by Eden Sharp
The elevator took me to the sixtieth floor, over six hundred feet above the city, in twenty-six seconds. According to the building's legend this equated to one thousand two hundred vertical feet per minute. Allegedly, the bottom of each shaft had a cylinder filled with hydraulic oil which, in case of an accident, would stop a falling elevator without injuring passengers.
Inside I took a right off the hallway into my bedroom. The architect had envisioned it to be a living room. I hadn't. Now it was a bigger than average sleeping space containing a Californian king, a television cabinet, and a couple of nightstands. I liked the lack of clutter. I had never understood the attraction of accumulating possessions. They either had to be moved, stored or cleaned. They cost money. They trapped you and kept you from being free.
I took in the familiar floor to ceiling view of the Bay Bridge which never got old. The wall to wall glass made me feel like I was living at the top of the world.
The bridge loomed out of the morning fog and glowed at sunset when it was clear. Not as popular with tourists or the suicidal as the Golden Gate, it was spectacular at night lit by twenty-five thousand LED lights. Programmed using randomly generated algorithms, patterns such as rainfall, birds in flight, and expanding rings were uniquely sequenced so no two viewing experiences were ever the same. The reflections on the water cast an illusory warmth into the bay. In contrast to what it must feel like to sink into its cold, inky blackness.
Tourists often came to visit San Francisco under the illusion that they were visiting sunshine and bikini California. At best the weather could be described as mild. Though summer was the most popular time for visitors, it was usually the coldest time of year. Mark Twain said the coldest winter he spent was a summer in San Francisco.
People dressed for LA were shocked by the cold, damp, foggy days and the windy nights. There was a reason that Fisherman's Wharf sold a lot of sweatshirts. Friends who visited from out of town packed what they referred to as a San Francisco sweater.
Now we had hit September, after months of the traditional whining about being cheated out of yet another summer, the temperature had risen and the skies were clear. We had our Indian summer and the double bonus of fewer crowds.
I took my laptop out of the cabinet which housed the TV, waited for it to connect to the wifi and hit Craigslist to start. I wasn't surprised when I came up empty. Best to get the easiest options out of the way first. You never knew when you might get lucky.
I powered up Amber Grigson's laptop and waited forever while it loaded. Poor processing power and a cluttered desktop were slowing it right down.
I had no need for a dictionary crack. Of using software to randomly generate words in all manner of combinations. It took me less than five minutes to overcome her password by typing details I had already noted down such as her date of birth, pet names and favorite celebrities.
I waited for it to connect to my network, opened up the browser and logged in to Facade using the same password. It never failed to amaze me that so many people chose easy to crack passwords and then repeated them across their whole range of accounts or that they provided so much information about themselves without considering how it could be used by others. All because they felt the urge to build some kind of shrine to themselves. I read for a while and got bored.
Time to make a call. I hit a number I had on speed dial and after a couple of rings, it answered.
'Hey,' I said.
'Hey yourself. We've not heard from you in a while. Ollie's been away for a couple of days but she's back tomorrow night. We should all hook up. It would be really great to see you.'
'I'm working on something right now, but soon. I've got a missing who might be pulling tricks. If I send over her picture will you hand it around for me later?'
'Yeah, no problem.'
'Thanks.'
'And Angie? Make it soon.'
'I'll call you.'
I plugged in a portable scanner, copied the image and attached it to a mail addressed to Lucy Chan at Bayreach. I hit send.
FOUR
John Knox
John Knox noticed the bar he was standing at had been clad in sheet metal. He figured that scorching the edges from silver through to copper then black guaranteed overpriced liquor just to meet the designer price tag. He assumed they were funneling discount brands into premium bottles just to pay for it.
He looked around for Kelly again and realized that the man must have upped and left. The clientele were a bunch of suits who looked like they had tipped out straight from work and had been loading up ever since. Knox felt decidedly blue collar by comparison. He mentally cursed Kelly for choosing the place but decided to stay for another beer and a shot of bourbon and make the best of it.
He remained at the bar and watched the bartender underpour shots into pitchers and add too much soda to the overpriced cocktails with crazy names that seemed to be such a hit with the other customers. In a couple of months the crowd would have moved on rendering this place old.
The junior office workers pretending to be managers were still young enough to be flashing the green with abandon. No mortgages, second wives or kids yet. No nose to the grindstone, half-assing a career they thought they wanted before they realized differently down the line. No remission for good behavior, just a cubicle and meaningless paperwork that said, this is who you are, this is what you did with your life.
There were plenty of cute girls but to him they were all trying too hard: to look like each other, to be at the front of the pack, to stomp on any perceived competition.
Knox had never had any trouble picking them up. In the past he had even been referred to as pretty. But more lately, as serious and aged. His light-brown hair was a little lighter from desert sun but not gray. His nondescript, possibly hazel eyes maybe a little wearier and framed by a deeper than usual tan which highlighted the lines around his eyes etched by paler skin.
No one in the place appeared to be over twenty-two. Knox felt old. The way some of the girls looked at him, they clearly believed that twenty-nine signaled the retirement village.
One guy, tie long gone, wearing a white cotton shirt unbuttoned to just short of pathetic and chosen with a thin blue stripe that said hey I'm an individual, staggered over to the far side of the bar with a group of buddies. A blond in miniature clothing lurched past him, struggling to extract money from her purse. The guy leered along with his friends then reached out and grabbed her by the wrist.
'Hey come over here and meet a friend of mine.'
His grin sought approval from the three accompanying clones.
'Get off me,' the blond said.
She pulled away, feet unsteady on teetering skyscrapers, a triumph of fashion over style in Knox's opinion, and dumped her purse into a wet puddle on the bar. She steadied herself with one hand while the other kept up a futile attempt at extricating whatever it was she needed.
No-tie guy decided a refusal was not in his frame of reference.
His voice took on a harder edge.
'Hey I said come here. I just want to talk to you.'
He pulled her back over to him, hooking his spare hand round her waist. The grin remained, but hid a desperation to retain the semblance of authority and veneer of cool in front of the onlooking friends and assorted extras.
Knox strode over. He didn't like anyone who tried to force an agenda on those weaker than themselves. The pinstriped jerk had already seen the move and released the girl uncertainly, ready to be best buddy in a flash with the indignant boyfriend or greater threat. He puffed his chest out like a cat trying to gain stature while attempting to keep a mask of bravado in play.
'She doesn't wanna talk to you,' Knox said.
With some guys you just had to state the obvious and keep it simple.
The man's eyes thrashed around gaining as much information as they could in those valuable three seconds you were afforded in such circumstances to make a first impression of someone. Gauge their mood, strengths and weaknesses.
Precious seconds that would determine the next five minutes of your life.
'You her boyfriend?'
'No,' Knox said, bored already.
'Then this ain't your fucking business buddy, so fuck you.'
'Articulate,' Knox said, nodding his head.
The man wasn't blind. He'd figured six-two out-trumped his own frame but the alcohol had conned him into seeing himself as some kind of movie star legend, freeing him up to engage in primate-like posturing, hoping there would be safety in numbers.
'Have a good evening then,' Knox said and half-turned away before spinning back and landing a fist hard into the man's temple, the impact waves spreading out, causing brain tissue to bounce off skull walls like a pinball. The guy slumped to the floor transformed, in an instant, back into Clark Kent.
His friends overly concerned themselves with trying to get him back on his feet, or drag him away, or perform any kind of maneuver that didn't involve looking at Knox.
The blond, who had seemed impressed, became positively besotted when conversation revealed she'd been saved by her very own ex-Marine in shining armor.
He knew she hadn't caught the 'ex' part. Hadn't tried to correct her. He heard Kelly's voice, his fellow sergeant: Marine Corps. Pure CDI. Time and time again the man had been proved right. Chicks did indeed dig it.
FIVE
Angela McGlynn
By midnight I decided to make the literal definition and call it a day. I powered down my laptop and put it away.
Off the ex-living room was a second door. It led through into what should have been the master bedroom. I used it variously as an office, storage space and a dressing room. Along the length of the external wall the architect had provided a purpose-built walk-in closet. Due to my extensive remodeling there had been an opportunity for some extra out-of-the-way storage.
Inside the closet I pushed a row of clothes aside, felt for the release of a magnetic catch, stepped under the rail and walked through into the space behind.
The custom-built room was icy cold. Air-conditioning off the dial. Necessary because the amount of computers in such an enclosed space generated enough heat to start a dope farm. All of the machines lined against the back wall had been modified in order to disable any identifying components and each had benefited from several additional super-charged security tweaks. Some formed a network with libraries and programs installed which allowed processing to be shared among them. The result was a high-performance parallel computing cluster where many calculations could be carried out simultaneously meaning large problems were divided into smaller ones and solved concurrently.
I went through several precautions. A special proxy with a system of CGI-relays in conjunction with a socks program. A TOR anonymizer. A random SSL proxy for browsing. In essence making sure no connections could be traced.
What most people didn't realize was that when they logged on to the internet they were only looking at a tiny fraction of what was really there.
Go deep and it's five hundred times bigger, but you have to know where to look.
Buddhism says that everything and everyone is connected. The web proves it to be true.
Links appeared on a web page to the TOR Directory, Hidden Wiki, and Masked. A few clicks away menu options appeared along the top edge. Drug Services, Niggers, Adult, Assassins, Gladiator Rings, Executions.
I connected to the network and clicked on Adult. There was a level of irony in the title as the majority of images were of children. Did people even know what child porn really amounted to?
A string of god-awful words appeared across the top navigation bar of the web page I had just selected. Infant decapitation, Forced bestiality, Torture, Child prostitutes. Another week and thousands more images and videos on offer. Evidence of five-year-olds being hog-tied and sexually abused, or strapped down on tables or strung up from ceilings.
Not all of the material on the site was current. Some victims had grown up by now, but through the circulation of old pictures their childhoods had been frozen in time.
For what I wanted to accomplish I first needed to determine if the online order form for buying the products available for sale was hosted on the same network as the site. For that I would have to poke around longer than I cared to in order to answer several questions. How was the website being hosted? What type of server software was being used? What operating system was it sitting on? Was a database being used? And, how well was it designed?
Whoever had put it together had above-average design capabilities but the sloppy code was an indicator that the security was not up to par.
I determined that the pages were dynamically generated which was good. This meant the source code could be modified.
Next I needed to look at how items were added to the shopping cart, allowing me to search for variable names and values after the active server pages file extension.
I had already set up a dummy account and so added an image at random which I needed to purchase in order to go through the checkout process. This took me through an encrypted secure socket layer connection.
I entered erroneous product ID numbers in the order form and clicked submit over and over again to discover what happened.
After doing this for an extended period I forced an error to occur. Instead of a well-formed error message intended for a customer, up popped a programming message intended for the developer.
For the first time all day I felt like celebrating. They hadn't anticipated parameter tampering. I had found a way of compromising the site. By using timing attacks I would be able to determine the server’s location.
I already had a plan in place as to what would happen after I hacked it. Any unusual activity would show up as entries in the web log and alert the developers that someone was testing the application's resilience. Like playing a game of chess, it was crucial to think ahead. A rule I lived by: always have a plan B.
Ultimately I would be able to access the real names, addresses and charge card details of subscribers to the site. Once I had this information it would find its way to the FBI's Innocent Images National Initiative Task Force via an anonymous email and I would chalk up another personal success.
I left the machines to carry out their attacks and went to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.
Once this was made and I was on my second cup, I set about finding the file with the ASP database connection from information embedded in the code.
The next stage was to retrieve the database layout and customer data from the various tables. The developers had used a proprietary package from a vendor. By requesting a demo I obtained the ASP code revealing the layout.
I employed my own scratch-built tools to run a vulnerability scanner to find a port to exploit. Once found, this would allow me to run the code of my choice and escalate privileges. Ultimately I would be free to execute commands usually reserved for the system administrators.
My final goal would be locating the charge card data which would be stored separately but attached to customer orders. This way I would be able to differentiate sellers from buyers.
I had finished the whole flask of coffee when the chirp from my cell phone brought me back to the real world. Through eyes blurred by staring at a back-lit screen in a darkened room I checked the caller ID and made out JB. The time said 9.12. It was morning. I had been up all night. I hit the answer button.
'Jeff.'
'Busy?'
'No. Just thinking about going out for breakfast.'
'Could you come by the office?'
Food and fresh air would be good. Nothing to do now but wait.
'Sure. See you in fifteen.'
SIX
I paused at the door before I went in. Through the glass two men were fighting. Their energy said they each had something to prove. Blood had been spilled but there were no obvious wounds. They were making a lot of noise and using a lot of space attacking and countering around the room. Wasting energy.
I pushed the door open,
kept to the edges and headed for the glass office on the far side. The place wreaked of testosterone and stale sweat.
The action had slowed. I glanced across. Both men were eyeballing me. After a couple of long seconds they resumed their spat. One lunged at the other with a shout, leading with a flying kick which his opponent immediately dodged. Wannabe Bruce Lee winked at me and smiled.
Showboating would just get you your ass kicked in a street fight. I stared back a Really?
Both of their black belts looked new. If they had earned them long ago they would be old and worn. Falling apart like a badge of honor. Faded, fraying and gray. In some cases almost back to white.
Jeff sat with his back to me at his desk. I had been surprised when he’d asked me to meet him at the dojo. Normally I would have expected Kelly to be running the place on a Saturday.
'What's with the dancers?' I said.
His shoulders moved but I didn't hear him laugh. He turned towards me grinning.
'In town for a tournament tomorrow. Paid to train here this morning.'
'No Kelly?' I asked.
'He went out last night, took the day off.'
'So what do you want to talk about?'
The smile faded away.
'I need to ask a favor.'
'Sure.'
'You're not gonna like it.'
I found a perch on the edge of the desk.
'It's Kelly's friend Knox. He's bored and he ain't gonna stick around for much longer. But he's good and I don't want to lose him. I want you to find something for him to do for the next few days until I can get him another job.'
I nodded. I liked to work alone but this was Jeff asking therefore it was a given.
'Okay he can come trawl the Tenderloin with me.'
He didn't respond but gave me the look that told me there was more.
'What's going on? You're distant like you used to be,' he said.
