#RedTeam Attack

Home > Other > #RedTeam Attack > Page 11
#RedTeam Attack Page 11

by S J Grey


  Devin nodded.

  “Good work,” Caleb said. “My data-mining tool is ready to go, so I’ll set that crawling too. I’ve configured it for certain keywords, and it’ll package the results into a single file, so you don’t need to worry about documenting that.” He turned his gaze to Jonathan. “Are we still going ahead with the fire evacuation plan in the morning?”

  “Yep,” said Jonathan. “If we time it for around eight-thirty, we’ll get the most confusion when people are trying to enter the building. Nat and Will are gonna become service engineers to set it off, while Andi and I are going to mingle with the office workers. Devin’s made us mock-ups of the passes and lanyards, so we’ll look the part, even if they don’t work.”

  Caleb nodded. “Sweet.”

  Next, they talked about the social media profiles of some key employees. It never failed to amuse Andi, how much private information people shared on Facebook and Instagram. She had dummy accounts on both, to give her access to the platform without giving anything away.

  “Social engineering is your area, Andi.” Caleb looked directly at her. “We’ve got the names of four senior DTI employees for you to dig into. Find me everything you can. Where they hang out, what time they come and go—I want to know where to find them when they’re not in the office.”

  “Got it.”

  “Anything else to report for the exercise?” Caleb looked around the room. “No? Okay. Where did you get up to, on the profile searches for Nicole, Freddie, and Dimitri?”

  “I’ve got a ton of background info,” said Andi, “but nothing useful yet. Dimitri is another rich asshole with more money than he knows what to do with. I’m pursuing an idea on Nicole’s medical history, though. She took an overdose, so where did she get the pills? A previous prescription, maybe? Also, she and Dimitri are generous donors for the Starship hospital, and Dimitri has talked publicly about wanting a family, so maybe there are some fertility issues there?” She unlocked her screen and quickly checked her search results. “Freddie is proving elusive. He was a rock guitarist in Melbourne though, so it’s possible that’s where he met Nicole. He’s also been in rehab a couple of times with a coke habit, but apart from that, he stays out of the media.”

  Caleb scrubbed his hands across his face. “The more I think about it, Freddie has to be the key to this clusterfuck. He’s in the sex video. He was supposedly blackmailing Nicole. And now he’s lying in a morgue.”

  “We assume it’s Freddie in the video,” said Devin. “We’ve only got Nicole’s word for that.”

  “True,” said Caleb. “Did we get anywhere with the Metropole Hotel records?”

  “Not yet,” said Will. “No reservations for Sparks or Golden over that entire weekend. I’ve got a list of all the bookings, and I’m going through them one by one, trying to identify them, but it’s slow work. There was a conference with a shitload of out of town people, and at least twenty guests that flew in from Oz.” He shrugged. “No useful CCTV footage. If anyone has any bright ideas about how to tackle this, gimme a shout.”

  Andi took her share of the employee logins and started digging into their accounts. On the surface, she was working with the team, but at the same time, she was searching for her own way in. A backdoor she could secure to her requirements. Her goal was the Immigration network, and it was close. She could feel it. The Department of Technology and Innovation had multiple connections to other government agencies. Like Will said, if they were real hackers, the organisation would be in trouble.

  She knew from her previous searches that three key applications connected to the Immigration network, but they weren’t the ones she wanted. As targets, they were too obvious and should have good security protocols in place. What she needed was a lesser application. One with a little-used—or retired—connection. One she could come back to in the future, with a low risk of being spotted.

  She visualised a tree with Immigration at the top, nestling on the highest part of the canopy. Three main branches led up to it, but each of those had smaller branches spreading out. Somewhere would be a twig that she could use.

  Andi worked methodically, one user ID at a time. Login. Search for recent links. Follow network threads. Examine drive-access structures. Screenshot after screenshot. And every time she touched one of the three branches, she paused and dug a little deeper, searched wider.

  Time passed. Devin phoned out for pizza, and brewed jugs of coffee.

  This was where she felt at home. She didn’t care anymore that Nat sat on her left and Toby on her right, with Devin a few feet away. She was focused on the screen—on the data. In the zone.

  There it was. Andi paused and gulped some of the tepid coffee at her side. This particular user had a link to a test environment that connected to a scheduling system—one of the lesser branches. She saw a reference to this environment earlier, and she backtracked to take another look. The test environment was scheduled for decommissioning, but not until August, due to dependencies with a project that was closing down.

  Excitement sparked in her veins, and her pulse sped up. Test environments were often overlooked. They were usually transient and could escape the rigour of the security protocols applied to production environments.

  Could this one work?

  From here, she’d have access to the Immigration test servers, and from there, with enough effort, she could break into the live network. Excitement surged, but she tempered it with caution. How many users had access? And how frequently was it used? She didn’t want to raise a red flag the first time she set foot in there.

  She made notes of the details and the user name, and then backtracked. One other user, who accessed it weekly, for around five minutes each session. The access pattern had been like this for almost two months. Most likely, it was an automated test running that hadn’t been switched off yet.

  As a precaution, she checked the user name, to see if it was on their list from the phishing. It wasn’t.

  She had to pause and take a couple of deep breaths. This might be it. Her coffee was completely cold, and that gave her the excuse to walk away from her desk for a few minutes.

  “Making a brew,” she announced as she headed for the kitchen.

  It was completely dark outside. From the kitchen, she could see out across the harbour and the twinkling lights of Petone in the distance. One of the cross-channel ferries was leaving port, and she watched it chug into deeper water, and then make its turn, ready to leave Wellington.

  Somewhere down below, underneath one of Wellington’s many pubs and clubs, there was a basement filled with young women. Girls barely old enough to leave school were being sold, over and over again. Innocent victims of a visa scam, now being forced into slavery under threat of death if they protested. If they escaped, their future was uncertain, with either prison or deportation to look forward to.

  Andi felt sick at the idea. Prostitution was legal in New Zealand, but this was different. This was human trafficking, and somebody had to take a stand.

  By the time she’d poured her own coffee and carried two full jugs back into the main office, she was calm again and ready to dive in. She had to do it tonight, while she was here, rather than leaving it until she got home.

  Confidence was the key to everything. If she tried to be furtive, the others would notice.

  She initiated a key-logger and logged into the test environment, then took a screenshot and made a note of the details. Same routine as the past few hours. The other people were similarly engrossed. Nobody was paying her any attention.

  Next up was one of her custom-written spider routines. She started that running and watched as it scanned the available connections. Come on. All she needed was one link to the production environment. Just one.

  Port designations flashed on the screen, as the spider sifted through them. It was taking too long.

  “Thanks for the coffee.” Nat smiled at her and ran a hand through his hair. “Nice ’n’ strong. How I like it.”

 
Fuck. If he looked properly at her screen, he’d see she was doing something other than she should be. Adrenaline spiked. Closing the window was a giant no-no. She had to keep his attention on her.

  She forced a smile. “If that’s supposed to be a chat-up line, you need to work on it.”

  “Aww, that’s mean.” He didn’t look hurt. “I was complimenting your coffee skills, you know.” He leaned back in his seat, his gaze on her face. “Tell me—did you call yourself Sonic before the blue spikes or after?”

  “It’s not fair that you know my handle, but I don’t know yours,” she parried and pretended to stare at his screens. “Wow. Where did you get into?”

  His attention jumped right back to his monitors.

  Andi leaned in at the same time toggling her own windows to close the Immigration screen. Her heart pounded, but she kept her hand steady as she pointed at Nat’s current screen. “What’s that?” Did he notice what she did?

  “Eh, it’s a library system,” he said. “A fancy interface, but all public-access materials. Haven’t you seen that one yet?” He sounded disappointed.

  “I must have missed it.”

  “You looking forward to the fire evacuation tomorrow?”

  Christ, what was this? Twenty questions? “Sure. It’ll be interesting to see how far we get.”

  Would her spider routine flash on-screen when it finished? It shouldn’t. She wanted to get back to it, see what it found, but she had to head Nat off first.

  “Damn,” she said. “I forgot to pick up sugar. Do you have any sachets?”

  “I don’t take it.” Nat pushed his chair back. “I’ll grab you some. I need to stretch my legs, anyway.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled. “My hero.”

  The moment he walked away, she opened the spider window.

  There it was. An open port. Her way in.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Andi couldn’t waste any more time searching for a secondary opening. She had an open port and the IP address. They were enough to enable her to use Telnet, a remote access tool.

  She was in. The landscape was unknown, like a distant world she just stepped into. She needed to map the connections. See what she had access to without having to break down any virtual walls. She loaded one of her custom-built tools, and then navigated her way to the root directory.

  Okay. She let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding, and consciously relaxed her hands. Nat would be back any second, and she wasn’t going to risk him seeing this. He might think it was another DTI interface, but he might also recognise it as something else. He worked for the freaking SIA. Who knew what mad skills the guy had?

  Outwardly calm and under control, Andi created the digital equivalent of a backdoor into the server, with a dummy user ID acting as the locking mechanism. It would be invisible to most of the techs on this network. They’d need to know it was there, to spot it. Meanwhile, she could now log in from anywhere, at any time.

  Job. Done. At least for the moment, and not a second too soon. Nat ambled back to his desk, arms stretched over his head.

  “Sugar for my sweet?” He winked at her and dropped a handful of sachets onto her desk.

  “I hate to burst your bubble, Nat, but I ain’t your sweet.” She picked up two and ripped them open, before pouring them into her drink. “Thanks, though.”

  “Can’t blame me for trying.” He sat at his desk and swivelled his chair back and forth, his gaze on Andi’s face. “I know you’re a bounty hunter. That’s pretty awesome.”

  “Did Caleb tell you?”

  “No. I read one of your casefiles as part of an investigation I was working on. I can’t share the details, but it was Sonic_Online who provided the trace we needed. You did a bloody good job. I hate to sound like a dick, but I assumed—we all did—that Sonic was a guy.”

  Oh. She didn’t expect that. Her cheeks heated at the warmth in his eyes. Maybe Nat was okay, after all. “Thanks. I work freelance, which means I had time to join this exercise.”

  His lazy grin returned. “Red teaming is the business, aye.”

  “Damn right.” She lifted her mug in a mock salute. “Let’s get back to it.”

  She continued to work through the user IDs alongside the others, chasing down logins and delving into systems, breaking for coffee or iced water. It was close to two in the morning, and she was flagging, but this was her last one. She looked around the others. Will typed with one hand, resting his head on the other, and Nat looked bleary eyed. Toby sprawled in his chair, mostly asleep, while Devin tapped slowly on his keyboard.

  There was a low buzz of conversation from Caleb’s office, where Jonathan was talking with him, but she couldn’t tell what they were saying.

  “Done,” she said aloud and pushed back from her desk. The adrenaline was long gone, and now she prickled with exhaustion. “Devin, my screenshots and timestamps are in the shared folder.”

  “Yep,” he said, his voice croaky. “On it.”

  Andi rubbed her eyes and bit back a yawn. The night air would wake her if she walked home, and she could pick up her work again on the Immigration servers. She had to start searching them tonight, in case access was revoked in the morning.

  “Got a Sharpie there?” Jonathan had snuck up beside her.

  Damn. She needed to keep her wits about her. “Sure.” She picked up the black marker pen and handed it over.

  “Cheers.” He put a finger to his lips. “Don’t say anything.”

  Huh? He tiptoed to the sleeping Toby and drew a swirling moustache above his lip, then tossed the pen back to Andi, who caught it easily.

  “He looks like a pantomime villain now,” she whispered and smothered a laugh with her hand.

  “It might teach him to stay awake.” Jonathan grinned. He stepped to the centre of the room and clapped his hands. “Okay, guys. Time to quit. Save your work, and we’ll pick it up tomorrow. We’ve got the fire evacuation at eight thirty, so we meet here at eight. Okay?”

  “Thanks for staying late tonight,” said Caleb, from the doorway to his office. “We’ve done well.”

  “I nearly forgot,” said Jonathan. “I’ve called a couple of Ubers, and they’ll be here in five minutes. Nobody walks home, okay?”

  A nice touch. Andi appreciated them looking out for her safety.

  They packed up, energy low and talk muted. That was, until Toby returned from the bathroom. “Thanks, you bunch of bastards. Which one did this?” He pointed to his face and glared at the team. “My girlfriend is going to piss herself when she sees this.”

  “Maybe we need a swear jar, as well as a Star Wars one?” Devin didn’t hide his grin.

  “Fuck that,” said Nat with a snort. “I’ll be permanently broke.”

  The humour was energising, and Andi laughed. “Maybe it suits you, Toby?”

  “Ubers are here.” Caleb had a motorbike helmet in his hand and was shrugging into his leather jacket. “See you all tomorrow. We’ve got an early start, so get some sleep.”

  Maybe the others would, but Andi still had work to do.

  Back home, she made herself a mug of peppermint tea, grabbed a bar of dark chocolate from the larder, and settled down with her laptop. This was the beauty of living alone. If she wanted to work at three in the morning, she could do so without disturbing her partner. Griff kept pushing for them to move in together, but he hadn’t come up with a good enough argument yet, so she kept saying no.

  One day, maybe.

  She flexed her hands and logged into the Immigration server. From there, she jumped up a level, to gain access to the network. Where to start looking?

  Would it make sense to tell Caleb about this and ask for his help? He was famous for his data-mining programmes. They were his signature tool. There was no doubt in her mind that he could write a better mining programme than she could, in a fraction of the time, and make it all but invisible.

  That was true, but it didn’t feel right. Didn’t she trust him? Or was it because the gu
y was in enough trouble already, and she didn’t want to put his freedom any more at risk?

  Andi was better on her own for this.

  She needed to run complex SQL queries on the Immigration databases. It didn’t help that she wasn’t sure exactly what or whom she was looking for.

  Patterns of behaviour—that and what she gleaned from Kaali was all she had.

  She searched for women that had entered the country from one of the Pacific Islands on a work visa, and captured who their migrant sponsor was. The guy at the top of the tree wouldn’t be sponsoring them; he’d have a middleman doing that.

  The query was taking forever to process. Far longer than Andi expected. She checked the time again. Almost four. Jesus. She had to be back in the office at eight. Could she leave the query running?

  No. Like leaving a pan simmering on the stove, she didn’t want to take her eyes off this, in case anything went wrong. In case it was intercepted and traced back to her. She’d configured alarms, to alert her for other users, but they were no use if she was asleep.

  She’d heard rumours of recent DDOS attacks on government databases. Distributed Denial of Service cyber-attacks would slow server processing to a halt. Was there one in progress now? Or was it a routine update or patching exercise?

  It was no good. She’d have to stop and try again tomorrow night, and hope she could get in again.

  She fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow. It felt like only minutes later that her phone alarm blared and it was time to get up. Existing on barely three hours of sleep was not fun, especially if Caleb planned another all-nighter on the exercise.

  She’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

  Standing under the shower, the water as cool as she could bear, in order to wake her up, Andi heard her phone ring from the bedroom. Griff’s ringtone. Nope. He could wait five minutes.

  He rang again before she’d finished under the water, and then once more as she crossed the floor to pick it up. This was serious. He’d normally leave a message.

 

‹ Prev