Black Hat Magick Volume 2: Tango & Cache
The “highly orchestrated action in Student Records” would begin to play itself out in mere minutes; but Elaine found herself far away from the activity: across campus, standing right outside the Engineering Computing Commons in the air conditioned antechamber of Engineering Wing H. Frog sat on the stairs fiddling with a small laptop open on … Read more
“It’s not what it looks like,” Shutters finally said with a single long breath. “What we’re doing isn’t illegal—okay—we’ve all had scrapes with the law before, by testing mathematical theory on poker games in Las Vegas. No cops were called, understand. It’s just that what we’ve been testing isn’t totally covered by University policy and … Read more
Professor James Shutters stared nervously at the two FBI agents standing on his stoop, uncertain how to proceed from their introduction. He fidgeted with the ice water held in his clammy hands, condensation dripping down the sides. To cover his anxiety, he took a sip and drew out the moment. “May we come in?” Agent … Read more
Brad Wright and Casey Vargas stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the semicircle of people that made up their DarkNet ARG team while Frog stood away from them and explained the nature of the operation. At first, the team took to her with suspicion—they knew that she’d been spending time with Brad, but they … Read more
Zane and Elaine found themselves in the back room of her brother’s house, lording over a sleepy-eyed DarkNet team once again. Today she wouldn’t be lecturing on encryption, explaining operational protocol, or teaching them the ins-and-outs of traditional spy craft. Today would be an altogether different experience: they didn’t know it—but they were about to … Read more
“I’m more interested in if people use it for less-than-legitimate purposes.” Their trek took them into a workshop made of iron girders, wood floors, with a furnace and a circular dais. He carefully stayed back as Shodan charged in recklessly and flattened all opposition that rose to attack her. She seemed to carom off the … Read more
Shodan didn’t appear to mind, as he waited to find out what would happen next, another message popped up: “You’ve been asking about Bitcoin on the forums. I don’t know how much you’ve googled on the subject, but I think that I can answer most of your questions directly if you don’t want to wade … Read more
Special Agent Ellis Warren found himself clearly out of his depth. Years of training as a field operative, extensive hand-to-hand experience, and seminars in profiling aggressors didn’t give him any edge against the pixelated fox-like creature on his computer. He’d spent the better part of the day trying to get into a discussion with the … Read more
“Actually, no,” Elaine said. “Neither of these Universities shows a great amount of anomalies. What is anomalous here is that ASU generally receives a lot more graduate students from out of state than they do from their own undergraduate population. In this case, the opposite is true. Something Dr. Fedora said earlier today got me … Read more
Zane enthroned himself in his ergonomic computer chair in the living room as he, Elaine, Frog, Roger, and Hadaly all held an audience by the flickering light of the numerous monitors. Each one currently displayed scenes from different video games as they cycled through downloading all the various media feeds that Zane consumed during a … Read more