No sysadmin in their right or deranged mind ever allowed themselves to think that they had an impenetrable firewall, but my team had come pretty damned close to accomplishing exactly that.
Ben, my second-in-command at FI, and I met in our freshman year in high school and bonded over code, games, making it better, run faster, busting industry limitations, DSL, the miracle of broadband, what our parents called ‘all things computer’.Then we discovered Tor and thus began our adventures on the darknet.
Ben came up with the idea of dabbling in cybersecurity after we encountered Bjorn Arneson, the insane genius who would become our third cohort and eventual co-founder of Gatekeeper Security, named after his darknet handle.Our primary mission—the skill that paid the bills and tuition—in those early years, break into corporate networks to find vulnerabilities and plug any holes.Do legally what we caught BJ doing before he ended up busted and scooped up by the feds in a deal to avoid prison time.
Ben, BJ, and I met John Boyd in grad school when he approached us about designing a website to sell everything from adult toys to kink furnishings and later to helping clients make sexual fantasies a reality.Graphics and website design were sort of a hobby for me, and when I told Ben and BJ what John wanted, they were onboard before I even blinked.Sex toys, kink, and fantasies?Who could pass that up?In less than a year, that collaboration had given birth to Fantasies, Inc.BJ thought FI was a fantastic idea, and he put up some serious money to help with startup, but he decided to expand Gatekeeper, which was now one the three best and most respected cybersecurity companies in the world.
FI blew up beyond even what our wildest speculation could have come up with, and we recruited Tim Campbell and Will McDonald from Stanford.Ben and I ‘met’ them in our online gaming group while fighting aliens, zombies, vampires, and other universal threats to help us recharge.Ben and I were impressed with their mad gaming skills, out of the box tactics, and strategy, all of which complemented their professional expertise.We invited them to intern with FI during their undergrad summer breaks sophomore and junior years and onboarded them after graduation.They were now the co-leads of what I considered one of the sharpest IT teams in the business.
Whether it’s the deepest classified US Government agencies or John and Jane Q Public with a cellphone or other electronic device connected to the internet, odds are better than seven in ten that some bad actor or actors would be successful in their hacking attempts, be it by brute force or the end user inviting them in through malware.
Fantasies Inc.’s number was up today.
“Tell me what you do know.”We’d already been here for an hour, and no one had any concrete answers.
“We’re still checking all the firewalls, mainframe and subnets, to find where they got in.It’s looking—” Tim said.His red hair was sticking up so that he looked like he’d stuck his finger in an electrical outlet.
Will broke in.“Bossman, right now, everything is preliminary.I don’t want to say much more than that because, at best, it’d be speculation.The only sure thing at this moment: There was no breach of any of the firewalls.”
Ben looked directly at me.“I don’t want to go where that sign is pointing, at least not yet, until we have some concrete findings that give us no other choice.”
I waved his apology away.“I trust your work.”
“Thanks, but I’m not sure I do, not at the moment,” Ben muttered.
Will rubbed his eyes and raked his fingers through his hair.“I haven’t been through every line of the logs yet, but I didn’t just scan them either.The first review did not showanybreach of the main firewall or the subnet firewalls.All security updates are current.Scans have not turned up anything.Being able to do this and not leave a trace is thirteen thirty-seven level…or...”
The conference room door opened, but there’d been no knock.I was expecting John Boyd since I’d notified him, but it was Emma, balancing her open laptop on one arm and closing the door with her free hand.She didn’t move from in front of the door.Ben nodded a greeting.Will and Tim looked to me and then back to Emma.
“Emma Palmer, meet Tim Campbell, and the ginger next to him is Will McDonald.You’ve met Ben.Emma’s on loan from Tri-O-Tech as project manager for the streamlining and expansion.She’s something of a rock star when it comes to development.”
Emma’s cheeks turned a deep shade of pink as she looked down at her laptop.
“Nice meeting you, Emma.”
“Welcome, Emma.”
She nodded to Will and Tim and gave Ben a shy smile.
“Hi Emma.I meant what I said about that dinner and wine.”
“Thank you.”She put her laptop on the table next to me and pointed to the screen.“Sorry, for the interruption, but I thought you might want to have this information,” she said softly.
“What did you find?”
“Whoever it was didn’t breach the main firewall or the subnets, but you’ve probably already figured that out.”
Ben frowned.“It looks that way.”
I gestured for Emma to sit down.
“Do you have a way to project this so everyone can see?”she asked.
“Yes.”I woke the ninety-eight inch monitor and pulled it out just enough to read the label on the back.“Here’s the mirror address.”I read off the alphanumeric code.
“Thank you.”Before I was back at my seat, her laptop screen appeared on the monitor.
“All right.”Her voice shook a little bit, and I smiled with a half nod.“It took me a bit of digging, but whoever this is, they used valid credentials, which indicates…”
