Hack (5 page)

That was probably filled with my new identity. One of the things that had constantly amazed me when I had first started hacking and sneaking into computer networks was how important appearance is to laypeople. They often judge a person based on how well he’s dressed. That suited me fine, since it had made my job of convincing people a hell of a lot easier.

13

I remember one time when I was standing in the bathroom at home, in an expensive suit that I had rented. I needed to imitate an office worker on a hack that required me to take a
field trip
to a local office, to get some server details. I was checking out my new hairstyle when my mother walked in. She looked startled, as if her home had been invaded by a well-dressed burglar. I could see her eyes working, trying to figure it out. Then she realized who I was. She didn’t ask, but I felt that I should volunteer an explanation.

I made up some lie about a job interview, and she seemed to accept it. Later the next day, I took that field trip and managed to get the server information I needed, and on the way home, took the suit back to the shop. But I kept the idea that people sometimes judge a hacker by their appearance.

“On to the subject’s history,” Philips said.

He reached over to Garman’s briefcase, and started shuffling through a bunch of photos.

“You know Malik,” he said, spreading out the photos—ones I had not seen before. Then he placed another photograph on the table, of a high school boy, thin and unkempt.

“This is Abdul Zaqarwi. He is fifteen, and happens to be in your computer class at Elmwood High.” I studied the photograph. If the photo of Malik I had seen in jail looked harmless, then Zaqarwi was even more so. He was a stereotypical nerd. He looked like he would have the most fashionable gadgets, but not a fashionable girlfriend. I raised an incredulous eyebrow, which was getting to be my favorite expression. Philips picked up on my doubt.

“He looks like an ordinary kid, but don’t get the idea that he is not in this up to his neck.”

I put down Zaqarwi’s picture.

“He’s my contact?”

“That’s right. With your overdeveloped computer skills, you should soon attract his attention. Just do your stuff.”

“Did you have anything in mind?” I said.

“What do you mean?” Philips said. He sounded genuinely surprised at my question.

“Hacking is all about stealth, about not being seen. Now I’m supposed to get caught?”

I wasn’t really concerned. Hackers are like any other group. They find each other by animal radar or something like that. But I didn’t want to undersell my task. I needed some breathing space, and like any businessman going into a deal, I wanted to put the worst light on things.

“For a man with your talents for improvisation,” Philips said a little testily, “it should be simple. Like I said, these people have their eyes out for any prospects.

They’ll find you.”

I nodded, without speaking. But now Philips was spooked.

“Are you sure you can handle this?” he said. It was as if he had taken my concerns seriously. Whether he doubted my ability, or was prodding my hacking ego to see if I doubted my ability, I couldn’t tell. Either way, I let some of my natural arrogance back into my voice, and I smiled.

“No problem.” I decided to change the subject.

“What about my equipment? I need a phone, a notebook computer, and some money.”

14

Philips looked at Hannah, who reached into her bag. She took out a notebook computer and a cell phone, and put them on the bed next to me. They didn’t look like anything special—not the toys that a computer hacker would have. I powered up the notebook.

“It’s been rigged with a key logger?” I asked. “So you can see everything I’m doing?”

“It won’t stop you from doing it,” was Philips terse reply.

“It just means you get to watch,” I said, feigning annoyance. I wasn’t concerned about that, either. I powered down the notebook, and put it back into the bag, where, apart from a few uses—to keep the FBI thinking that they were tracking me—it would remain. The phone got the same treatment.

“I guess you know that we’ll be tracking every phone call you make,” Philips said, as he picked up the phone.

“If I know that you’re listening to everything I do, it’s going to freak me out.”

“You don’t have any choice,” Garman said. I decided to tackle the subject now. I knew that at some point I would have to argue my way into getting some free time, to devote to my Knight agenda.

“Look,” I said, “I’ll do what you want me to do, but we agreed that I could do it my own way. If I see anyone following me, or trying to interfere, I’m out.”

“Nobody is going to interfere with you in any way whatsoever. We can’t afford to. Once Malik shows an interest, they’ll probably put you under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Directional microphones and bugging devices mean that Malik could be listening in to any conversations you have, even in the house—especially in the house. That’s why from now, until the end of the play, you’re always the Johnson family. You can never make a single slip, do you understand?”

I nodded.

“The only place you can be out of character is in the car, which has anti-surveillance equipment. If you need to talk business, or to make a report or a request, then tell Richard or Hannah that you want to take a ride to the mall. You can talk in the car, and only in the car.”

I wondered about what anti-bugging device the car had. That sort of thing interests me, but I never get to play, because it is so expensive. I had considered attending one of those private investigators' conventions, where the latest hardware is demoed by the industry leaders, but had never got around to it.

“If anybody tries to listen in, all they’re going to hear is what sounds like white noise interference from the engine.”

“What if somebody pulls a gun on me, or something?”

I wasn’t worried by that prospect; I just wanted to know how much leeway I had. Philips had to have people pretending to be teachers. The question was how many and where.

“That’s unlikely,” answered Philips.

“Do you have someone I can contact at the school?”

“We have one agent working on the school staff who’ll be looking out for you if anything happens at the school.”

“Who is it?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

“That doesn’t concern you. This agent is only there to keep an eye on you.

You won’t see him, and he won’t talk to you. You do not need to contact him. Ever.”

Did that ‘him’ mean the agent was male?

I nodded. “Okay.”

15

I took the wallet off the table. Apart from the ID cards, I noticed some money tucked into the rear flap. I counted fifty dollars.

“I’ll need more money than that.” Taking out a bank card, I asked, “How much is in the account?”

“Five hundred. The access number is the last four digits of your library card. I can’t see you using more than that. But if you have a genuine need, then you can have what you want. You just have to discuss it with Richard first.”

I stuck the wallet in a back pocket.

“Any other questions?” Philips asked.

I said nothing. Philips looked disappointed that I hadn’t asked anything, as if it was a bad sign. I was supposed to be an eager beaver, a smart guy.

“You might like to know where Zaqarwi’s group meets,” he said.

“Let me guess. He has a habit of changing meeting locations, and it’s never the same group twice.”

Knight was the same: cagey. In the old days, Knight had a lot of fun picking bizarre places for us to meet—paranoid the cops or some shadowy organization would be bothered enough to listen in to his delusions and misdemeanors. But I guess in the end those fantasies had turned out to be true.

“Wiretaps show that he’s used the local Internet cafés,” Philips added. I nodded. Back then, it was a big deal that coffee shops had just started offering free Internet stations and access to customers, if they paid extortionate rates for a half-gallon cup of coffee—almost the same as a jar of instant. But those spots were so popular that I had seen hackers (who wouldn’t dare use their own Internet connections) in there at 2:00 p.m., and they were still there at kicking-out time. What used to annoy me about those places was that the college students who worked there could see on the log where you were surfing to, and you had to expend time evading their amateur surveillance.

They had a big board above the counter, with two dozen supposed varieties of coffee on it, to foster the consumerist “choice” illusion, which presumably was as addictive as the caffeine. We used to annoy them by asking for a coffee with milk.

“You mean an Americano?”

“No, I’d like a coffee, with milk, and no sugar.”

“Milk is on the counter.”

“Can’t you put it in?”

“You might like to choose how milky you like your coffee.”

“Just average, thanks.” It went on. They annoyed us hackers, and we annoyed them.

“Anything else?” Philips said.

“No.”

“Let me warn you, you’re going to be cooped up in a house for the next month with Richard and Hannah, and I expect you to try to treat them with some respect.

They’re experienced federal agents. They deal every day with the worst that society has to offer. They have both made major busts and received citations for valor. So, any sarcastic remarks are going to roll off them like water off a duck’s back. My advice to you is to be good and try to get along. Soon, this will be over, and we’ll all be smiling.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m not going to make waves.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Go with Hannah. She’s going to change your hair.

Then put on your new clothes.”

16

I went into the bathroom as Karl Ripley, and emerged fifteen minutes later as David Johnson. Philips nodded without speaking, as if to say, “I’m right about nobody recognizing you.”

That was true enough. In the mirror, even I didn’t recognize me. I looked like a chatroom junkie. I stood in the middle of the room, while Philips, Garman, Richard, and Hannah looked me over. But they were not just judging whether my new image would be good enough to pass as an ordinary high school student. They were weighing
me
up. Was I up to the job?

It reminded me of that time in drama class, when Mr. Ronsen unexpectedly picked me to play Horatio in the school’s dismal production of
Hamlet
. I could see everyone staring at me, wondering who this nerd was, and why I had been given an important role in their play. Come opening night, I gave a good-natured performance that was neither good nor bad, and somehow got the loudest applause, much to everybody’s surprise, and my indifference. The gorgeous and popular Anne Noble even said hi to me. But apart from its use in hacking, being an actor sent me to sleep.

I stared back at the feds, and kept the idea in my mind: it’s just another hack—

no sweat.

“You’ve heard everything we have to say, and now you know almost as much about Malik and his organization as we do. This is your last chance to call this off.

You can leave now, and get a job making pizza. It’s up to you.”

Well, maybe I did have a couple of reservations about what I was doing. But I looked again at the pictures of Malik and Zaqarwi that were still on the table. For all I knew, the FBI had their information right, and these men were the front of an organization dedicated to murder and mayhem at any cost.

If that was true, then I had no problem with doing what I had to do. Then the FBI would crack the case, and I’d have a free ride to college. Win-win, as they say.

Sure.

“It sounds like a good plan,” I said. “I’ll need to download some hacker tools and stuff.”

Philips nodded, and I set up the notebook, connected to the motel’s broadband connection, and started surfing.

I soon realized that being away from the game for over six months had made me rusty. I had by then forgotten many of the details of the warez sites I had used for downloading tools and uploading my own contributions, hacker to hacker.

I rolled my eyes upwards, navigating through the universe of memory where I had left several important details hidden away. With a bit of effort, I managed to grab them. Within a minute, I was downloading the sort of scripts and hacker programs that would have incriminated me in a court of law, if it weren’t for the fact that the FBI was paying for the line.

Still floating around the Internet, despite the hacker crackdown, were some of my own old scripts. Once I had my old tools, I ran one of my programs that let me see the vulnerabilities on the notebook that the FBI had just handed to me. It soon came up with a list:

1

sttd vulnerability

DOS

2

zty

overflow

possible

root

I was going to say something about the FBI giving me a computer that was full of security holes, but then I saw it hadn’t been booted for weeks. It was new, and had never had any updates at all. I checked the history logs, and saw the only website that it had ever visited was the FBI home page.

17

“Brilliant,” I said. “You’re giving me a machine with the FBI site in the cache.”

No one answered. I wasn’t worried about it. I was just looking for an excuse to stamp my authority, even if it was trivially.

“Apart from that, it’s cool.”

I turned the notebook off, and stood up.

“Okay?” Philips said.

“Okay,” I said.

“All right, then, this meeting is over. If we’re lucky, within a few weeks Malik will be in the bag, and we’ll all be happy.”

We went outside to the cars.

“Be sure that I’ll be keeping track of everything,” Philips added.

As if on cue, the other three got into their cars, leaving just me and Phillips standing in the autumn breeze. He leaned toward me, talking confidentially.

“I want to trust you, Ripley. You’re the only teenager I know bright enough to pull this off. That’s why I came to you. I’m depending on you. Don’t let me down.”

“I won’t,” I said, matching his serious voice.

We walked over to the Mercedes, and Philips opened a rear door for me.