Search Request: "TripleX"
Location: IRC, #hack
Status: Currently online
TripleX was the hacker Gillette had tracked down earlier, the one who seemed to know a great deal about Phate and Trapdoor.
"He's in the hacking chat room on the Internet Relay Chat," Gillette said. "I don't know if he'll give up anything about Phate to a stranger but let's try to trace him." He asked Miller, "I'll need an anonymizer before I log on. I'd have to modify mine to run on your system."
An anonymizer, or cloak, is a software program that blocks any attempts to trace you when you're online by making it appear that you're someone else and are in a different location from where you really are.
"Sure, I just hacked one together the other day."
Miller loaded the program into the workstation in front of Gillette. "If TripleX tries to trace you all he'll see is that you're logging on through a public-access terminal in Austin. That's a big high-tech area and a lot of Texas U students do some serious hacking."
"Good." Gillette returned to the keyboard, examined Miller's program briefly and then keyed his new fake username, Renegade334, into the anonymizer. He looked at the team. "Okay, let's go swimming with some sharks," he said. And hit the ENTER key.
"That's where it was," said the security guard. "Parked right there, a light-colored sedan. Was there for about an hour, just around the time that girl was kidnapped. I'm pretty sure somebody was in the front seat."
The guard pointed to a row of empty parking spaces in the lot behind the three-story building occupied by Internet Marketing Solutions Unlimited, Inc. The spaces overlooked the back parking lot of Vesta's Grill in Cupertino where Jon Holloway, aka Phate, had social engineered Lara Gibson to her death. Anyone in the mystery sedan would have had a perfect view of Phate's car, even if they hadn't witnessed the actual abduction itself.
But Frank Bishop, Bob Shelton and the woman who ran Internet Marketing's human resources department had just interviewed all of the thirty-two people who worked in the building and hadn't tracked down the sedan.
The two cops were now interviewing the guard who'd noticed it to see if they could learn anything else that would help them find the car.
Bob Shelton asked, "And it had to belong to somebody who worked for the company?"
"Had to," the tall guard confirmed. "You need an employee pass to get through the gate into this lot."
"Visitors?" Bishop asked.
"No, they park in front."
Bishop and Shelton shared a troubled glance. Nobody's leads were panning out. After leaving the Computer Crimes Unit they'd stopped by state police headquarters in San Jose and picked up a copy of Jon Holloway's booking picture from the Massachusetts State Police. It showed a thin young man with dark brown hair and virtually no distinguishing features--a dead ringer for 10,000 other young men in Silicon Valley. Huerto Ramirez and Tim Morgan had also drawn a blank when they'd canvassed Ollie's Theatrical Supply in Mountain View; the only clerk on hand didn't recognize Phate's picture.
The team at CCU had found a lead--Wyatt Gillette's bot had turned up a reference to Phate, Linda Sanchez had told Bishop in a phone call--but that too was a dead end.
Bulgaria, Bishop thought cynically. What kind of case is this?
The detective now said to the security guard, "Let me ask you a question, sir. Why'd you notice the car?"
"I'm sorry?"
"It's a parking lot. It'd be normal for a car to be parked here. Why'd you pay any attention to the sedan?"
"Well, the thing is, it's not normal for cars to be parked back here. It was the only one I've seen here for a while." He looked around and, making sure the three men were alone, added, "See, the company ain't doing so well. We're down to forty people on the payroll. Was nearly two hundred last year. The whole staff can park in the front lot if they want. In fact, the president encourages it--so the company don't look like it's on its last legs." He lowered his voice. "You ask me, this dot-com Internet crap ain't the golden egg everybody makes it out to be. I myself am looking for work at Costco. Retail . . . now, that's a job with a future."
Okay, Frank Bishop told himself, gazing at Vesta's Grill. Think about it: a car parked here by itself when it doesn't have to be parked here. Do something with that.
He had a wisp of a thought but it eluded him.
They thanked the guard and returned to their car, walking along a gravel path that wound through a park surrounding the office building.
"Waste of time," Shelton said. But he was stating a simple truth--most investigating is a waste of time--and didn't seem particularly discouraged.
Think, Bishop repeated silently.
Do something with that.
It was quitting time and some employees were walking along the path to the front lot. Bishop saw a businessman in his thirties walking silently beside a young woman in a business suit. Suddenly the man turned aside and took the woman by the hand. They laughed and vanished into a stand of lilac bushes. In the shadows they threw their arms around each other and kissed passionately.
This liaison brought his own family to mind and Bishop wondered how much he'd see of his wife and son over the next week. He knew it wouldn't be much.
Then, as happened sometimes, two thoughts merged in his mind and a third was born.
Do something . . .
He stopped suddenly.
. . . with that.
"Let's go," Bishop called and started running back the way they'd come. Far thinner than Shelton but not in much better shape, he puffed hard as they returned to the office building, his shirt enthusiastically untucking itself once again.
"What the hell's the hurry?" his partner gasped.
But the detective didn't answer. He ran through the lobby of Internet Marketing, back to the human resources department. He ignored the secretary, who rose in alarm at his blustery entry, and opened the door of the human resources director's office, where the woman sat speaking with a young man.
"Detective," the surprised woman said. "What is it?"
Bishop struggled to catch his breath. "I need to ask you some questions about your employees." He glanced at the young man. "Better in private."
"Would you excuse us, please?" She nodded at the man across from her and he fled the office.
Shelton swung the door closed.
"What sort of questions? Personnel?"
"No," Bishop replied, "personal."
CHAPTER 00001111 / FIFTEEN
Here is the land of fulfillment, here is the land of plenty.
The land of King Midas, where the golden touch, though, isn't the sly trickery of Wall Street or the muscle of Midwest industry but pure imagination.
Here is the land where some secretaries and janitors are stock-option millionaires and others ride the number 22 bus all night long on its route between San Jose and Menlo Park just so they can catch some sleep--they, like one third of the homeless in this area, have full-time jobs but can't afford to pay a million dollars for a tiny bungalow or $3,000 a month for an apartment.
Here is Silicon Valley, the land that changed the world.
Santa Clara County, a green valley measuring twenty-five by ten miles, was dubbed "The Valley of the Heart's Delight" long ago though the joy referred to when that phrase was coined was culinary rather than technological. Apricots, prunes, walnuts and cherries grew abundantly in the fertile land nestled south of San Francisco. The valley might have remained linked forever with produce, like other parts of California--Castroville with its artichokes, Gilroy with garlic--except for an impulsive decision in 1909 by a man named David Starr Jordan, the president of Stanford University, which was located smack in the middle of Santa Clara Valley. Jordan decided to put some venture capital money on a little-known invention by a man named Lee De Forrest.
The inventor's gadget--the audion tube--wasn't like the phonograph player or the internal-combustion engine. It was the type of innovation that the general public couldn't quite understand
and, in fact, didn't care about one bit at the time it was announced. But Jordan and other engineers at Stanford believed that the device might have a few practical applications and before long it became clear how stunningly correct they were--the audion was the first electronic vacuum tube, and its descendants ultimately made possible radio, television, radar, medical monitors, navigation systems and computers themselves.
Once the tiny audion's potential was unearthed nothing would ever be the same in this green, placid valley.
Stanford University became a breeding ground for electronics engineers, many of whom stayed in the area after graduation--David Packard and William Hewlett, for instance. Russell Varian and Philo Farnsworth too, whose research gave us the first television, radar and microwave technologies. The early computers like ENIAC and Univac were East Coast inventions but their limitations--massive size and scalding heat from vacuum tubes--sent innovators scurrying to California, where companies were making advances with tiny devices known as semiconductor chips, far smaller, cooler and more efficient than tubes. Once chips were developed, in the late 1950s, the Machine World raced forward like a spaceship, from IBM to Xerox's PARC to Stanford Research Institute to Intel to Apple to the thousands of dot-com companies scattered throughout this lush landscape today.
The Promised Land, Silicon Valley . . .
Through which Jon Patrick Holloway, Phate, now drove, southeast on the rain-swept 280 freeway, toward St. Francis Academy and his appointment with Jamie Turner for their Real World MUD game.
In the Jaguar's CD player was a recording of yet another play, Hamlet--Laurence Olivier's performance. Reciting the words in unison with the actor, Phate turned off the freeway at a San Jose exit and five minutes later he was cruising past the brooding Spanish colonial St. Francis Academy. It was 5:15 and he had more than an hour to stake out the structure.
He parked on a dusty commercial street, near the north gate, through which Jamie was planning on making his escape. Unfurling a planning and zoning commission diagram of the building and a recorder of deeds map of the grounds, Phate pored over the documents for ten minutes. Then he got out of the car and circled the school slowly, studying the entrances and exits. He returned to the Jaguar.
Turning the volume up on his CD, he reclined the seat and watched people stroll and bicycle along the wet sidewalk. He squinted at them with fascination. They were no more--or less--real to him than the tormented Danish prince in Shakespeare's play and Phate was not sure for a moment whether he was in the Machine World or the Real. He heard a voice, maybe his own, maybe not, reciting a slightly different version of a passage from the play. "What a piece of work is a machine. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculty. In form, in moving, how express and admirable. In operation how like an angel. In access how like a god. . . ."
He checked his knife and the squeeze bottle containing the pungent liquid concoction, all carefully arranged in the pockets of his gray coveralls, on whose back he'd carefully embroidered the words "AAA Cleaning and Maintenance Company."
He looked at his watch, then closed his eyes again, leaning back in the sumptuous leather of his car. Thinking: only forty minutes till Jamie Turner sneaks into the school yard to meet his brother.
Only forty minutes until Phate would find out if he'd win or lose this round of the game.
He rubbed his thumb carefully against the razor-sharp blade of the knife.
In operation how like an angel.
In access how like a god.
In his persona as Renegade334, Wyatt Gillette had been lurking--observing but saying nothing--in the #hack chat room.
Before you social engineer someone you have to learn as much about them as you can to make the scam credible. He'd call out observations and Patricia Nolan would jot down whatever Gillette had deduced about TripleX. The woman sat close to him. He smelled a very pleasant perfume and he wondered if this particular scent had been part of her makeover plan.
So far Gillette had learned this about TripleX:
He was currently in the Pacific time zone (he'd made a reference to cocktail happy hour in a bar nearby; it was nearly 5:50 P.M. on the West Coast).
He was probably in Northern California (he'd complained about the rain--and according to CCU's high-tech meteorology source, the Weather Channel, most of the rain on the West Coast was currently concentrated in and around the San Francisco Bay area).
He was American, older and probably college educated (his grammar and punctuation were very good for a hacker--too good for a high school cyberpunk--and his use of slang was correct, indicating he wasn't your typical Eurotrash-hacker, who often tried to impress others with their use of idioms and invariably got them wrong).
He was probably in a shopping mall, dialing into the Internet Relay Chat from a commercial Internet access location, a cybercafe probably (he'd referred to a couple of girls he'd just seen go into Victoria's Secret; the happy-hour comment too suggested this).
He was a serious, and potentially dangerous, hacker (ditto the shopping center public access--most people doing risky hacks tended to avoid going online out of their houses on their own machines and used public dial-up terminals instead).
He had a huge ego and he considered himself a wizard and an older brother to the youngsters in the group (tirelessly explaining esoteric aspects of hacking to novices in the chat room but having no patience for know-it-alls).
With this profile in mind, Gillette was now almost ready to trace TripleX.
It's easy to find someone in the Blue Nowhere if they don't mind being found. But if they're determined to remain hidden then tracing is an arduous and usually unsuccessful task.
To track a connection back to an individual's computer while he's online you need an Internet tracing tool--like Gillette's HyperTrace--but you might also need a phone company trace.
If TripleX's computer was hooked up to his Internet service provider via a fiberoptic or other high-speed cable connection, rather than a telephone line, then HyperTrace could lead them to the exact longitude and latitude of the shopping mall where the hacker's computer sat.
If, however, TripleX's machine was connected to the Net over a standard phone line via a modem--a dial-up connection, like most personal computers at home--Gillette's HyperTrace could trace the call back only to TripleX's Internet service provider and would stop there. Then the phone company's security people would have to trace the call from the service provider to TripleX's computer itself.
Tony Mott now snapped his fingers, looked up from his phone with a grin and said, "Okay, Pac Bell's set to trace."
"Here we go," said Gillette. He typed a message and hit ENTER. On the screens of everyone logged onto the #hack chat room appeared this message:
Renegade334: Hey Triple how you doing.
Gillette was now "imping"--pretending to be someone else. In this case he'd decided to be a seventeen-year-old hacker with marginal education but plenty of balls and adolescent attitude--just the sort you'd expect to find in this room.
TripleX: Good, Renegade. Saw you lurking.
In chat rooms you can see who's logged on even if they're not participating in the conversation. TripleX was reminding Gillette that he was vigilant, the corollary of which was: Don't fuck with me.
Renegade334: Im at a public terminal and people keep walking bye, its pissing me off.
TripleX: Where you hanging?
Gillette glanced at the Weather Channel.
Renegade334: Austin, man the heat sucks. You ever been hear.
TripleX: Only Dallas.
Renegade334: Dallas sucks, Austin rules!!!!
"Everybody ready?" Gillette called. "I'm going to try to get him alone."
Affirmative responses from around him. He felt Patricia Nolan's leg brush his. Stephen Miller sat next to her. Gillette keyed a phrase and hit ENTER.
Renegade334: Triple--How bout ICQ?
ICQ (as in "I seek you") was like instant messaging--it would link their machines together so that no o
ne else would be able to see the conversation. A request to ICQ suggested that Renegade might have something illegal or furtive to share with TripleX--a temptation that few hackers could resist.
TripleX: Why?
Renegade334: can't go into it hear.
A moment later a small window opened on Gillette's screen.
TripleX: So what's happening, dude?
"Run it," Gillette called to Stephen Miller, who started HyperTrace. Another window popped up on the monitor, depicting a map of Northern California. Blue lines appeared on the map as the program traced the route from CCU back to TripleX.
"It's tracing," Miller called. "Signal goes from here to Oakland to Reno to Seattle. . . ."
Renegade334: thanks man for the ICQ. Thing is I got a problem and Im scared. This dudes on my case and the word is your a total wizard and I heard you might know somthing.
You can never massage a hacker's ego too much, Wyatt Gillette knew.
TripleX: What, dude?
Renegade334: His names Phate.
There was no response.
"Come on, come on," Gillette urged in a whisper. Thinking: Don't vanish. I'm a scared kid. You're a wizard. Help me. . . .
TripleX: What aobut him? I mean, about.
Gillette glanced at the window on his computer screen that showed HyperTrace's progress in locating the routing computers. TripleX's signal was jumping all over the western United States. Finally it ended at the last hub, Bay Area On-Line Services, located in Walnut Creek, which was just north of Oakland.
"Got his service provider," Stephen Miller called. "It's a dial-in service."
"Damn," Patricia Nolan muttered. This meant that a phone company trace was necessary to pinpoint the final link from the server in Walnut Creek to the computer cafe where TripleX was sitting.
"We can do it," Linda Sanchez called enthusiastically, a cheerleader. "Just keep him on the line, Wyatt."
Tony Mott called Bay Area On-Line and told the head of the security department what was going on. The security chief in turn called his own technicians, who would coordinate with Pacific Bell and trace the connection from Bay Area back to TripleX's location. Mott listened for a moment then called, "Pac Bell's scanning. It's a busy area. Might take ten, fifteen minutes."
"Too long, too long!" Gillette said. "Tell 'em to speed it up."
But from his days as a phone phreak, breaking into Pac Bell himself, Gillette knew that phone company employees might have to physically run through the switches--which are huge rooms filled with electrical relays--visually finding the connections, in order to trace a call back to its source.