by Reece Hirsch
It wouldn’t be easy for the agents to follow them now. Someone at the Hilton would have to remember seeing them get into a cab and remember the cab company. Chris knew, however, that they hadn’t really lost their pursuers. After all, they knew their destination—DefCon.
Michael Hazlitt and Sam Falacci arrived at the Air France customer service desk at JFK about an hour after Chris and Zoey had escaped in a cab. An airport security agent had reported his suspected sighting of Chris and Zoey, and the FBI agents were trying to confirm it.
A burly, uniformed baggage clerk with a heavy Bronx accent led them to a stack of unclaimed luggage from the Paris flight. Hazlitt didn’t know what he was looking for, but he felt fairly certain that he would know it when he saw it.
There were five bags in the stack. The third bag was nearly empty, containing only a stack of Le Monde newspapers. The bag had no name tag on it, but there was a plastic routing band with the name of the passenger who had checked it.
Michael Falacci.
“Hey, Falacci, look at this,” Hazlitt said to Falacci, motioning him over. “He’s just messing with us now.”
“So he must have gotten a fake passport,” Falacci said. “He must think he’s pretty smart.”
“We’re going to want to see the security camera film of the passengers coming off of that flight,” Hazlitt said. “They’ve probably changed their appearances.”
The clerk opened the two remaining bags and Falacci examined one, tossing back the lid of the black case. The bag was empty except for some French magazines. “This must be Doucet’s.”
“What’s the name on the tag?”
Falacci leaned down and frowned as he read: “Samantha Hazlitt.” He shook his head. “In the NFL, they would call a taunting penalty for this kind of behavior.”
“Oh, they’re going to be penalized,” Hazlitt said.
CHAPTER 38
Chris and Zoey climbed out of their taxi in front of the venue for DefCon, the world’s largest and oldest hacker conference. The conference took its name from the military shorthand for “defense condition,” the term used to grade the worldwide alert posture, from one (war) to five (peace). Changes in DEFCON status had driven the plot of War Games, a movie that occupied a special place in the hearts of many first-generation hackers.
During its twenty-year history, DefCon had usually been held in Las Vegas at one of the casino hotels, but this year it was at Skylight One Hanson in Brooklyn, a magnificent Art Deco building topped with a clock tower. Nearby was the giant, collapsing chocolate soufflé that was The Barclays Center, home to the Brooklyn Nets. There were rumors that the CEO of one of the tech giants had bankrolled the elegant venue as a form of peace offering, and bribe, to the hacker community.
They entered the main hall under a black “DefCon 20” banner bearing a logo that was a combination of a skull and bones and a smiley face. That was a fitting symbol for the conference, which was viewed by the mainstream media as a gathering of high-tech pirates but was in actuality a fairly harmless collection of malcontents coming together to let their geek flags fly.
The main hall was a vaulted, ornate space with soaring pillars of sand-colored marble and rows of old-fashioned, mahogany-framed teller windows. The teller windows were decorated with literal-minded carvings of images of thrift, like beehives, squirrels storing nuts, and a seated lion with its paws protectively draped over the bank’s lockbox. To give the place a more of-the-moment feel, it was dimly lit and highlighted with spotlights in cool blues, reds, and oranges.
As they purchased their passes, Chris and Zoey gave their assumed names. The twentysomething guy with shoulder-length, brown hair working the registration desk took a long look at him, and Chris wondered if he’d been already been recognized, despite the disguise.
“Okay,” Chris said as they strode through the main hall. “We start by looking for someone we know who might also know Blanksy.”
Chris saw no familiar faces in the throng, so he took a moment to examine his unusual conference badge, which was an aluminum rectangle. The front of the badge bore the DefCon 20 logo and a small LCD display. The back of the badge was studded with microchips, wires, and a mini-USB-connector. “What does this stuff do?” Chris asked.
“That depends on you,” Zoey replied. “It’s a DefCon tradition—the hackable conference badge.”
“Interesting,” Chris said, examining the badge and starting to think through what it could be turned into with some tweaks to its firmware.
“Focus, Chris,” Zoey said with a slight smile. “Have you ever actually been to DefCon?”
“No,” Chris conceded, “but I’ve arrested quite a few of the attendees.”
“You should know the social etiquette. You’re going to have enough trouble making friends as it is.”
“So how should I conduct myself?”
“First, don’t ask anyone what they do or where they work. Everyone here is paranoid about being identified as a hacker and losing their day job.”
“Got it. What else?”
“No photos without getting the permission of everyone in the frame, and that includes your smartphone. Everyone thinks that law enforcement agencies are keeping files on the attendees.”
“Their paranoia is justified.”
It was an eclectic crowd. Some of the hackers sported tattoos and piercings, but others were in khakis and polo shirts. They passed a booth that was offering mohawk haircuts for fifteen bucks.
“Maybe it’s time to change your appearance again?” Zoey offered, deadpan.
“I think I’d rather go to prison,” Chris said.
They entered a large ballroom where one of DefCon’s main attractions was being held—the Capture the Flag contest. “If I were Blanksy, this is where I’d be,” Zoey said. “This is the main event.”
Capture the Flag was a hacking contest that involved twelve computers elaborately configured to repel intrusion attempts. Teams of hackers were given forty-eight hours to penetrate as many of the computers as possible, with points assigned for each successful hack. Competitive teams had strong skills and the right equipment, such as a good site cracker, reliable laptops, a farm of computers back home that were prepped to compare and exploit code, and mirrors of several full-disclosure sites—hacker-generated sites that publicly display lists of vulnerable websites. The team with the most points at the end of the marathon session was the winner.
The ballroom was decorated in a minimalist style, with low-slung chairs grouped around the tables that held the computers. Conference attendees strolled past, encouraging and taunting the various teams. Chris and Zoey looked in on the nearest team of hackers. Cans of Mountain Dew Code Red littered the table, and a vintage boom box blasted the Clash’s “The Magnificent Seven.” The team was called “Trotsky” and wore matching red T-shirts emblazoned with the image of the bespectacled Marxist. Each team member had his or her eyes locked on a laptop screen, furiously coding.
“I competed here once with a bunch of guys from San Francisco,” Zoey said.
“How’d you do?” Chris asked.
“Finished third,” Zoey said. “Around the thirty-six-hour mark the team got punchy and started squabbling. We never recovered.”
It wasn’t much of a spectator sport, but the event still drew an avid crowd, watching to see how the teams were bearing up under the stress of more than twenty-eight hours of nonstop coding.
“You see any familiar faces?” Chris asked.
“No one who would be able to help us,” Zoey said.
They moved on to another conference room off the main hall where a crowd was gathering. The area was plastered with posters that read:
WARNING!! Cell phone calls may be intercepted or disrupted in this area from 4 to 5 p.m. today. This is due to a practical demonstration of the insecurity of GSM cell phones at the DefCon security conference. If you do not consent to having your cell phone hacked, please do not use it in this area between 4 and 5 p.m. PLEASE BE WARNED TH
AT WE DO INTEND TO ACCESS THE CONTENT OF THE INTERCEPTED CALLS.
Chris and Zoey stood in the back of the room as the presenter explained that, using a laptop, a transmitter broadcasting over a ham radio frequency, and two antennas, he had created a GSM base station that would intercept the calls of mobile phones in the vicinity by fooling them into thinking that they were linking to an AT&T cell tower.
Copies of a flyer were being passed back through the crowd. Chris took one—it was a list of cell phone numbers that were now under the control of the fake GSM base station. The number of Chris’s new prepaid cell phone was on the list.
Chris pointed the number out to Zoey. “Any calls I make to Blanksy or the feds are going to be intercepted during this demonstration.”
“Then you’d better stay off your phone,” Zoey said.
“If this guy intercepts one of my calls, then some federal agency is probably going to get those records sooner or later,” Chris said. “Probably sooner.”
“You think he’ll be arrested?” asked a teenager with bleached blond hair standing in front of them.
For a moment, Chris was puzzled by the question. Did he know that Chris was a former DOJ cybercrimes prosecutor? “Why would you say that?” Chris asked.
The kid’s face was shadowed with acne and the anxious look that comes with adolescent social anxiety. He looked like he could still be in high school. “Hacking phones is, like, a crime. Some people think the FCC is going to arrest him during the presentation.”
“No, I doubt that’s going to happen,” Chris said.
“You’re probably right,” the kid said. “That would be some extreme cyberdouchery, even for the federal government. He’s just trying to make a point, right?”
“Yeah, right,” Chris said.
Chris glanced over at Zoey and, as expected, caught her grinning.
“Did I just hear you acknowledge that hacking can serve a social purpose?” Zoey asked.
“You said I should try to blend in,” Chris said.
Chris surveyed the large crowd gathered for the demonstration, many of them talking into their cell phones despite the knowledge that they were being hacked.
Chris had a brainwave. “We need to talk to that guy when the demonstration is over,” he said, pointing at the figure at the podium explaining the cell phone hacking experiment. Chris saw in the conference program that his name was David Yoshitake, and he resembled a young, Japanese Jerry Garcia, with a peach-fuzz soul patch and a large belly distending a black Reservoir Dogs T-shirt.
As soon as the demonstration concluded, Chris pushed his way onto the podium.
“I need to speak with you in private—right now,” Chris said.
A cloud passed over Yoshitake’s placid stoner’s face. “You’re not—”
“No, I’m not with the FCC, but I am someone you need to speak to.”
Yoshitake studied him for a minute. “Step into my office,” he said, leading them into an adjoining conference room, then motioning for them to step behind a mountain of pizza boxes. To anyone who opened the doors of the conference room to look for them, the room would appear empty.
Chris and Zoey sat down in plastic chairs on either side of the computer. The close, marinara-scented space caused Chris to flash on a childhood memory of building a fortress out of blankets and a card table. As he took a seat at the computer, Yoshitake pointed at the walls of Fort Domino’s. “My friends’ idea of a joke,” he said.
“Interesting demonstration you gave in there,” Chris said.
“I just think people need to know that their cell phones are not secure. If I can do it, then other people can, too.” Yoshitake spoke in halting bursts like a webpage downloading over a dial-up connection.
“I can vouch for that,” Chris said.
“So who are you people? You don’t look like DefCon types. No offense.”
“None taken. We’re trying to track down a hacker who’s here at DefCon and is about to do something very, very bad. Something that’s going to hurt a lot of people.”
“So are you cops or what?”
“No. I’m an attorney, but right now we’re—unaffiliated.”
“What is it that you want?”
“Your notice said that you were recording the content of the intercepted cell calls. Is that right?”
“Right. I’m creating a transcript using voice-recognition software. I’m going to use it in a later session to call some people out from the audience, have a little fun with them.”
“We need to search that transcript. It may help us find the person that we’re looking for. I think there’s a decent chance that he was within reach of your base station.”
Yoshitake rubbed his thumb over his wispy soul patch. “How do I know that you’re the good guys? Maybe you just want to get the cell numbers of a bunch of hackers so you can harass them.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Zoey said.
“And who are you?”
“I’ve been coming to this conference for years. There are people who know me, you can ask around. My name is Zoey Doucet, but I go by Cynecitta.”
“The Centinela Bank exploit? Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Yoshitake said, opening up his laptop and getting to work.
Zoey waved a hand at Chris as if to say, See, you should have let me handle this.
A few minutes later, Yoshitake had the database of hacked cell phone call transcripts up on his computer. “Okay, what’s our search term?”
“Blanksy. B-l-a-n-k-s-y.”
Yoshitake frowned. “I’ve heard of him.”
“What do you know?”
“Not much, just that he controls a huge botnet.” A botnet is a network of computers that are all infected with, and controlled by, a virus—the bot. A botnet could be used to launch massive volumes of email, either as a delivery system for spam in a phishing scheme or to crash a website through a distributed denial-of-service attack.
Yoshitake typed in the name, but before pressing the key to search, he said, “After I do this, we’re done, okay? I’m working toward a PhD in mathematics at MIT. I need to keep this stuff separate from my real life.”
“No one is going to know,” Chris said. “We just need to find this guy.”
Yoshitake seemed assuaged. A few seconds later, he was skimming through the search results.
“Got one,” Yoshitake said, pointing at this entry as Chris and Zoey leaned in to read the screen:
CALLER 1: AFTER I ACTIVATE AT 6, I’LL COME INTO THE CITY AND MEET YOU AT THE HOTEL.
CALLER 2: IT’S GOING TO BE SOMETHING TO SEE NEW YORK GO DARK. I HOPE YOU CAN GET HERE BEFORE IT KICKS IN.
CALLER 1: WHAT SHOULD I BE CALLING YOU THESE DAYS, ANYWAY, BLANKSY OR ENIGMA?
CALLER 2: CALL ME BLANKSY. AFTER TONIGHT, I THINK ENIGMA’S GOING TO HAVE TO GO AWAY FOR A WHILE.
“Do you have phone numbers for these two people?” Chris asked.
“Only the first person, the one who’s here at DefCon, not the person he’s speaking to.”
“That will have to do,” Chris said, checking his watch. It was 5:45. If the caller was right, the Lurker virus would be activated in fifteen minutes.
CHAPTER 39
The podium was now empty where the phone hack demonstration had been conducted. Chris and Zoey stood at the back of the room, waiting as the attendees found their seats for the next presentation, titled “The New Face of Social Engineering.”
The auditorium was nearly full, it was five minutes until the start time, and the next speaker wasn’t yet at the podium—time to get started.
“Wait for my signal, then call the number Yoshitake gave us,” Chris said. “Get as many people in here as possible, and I’ll talk for a couple of minutes to keep their attention.”
“What are you going to say to them?”
“The truth,” Chris said. “I mean, why not?”
He strode up the aisle, climbed the steps to the stage, and stood at the lectern. The audience did
n’t immediately notice him.
Chris tapped the microphone, and it let out a startled shriek of feedback.
Now everyone was staring at him. Chris was not at all sure how this was going to go. He wiped his damp palms on his pants and gripped the sides of the lectern. He felt like someone about to knock down a hornet’s nest with a broom handle.
Clearing his throat, he said, “My name is Chris Bruen.” This was greeted by scattered boos. “I guess some of you know who I am.”
Now the boos rose from the audience in a chorus.
Chris looked out upon a sea of unfriendly faces. The crowd was mostly young, mostly male, mostly wearing jeans and T-shirts, and mostly muttering epithets.
Zoey was standing at the foot of the stage and wincing at the hostile reception.
“I have something to say and I really hope you’ll listen,” Chris said. “Over the years, I’ve gotten to know many of you when I was a cybercrimes prosecutor at the DOJ and now in private practice. And, yes, I may have put some of your friends in jail.”
“Get off!” someone shouted from the back of the auditorium.
Chris pressed on. “Some of you have heard the rumors about a possible cyberattack on New York City tonight. It’s an extremely sophisticated virus and it’s capable of doing a great deal of harm.”
There were scattered nods of acknowledgment from the crowd. Clearly, the word was out.
“I have reason to believe that the person behind that virus is here at DefCon, and I need your help finding him before the attack can be carried out,” Chris said. “If it’s successful, people will die—probably a lot of people.”
The auditorium was silent.
“Okay,” Chris said. “I know that I’m not the most popular person here, but something bad is going to happen tonight. If one of you has the power to prevent that, I’m hoping that you will step up. Now.”
Maybe he was deluding himself, but he sensed that the crowd was listening.
“I believe that the hacker behind the attack is known as Blanksy. He also goes by the name Enigma. His real name might be Jay Hartigan, but I’m not certain. I know that he has some connection to DefCon, because he asked me to speak here. Can someone here help me find him?”
