SILENT AS THE DEAD: A Deadly Cyber Chase Begins

by Sanjib Sinha

  PG had already developed this backdoor surveillance tool a little more sophisticated and powerful. He’d added more artificial intelligence so that his automated system back home always could keep a constant vigil on the numbers.

  Spies usually gained access to use it for such things as taking pictures and snooping in. From now on if someone wanted to find his location, he’d see Jacky’s location. He, silent until now, belched first and then made a false statement to Jacky, “It is taking time because there is a video file. You know, video files are heavier than other files.”

  Jacky sat tentatively on his huge chair while playing with a pencil between his fingers, heaved a sigh of relief as if he had expected something like it before.

  He said, “No problem. Take your time.”

  Why did he sound slightly relieved? PG noticed it and took a quick mental note. Had he expected a video to be retrieved? The way his expression changed; muscles of faces relaxed; it seemed that Jacky had anticipated it much earlier. Although he wasn’t in a position to understand the entire activities that had taken place without his permission; Jacky was contented listening about the video. It made PG more curious about the case. Did Jacky hire him and spent so much money for retrieving a video?

  PG had to copy it for saving his own ass. If Jacky came to know what had happened just now he would have jumped out from his chair. He could have hurled the chair to PG, had he known the bitter truth.

  After the job was over Jacky gave him another twenty thousand in cash and PG was contented. Now it was time to break the real big news to this ‘rich bastard’. The big bad news would earn him more money and at the same time it could hammer the nail deep into Jacky’s filthy dirty butt.

  He belched first and then took some time and then declared the bad news to Jacky, quite indifferently, as if it was the joke of the day.

  “This video had been emailed to somebody before all the data were deleted.”

  Suddenly all hell broke loose!

  13. Sunday, 1:05 PM, Calcutta

  “What?”

  The lean and mean face with straggly moustache and deep shrewd black eyes took an awkward turn and went bloodless.

  Jacky stood arms akimbo, refusing to move. Staring in disbelief, he asked, “You mean someone had got it too, I mean any third party?”

  An agitation mixed with annoyance made his face look horrible. PG enjoyed the panorama.

  PG belched again making an irritating sound and looked sideways at Jacky as if he was declaring his death penalty, “Yes I have just found a record that someone has sent this video to an email address from this laptop..”

  “Can you not retrieve them also?” He interrupted with wide eyes. Completely at loss, he sounded helpless as if someone tied his hands and unzipped his pants.

  “Well those emails can be cracked. The machine and IP address can be tracked down and finally you need to destroy those systems physically but Mr. Sen…” PG took time keeping his sentence incomplete to apply more pressure on Jacky. At the end of his silence he belched in a high pitched sound and said in an artificial melancholic tone, “You know this is highly illegal and punishable offence in our country.”

  “But I want you to do this job for the sake of my reputation Mr. PG. Please, help me; I know you can do it.” He was begging and PG remembered the face of the street child he had seen while coming to this overbearing office riding Jacky’s luxurious car. They looked same.

  He explained, slowly, taking time, “Yes I know how to do it. But I can’t do it. This is illegal Mr. Sen. I cannot send you to jail. How can I do that?” He continued in a mischievous tone, “These police people are simply bad. Once they get the whiff of any illegal cyber activity they will come down to your place sniffing like a dog.”

  He belched again and showed irritation about the imaginary police raid.

  He fabricated just to put more pressure on him; he had done it before many times as the situation had demanded.

  In real life it’s simply a child’s play if you consider about the official snooping devices spies often use. Their surveillance tools like ‘Dreamy Smurf, Nosey Smurf, Tracker Smurf or Paranoid Smurf’ conduct real time snooping on smart phones and hack any unsafe system. If they want they can crack any email account.

  Jacky’s face stiffened and it was turning red and he was buttoning up his shirt unnecessarily when he finally exhaled an ailing breath, “Please, do that Mr. PG. I’m explaining you the real true story. Somebody has back-stabbed me…you know.” at the end his voice was seething in anger. Initially it had a kind of burning sensation. But it toned downed abruptly when he almost begged, “I’ll give you what you want. What amount do you charge for that? That will be no problem, I assure you. You’ll get the money now. Whatever the amount be, I’ll pay you in cash right away.”

  “Money is not a problem Mr. Sen. As I said you, it is illegal.” He tried to hide a big laughter and wanted to be heard as indifferent as possible with two successive loud belches this time. With each denial the amount of money would jump, PG knew it.

  “I know that. But for my reputation, you know, this fake video was made to malign my image.” He tried to convince him and stared innocently, “You can save me. Tell me what your fee is? I am begging your help.”

  “Now he looks like a perfect beggar.” PG thought.

  He was curious to see what that video contained. Why this video had made Jacky look so worried? He had already collected some data about the owner of this laptop. The man was called Grass. The laptop manufacturers would have been glad to know that this laptop had been used only for watching pornography. The machine used a pirated version of old Windows. That had made the job of cracking much easier.

  This username – Grass – had been used everywhere. The man had an email address with that username. Who was Grass? What kind of video did he have? As per the records of the machine, the video couldn’t have been a saint-like-religious-type. Lots of questions stormed his mind. Whom he had sent that video? And lastly, who had cracked this machine and deleted all data? Why he had done so?

  Jacky came forward and was whispering in his ears, “Listen Mr. PG, it was a fake video. My enemies always want to malign me. It’s another effort. It’s not too late. Before it goes viral you have to delete it. Please. Take any amount and do this for my sake.” He came so close PG got the smell of chic cigar mixed with an expensive eau-de-cologne.

  PG was watching him like a tiger that had just killed its prey. Last night he enjoyed the song ‘I am the tiger’ by ABBA in you tube. He remembered the lines!

  I am behind you, I'll always find you, I am the tiger

  People who fear me never go near me, I am the tiger

  PG said, “Mr. Sen, I don’t want to do such illegal activities. But, yes, your reputation is at stake. I have to take care of deleting my each footprint so that nobody suspects you. It’s a laborious job.”

  Jacky was breathless when he asked, “I’ll pay you sufficiently for that labour. Don’t worry; tell me, how much you charge?”

  PG said, “I hesitate, you know. It’s illegal. I usually don’t want to involve in such activities.”

  Jacky came forward and held his hands; he begged, “Please Mr. PG, tell me your price. Don’t hesitate.”

  Such an important person was almost crying for help when PG finally announced, “I charge one hundred thousand cash for this illegal job. You have to pay the full amount in advance. Permanent damage can’t be done to that mail account. I will bring it down temporarily. But probably the receivers stored it in the hard disk also.”

  “What can be done?” Jacky urged anxiously.

  He was desperate to get the video. Why such desperation? PG wondered.

  “I will give you the IP address, user name and location. You need to find out that machine and physically destroy it because as you see, deleting data is no remedy. It can be retrieved back. Someone will do that. There are people like me in this country, you know, who will do it happily for some money. So you n
eed to destroy that rogue computer completely.”

  PG knew it was too difficult to destroy any data once it had entered the great and complex world of web. And he won’t allow doing that.

  This video had come here to stay. PG had already made an exact copy of it in his home system.

  14. Sunday, 1:15 PM, Calcutta

  Things turned murkier.

  Somebody muddied the water intentionally so that no one would dare to find the trace of the original source of hacking in the future.

  Probably the cracker had kept it for further distribution or he had an intention to blackmail Jacky. But if he told Jacky Sen about the possibilities; PG knew – he would have lost another one hundred thousand.

  PG decided to keep silent. This lean and mean man had done something wrong and that had been recorded in that video. PG guessed it earlier. Now he was eager to go back home and watch the video first. Next he’d snoop on his mobile to know his activities associated with that video.

  PG had no bad feeling about spying on this thug.

  There should always be some interesting stories flying around these colourful characters. They had money, they had plenty full of bad habits and weaknesses; they had interesting stories.

  PG was not supposed to know that this video-story had a violent past and the future would be uncertain like the grey rain outside. PG was not in a position to guess that. His conjectures had limitations as the evidences were incomplete. He had actually just entered the first phase of a risky bloody-game through the back door. In the front end there were three dead bodies lying in the pool of blood. In the back end there was a vicious killer who could social-engineer his identity in a minute and exploit people for money. He was ruthless and didn't blink to kill people.

  PG didn’t know that. He was not supposed to know.

  He knew only one deep-rooted-secret – someone had already entered into this computer before through the backdoor and became the super user. Not only that; the cracker had also placed a ‘Bot’ to track every move. The Bot was supposed to record every key-stroke.

  There could be more twist to this uncertain game. He did not know what kind of router or networking device Jacky Sen’s company had been using since it had started functioning. If anyone had already bugged it to keep a constant vigil, he would have been informed by now. In that case they were keeping tracks of every movement going on through this network.

  PG’s program blocked the keystroke logging. But he had no time to scan the port. Somebody might spy on each activity that was going on in this machine. Network spying was a common practice in hacking community.

  A security agency’s recent report was quite shockingly explicit in this regard. The agency’s Access and Target Development department routinely received – or intercepted – routers, servers, and other computer network devices being exported from that country before they were delivered to the international customers.

  The agency then allegedly implanted backdoor surveillance tools, repackaged the devices with a factory seal and sent them on. What had they been doing in between? They had already implanted the backdoor surveillance tools so they could gain access to the entire networks and all their users.

  If there was any backdoor surveillance tool, it could have recorded his home machine and IP address. But it would not happen as he had got his special protection already in place. If someone wanted to track his activities and locate his home machine address he would fail through the maze of protective layers. He would be guided through six proxy chain servers. Finally the tracker would end up in a wrong address. He had kept many other layers ready to trick the intruder from reading his real identity.

  He was busy cracking the email, temporarily disabling it. Locating the IP address was his primary concern. After that it would be Jacky Sen’s headache to find out the hard disk and destroy it.

  He copied entire documents from that email address and there were a hell lot of interesting things to be copied. Some of them must have been very interesting and could be an ideal source of entertainment later in his free time.

  PG decided to copy them simultaneously at his cloud servers and assured Jacky that everything was settled. The email was hacked. The video was deleted and now it was his responsibility to pick up and destroy that rogue computer.

  He belched and said, “The video was emailed to someone called – Tara Sen. And the IP address shows it’s in Calcutta…” as he was giving him facts and figures he didn’t look at Jacky.

  Someone had already sucked out all the blood from Jacky’s face. Once he heard the name his lean face turned ethereal. Jacky suddenly plopped down next to him and said, “I don’t need the address. Leave it.” His eyes were burning in anger.

  He stood up and started walking up and down impatiently and it seemed he would collapse any time.

  Who was this lady? Why her name suddenly brought a sea of change and murderous rage on his face? He stayed no longer an ordinary looking man. PG was gazing the change. Jacky’s face was burning with rage and it wore a brutal look. PG tried to gather his thoughts and wanted to join the ends to get a clear picture.

  Jacky didn’t tell him a single word. He was now grumbling and cursing in such a low voice that PG couldn’t hear a piece of sound. Jacky silently handed him over the money. He seemed oblivious to some thoughts.

  When PG was about to depart Jacky said, “Mr. PG, please remember what I’ve told you before. Just forget everything.” He laid particular stress on the word – ‘everything’.

  PG smiled, “My memory is very short-lived Mr. Sen. I get the money and I forget everything. You’d better forget me.”

  He belched loudly as if he was really contented for what had happened.

  He was not in a position to guess the outcome at that moment. One woman and two men had already been murdered for this video.

  The dead faces always hung around. Dead faces were unforgettable.

  15. Sunday, 1:15 PM, Mumbai

  Sarika was staring blankly at the police officers.

  She was dumbfounded. She still didn’t believe what had happened to her. The man had almost killed her.

  She saw the killer who had murdered Diana and he came to kill her. It was sheer luck that she was saved by a whisker. She saw his original face partly; but, it was not enough to describe every detail. What she could have described in more detail was his dangling-toy. She preferred to stay silent.

  She had noticed the ugly-looking face with a deep cut mark on the chin and piggy eyes. She was shocked to hear that he was the killer of Diana Lamer. That man had killed Diana in the morning and after killing her he came to pick her up. Sarika was confused. The wet feelings between her legs had dried up. The dangling dick melted in fear. She couldn’t think about it any more. If the phone call didn’t come at right time she would have been a dead body like Diana lying in the morgue.

  That ugly-looking-man was a killer; not a simple killer; a new type of killer as the police said.

  The man was a ‘social engineer’ as the police officers had just described him. Sarika had never heard such fashionable coinage – social engineer. It was a kind of identity theft – the police officer tried to explain. What police officers didn’t know – that man disguised as Sarab Mehta approached her and made love with her. It seemed so repulsive now. A killer touched her unadulterated body.

  "Oh, my God! It's so nauseating." She thought.

  She was not listening to them any more. She was busy recreating the intimate scenes. That man had used prosthetic make-up and made love with her. The thought was circling around her mind continuously. An ugly face with a deep cut mark on the chin replaced the dreamy-dick.

  The police officers including the police commissioner were extremely cooperative. Although they didn’t know her actual dilemma of losing a toy as they were trying their best to help her.

  Especially that assistant police commissioner of detective department and cyber sell – the young officer, Udit Kashyap, with beaky nose and sharp grey eyes;
he had been with her since last one hour. He promised to catch that man at earliest.

  Udit told her repeatedly, “Don’t worry Madam; we’ll definitely catch the man. It’s our first priority.”

  Sarika was not listening to them any more; her priority was different - going to home at the earliest. She was scared to hell but at the same time she felt a strange sensation inside her body. She crossed her legs and uncrossed again. She had almost got it. The police had seized her mobile. If she had it, she would have used the vibration under the table to reach that explosion.

  Now the six police officers were talking in whisper. They were talking about the BMW car on which the killer was last seen. Where had gone the car? It had just vanished with the mysterious man.

  It was last traced by the CCTV footage moving towards the New Nagardas Road. It might have taken the left turn. In that case he had either crossed the rail line and took to the Swami Vivekananda Road. In another case he had taken another right turn and went past H F society road. If he didn’t take the left turn he should have taken the right-turn and moved towards Village Road.

  Since all the traffic surveillance cameras had stopped working, the police was clueless about his movement.

  “Sir, throughout the whole region CCTV stopped working at that time. It was unthinkable sir. It had never happened before. The hacker must have done something.” The Inspector General of Traffic Mr. Nalgonda was explaining it to the commissioner while Sarika listened to the explanations half-heartedly. All she wanted was to go home.

  She was not keen in this life any more. It seemed she had lost everything.

  That man with ugly face was actually Sarab Mehta. No, he was not Sarab Mehta. He disguised himself as Sarab Mehta. And he bedded her. Not once but twice. He took her half naked pictures. In the second love making session he had insisted to record the whole act in video. Sarika didn’t agree. She was lucky. By this time that video would have hit every possible social media accounts. Had he made the video clandestinely? She felt a cold wave running down the spine.