Security Breach
Page 8
The fact that very few cars were out helped as well. They passed a Dallas Area Rapid Transit depot with DART buses lined up at the curb. With no traffic signals and no way to call 9-1-1 in the case of accidents, the transit authority had bowed to Abbott’s call to cease all non-essential transportation. It wasn’t worth the liability to put their drivers on the road.
They travelled north toward Highland Park, then turned east to Lower Greenville.
Fleming shifted in her seat. She was black, probably forty years old, and by the looks of it, a seasoned officer. “This area is in a real state of transition. You have half a million dollar condos across the street from public housing.”
“How does that work?” Randall was riding in the back seat. He tapped his window, which looked out over a row of two-story brick apartments that had been built at least fifty years ago. Trash littered yards and not a single blade of grass or shrub threatened the place. People sat out on their stoop, smoking cigarettes or holding babies. Children from toddlers to teens gathered between the buildings playing ball or hopscotch or whatever kids played when their cell phones weren’t working.
“Not very well, to tell you the truth. The lower class is getting pushed out due to urban revitalization.” Her voice put quotation marks around the last two words. “While it’s a boon for the real estate market, the people at the bottom have fewer and fewer places to go.”
She made three more turns and arrived in front of a house that looked no better than the apartments they’d passed. “This area sits right in the middle of the turn war.”
“War is a rather harsh term.” Nora’s hand was on the door handle, but she waited for the officer’s reply.
“To you, it might. To the people living in these houses? They’ll get bought out at bottom dollar, and then they’ll have a tough time finding someplace else to live.” Fleming nodded toward the house. “Want me to go in with you?”
“That won’t be necessary. What we find will determine how long we’ll be. I’ll let you know.”
Randall jogged to catch up with Nora. Apparently the caffeine had energized Nora as well. Had she had a double shot of espresso or a triple?
They did a perimeter sweep and met back at the front door. Randall checked the door frame for any signs of an explosive device, then nodded at Nora, who knocked loudly.
No answer.
Of course there wasn’t. It couldn’t be that easy.
“Want me to jimmy the lock?”
“Not necessary.” She’d put her hand down into the bottom of the old mailbox attached next to the front door and pulled out a key.
“I didn’t realize postal workers actually came to the door anymore.”
“Only in old neighborhoods like this—another reason the city would like to see them bulldozed.”
“No mail.”
“There’s a post office box associated with the address. Cash was able to get that far into the postal computers before the system crashed.”
Randall pulled in a deep breath as Nora unlocked the door and they stepped into the place. He liked being out from behind a desk, but times like this—times there could be a bomb attached to the door or a guy with a gun sitting inside—he wondered if he was crazy for choosing field work.
Then they stepped into the room, and any thoughts of desk work evaporated like raindrops in the sun.
He let out a long, low whistle as they walked around the room, then into the kitchen and the single bedroom. Every room was the same, packed from floor to ceiling with boxes of what looked like unopened merchandise.
Only that wasn’t quite right. He picked up a box holding a first generation iPad and studied it. Definitely it had been opened, then placed back inside exactly as it had been packaged.
Nora stopped in the middle of the living room, hands on her hips. “A hoarder? Our hacker is a hoarder? How does that make sense?”
“It kind of does.” Randall squatted down in front of a tower of cellular phone boxes. “Though collector might be a better word than hoarder.”
“Explain it to me.”
“Hoarders often can’t articulate why they keep something. They have an obsessive compulsive disorder to prepare for the future—any future. I knew a woman once who kept toothbrushes, printer paper, and green beans.” He glanced up at Nora, a smile playing on his lips. “You couldn’t walk through her house, and she couldn’t explain to you why she had to buy yet another toothbrush when she saw one.”
“Huh.”
“This is different. This is...more like a very well-thought-out plan.”
“For what? This stuff is all...old.”
“That’s exactly it.” Randall hurried from the room, checking to see if what he thought was happening here, was in fact happening. When he returned to the living room, Nora was coming in from outside.
“I told Fleming we should be ready to go in a few minutes. This looks like a dead end.”
“But it’s not. Call Quinn and have him send a team over.”
“A team?”
“They need to check for fingerprints, though I suspect our guy—or gal—wore gloves.”
“You think this is legit? That our cyberbug lives here?”
“I wouldn’t say he or she lives here, but whoever it is definitely uses this place as a staging area.” He tapped a tower of smart speakers. “These are all Gen 2 devices—not Gen 1.”
“You lost me.”
“Gen 1 was analog. Gen 2 was digital.”
Nora walked over to him, put her hands on his shoulders and attempted to shake him.
He couldn’t help laughing.
“Explain it in English.”
“Okay. Look. Gen 1 was the first wireless technology, but it required a modem. Gen 2 was truly wireless. These devices stacked throughout this house...all of them...are Gen 2. They’re not older and they’re not newer.”
“Why is that significant?”
“Because there are no security patches for Gen 2. Whoever is in charge of our cyberattack is using this house to send signals through.”
“Someone could do that?”
“Sure. It’s like this place is a giant amplifier to a part of the web that everyone thinks has been shut down.”
“But it hasn’t been.”
“Not yet. They’re working on it, to make room for 5G.”
“You’re making my head hurt.”
“My point is that he’s patching his code through these devices.” He picked up a box that claimed to hold a baby cam set inside a wooly lamb. “He’s hacking these machines, because they have no security patch. That’s how he gets in...from there, the IoT can take care of the rest.”
“The machines talk to each other.”
“Exactly. It would be like getting a call on your cell phone from your great grandparent talking on a wall phone that has a long curly cord. You’d still be able to hear and understand grandpa.”
“So if we turned off all these...devices, would that shut our perp down?”
“No. He—or she—is already in.”
“So what do we do?”
“What we always do. We follow the trail.” He had that fluttery feeling that he got when he was close. He could almost see how this had come together, but there were a few pieces missing.
“Back to headquarters?”
“Yeah, and I think we better hurry.”