US Cyber Command, Fort Meade, Maryland
Midshipman First Class Janet Everett focused on her single computer screen. She was acutely aware that Goodwin and Ramirez were running the same exercise as she was, but on multiple screens. Ramirez had two monitors engaged and had probably hacked together a nice piece of code to do all the work automatically. Goodwin was running three screens, his finger on the down-arrow key, eyes shifting from screen to screen looking for anomalies.
She was near the top in her graduating class at the academy and these two made her feel slow. She focused harder on the screen. Slow and steady wins the race, she told herself.
The three of them were running a random security audit on a DOE agency—she didn’t even know which one—decrypting their SSL streams for suspicious activity. Not exactly glamorous work, but Mr. Riley assured her that some of the greatest hacker discoveries had come from good old detective work.
And so Janet and her two midshipmen friends were spending their second holiday camped out at Fort Meade. According to Riley, Christmas break was an especially good time to survey government organizations for suspicious activity, since network usage tended to be low.
She saw an outgoing ping on the network. She followed the signal to a URL, nucleartreaty.org. Odd to have an outgoing packet from a secure government site relayed to a .org site. She used her network admin access to check the system. There were only twenty or so users logged on, and none of them had sent the file.
Janet shot a sideways glance at Ramirez and Goodwin but hesitated to say anything. She wasn’t even sure if they were looking at the SSL stream from the same agency. No, she would make sure this was an actual hack before she called it.
She ran back through the logs, looking for another ping to the same outside URL. It took her another half hour of backtracking to find it. Janet stared at the screen, a growing sense of excitement bubbling up in her chest. It had been five hours between pings. She scrolled back through the historical record, seeking the time stamp from five hours prior.
There it was. The same .org site receiving another outgoing packet.
“Hey, guys, I think I’ve got something here,” she said to Goodwin and Ramirez. “Come check this out.”
She quickly recapped the random pings and external website. Ramirez scrambled back to her station and typed in a quick search. “Website is registered to a Richard Grayson.”
“You need to let Lieutenant Jackson know about this,” Goodwin said. “This is really good work, ma’am.”
Janet felt a glow of pride from the praise. Sure, he was only a plebe, but he was easily the best hacker she’d ever met. “I told you to call me Janet when we’re out of the Yard. When we’re away from the academy, we’re equals, Michael.”
“Okay, Janet,” he replied with his slight, lopsided grin. “It’s still good work.”
Janet raised her hand. “Lieutenant Jackson, I think we’ve found something.”
Jackson, who was doubling as the watch supervisor that day, made her way to Everett’s workstation. Her eyes grew wide as Janet laid out her case. She touched the microphone at her throat. “Listen up, all watch standers, we’ve got a possible hack in progress.” She nodded for Janet to put her monitor on the big wall screen. “Our midshipmen trainees may have uncovered something big here. They’ve identified an outgoing ping of a zipped file leaving the Department of Energy at regular intervals going to a dot-org website registered to a Richard Grayson.”
“Dick Grayson. The site is registered to the superhero Nightwing. Classic hacker move,” one of the watch standers called out.
Jackson nodded. “Agreed. Let’s find out where this hack is coming from and how it got there.” She turned back to the midshipmen. “Good job, all of you.”
“It was Janet, ma’am,” Goodwin said. “She’s the one who found it.”
Janet found herself blushing. “How can we help?” she said to cover her embarrassment.
“We need to determine the five w’s on this case: who, what, when, where, and why. You’ve already given us a good starting place, but now the real work begins. We need to find out as much as we can without tipping off the hacker. From the looks of it, these guys have been there for a while, which means they’re dug in and probably have backup systems in place if we try to shut them down. There’ll be an executable file on the network somewhere that’s running the show—probably embedded. We need to find that file.”
“We’re on it, ma’am,” Janet said.
Jackson smiled. “I’m sure you are.”
Janet turned to her friends. “Let’s do this, guys. How do we track down this executable?”
Ramirez posted her chin on her fist. “Well, there’s got to be some kind of pattern to the usage, right? I mean, the hackers are using this program to capture data, zip it into a packet, and send it off-site. They need to feed the outgoing stream, which is on a schedule.” She sat up and pulled her rolling chair toward the monitor. “It stands to reason the executable is on a schedule, too. Maybe I can write a script for Michael that feeds him all the programs with a regular start-stop cycle and he can look for a pattern.”
Janet shook her head. “That’s got to be thousands of programs, cycling all the time. We’re talking millions of lines of code.”
Ramirez was already hammering at her keyboard. “It’s the best we’ve got for now.”
Within the hour, she’d hacked together a monitoring program to allow Goodwin to see the inner workings of the Department of Energy network. The young midshipman had set up his three monitors in a band shell–style arrangement so he could watch all three without moving his head. Ramirez routed the feed to his screens, and they waited.
Michael sat perfectly still, his eyes scanning across the code as it rolled down his screens. Minutes turned into hours, but the midshipman sat still as a stone.
“What’s he doing?” said a voice from behind Janet.
It was Don Riley. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “Jackson called me. Said you guys had uncovered a hack in progress. He’s looking for something on the DOE network?”
“Dre wrote a program that lets us look for a suspicious start-stop cycle on the network. He’s looking for a pattern in the data, hoping it will lead us to the hidden executable.”
“By himself? Can he really watch three screens at once?”
Janet shrugged. “If anyone can do it, it’s Michael. He’s been at it for nearly three hours without a break.”
“I got it,” Michael said. “At least, I think I do. Stop the feed, Dre.” His normally calm voice held a trace of excitement. Using his cursor, Michael highlighted one line of code on each screen. “These all point back to a DLL file.”
Ramirez already had the file open and was scrolling down the screen. “Holy shit, you did it, Michael! This has got to be it.”
Jackson crowded close, peering over Ramirez’s shoulder. Janet watched the lieutenant’s eyebrows arch up, and then she looked back at Don Riley, nodding.
Riley’s gaze went from Goodwin to Ramirez and finally rested on Janet. A warm feeling of pride filled Janet. Her team did this. Her team.
Riley rubbed his jaw and smiled. “Well done, Midshipmen, dinner’s on me tonight.”