Trace’s eyes followed the sweep of Karl’s arm, then settled on the poster nearest him. He looked at his photographic headshot beneath the highly legible word, wanted.
Trace looked around the room. It seemed to him that as he did so everyone stopped talking, stopped moving, and now stared at him.
He reached out to the column and peeled the poster away, held it in both hands and looked at it.
The poster was a FBI-type Ten Most Wanted-type poster with a good likeness of Trace taken two years before when he, Isabella and Pete had played around with the digital camera they’d given Pete for Christmas. Isabella carried the photograph in her wallet.
Trace turned toward Karl.
“We’re going now,” Trace said. “Thanks for your help.” He started toward the door.
“Wait a minute,” Karl said. “You can’t just walk out in broad daylight. You’ll be a sitting duck.”
“I can’t stay here. I’ll be reported, if I haven’t been already,” Trace said, as he and Ibrahim stepped through the door onto the patio.
Trace looked around. He didn’t see any unusual activity.
He and Ibrahim cut over toward the side of the building, behind the bushes. They paused, out of sight, to gather their thoughts and plan their next step.
They began to work their way along the side of the building, moving parallel to the street, back toward Port Everglades, heading to an abandoned warehouse Alex had told Trace about.
Trace planned to hide himself and Ibrahim in the warehouse for the day, and sort through his thoughts, see how his plan to rescue Bella had evolved in his mind, and, hopefully, see if it seemed achievable.
He would continue the debate with Alex later that night at the rendezvous. Some discussion of my plan might prove useful, he thought.
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Day 34
Viktor locked up his weapons for the afternoon, satisfied the tools of his trade were properly cleaned and oiled, ready for his next foray out into the night to kill unsuspecting policemen and soldiers.
His life had taken on a familiar and comforting rhythm now that he had upped the stakes and reintroduced some risk to himself by targeting the government, not only soft-target civilians. Kill civilians during the day to sow panic and discord among the population; kill policemen and soldiers at night during curfew to let the authorities know they, too, are vulnerable.
Not that the risk he now encountered was anything like the risk he’d known as an authentic shooter engaged in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Now that was invigorating risk, he thought. It kept you on high alert day in and day out. You slept with one eye open. Viktor beamed at the memory.
The risk Viktor experienced as a shooter in the Quarantine Zone, he decided, was akin to that he experienced when he’d ridden a roller coaster for the first time — a frightening sensation felt at the moment, but with the certain knowledge that the danger was contrived and managed by the ride’s designer. Illusory danger, not really risk at all.
So be it, he thought. If this is the best Fort Lauderdale has to offer, I’ll live with it until something better, something more perilous and interesting comes along.
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Day 34
Trace and Ibrahim entered the warehouse through a side door. Trace easily picked the lock using Alex’s tools he’d held onto after they had broken into Everglade Harry’s. The air inside was heavy and stale. Trace could see dust floating in the light that filtered through grime-covered windows.
Trace looked around for a place to sit, somewhere he and Ibrahim could take advantage of the limited daylight squeezing into the building.
Trace settled onto a wooden pallet, opened Pete’s laptop, and booted it up. Ibrahim stood behind him and looked over Trace’s shoulder at the computer’s screen.
After twenty minutes of watching Trace, Ibrahim said, “How’s your son, Pete? Will I meet him? How come he’s not been with you?”
Trace stopped what he was doing and said, “Pete died from the terrorists’ disease.” He turned his attention back to the laptop.
“Sorry,” Ibrahim said. “I’ll be quiet now.”
A few minutes later, Ibrahim said, as he pointed to the computer, “What’re you trying to do with the laptop?”
“Checking my e-mail.”
“Can I see it when you’re finished? The laptop, I mean, not your e-mail?” Ibrahim asked.
Trace nodded, said, “I’m finished for now,” and passed the laptop over.
“Ever hack a network other than for the Israeli military?” Trace asked.
Ibrahim stilled his fingers on the keyboard, and looked up at Trace.
“Hacking’s illegal,” he answered. “Besides, I think you mean crack a network, not hack. They’re different.”
“Call it what you want. You know what I meant,” Trace said. “That’s a strange question. Are you a cop?”
“No, I’m not a cop, and not a federal agent or anything like that. I have my reasons for asking, personal reasons. So, what about it. Have you?”
“I might have, but I never did any damage. Never stole anything. If I broke in, it was only for bragging rights. Assuming I even did it in the first place, that is.”
Where’d I ever hear that before? “Okay. So now we both know you’ve done it.”
Ibrahim’s face reddened, and he slowly nodded.
“I learned recently that my son, Pete, hacked systems. He said he did it for the same reasons you said, for the challenge, for peer recognition. Pete wasn’t a criminal.”
Ibrahim remained silent for a minute. Then he nodded at Trace. “What’s your interest in hacking?”
“I need to get into a government network,” Trace said, “to find a file so I can learn about my wife’s imprisonment and, hopefully, use the information to free her. I need help getting into the system.”
“You’re talking major prison time when you’re caught,” Ibrahim said. “Notice, I said when, not if, you’re caught.”
He paused, waiting for Trace to respond. When Trace remained silent, Ibrahim said, “I don’t do government computers.”
“That’s fine, Ibrahim, but I don’t have a choice. I understand your reluctance to help me.” He reached out to take back the laptop.
“Anyway, I can get along on my own,” Trace said. “I had an assignment in the Navy similar to your Israeli Army assignment so I understand the fundamentals of hacking.
“Not only that,” he said, “Pete showed me how to use some of the current, popular hacking tools so I’m pretty much up to date on the software used to penetrate networks.”
“I said I don’t hack government networks,” Ibrahim said. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you other ways. There’s a difference. And a condition.”
“What’s the condition?”
“It’s simple. When the Feds bust you and want to know how you learned to hack, you tell them you learned from your son. You don’t know me. Never heard of me. My name never comes up. As far as you’re concerned, I don’t exist. That’s my condition.”
Trace hesitated, not comfortable with the prospect of shifting blame to Pete, but said, “Fair enough.”
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“First off,” Ibrahim said, I need to know what you know. Have you ever actually hacked a network since you left the Navy? Alone or with your son?”
“No,” Trace said. “Pete showed me current keystrokes and explained some of the software tools. That being said, I do have a pretty good grasp of the concepts from my Navy days even if I haven’t used them for years. I also have a master’s degree in Computer Science and I’m a technology lawyer.
“Did Pete have hacking tools on this computer?” Ibrahim said, looking over at the laptop.
Trace nodded. “In a password protected directory. Here—” Trace said. as he double-clicked a folder Pete had named SAFECRACKER.
A text box popped up in
structing Trace to enter the password. Trace typed it in. A list of twenty-three files scrolled down the screen.
Ibrahim leaned in close and examined the list.
“Good tools,” he said. “I use most of these myself.”
Trace couldn’t help smiling at Pete’s state-of-the-art preparation.
“I’ll probably tell you things you already know from your Navy days or from Pete,” Ibrahim said, “but bear with me. I don’t want to assume you know every step and leave something out that will cause you to fail before you’re caught, after I’m gone.”
“The first thing we’d do in a real hack,” Ibrahim said, “would be to find a target. We don’t have to do that. I have one in mind for the lesson. I assume you know which federal target you want, but don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
“Uh huh,” Trace said. He wasn’t going to reveal his target in any event.
“We’ll hack into an easy target right now,” Ibrahim said, “one of the corporations I sometimes poke around in. Based on my prior experience, we’ll be able to do what we want there without being detected.”
“Okay,” Trace said, “but I thought you said—”
“I said I wouldn’t mess with a government network. This is private, a business.”
He pulled the laptop in close to him.
“I’ll step you through the process. After that I’m out of here and you’re on your own.”
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Day 34
Ibrahim placed the computer on his lap. “First we’ll start by getting your target’s IP address and host name.”
He opened Pete’s directory and scanned the list of hacking tools.
“For that we’ll use the whois protocol tool to create a diagram of the network to show us how the network is organized. Then, with that information we’ll examine the network for vulnerable ports. If we find an unprotected port, we’ll enter the network there.”
Trace said, “Okay.” This all was familiar to him.
The whois tool did its work. In about thirty seconds it returned the specimen corporation’s IP address and host name.
“Now, open the QuaylsGuard tool,” Ibrahim said. “We’ll use it to scan the corporation’s IP ports.”
After a few minutes QuaylsGuard highlighted two vulnerable ports. Ibrahim wrote down their identifying numbers — Ports 3702 and 3734.
Ibrahim said, “We’ll first try to enter through Port 3702 using Nmap.” He handed the laptop to Trace and said, “Open Nmap and type “3702” into the text box . . . . Good. Now, click the run button.”
They watched the monitor as Nmap did its job and infiltrated the network, entering the corporation’s network through Port 3702.
“Good,” Ibrahim said. “We’re in. Now the fun starts. We’ll monitor network traffic to identify some careless user whose UserID and password we can temporarily hijack.”
Ibrahim again deployed QuaylsGuard, this time to monitor network traffic. He wanted to find an employee or a contractor whose user account was vulnerable, then glom onto the account and temporarily make it his own.
They were in luck, and soon had a UserID and password.
“With these,” Ibrahim said, “we’ll be able to pass through the firewall. We’ll have this user’s account privileges, such they are, as our entree, our first step into the network.”
Trace nodded, then recorded the step in a notebook he carried with him.
“What we really want to do, as I’m sure you already know,” Ibrahim said, “is leverage this user’s privileges up to someone with privileges at the level of a system administrator. When we have that we’ll seize root control and own the network.”
Ibrahim waited while Trace wrote in his notebook.
“When you hack the government site, you’ll need not only administrator’s privileges, like we’ll soon get here, but also the highest security-level clearance possible in case the files you’re after are classified. You’ll follow the same steps we’re using now, but it’ll take you several tries, a few passes to get through all the firewalls. That’s when you’ll be caught, if you haven’t been already.”
Trace shrugged. What choice did he have?
“Are you with me so far?”
“I am.” He held up his notebook.
“Now we’ll use the DumpSec tool. It will scan the network to learn the protocols and services that are running. It should also return a list of the required authentications, the users, groups, and file-sharing permissions we’ll need.”
Trace wrote furiously as he looked back and forth from the laptop’s monitor to his notebook.
“Now we’re going to sniff packets that are crossing the network,” Ibrahim said.
“Our tool, Ethereal, will check each packet — sniff it — to locate the files we want,” Ibrahim said. “But since we don’t really want any files, we’ll log off now and close up.”
“That was helpful,” Trace said. He closed his notebook.
“That was equivalent to elementary school compared to what you plan to do — a graduate school-level penetration. You’ll not only have to penetrate several firewalls, but once you’re in, assuming you get in, you’ll have to detect several levels of UserIds and passwords to find and assign yourself a high-level security clearance. I don’t think you can do it.”
“Maybe, but I don’t have a choice.”
Ibrahim raised his eyebrows. “Do you think you understand what we just did well enough to replicate it?” he asked. When Trace nodded, Ibrahim said, “Okay, let’s try another one of my private corporation targets. I’ll watch while you hack into its system on your own.”
Thirty minutes later Trace powered down the laptop and closed the lid.
“That was good. Better than I expected,” Ibrahim said. “It’ll probably go all right for you until they detect you. Then the roof will come crashing in.” He paused as if trying to remember something.
“Here’s some advice for you,” Ibrahim said. “Go slowly. Follow the steps I showed you. If anything unusual happens, anything at all, immediately break-off the network connection so they can’t track it back to you.
“If in doubt, break off the connection. You can always come back another time. Your speed getting offline might just save you, though probably not.” Ibrahim studied Trace’s face for a second.
“You’re going to get caught, you know. I’d bet on it,” Ibrahim said.
Trace nodded.
“Remember our deal. Once I leave here, you’re on your own. I don’t exist.”
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Day 34
Trace took his first steps to break into ODMC’s network.
He thought about Pete’s repeated admonition to him: to hack a system successfully, you have to think like a computer programmer who is writing software code to achieve a specific goal.
He could do that. This was the methodology he used with clients in his law practice. As a lawyer, he would first establish his client’s goals; then he’d map a logical route to achieve them, anticipating or addressing and resolving obstacles as they surfaced along the way.
Pete had also drilled into Trace that it was stupid to engage in anything other than safe hacking, an oxymoronic phrase if ever I heard one, Trace now thought. It was essential, Pete had said at the start of each night’s lesson, that the hacker disguise his identity and hide his location from prying eyes. His goal should always be to probe without being noticed, to penetrate the system’s defenses in secret, spend time within the system unobserved, and then withdraw.
Be invisible at every step in the hack, Pete had said. Be a good runner who leaves no footprints.
Trace looked through the pages of his notebook and thought about how he would approach attacking ODMC’s network. He did not have the benefit of knowing the names of ODMC’s servers or the identities of its firewalls. He also did not know the identity of any authorized user whose account he could appropriate to crack the networ
k.
Trace’s assault on ODMC’s protected network would have to be made directly, blindly, with what Pete had called brute force penetration. He would probe every possible avenue of entry until he found an open port and an available password or until they heard him coming, shut him out of the system, and stormed in and arrested him.
Pete’s laptop searched the airwaves for a usable wireless connection. It located a hotspot called FRIEDA, and logged on to it. FRIEDA was an unsecured Wi-Fi network, like the old telephone party lines, operated by someone who generously or, more likely, unknowingly made the online connection available to anyone close enough to tap into it. FRIEDA was as public a wireless network source as Trace could find since the usual sources of public wireless hotspots — schools, libraries, airports, hotels and restaurants — were closed for the duration of the quarantine.
Trace looked again at his notes, took a deep breath, and embarked on his first step as a civilian network hacker.
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Day 34
Using his notebook and his memory as guides, Trace stepped through the preliminary stages of hacking.
He quickly identified the IP address of ODMC’s network, found three vulnerable ports, and lurked at one port long enough to capture the UserID and password of Major Michael Fowler (UserID: mfowler. Password: General*2B1Day#). Using this as his entrée, Trace then deployed the Ethereal tool to penetrate two firewalls.
He paused and reviewed his notes. He now needed to elevate his privileges from that of a user with ordinary, limited access to the level of a user having full administrative standing.
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