Fifteen miles south of Eilstadzir, a hacker leaves Sindri and walks into a snow-covered, decommissioned cloud data center known as Skýborg. Disguised by a C-skin and guided by a foothold already planted in the system, the intruder follows three rules—do not talk, just walk and do not think—as security drones, a thought scanner and an apparently live server complicate an operation to erase and degauss stored data.
Into the snow
Sindri stopped the car 15 miles south of Eilstadzir. Her smile looked strangely cheerful against the desolate landscape outside the window.
“This is the place,” she said.
Right. The scenery looked no different from 30 minutes earlier. I returned her smile and congratulated the father-to-be before ending the conversation. Sindri was chatty—probably more so than she should have been. A married man talking about his sister-in-law? It was weird.
I jumped out of the truck and watched it disappear around the corner. Then I pulled a compass from my jacket pocket and a map from my knapsack.
Go south. Start walking. Leave yourself enough time before the birch trees and snow become thinner.
Blend in. That is what hackers do. It is almost the first rule. I had attracted stares on the streets of Nairobi, but never in Fukuoka. It was like broadcasting in Los Angeles while refusing to broadcast in Leipzig—but as a system, and from behind a desk. It does no good if they see you.
Take an attack one step at a time. Use everything at hand. Live off the land and attack from blind spots. For example, attack from the system’s memory. If they become popular, I am already in the past.
Of course, active reconnaissance is a completely different situation. It requires different conditions if you want to remain invisible.
1: Don’t talk
It does not matter. The only person who frequented Skyborg could not give me accurate information when I visited her—at least, I think it was her.
I might have called the ID handle √^}° a “guerrilla hat”, but that backfired. It was all effect and no elegance, so I should not have suggested “Us vs Them”. Still, less than a week had passed 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 disappear, large black squares emerge from the snow. There are nine of them, all lying flat across an area the size of a soccer field. American.
A tall stick figure crosses the white landscape. That is my cue to play it cool. Trust the terms.
Thanks to the C-skin I have worn since Reykjavik, I cross the line from a blue-eyed, square-jawed young Icelander to an ebony ape with a pulsating orb on his forehead. Authentication is instant.
Security at a decommissioned cloud data center. Strange, right?
Direct current2 Downwind—or DC2 if you are an A-hat—lies underground in Skýborg. From here, the traceroutes do not look like a glitch. The site is running, connected and active.
What makes it look less active is the reindeer, half buried in the snow with its feet in the air and a hole in its side. The poor animal 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 is untraceable. I am an A-hat through and through. The only thing I brought in was the foothold I left in the system: an hour to make a deal.
These days, everyone is putting their credentials on the network. Maybe someone has found mine. But they have not found it yet.
The rotor moves back. In cybersecurity, unknown vulnerabilities are called zero-day threats. We all worry about them, but we never expect them to come through our front door.
I walk up the stairs just for a laugh.
Think about it. Leave all your eggs in one place and pay someone else to keep the key. I really want that.
You cannot blame them for wanting a larger cut. Oddly enough, that is not what they are asking for. Not exactly.
Is it more than a little green, or are you kidding me? Twelve euros and 49 cents to unfreeze your data? In Nepali currency? Or do you want them to sit there while you calculate the ransom? π.
My client is clear for now. You little bastards. I just want the data stored here to disappear.
Speaking of here, it is warm.
My spider sense is strange at this level. The administrator hurried away and abandoned part of the server. But are those things moving?
Ah. Right. Server drones.
I did not think they were real. They are mobilized for safety and storage. So this is not a normal malware threat. It is more like something that knows I am here.
3: Don’t think about it
That is something I am still working on. Laughs.
A thought scanner cannot catch me while my THINKbox splits my internal dialogue. Otherwise, I would appear as a pulsating white dot.
And reindeer.
Speaking of spots, there is my server.
Getting inside is easy. I switch on the identification light through the administrative console.
Now it is time for the crowbar.
Among my other hats, I am SEDkey. It does two things: securely erase the data, then fully degauss it.
Irreversible.
It looks like a key. Elegant enough for you, √^}°?
The other drones are probably wondering why I am standing so close. Anyway, I enter the key.
Woopara.
Source: www.nature.com
