For Mayhem or Madness
6
Paper Trails
WE LIVE with the mistaken belief that digital files are somehow safer than old fashioned paper files. Haven’t we been told since the dawn of the Internet that the Internet is forever? ‘Don’t post that picture because you can never remove it from all the places it will be posted.’ It’s a contradiction that we believe the ‘cloud’ is somehow a safe place for our information while our privacy is made vulnerable on the Internet. And they are the same thing.
Well, Hacker X had proven that he could erase someone from the Internet, and all digital trace that he existed. And he’d apparently taken credit for my attack on Philanthropolis and the Patterson Empire. Nice guy.
Except that meant he knew who I was. I was worried.
It took a few days to reach a full agreement with Jordan. The simple fact that FinCEN was willing to pay me in tax-free, or tax-paid, bearer bonds was enough to convince me they were serious about putting me on this case. Bearer bonds hadn’t been issued in the United States since the 1980s as part of the agency’s drive to stop money laundering. Now, you had to buy Eurodollar Bonds in foreign countries and even then, you couldn’t transport them into or out of the country without declaring their value and paying tax on them.
I’d found that out when I stashed the bonds the Mexican government gave me and decided to transfer most of the money FinCEN had paid into the instruments. When I brought them back into the country, I had to declare them and show an IRS agent that I had transferred post-tax dollars from my account in Seattle to buy the bonds in Mexico City. They really wanted to charge me tax on them again.
Any financial instrument with a value of over ten grand had to be declared going into or out of the country. Stocks, cash, bonds, treasury notes. And if one became a stickler about it, even the American Express cash cards they gave me for expenses. The thing is, you can take any number of credit cards and bank cards in and out of the country with any limit. But credit card transactions are logged and reported. Amex cash cards are not. They just happen to look almost the same. The missing bit of information on the cash cards is the key to their value. They function by PIN and there is no name on the card or associated with the account.
FinCEN was making it possible for me to travel anonymously, or under any name I chose.
Did I believe they couldn’t track the cash cards? No.
On the other hand, one of the things that had saved my bacon when I was investigating EFC was a credit card transaction and receipt in my wallet from a gas station a hundred miles away time-stamped when I was supposed to be breaking into the company’s manufacturing facility. There was a place for a paper trail.
And a way to use one to deflect interest in me.
“Maizie girl. How about a road trip?” I’m not sure she understood what I was saying, but something in my voice must have said “GO!” The little dog was out the door and downstairs in a flash. There were two quick barks at the front door, then she bolted back upstairs with leash in her mouth. I heard Mrs. Prior huffing upstairs behind her.
“You’re leaving again?” Mrs. Prior asked from the top of the stairs.
“Maizie and I need some time to get to know each other better. I’m thinking we’ll drive down the coast—maybe all the way to San Diego and back. My car needs to be driven occasionally to get the oil circulating, you know,” I said.
“How long will you be gone?” she asked, eying the overnight bag I brought from my room.
“Oh, not more than three weeks or so.”
“I’ll watch things here for you and bring in mail. Call if you need anything.”
I can be ready to walk out the door for a three-week trip in twenty minutes. Ten if I’m in a hurry. I don’t need that much and part of the purpose of this trip was to equip myself for a much longer journey if it proved necessary. I can open up the Mustang and get to Las Vegas in two days, so I figured three to San Diego.
Not so when traveling with a dog.
In addition to my small bag of clothes and backpack with computer equipment, I needed a dog bed that would fit in the passenger seat, a special harness that looped into the seatbelt so Maizie could ride safely, a twenty-five-pound bag of dog food, doggie dishes, poop bags, a huge box of doggie treats, dog brush, and two and a half gallons of water in case she got thirsty.
As casual as she was about saying ‘have a nice trip,’ Mrs. Prior still accompanied me to Pet World to make sure I purchased things that Maizie liked. Add to the list a ball and three squeaky toys.
After stopping at every rest area along the freeway, Maizie and I finally made it to a cheap motel on the north edge of Portland, Oregon in time to eat dinner and stretch out for the night. I used a cash card for the room, the meal, and fuel for the Mustang. At every truck stop I visited, I withdrew $500 from one of the cards. I was going to be carrying a lot of cash soon. I revised my time to San Diego to a week—maybe ten days.
But Maizie and I were having fun.
After Maizie had chased her ball up and down the hallway until she was exhausted, I settled in with my new laptop and started searching around the perimeter for Hacker X. Jordan had given me a pretty hefty file of what they knew about the guy. The attack on Carlisle and on Philanthropolis were only part of his exploits, or at least part of the exploits he’d been credited with. I had to remind myself that he was being credited with at least one attack that he didn’t do, which meant there could be more than one hacker who was carrying out the other attacks, either independently or in a coordinated effort. I could be looking for a cyber army.
The FBI is responsible for investigating and protecting against cybercrime in the US. Some of the paper files Jordan gave me had names and information about investigators redacted. I’d insisted that he deliver paper copies of all the information, and the file was nearly two inches thick. He’d tried to give me a laptop, provide a hard drive, and suggested a thumb drive with all the data on it. I was taking no electronic ‘gifts’ from the Federal Government. I was still stinging from EFC tricking me into being a rabbit for their hounds under pretense of investigating a security breach. If I was just a training exercise for the FBI, they’d at least have to work to find me.
One of the reasons for the road trip was so I could connect through a wide variety of locations and internet portals. I was actively blocking my hardware identification so my searches appeared to come directly from the motel’s front desk. Their guest WiFi was laborious, but the secure office WiFi had reasonable response. And I could hack into it.
The profile the FBI had put together was pretty amazing. You have no idea how much they know about you without actually knowing who you are. According to the FBI, Hacker X was a white male in his late forties, lived or had lived on the West Coast, had probably worked for a large tech company, was protecting a family, was non-religious but not necessarily anti-religion, probably served in the Armed Forces in his twenties, was college educated and not just a self-educated hacker, and might be terminally ill. Yet their search had not zeroed in on a person. He had erased himself.
I worked around the edges of what they knew. I started by using my personal search engine to compile a list of tech companies located in Washington, Oregon, and California. That narrowed things down to just a little over ten thousand. I cross-checked the list against the term ‘cyber security’ and reduced the list to about a thousand. Of course, a lot of companies have some mention of cyber security, but I was interested specifically in those that produced or were involved with providing network security software. It was just a hunch, but if the hacker had worked in the tech industry like the FBI profile said, chances were that he’d had an opportunity to work with the nuts and bolts of security systems. The nature of his attacks had been against networks and not primarily against individual computers.
My list was down to just over a hundred companies.
By the time I’d manually sifted through the profiles of each company, it was nearly breakfast time.
Maizie stretched and we went out for a walk. Then I stretched out on the bed and caught some shut-eye.
She was dancing on her hind legs and ready to go by the time I was out of the shower. After a bite to eat, I located a big chain discount store and bought an unlocked smart phone, but no SIM. We used to call these ‘burner’ phones, but they were just a cheaply produced cell phone that could be attached to nearly any GSM network. That’s good for world-wide travel. The U.S. is pretty backward about cellular access. We prefer to serve the providers rather than have providers serve customers.
On the other hand, you can get off a plane in almost any major foreign airport and stop to buy a local SIM to plug into your phone with unlimited text, a gigabyte of data, and sixty minutes of voice calling for about twenty dollars. All you need is an unlocked phone to install it in. My paranoia told me that I’d need a few of these phones if someone started tracking me.
I paid cash for the burner and declined the kindly teenage clerk’s offer to help me activate it.
Then Maizie and I headed South.
We made it to Ashland and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. June evenings at the Festival are the perfect time to see the Bard of Avon performed out-of-doors. Only I had an eighteen-pound furball that was not allowed into the theater.
Enter Monique.
Monique was the desk clerk at the Act III Motel, a pet-friendly establishment on the fringe of Ashland. It might have taken the ‘pet-friendly’ term from Monique. Before I’d finished registering, the little sprite had emerged from behind the desk and was rolling on the floor with Maizie jumping, yapping, and licking all over the girl. Woman. Indeterminate age, but well past her teens, of that I was sure.
“Aren’t you a cuddly little love?” Monique asked.
“Maizie, are you assaulting that young woman?”
“She’s fine! Are you going to a show? I can keep her overnight for you.”
“Maizie sleeps with me.”
“Do you share?”
I wasn’t sure if Monique was talking to me or to Maizie. Either way. I paid for two nights and immediately took Maizie for a nice long walk. Monique looked mournfully after us.
By some remarkable coincidence, I walked up to the ticket window just in time to hear a distraught woman tearfully begging to get a refund on her ticket for the next night’s opening performance of Romeo and Juliet because she had to return home to tend a dying aunt. According to the marquee, it was a sold-out show. I offered to buy the ticket from the woman and gave her an extra ten dollars above the hundred and twenty-dollar face value. The box office attendant scowled at me, but we walked away to make the transaction. I guess, technically, I’d just bought a scalped ticket.
After we had a late dinner, Maizie and I returned to the Act III Motel and she settled into bed. I settled into the search.
Ten seconds of missing log entries enabled me to break the EFC mystery five years ago. Scanning through miles of lines of code, my eyes caught a skip in the timeline. Such an anomaly doesn’t provide an answer, but it shows where to look for one.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to search for where information is missing. When you create a spreadsheet, a rudimentary algorithm will flag a cell that doesn’t seem consistent with the cell before it. It’s a part of pattern analysis. I wrote a snippet of code based on that very algorithm that would analyze, for example, a list of records online to see if there was one that was out of order or had inconsistent entries.
Take your bank account, for instance. Let’s say you get a twice-monthly auto-deposit of your paycheck on the fifteenth and thirtieth of the month. After scanning a year of your deposit record, my little program might flag the fact that you received your pay on the fourteenth twice and on the twenty-eighth once. Then I’d have to look at the record and determine that twice, the fifteenth of the month fell on a Saturday and your check was deposited the day before. Good. Once, there were only twenty-eight days in the month. Good old February. No harm no foul.
But if the inconsistency over a five-year period was a skipped pay period, I’d think something was wrong. I’d be looking at your expenses that month, maybe even your employment records. Were you on a temporary leave without pay? Laid off? Did your company have a pay period furlough? I wouldn’t know what happened—yet—but I’d know where to look.
I was looking for a missing person who I believed had worked for a tech company involved in security on the West Coast. The spider I wrote would look for missing information. Say, for example, a missing employee number.
When the sun rose in Ashland along with Maizie, I had written the code and tested it in a limited environment on some public records. Now I just needed a way to deploy it in the companies that prided themselves on providing the best in computer and network security.
Maizie and I went for a walk, grabbed a bite to eat, and collapsed on the bed. I needed to let the idea percolate for a while.
I stepped into the office of the motel a little after four o’clock that afternoon. Monique hurried out from behind the desk and immediately collapsed to the floor where Maizie was all over her.
“I love this little dog,” Monique squealed.
I loved what the little dog was doing to Monique’s costume.
I’d noticed it yesterday, of course. Many of the businesses in Ashland had a Shakespearean theme. Waitresses dressed up as Elizabethan serving wenches, troubadours sang on street corners, and an occasional sword fight broke out in the courtyards of the theaters for the entertainment of Ashland’s many tourists. It was almost like being in a Renaissance Faire that lasted all summer. The Act III Motel was no exception.
Monique’s costume had a full skirt and a peasant blouse with an apron tied about her waist. Maizie had tugged one sleeve down off her shoulder and I noticed that the hem on the right side of her skirt was tucked up in the apron ties, exposing a lovely expanse of leg.
She sat up and Maizie settled down. Monique took a look at her left shoulder and tugged her blouse back up over it. “You are well-trained, aren’t you!” she laughed at Maizie. “So, when will this little sweetie be here to play with me tonight? Are you leaving her now?”
“Oh. No,” I said, coming out of my reverie. “We were just stopping by to confirm. I figure I should head over to the theater by seven. Will that work for you?”
“I’ll be right here until midnight,” she said. “You’ll be back by then, won’t you, Mr. Hamar?”
“I can’t imagine I would survive a Shakespearean tragedy that was longer. Even if the play is not over by then, I will be.”
“You can always come back early,” she said brightly. “We can get down on all fours with Maizie for the rest of the night.” She rolled to her hands and knees to get up and I’m sure she wiggled her butt a little extra. “I have a water dish for my little guests but if she has a favorite treat or toy, be sure to bring that down as well. I expected more pets tonight, but so far, Maizie is my only prospect.”
Maizie and I went for a walk and to find dinner.
Romeo and Juliet was well-performed and uniquely interpreted. It was set in California before the Gold Rush when Spanish families controlled vast estates. To see the play in this unexpected environment changed the experience drastically. The Prince was now a U.S. Cavalry Major sent to govern the newly acquired territory and the families included two Spanish rivals for dominance. I enjoyed myself thoroughly and was still back at the motel by a quarter past eleven.
Maizie barely lifted her head from Monique’s lap at the desk when I came in.
“Not too much trouble, I hope,” I said as I laid a twenty on the desk for her. It seemed a bargain to have Maizie so well cared-for.
“Not at all. But she’s so… comfortable, you know… lying in my lap. She could stay here and I could bring her to your room when I get off… at midnight.” She batted her eyelashes at me with just a touch of a smirk playing about her lips. I’m worthless when it comes to reading people in this kind of situation. I wanted to believe she was truly flirting with this middle-aged, six-foot-two, gangly Swede with the cute little dog. On the other hand, why on earth would she flirt with a middle-aged, six-foot-two, gangly Swede—no matter how cute the dog?
“That’s a lovely offer,” I said, holding my arms out to Maizie. Monique came out from behind the desk and handed her to me, letting her hands linger on my arm as she petted the dog. Maizie stirred just enough to lift her head and lick my chin. “Maizie and I have business in San Diego and need to hit the road early tomorrow. Maybe, if the offer is still open, we could see you on our return trip?”
A degree of merriment danced in her eyes as she leaned back to look at me. “No matter what your impression of me, Mr. Hamar, I am not a common trollop.” Well, that put me in my place. I was glad I didn’t accept her suggestion at face value. She leaned forward again and stroked Maizie one more time before lifting her hand to touch my face gently. “I’m a very uncommon one,” she whispered. She returned to her desk and handed me Maizie’s squeaky toy and leash. “Good night, Maizie. And Mr. Hamar.”
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