White Hat Black Heart (Cyber Teen Project Book 1)

by D. B. Goodin

  “Give me the information and I will get back to you.”

  After the successful completion of his first assignment, Nigel got multiple assignment opportunities every day. He was beginning to amass a small fortune in Digitbit, and he was also starting to become overwhelmed—not because the assignments were becoming more difficult, but because they were taking precious time away from helping his mother with her own hacking situation.

  He told himself that he was helping by using the money generated from these ventures to put food on the table and gas in her tank, but the problem with working for Collective Systems was that he was paid in cryptocurrency, which was not easily convertible to cash. It was not like he could put in a Digibit ATM card and withdraw funds. The process he was using now took too long and required a lot of time.

  Between working for Collective Systems, finding a way to automate his character-leveling process, and class projects, he was finding that there was little time to do much else. Nigel promised himself that he would analyze his mother’s computer to find the hackers. The FBI supposedly examined her computer but had not been in touch since. The evidence was on the computer somewhere. He just needed to find it!

  After a couple agonizing weeks, Ellen was starting to get her life back on track. She opened another bank account at the Telemarketers Credit Union because she no longer trusted Milford Savings and Loan. The hack was over, but she felt uneasy about its lack of resolution. Agent Appleton was supposed to keep her updated, but every time she called he was in the field or otherwise unavailable. She had more faith in Nigel, who reassured her that he was doing everything possible to track the hack.

  To prevent a recurrence, Nigel helped Ellen with new security measures. Ellen thought Nigel’s security measures were a bit extreme, but she remembered what he said.

  “Access to your bank account can be easy or secure but not both.”

  Nigel also noticed his mother’s old computer sitting on the floor. His mother wanted to throw it away, but he advised her against it.

  “I hate that computer,” Ellen said.

  Nigel knew that it wasn’t the computer she hated but the situation that her vulnerable computer put them in.

  “Well, we should wipe it properly, first,” Nigel said. “Time to get the evidence.”

  Nigel carried his mother’s tower up to his loft to start an imaging process that would not alter the original files on the hard drive. Nigel didn’t have the necessary hardware to prevent writing files while imaging, but he did have access to a software version.

  Thirty minutes later, he was performing a raw image of the original hard drive.

  Securing a copy of the Dark Glider program was a big win for Nigel. Now he might have a chance of getting Jake off his back. Nigel’s thoughts drifted back to the evidence on his mother’s computer. He decided to multitask and set up Dark Glider to run while he was busy investigating the image.

  Nigel inspected the contents of the imaged drive using open-source forensic software. Performing the inspection on the imaged copy of the drive reduced the risk of damaging the original contents.

  Nigel ran a script that reconstructed all activity for a given time period on the machine. It was like running a time machine to go back and recover certain system activity, such as networks, internet browser histories, and what programs were being run. Nigel was hoping that he would be able to piece the clues together to at least construct a timeline of events.

  Several hours later, Nigel found clear evidence of malicious activity on the computer. The hacker did a good job of cleaning up after harvesting his mother’s information, but left one important breadcrumb for Nigel: an IP address to a MORP relay server.

  Using an enhanced IP address tracker, Nigel was able to determine the attacker was operating out of Grozny, Chechnya—or at least the relay was—but he needed more information.

  Chapter 15

  Nigel assembled Dark Glider in the correct order determined by the ROT-13 clues that were given by the rouge site administrator. Nigel had no clue if these clues would work and install a dropper that would download malware, but he needed to act fast to level Jake’s account. Nigel had to purchase a new game to proceed with the character leveling. The installation of Dark Glider required a node relay server to protect its anonymity. The easiest way to do that was to install the MORP node relay software. However, there were risks in doing that. There was a slight possibility that it could be traced back to Nigel. What if I set Jake up with this capability?

  If Nigel were able to set up Jake with a way to level his character himself, he would be off the hook and wouldn’t need to take any more risks with Jake. All it took was a little hardware, which he had, and some time. Nigel picked up his phone and dialed.

  “Hey, I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. You have my level seventy?” Jake asked.

  “I do, in a manner of speaking.”

  “What?”

  “We need to set up something at your place for it to work, not only will you have a level-seventy character, you will have the ability to create your own items and hunt other players. Jake, you there?”

  “Yeah. What’s the catch?”

  “No catch. You need to promise not to ever contact me or my family again. Deal?”

  “Yeah, come over.”

  Nigel grabbed a few miscellaneous items to make Dark Glider work with the relay server. He had a small project board kit he had assembled last summer. It wasn’t powerful enough to play games, but would serve nicely as a MORP node relay.

  About an hour later, Nigel showed up at Jake’s house with his gear. It took some downloading, installing, and some configuration, but his new MORP dark node relay was ready.

  “Is my leveling box ready?”

  “Almost, still have to do some finishing touches. Do you know how to access your router's configuration?”

  Based on the blank expression that Jake emanated, Nigel decided that he had no clue what Nigel was saying.

  “Never mind. I need to get on your computer to finish.”

  Jake pointed at the computer.

  Nigel visited a website to get detailed information from Jake’s internet provider. He uses the same provider as me. Perfect. From experience, Nigel knew the default authentication credentials for Jake’s router. He was in.

  Jake really needs to change from the default credentials.

  A few minutes later, Nigel obtained Jake’s IP address that was reserved for Jake’s house and added it to the MORP relay server configuration. Nigel also placed Dark Glider in the “Colossal Machine Mods” folder.

  “Done!” Nigel said.

  “Can I level my character now?”

  “Let’s try.”

  Nigel loaded The Colossal Machine game, entered the username and password he created for Jake, and Jake’s level-five avatar appeared.

  “Notice that you are level five still? This is going to change.”

  “Hell ya.”

  Nigel used a keyboard shortcut command to bring up a text-based menu with information such as location, coordinates, modifications, and other metadata. Nigel typed in the following to activate Dark Glider:

  “Load Dark_Glider wit full fury 10.10.1.1 admin changeme.”

  This command specified to The Colossal Machine that the Dark Glider was loading with his IP and credentials to the MORP relay server. The Colossal Machine wasn’t supposed to work with code from another machine, but Dark Glider took advantage of an unpatched vulnerability in The Colossal Machine to connect to the MORP relay to hide Jake’s unauthorized use of Dark Glider.

  The add-on appeared to be working because he noticed the menu bar where text commands were entered was different. “” was displayed.

  Nigel typed, “Initiate accelerate mode level five.”

  “Now play your avatar, Jake,” Nigel said.

  Jake started playing the character. He immediately started killing things like boars, dogs, cats, and anything that he could use his vir
tual sword to whack.

  “I kill so easily now,” Jake said.

  “Yeah, and that’s not all.”

  Jake’s sword broke as he was indiscriminately killing everything.

  “No worries. Allow me.”

  Nigel reached over Jake’s shoulder and tapped in some commands. Jake’s sword was instantly fixed.

  Jake just stared, dumbfounded.

  “This is awesome!” Jake yelled.

  “With the power of the server box, I installed your powers off the add-on. You will reign supreme, but there is one glitch.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You need to limit yourself to ten levels per day. You also need to move around in the game world, a lot. This is to protect yourself against being found out by the game monitors.”

  “Got it.”

  Nigel didn’t make a move to leave.

  “We are finished. I will leave you and your brother alone. Now beat it, Bonehead.”

  Nigel turned to leave, then stopped short of the door.

  “One other thing. This is important.”

  “What is it?” Jake said as he was killing things.

  “You need to keep your MORP software patched.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  Jake waved a hand toward the door.

  “What am I missing?” Alexei asked.

  “What do you mean?” Gregor countered.

  “I thought you were the best! I guess I was wrong because one of our interns solved something that you couldn’t.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Sasha’s communication program—developed by you—had several bugs that almost compromised the operation, and apparently you wouldn’t or couldn’t help him!”

  “I was very busy and—”

  “That doesn't cut it,” Alexei cut Gregor off, looking at him in disgust. “I’m putting you on probation. Perhaps I will replace you with the kid. Now get out of my sight.”

  Agent Appleton’s phone rang.

  “I found the locations of the agents,” Janice said. “Kyle Brennen is retired.”

  “Can I get his contact information? I need to speak with him.”

  “You don’t understand—by retired, I mean deceased,” Janice admitted.

  “What about Stohl?”

  “Relocated and reallocated.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Didn’t anyone at the Bureau teach you anything? Stohl got reassigned to another agency. His name was changed, and he moved to protect his identity,” Janice explained, as if to a child.

  “Can you at least provide me with the new name and location?”

  After a long silence, Janice spoke again. “I can lose my job for this! But I owe you a debt that is difficult to repay. Henry is the only name I could find.”

  Agent Appleton thanked Janice for her help. Time to pay Milford another visit.

  It was irrational, but Gregor was beginning to feel threatened by Nigel. In truth, Nigel reminded Gregor of himself ten years prior. Alexei had hand-picked Gregor from a recruiting event in Eastern Europe.

  After some preliminary research and database manipulation, Gregor was able to locate the HR database that contained basic employee information. From there, he loaded his exploit program called Datasploit and looked for the exploit module needed to successfully access the database.

  Five minutes later, Gregor was able to gain access to Nigel’s file. After a preliminary scan, he noticed Nigel was interestingly from the same American town that contained the bank he recently hacked.

  Gregor clicked on the “Metadata” tab. After a few seconds, several groups of text blocks were visible on the screen. One heading read “VPN,” another “HomeNet.” Other blocks were labeled “CoffeeNet,” “AirNet,” and “GameNet.” Gregor clicked on the HomeNet grouping, and each of the blocks expanded into an interconnected network. Each block was connected by keywords in a block called a primary key.

  Several pieces of information appeared once Gregor clicked on the HomeNet image. One block was labeled “pictures,” another called “code”; however, one block that particularly caught his eye was labeled “known associates.” Immediately, four other blocks appeared, each with a name. Each of the names had one or more other blocks, depending on the level of interaction. He noticed blocks labeled “Jet” and “Milo” had dozens of other blocks clustered below them, while blocks labeled “Ellen” and “Henry” had only a few.

  Gregor clicked on the Jet link and the screen filled with text blocks, some with pictures, others with audio links. Just as Gregor was about to click on one of the groupings of pictures, a system message appeared over Gregor’s screen: “HR member access imminent, initiating read-only mode.”

  “This is not good,” Gregor said to himself. He launched a cleanup script, a precaution to help mask his actions. Since most actions on a system made changes to several files simultaneously, Gregor wanted to prevent logging anything on the system he was accessing with any identifiable system information from Gregor’s laptop.

  Now that Gregor had the background information he needed, it was almost time for execution. Gregor smiled as he manipulated additional Collective Systems databases. Nigel was going to be busy for quite a while.

  Gregor launched some custom-made programs to interrogate the database that Viktor and his crew used to schedule fieldwork. They attacked the database administrator’s account directly, which gave him full access to the database and everything within. He was able to get past the preliminary database security but encountered an encrypted block that required special handling.

  Gregor knew of two people that had access to such privileged information as passwords. Alexei would ask too many questions, but it might be possible to talk Viktor into providing access.

  Viktor’s phone rang.

  “Da?”

  “Viktor, I’m running maintenance on the field database and need access to it to clean everything up.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Alexei is unreachable, and I need an access password.”

  “You need my password?”

  “Da. I have the database ready.”

  “Why do you need my password? Why can’t you just log in?” Viktor demanded.

  Fair question, Gregor thought.

  “My backend access isn’t working, and I need to get this maintenance done. There are vulnerabilities on this system. You wouldn't want it to get hacked by outsiders.”

  “I need to work today. I’m preparing group assignments.”

  “If you give me your password, I can fix the problems and have you back in within the hour.”

  “CrazyCats75,” Viktor said abruptly. “Capital Cs.”

  “Is that your password?”

  “Da.”

  Too easy.

  With Viktor’s password, Gregor was able to unlock the hidden tables. After looking through several pages of field assignments, Gregor noticed a tab labeled “Pending,” inside which was a list of names. Gregor didn’t know for sure, but he hoped it was a list of targets. Next to each name was lists of known associates and places. Gregor added Nigel Watson’s information at the very top of the list, then saved his work.

  He notified Viktor that the database was accessible again, then attempted to obfuscate as much about his access as possible.

  Chapter 16

  Viktor put out his cigarette and lit another.

  “He's late!” Viktor bellowed to no one in particular.

  It was ten minutes past eight in the morning. Usually Ioann was at least fifteen minutes early! Viktor was just about to call Alexei when Ioann crept up behind him.

  “Where have you been?” Viktor demanded.

  “I had a problem with transport.”

  “Are you ready for this?”

  “Da.”

  “Good.”

  Two hours later, Ioann was perched on top of a building with a view of an alley. Ioann’s dossier on Nigel gave details of a picnic table i
n the alley where the kids usually met, because it was semi-private. Ioann had been watching these kids for a while now; he even left some weatherproof microphones in the vicinity of the picnic table.

  Ioann adjusted the scope so he could see the kid's face. He matched the description of the kid that Alexei was looking for. Ioann looked down at his sniper cheat sheet and he identified the kid as Nigel. Shortly after, a tall female with pink hair sat next to Nigel. She had several piercings on her face, most notably her nose. Ioann quickly identified her as Josephine, or Jet, from the dossier. Ioann adjusted his headset to see if his audio connection was working. He heard some ambient noise, but the kids weren't saying much.

  The third kid to show was shorter than the two already seated on the picnic table. At first, Ioann could not identify the gender; he moved like a male but appeared to be female. After Ioann made some additional scope adjustments, he finally identified the subject as Milo.

  “Do you know where George is?” Milo asked the other two kids.

  “Haven't seen him.”

  Jet nodded in agreement.

  Ioann confirmed that Nigel was the head of the little group that Viktor was concerned with. Ioann took aim at Nigel, watched him in the scope for a long moment. Ioann was about to squeeze the trigger and put an end to Nigel when his target suddenly moved.

  “Is your Jake problem taken care of?” Jet asked.

  “Well sort of. After beating Ralphie up, he not only demanded his money back but he still wanted his character leveled!” Nigel said in disgust.

  “Geez, that is rude,” Milo interjected.

  “I found some code on the Dark Web called Dark Glider. I installed it on Jake’s system. I was careful to use a MORP server relay. Also, I’m still trying to help my mother.”

  Jet gave Nigel a sharp look full of guilt and sad empathy for Ellen.

  Milo reached up to pat Nigel on the back, but his sudden movement caused him to slip on some condensation on the picnic table. Milo reached out reflexively and grabbed Nigel’s jacket. This entire encounter lasted less than a second but seemed much longer.