{"id":89,"date":"2012-03-19T23:31:28","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T05:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firmwarez.com\/?p=89"},"modified":"2012-03-19T23:44:20","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T05:44:20","slug":"defcon-19-short-story-entry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.firmwarez.com\/?p=89","title":{"rendered":"Defcon 19 Short Story Entry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s my entry from the Defcon 19 short story contest<\/a>, titled “Joel”. The contest theme was spy\/secret agent inspired.<\/p>\n

——————————<\/p>\n

5 August 2011. 03:16 in the morning. It is still 102 degrees in Las Vegas. Vs ~ 331.3 + 0.6Tc.
\nThat gives a speed of sound of approximately 355 m\/s, or 1165 ft\/s. The 158gr 9mm projectiles
\nimpacting around me have a muzzle velocity of about 940 ft\/s. Quite subsonic; and fired through
\nthe suppressor on the other end of this business the shooter is effectively stealthy. On my side
\nhowever, those slugs still make a serious sound punching through the air, not to mention a frankly
\nterrifying noise as they hammer and splatter on the concrete of the parking structure I use for cover.<\/p>\n

It started with a simple hypertext link; one of those \u201ca friend of a friend\u201d things on a mundane
\nsocial networking site. Mundane was the word of the day — so mundane I didn\u2019t notice it at first.
\nWhat I did notice was that this person\u2019s posts, pictures, likes, actions \u2013 all dull and mundane \u2013
\nwe\u2019re too dull\u2026and directly coincided with major events unfolding. Joel, the friend of a friend,
\nseeming \u201cfriends\u201d with half the planet, also seemed to be the world\u2019s least interesting man.
\n\u201cI went shopping today. I spent $17.45\u201d. Pictures of meaningless landscapes. A bland profile
\npicture in a white button up shirt, an unremarkable face. No doting on kids, no drama with
\nfrenemies, just pictures of suburbs, trees in the park, clouds in the sky. A million friends but
\nno girlfriend — or boyfriend for that matter. \u201cThe weather was nice today, I went for a walk at
\n6:30\u201d.<\/p>\n

It was a spring of change as obvious as that vernal analogy seems. Peoples of many nations once
\nunder the harsh thumb of mindless tyrants were rising up and making their voices known. As a self
\nproclaimed \u201cmin-archist\u201d I cheered from the sidelines for freedom, watching tweets and buzzes and
\nvids propagate as freedom spilled across the dry lands, more welcome than the rare rains.<\/p>\n

Maybe I watched too deeply, too interested, too investigative. I don\u2019t know why I did a simple
\nC(r) = NSXY – (SX)(SY) \/ Sqrt([NSX2 – (SX)2][NSY2 – (SY)2]). But I did, and I became convinced.
\nIt couldn\u2019t be coincidence. <\/p>\n

Every post, every check-in, everything about Joel\u2019s page was temporally connected to the events
\nunfolding on the world wide stage. He would post, and the state department made an announcement.
\nJoel announced that he went to the store for coffee, and NATO fighter planes would run a sortie.
\nAt times I felt half mad; but it was repeatable beyond expectation. If this was a paranoid
\ndelusion it was the best I had, my own personal Nash equilibrium. Joel posted, tweeted, and I
\ntuned to the world\u2019s media to see what would happen next. The patterns were indisputable.<\/p>\n

I became obsessed with seeing what deeper information lay hidden in Joel\u2019s personal page. <\/p>\n

Every spare moment was devoted to Joel\u2019s info. My late nights became illuminated by glowing
\nmonitors, digging through old collected philes on every form of spook-dom I could recall. I
\nthink all those of my profession of electronics and software had some interest in the technology
\nof espionage, and I for years I had stuffed away books, stories, presentations from technical
\nconferences, and now I was convinced that somewhere in all those philes-because-its-cool I could
\nfind a way to see more into Joel.<\/p>\n

I obsessed over Joel. Is there a real \u201cJoel\u201d, or is this personal page merely an electronic dead
\ndrop? I combed his posts for additional information, I looked for anything that carry additional
\nmeaning. His posts. His friends. Anything and everything. I added his friends. I scanned them
\nfor activity. I told no one of my discovery. <\/p>\n

The spring turned to summer. Some of the international games seemed stale mated; others came to a
\nconclusion. When there was a spike in activity in the world, there was a spike in Joel\u2019s activity.
\nMy obsession waxed and waned as well. <\/p>\n

By late summer the situation in one country, long considered a friend of those I would call enemies,
\nhad drastically deteriorated. Tales of violence and torture as daily tools of the \u201cpolice\u201d were
\ncoming to light. Joel\u2019s social life blossomed. New friends. New pictures. New posts.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure why it took my so long to make the critical connection that changed my life. Perhaps
\nthe associated technology was so old, something long forgotten tucked away on a shelf, exciting in
\nits day, but now merely old. But still useful\u2026through the haze of memory it popped out.<\/p>\n

Joel routinely talked about the buying items, and going for walks. Each of those included a dollar
\namount he spent, or a time he left for his walk. All dollar amounts were greater than $10, and
\nless than $20.<\/p>\n

During these days of intensified resistant in that far off land, Joel\u2019s walks and shopping trips
\nbecame almost routine. In anticipation I dug through my old gear; my pulse rate went up as I
\nconnected equipment and the time grew nearer. GMT \u2013 5. Joel had spent $14.55. I connected the
\naudio out to the line input on my PC, ready to record whatever sounds came out. The minutes ticked
\ndown, and I tuned my old shortwave receiver to 14.55 MHz. My room was filled with the sounds of AM
\nstatic. Crackles and swooshes. Pops and hisses. Then the non-silence of an unmodulated carrier
\nsignal, and\u2026the ping-pong of two notes! My palms were sweating as I started to record to my hard
\ndrive. A second after the tones played a female voice repeated \u201cAttention!\u201d Three times. Did she
\nhave a French accent? It was hard tell.<\/p>\n

\u201c15. 37. 18. 22. 33\u2026\u201d The female voice slowly and purposefully spoke a series of two digit numbers.
\nAfter a short time the numbers topped, and there was the sound of digitally modulated signal. Not
\nmusical like a fax machine, but the harsh squawk of a modem. After the data burst there were two
\nseconds of dead carrier, then the initial two tones again and the whole message was repeated. The
\ncarrier dropped away, and once again the radio interpreted only the background hum of the universe.<\/p>\n

I sat there flabbergasted. I replayed the recording over and over. I knew of course what this was.
\nBack in the cold war they were called \u201cnumber stations\u201d. We used them. They used them. No one
\ntalked about them; everyone knew what they were. Instructions to operatives, sent with one time pads.
\nThe connection between the old tech and new was haunting. <\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t sleep. I had to find more. I analyzed the modem squawk and found it to be very simple
\nold fashioned FSK, at only 4800 baud. This message, over a radio medium now more common in the
\nthird world than the first, was designed to reach out to people who had to make do. <\/p>\n

I focused on the data stream: I knew the numbers themselves were secure. The nature of a
\none-time-pad. I was no crypto specialist, but I have read a couple of \u201capplied\u201d and
\n\u201cprivacy\u201d books over the years. As with the audio itself, the modem data revealed nothing but a
\nstring of numbers. <\/p>\n

I played the audio over and over while digging through old paper files. A manila folder marked 2006
\nheld what I was looking for: some notes from a talk on steganography. I began to review the concept,
\nwhen simultaneously I had a new message online and a phone call. I stopped the recording of the
\n\u201cnumbers\u201d, multi-tasked and answered the phone while clicking on the new message.<\/p>\n

I heard and read the same thing: \u201cYou are following Joel too closely.\u201d A bit shocking yes, but
\nnot too surprising. Of course someone with access to the right logs knows exactly who is following
\nJoel. I was just a \u201cfriend of a friend\u201d. My interest in the mundane had caught someone\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

At this point I was supposed to be scared off, to let go of Joel and return to my normal life. It
\njust wasn\u2019t that simple for me anymore. People like me dream of connecting their technological
\nprowess to \u201csomething bigger\u201d. Add on top of that pure obsession, coupled with not an insignificant
\namount of sleep deprivation, resulted in a compulsive resolve to continue. From early on I wanted
\nto know what was hidden from me. It resulted in a life of engineering and technology, listening to
\nairwaves, snooping for open wireless access points, snarfing video feeds. Rational or not I decided
\nat that point to keep going, even to step over the lines I dare not cross before.<\/p>\n

I quickly downloaded all of Joel\u2019s pictures. My short reconnection with the steganography I attended
\nyears ago, the folder still in my hands, told me that there was something more to be seen in those
\nimages besides the dull suburban landscape around Joel\u2019s daily activities. <\/p>\n

In addition to the analyzing these images, I had another priority. I needed to know who else was
\nfollowing Joel. This would require returning to the more seedy side of my net friends, some people
\nI hadn\u2019t really interacted with since college. I mean, afterwards I \u201cwent legit\u201d, got a good job
\nwith a well known firm, and pretended like I didn\u2019t know the meaning of xploit. But now I needed to
\nknow, more than anything I had wanted to know before.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s the background. That was the spark that led to someone shooting at me at no-o-clock in
\nthe morning in Las Vegas. Those early days of this adventure were nothing but the fun of discovery;
\nthe days leading up to Las Vegas were a blur.<\/p>\n

I dug through a number of steganography options. I reviewed open source options, played with some
\nsource code.<\/p>\n

\tunsigned int Q = 0;
\n \tQ += (Pixel01.RedChan%2);
\n \tQ += (2* (Pixel01.GreenChan%2));
\n \tQ += (4* (Pixel01.BlueChan%2));
\n \tQ += (8* (Pixel01.AlphaChan%2));<\/p>\n

I let my code crunch the pictures. While hacking on this, some free beer for my old friends
\nreopened doors. Database exploits were never of much interest to me, but now they were the tool
\nI needed to get what I wanted. My beer soaked friends would be happy to drink and black hat their
\nway in to the inner workings of a popular social networking site, while I worked on finding what
\nwas hidden in those images. <\/p>\n

I was close, and I knew it. After digging through everything I could find on steganography it was
\nobvious these images were being used to convey information. I had to believe that it was a matter
\nof time before I knew what that was. I was about to compile, and an IM window bleeped to life.
\n\u201cW00t!\u201d It was my questionable friends. \u201cd00d u gotta see this. Aint\u2019 talking here; only IRL. Now.\u201d<\/p>\n

I pushed my project on to a laptop, along with all of my \u201cJoel\u201d philes, and drove across town. The
\ncity at night seemed like a glowing movie prop; not real, an imagined bit of scenery just to make
\nthings seem more real. The stillness of the sleeping buildings was at odds with my anxiety. I
\ngot to my friend\u2019s downtown apartment and nearly ran up the stairs with excitement. The door
\nopened and I was met with music that sounded like a missile strike, throbbing and synthesizing
\nlayers of moody electronica. <\/p>\n

\u201cWord! Come check this out. This hax0r is good\u201d. My friends talked like they typed. One sat a
\nsystem with three monitors. So they were able to get the information I wanted \u2013 the answer to the
\nsimple question \u201cwho is really following Joel?\u201d. From Joel\u2019s tons of \u201cfriends\u201d, there were a
\nhandful of true \u201cfollowers\u201d \u2013 people like me who read everything. \u201cOk, so these are the followers\u201d
\nsaid one of my buddies. \u201cLook at their IP addresses \u2013 from all over the world. See this guy? He
\nalways logs on from a cyber caf\u00e9 in Lebanon. But that\u2019s nothing \u2013 you gotta see what Doc found\u201d. <\/p>\n

All these years later and my friends still referred to each other with by their handles. I hardly
\nremembered the sobriquet I used; I had tossed it away like so many other college pranks. These
\nguys were still PeN1f, DrNex, and Proto-c4ll. The good doctor opened a beer bottle. \u201cYeah, we\u2019re
\nlucky to have captured this part. This guy is good.\u201d DrNex proceeded to replay a session where he
\ncould see someone reading all of Joel\u2019s posts, but then cracking in and removing his tracks. \u201cIf
\nwe hadn\u2019t seen that happen real time we never would\u2019ve known this guy was watching your friend\u201d. <\/p>\n

My friends knew nothing about why I wanted to know about Joel. They were happy to be in the hunt,
\nfor any reason. If they hadn\u2019t had found they weren\u2019t the only ones sneaking around inside that
\nsystem, they would\u2019ve got my info and then played around with the site for their own nefarious
\nreason. But nothing gets these \u201cd00ds\u201d going like competition, and it was on.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew this wasn\u2019t a game anymore. We were playing with something
\nthat could have real world impacts. I knew it, but I ignored it. We\u2019re talking guys with guns,
\nfeds or worse, after me. After my friends. I honestly knew it, but I chose to ignore the risks
\nand side with the buzzing rush of electronic breaking and entering. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo Doc,\u201d I said, \u201cwhat have you found out about this uber guy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Doc laughed. \u201cNot much, but maybe enough. Lamer was good enough to hide that he had been there\u2026
\nbut when we caught him, not good enough to hide where he came from.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s that mean?\u201d <\/p>\n

Proto-c4ll turned a laptop around. \u201cCheck this.\u201d They had a trail. Cover-his-tracks ninja-boy
\nwas connected to a system that hosted a forum. A private, not public, hidden forum\u2026\u201dthat fell
\nvictim to the same xploit we used to hit that social site. What a noob.\u201d Proto-c4ll laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, check it out. And people think we\u2019re crazy\u201d said Doc.<\/p>\n

The boys had extracted the info from the database of the private forum and reconstructed it in
\nreadable format. It was almost as lame as Joel\u2019s tweets and updates. \u201cListened to the radio.
\nDo not enter blue zone.\u201d \u201cJoel is online.\u201d \u201cJoel\u2019s friends know about Marcus.\u201d<\/p>\n

I looked at the postings, knowing the deeper meanings my friends hadn\u2019t yet imagined. \u201cGive me
\na copy of that.\u201d \u201cSure thing.\u201d \u201cYou guys rock. Do me a favor and forget about this, ok?\u201d I
\nhoped the old debt they owed me, the legit one who helped them through some legal difficulties,
\nwas enough. \u201cYeah, whatever.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t be an asshat, ok?\u201d<\/p>\n

I took a copy of their data, and left. <\/p>\n

By now the sun was coming up, it was time for some coffee. I finally did what I hoped was the last
\ncompile on my steganography code. I ran it on Joel\u2019s picture gallery. The pieces were all coming
\ntogether. The images contained one-time pads. I used that to decode the audio message I had
\nrecorded from the number station. \u201cFriends: avoid structure 35, Jabadeen. Joel\u201d. A date was
\nincluded. The modem squawk looked like grid coordinates. I still didn\u2019t know whether Joel was a
\nreal individual or a complete fabrication, but I did know now what Joel was doing.<\/p>\n

I suddenly felt very small; as though the world around me had grown bigger and beyond my
\ncomprehension. There was a physical sense of shrinking. I worked to clear my head, and looked
\nover the messages from the hidden forum. It became obvious that those on the hidden forum were
\nnot friends of Joel. Not only were they following him, but they were actively engaged in working
\nagainst the forces of Joel.<\/p>\n

I called DrNex. \u201cWord.\u201d \u201cDoc, I need to see real time what\u2019s happening on that forum. Can you
\ndo that?\u201d \u201cYeah, no prob.\u201d<\/p>\n

We set up a scheme to feed the forum to my laptop. I don\u2019t know why I wanted to keep watching
\nthis, but I just had to, even though the more I watched the more I felt as though I were being
\nwatched.<\/p>\n

Traffic was picking up on the secret forum. It became apparent that \u201cJoel\u201d was indeed an
\nindividual, as well as a network based method of disseminating information. <\/p>\n

\u201cJoel will be in Las Vegas soon. 1st w\/e August.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cWe will meet him this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Las Vegas. I hadn\u2019t even thought about it this year. When I had time there\u2019s an annual
\nconvention I would hit in Vegas, something of interest to tech guys like me. The whole
\nJoel affair had taken over all my thoughts, and I hadn\u2019t even considered it this year.
\nI was going to Vegas.<\/p>\n

I did something I hadn\u2019t done in years. I logged on to IRC, irc.PeN1f.org. #3amigas.
\nWhy those three \u2018tards who always seemed to be in the same room maintained an IRC channel
\nto talk to each other is completely beyond my understanding. But they did keep it running,
\nand there they were.<\/p>\n

==I2R has now joined #3amigas
\n *DrNex slaps I2R around with a trilobot
\n l4mer. Can\u2019t believe you\u2019re here.
\n goin on roadtrip re: this wknd. u b there?
\n yeah, me and Proto-c4ll. peewee\u2019s staying here to finish a job for a client.
\n somebody\u2019s gotta pay the beer bills
\n kew. Got a room?
\n sure, for you. Not at the con hotel, Proto was too slow
\n at least I remembered this year!
\n we\u2019re flying out tomorrow. How about you?
\n Not sure. Bus maybe?
\n Bus? That\u2019s leet. Not.
\n Whatever. I\u2019ll see you guys there. I\u2019ll msg when I get on site.<\/p>\n

I did decide to go bus. Cheap. Less overhead. The ride to Vegas was uneventful. I showed
\nup late the night before the con started. Doc and Proto would be there already, probably at a
\npre-con party, drinking beer, whatever. They had left a key for me at the front desk. I
\nsettled in to the room, and did something I hadn\u2019t since the warning call: I checked up on Joel. <\/p>\n

\u201cJoel\u2019s status: Joel is on vacation.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I need. I had been running for days, trying to solve all this. I couldn\u2019t sleep
\non the bus. I went down to the casino, drank a couple of beers, and then headed back to the
\nroom and crashed. <\/p>\n

The next morning Doc and Proto-c4all got me up to hit the con. I told them most of the story.
\nI didn\u2019t tell them about the connections to world events, the military strikes, the real politicking.
\nThey interpreted the Joel vs. Ninja thing as a game \u2013 \u201cLike the lost dude\u2019s thing\u201d as Proto-c4ll
\nput it.<\/p>\n

I spent most of the day with those two, listening to talks, drinking beer, taking in the sights,
\nall the while keeping up with the secret forum. <\/p>\n

\u201cJoel is here.\u201d \u201cDo you know his location?\u201d<\/p>\n

We hit a party that night \u2013 DrNex always got invites to the parties. I was almost completely
\ndisconnected from my reason for being here. Then Proto-c4ll pulled me across the room. \u201cDude,
\nPeN1f is flipping out. Talk to him.\u201d Proto pushed a phone into my hands. I stepped out of the
\nparty room. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d \u201cThis game isn\u2019t; and they\u2019re on to you. That uber-dude who covered his tracks?
\nHe\u2019s after you. And us too\u2026\u201d I didn\u2019t hear PeN1f on the phone, only what sounded like someone
\nbeating on a door, and then nothing.<\/p>\n

I looked for Doc and Proto back in the party, but they were nowhere to be seen. My current mental
\nstate was not the best for making a decision. I felt like I was floating. I turned to leave. I
\nrealized I had two guys walking me out. \u201cCome on, it\u2019s time to bring this to an end.\u201d
\nMy escorts were pushing me towards an elevator. Each had a grasp on my arm. I weighed my
\nopportunities for escape. The elevator dinged, and as the doors opened some pranksters moving
\nhotel furniture burst out. My attempted captors momentarily lost their grip on me, and I bolted.<\/p>\n

I ran down a stairwell, and out an emergency exit, tripping an alarm. I sprinted across the street
\nto a parking deck, hoping to find concealment, cover, and evasion in its concrete corridors. <\/p>\n

So a simple accident and hacker like curiosity led me to quickly calculating the speed of sound on
\na parking deck in the middle of Las Vegas. The muffled whumps of the suppressed weapon being fired
\nat me came to a stop. I was frozen, hiding behind a barrier. <\/p>\n

A voice yelled out \u201cCome on Joel, give it up. You know we\u2019re on to you, you have no place to hide.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s my entry from the Defcon 19 short story contest, titled “Joel”. The contest theme was spy\/secret agent inspired. —————————— 5 August 2011. 03:16 in the morning. It is still 102 degrees in Las Vegas. Vs ~ 331.3 + 0.6Tc. That gives a speed of sound of approximately 355 m\/s, or 1165 ft\/s. The 158gr […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[11,36,14,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firmwarez.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firmwarez.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firmwarez.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firmwarez.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firmwarez.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.firmwarez.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":420,"href":"http:\/\/www.firmwarez.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firmwarez.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firmwarez.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firmwarez.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}