right in the middle of a firefight and people could die, you start to hate your dependence on high-tech.”
Kyle nodded at Roger, “You saw your video? There have been dozens like it. Someone’s playing a nasty psychological game. If you’re an employee with a secret addiction to gambling, then Buzzworm will throw up a new poker site on your screen every morning. With lots of noise and flashing lights so everyone around you knows what’s happening. How does the virus know you have a gambling problem? I have no idea. Maybe human resources had a talk with you about it once and entered it in an employee file. But that kind of detail is supposed to be confidential.”
“Has that happened?”
“Yeah. Another employee had a drinking problem. No one is supposed to know about it, of course. But Buzzworm does. Some pictures of her that were posted years ago on Facebook by a quote unquote friend suddenly showed up on screensavers all over the department. Pretty nasty stuff. Her laying drunk in a flowerbed somewhere, half naked, covered in vomit. Hey, maybe we were all there once when we were younger. But I wouldn’t want it showing up on my boss’s computer every morning.”
Kyle tossed his pop can into the recycling bin. “She quit after that. Too bad. She was cute.”
Roger stood and stretched. He’d gone far too long without sleep. He knew that finding old Facebook images wasn’t hard. There were services on the Internet that went out everyday and copied everything and stored the content away. Like a global archive. Erasing something from the Internet was a waste of time. That stuff lived forever, like toxic plastic in a landfill.
“I’ve got another,” offered Kyle again. “A woman in Monitoring gets an email that looks like it was sent by mistake by her husband and intended for three of his buddies. Pretty wild stuff going on. A shot of him with two women in the back seat of a limo. Apparently she didn’t say anything about it and she never called us on this, but we all heard about it and checked her email account. The next day her email account sends the husband an anonymous message with a manipulated photo based on a Face book picture of her at a family picnic. She’s half naked in the grass with a guy she works with. That must have created some dialogue on the home front. Then she starts missing work, which put stress on the others on her team. Who were sympathetic until they saw the photos taken at the picnic. Images are pretty powerful tools even if they’re fake.”
“So what do you guys think? Who’s doing this?” Roger asked.
Rupinder mumbled something. Roger asked him to repeat it.
“Sorry, I did not mean to eat my words. I wanted to say that it’s easier to hack people than hack computers.” Jacob and Kyle turned to him, curious. Rupinder seemed reluctant to continue. “Ninety percent of hacking is soching . Social engineering. There have been many books written on the subject.”
Jacob shrugged. “That’s no secret. But what does it have to do with the question?”
“Most viruses depend on foolish people. You might have an email sent to you that tricks you into giving away your password. It is so much easier to do that, than sitting there at your keyboard entering a million possibilities.” Rupinder looked around his group. He could see that he wasn’t getting his point across. “We are the CIA. We monitor all email coming into the agency. Every word. And I have looked. There has never been a social engineering message that has gotten through.”
Roger perked up. Rupinder was right. The breach that opened the door for Buzzworm would most likely have come from within. “Any of you know Scammel? Did he do this?”
Jacob looked to the others. “I think he could have been involved. Maybe in the graphical stuff. He wasn’t a programmer as far as we know. And you probably noticed nobody has seen any more of those Buzzworm videos since he killed himself.”
Roger hadn’t thought
Kyle nodded at Roger, “You saw your video? There have been dozens like it. Someone’s playing a nasty psychological game. If you’re an employee with a secret addiction to gambling, then Buzzworm will throw up a new poker site on your screen every morning. With lots of noise and flashing lights so everyone around you knows what’s happening. How does the virus know you have a gambling problem? I have no idea. Maybe human resources had a talk with you about it once and entered it in an employee file. But that kind of detail is supposed to be confidential.”
“Has that happened?”
“Yeah. Another employee had a drinking problem. No one is supposed to know about it, of course. But Buzzworm does. Some pictures of her that were posted years ago on Facebook by a quote unquote friend suddenly showed up on screensavers all over the department. Pretty nasty stuff. Her laying drunk in a flowerbed somewhere, half naked, covered in vomit. Hey, maybe we were all there once when we were younger. But I wouldn’t want it showing up on my boss’s computer every morning.”
Kyle tossed his pop can into the recycling bin. “She quit after that. Too bad. She was cute.”
Roger stood and stretched. He’d gone far too long without sleep. He knew that finding old Facebook images wasn’t hard. There were services on the Internet that went out everyday and copied everything and stored the content away. Like a global archive. Erasing something from the Internet was a waste of time. That stuff lived forever, like toxic plastic in a landfill.
“I’ve got another,” offered Kyle again. “A woman in Monitoring gets an email that looks like it was sent by mistake by her husband and intended for three of his buddies. Pretty wild stuff going on. A shot of him with two women in the back seat of a limo. Apparently she didn’t say anything about it and she never called us on this, but we all heard about it and checked her email account. The next day her email account sends the husband an anonymous message with a manipulated photo based on a Face book picture of her at a family picnic. She’s half naked in the grass with a guy she works with. That must have created some dialogue on the home front. Then she starts missing work, which put stress on the others on her team. Who were sympathetic until they saw the photos taken at the picnic. Images are pretty powerful tools even if they’re fake.”
“So what do you guys think? Who’s doing this?” Roger asked.
Rupinder mumbled something. Roger asked him to repeat it.
“Sorry, I did not mean to eat my words. I wanted to say that it’s easier to hack people than hack computers.” Jacob and Kyle turned to him, curious. Rupinder seemed reluctant to continue. “Ninety percent of hacking is soching . Social engineering. There have been many books written on the subject.”
Jacob shrugged. “That’s no secret. But what does it have to do with the question?”
“Most viruses depend on foolish people. You might have an email sent to you that tricks you into giving away your password. It is so much easier to do that, than sitting there at your keyboard entering a million possibilities.” Rupinder looked around his group. He could see that he wasn’t getting his point across. “We are the CIA. We monitor all email coming into the agency. Every word. And I have looked. There has never been a social engineering message that has gotten through.”
Roger perked up. Rupinder was right. The breach that opened the door for Buzzworm would most likely have come from within. “Any of you know Scammel? Did he do this?”
Jacob looked to the others. “I think he could have been involved. Maybe in the graphical stuff. He wasn’t a programmer as far as we know. And you probably noticed nobody has seen any more of those Buzzworm videos since he killed himself.”
Roger hadn’t thought
Similar Books
