Three Libras - BLACKBIRD book 4

10. leet

Cooper stormed out of the elevator at six a.m. and almost stumbled on Gillian, who was coming to meet her.

"What happened?" she barked, following Gillian to the team's office.

"He took his own child hostage to resist the arrest. And then he lawyered up."

"Son of a bitch! Did you stay here all night?"

Gillian swallowed her surprise at hearing her. "No, ma'am. Singer's lawyer will be here only after nine, and my techs were running diagnose programs that needed some time, so we all went home for a couple of hours after the procedure. We just got back."

The team was gathered around Tanya's desk, Russell and Hank included.

"Tell me we have enough to lock him up," Cooper said, striding among the desks.

"We're on it, ma'am. We seized all the computers and phones in his house, and we're analyzing them."

"And what about the tablet from the mall?"

"We couldn't process it as evidence because we needed to stop the transfer right there and then."

"So we need him to confess."

"Yes."

"Got it, Mom. He gambles in the deep web."

Cooper's eyes widened at hearing that deep voice, and her scowl was to beat a world record when she spotted Connor working on Kurt's computer.

Gillian flashed an apologetic smile. "That's my son, Connor, ma'am," she said, resisting the acid drill of Cooper's glare.

"And he is here because...?"

"He's very good at computers, ma'am."

Cooper didn't need to ask if Gillian was kidding, her face was enough. Gillian arched her eyebrows—let's leave it there, please. The other woman let out an exasperated sigh and shook her head.

"My office, Gillian," she grunted.

Gillian followed her out. She was still explaining what happened at Singer's house when Ron knocked on the door and stuck his head in.

"They got something."

Both women hurried out and back to the team's office with him. There they found the others looking up at the plasma, where thousands of images full of numbers were flashing.

"We cracked the code," Tanya said, anticipating any question, and nodded at the large screen. "The malware was meant to search and copy files containing numbers. It overlooked pictures, music files, everything else."

"So the blackhat was actually hacking the files that could have any kind of financial information," said Aldana. "We were right about the scam."

"Can you isolate the data Singer was able to send him?" asked Gillian.

"We're already on it. We'll have the complete list in twenty minutes tops."

"Al, we need to warn everyone compromised, as well as their banks and credit card companies. The blackhat can be using this information as we speak. Don't wait for the complete list, start making those calls right now."

"On it."

"And we also found the blackhat's sig, Reg," said Kurt.

He stroke a key and the flashing pictures were replaced by a black screen filled with colored lines of source code. He highlighted a combination of numbers and letters and deleted all the rest.

Hank frowned. "Six, aitch, zero, five, tee...," he read aloud. "What's that supposed to be?"

"Leet," Tanya replied. "Many blackhats use this kind of alphanumeric handle. You have to read the numbers as the letters they look like."

Gillian narrowed her eyes. Six, aitch, zero, five, tee... 6H05T... "Can it be... Ghost...?"

Kurt nodded and hit another key. "That's him. Now let me introduce you to The Ghost."

The plasma was filled with newspapers headlines. The others scowled as they read.

"These are sites he hacked?" asked Russell. "He crashed the whole Massachusetts power grid?"

"And the Bank of America, among others," said Fred, still reading. "He even tried to hack the Pentagon!"

"Actually he did hack the Pentagon," Connor corrected, softly. "But it's not like they can admit it."

Gillian's inquiring-mother mode was suddenly turned on and she turned to scowl at her son. "And you know it how...?"

"He posted the exploits to prove he did it."

"Posted it? To his Facebook?"

"On a blackhat forum in the deep web," Tanya replied. "I saw them, but couldn't try them. He posted enough to show it was the real thing, but not the complete exploit for any other blackhat to use it."

"Why?" asked Russell. "To avoid being caught?"

"To avoid sharing the credit," replied Connor. "Not easy, finding an exploit in such a complex system."

Kurt added, "By posting that, he showed off not only to the blackhat community, but mostly to the Pentagon techs. And made sure they corrected those failures, so nobody else could use those exploits again and claim they did it too."

"Tell me about alpha male pride," said Aldana.

Gillian tried her best to ignore Cooper's eyes, burning the back of her neck as her techs and son kept talking about their visits to the blackhats realm. Better move on from such shady waters.

"So we know who was receiving the information? Meaning we can go get'im."

Tanya, Kurt and Connor faced her as if she were speaking in tongues.

"We can't?" ventured Ron.

"If the Pentagon couldn't catch him..." Kurt replied.

"Okay, clean slate," said Gillian. "Can we prove Singer did the hijacking?"

Tanya shook her head. "Not yet, I still need to check his whereabouts in the deep web. I'm sure that's where the Ghost found him."

"Can the Ghost erase that?"

"He sure can delete the messages in forums and stuff from the web, but they may be still stored in Singer's computer. And it's offline, so the Ghost cannot reach it."

"Can the Ghost use the information Singer transferred before we found the tablet?"

"Yes, for the next thirty or forty minutes, until we get the whole list and issue the notifications."

"Then that's our priority. I want everybody on it."

Gillian turned to Cooper, to confirm that was the correct course of action.

Cooper only nodded. "Keep me up," said the Iron Lady, spun around and stalked out.

"Are we gonna start calling people this early?" asked Hank, frowning.

Fred scoffed. "They're so gonna hate us."

Ron shrugged, going back to his desk. "They're gonna hate us anyway."