Fifteen miles south of Eilstadzir, Sindri drops off an infiltrator in a desolate landscape. Disguised with advanced technology and guided by a foothold already planted in the system, the operative walks through the snow to Skýborg, a decommissioned cloud data center, intending to erase and degauss the data stored inside.
Approaching Skýborg
Sindri stopped the car. Her smile suddenly looked cheerful against the desolate scenery outside the window.
“This is the place.”
Right. The landscape looked no different from 30 minutes earlier, but I returned her smile and congratulated the father-to-be to end the engagement. Chatty, Sindri had probably told me more than she should have. A married man talking about his sister-in-law? That was just weird.
I jumped out of the truck and watched it turn the corner. Then I pulled a compass from my jacket pocket and a map from my knapsack. Go south. Start walking. Give yourself enough time before the birch and snow became thinner.
Blend in—that’s what hackers do. Almost the first rule. I had encountered street stares in Nairobi, but never in Fukuoka. It was like broadcasting in LA while refraining from broadcasting in Leipzig, but on a system-wide scale. And behind the desk. It was no good if they saw you. Take it little by little when attacking. Use everything you have at hand. They lived off the land and attacked from blind spots. For example, they attacked from the system’s memory. If they became popular, I was already in the past.
Of course, active reconnaissance was a completely different situation and required different conditions to remain invisible.
Three rules for an invisible intrusion
1: Don’t talk.
It didn’t matter. The only person who frequented Skyborg could not give me accurate information when I visited her—at least, I thought she was a woman. I might have called the ID handle √^}° a “guerrilla hat”, but it had backfired. It was all effect and no elegance, so I should not have suggested “Us vs Them”. But it had been less than a week since Skýborg was decommissioned and the work had arrived. I did not have time to wait any longer. We also stayed out of the ransomware business.
(√^}°: “CU L8R D00D”)
After the trees disappeared, large black squares broke through the snow. All nine lay flat in a space the size of a soccer field. American. A tall stick figure crossed the white landscape, and that was my cue to play it cool. Trust the terms.
Thanks to the C-skin I had been wearing since Reykjavik, I crossed the line from a blue-eyed, square-jawed young Icelander to an ebony ape with a pulsating orb on his forehead. Instant authentication.
Security in a decommissioned cloud data center—that’s weird, right?
Direct Current2 Downwind—or (DC)2 if you were an A-hat—was underground in Skýborg. From there, the traceroutes did not look like a glitch. The location was up and running and active.
What made it less active was the reindeer half-buried in the snow, its feet in the air and a hole in its side. The poor animal had got too close to the security guard. Ironically, Sindri would have been more likely to find my black hair through nanorefraction.
2: Just walk.
My equipment was untraceable—I was an A-hat through and through—and the only thing I had brought in was the foothold I had left in the system: an hour to make a deal. Nowadays, everyone was putting their credentials on the network, so perhaps someone had found it. But they had not found it yet.
The rotor moved back. In cybersecurity, unknown vulnerabilities are called zero-day threats. We all worried about them, but we never expected them to come through our front door. I walked up the stairs just for a laugh.
Think about it. Leave your eggs in one place and pay someone else to keep the key. I really wanted that.
You couldn’t blame them for wanting larger cuts. Oddly enough, that was not what they were asking for. Not exactly. Was it more than a little green, or were they kidding? So, 12.49 euros to unfreeze your data? But in Nepali currency? Or did they want you to sit there while you calculated the ransom? π.
My client was clear for now. You little bastards, I just wanted the data stored here to disappear.
Speaking of here, it was warm. My spider sense was strange at my level. The administrator had hurried away and abandoned part of the server.
But were those things moving? Ah, that was right. A server drone. I had not thought it was real. Mobilized for safety and storage. Therefore, it was not a normal malware threat. It was more like something I was aware of.
3: Don’t think about it.
That was something I was still working on. Thought scanners could not catch me while my THINKbox split my internal dialogue. Otherwise, I would be a pulsating white dot. And reindeer.
Speaking of spots—there was my server. It was easy once you got in. Turn on the identification light through the administrative console.
Now it was crowbar time.
Among other hats, it was SEDkey. It did two things: securely erase the data and then fully degauss it. Irreversible. It looked like a key.
Elegant enough for you, √^}°?
The other drones were probably wondering why I was so close. Anyway, I entered the key.
Woopara.
Source: www.nature.com