flooring and overhead fluorescent tube lighting. Parents with kids. Adults with casts, or walkers, or their hands gripped tightly on the arms of the contemporary stainless-steel furniture. Flu and STD posters line the wall alongside Elmo and Tinker Bell. A TV running a cooking show hangs in the corner above the fire alarm and a water dispenser.
No EU card this time. The Great Wall of corporate IT is passwords. Sophisticated high-bit encryption schemes have made hacking more difficult and time consuming. Cracking a password can take weeks, not hours.
Grace comes prepared, having anticipated certain impossibilities: she won’t be able to get a video camera in place to watch a keyboard; she can’t install key tracking software without the password.
The Achilles’ heel of such systems is complacency. Working a computer terminal has become second nature. Employees are accustomed to the look and feel of the terminal—to switch out a keyboard might sound an alarm or win an inquiry. Conversely, they pay no attention whatsoever to the snarl of wires and blinking lights at the back of the machine, and Grace knows this. This is where she has been trained to attack. She will need thirty seconds.
Phase one is simple enough: a prescription bottle with a small amount of lighter fluid and a cotton wick lit as it’s placed into a trash can. This goes off smoothly. Grace steps up to the counter, her purse open. Inside her head the clock is running.
“Name, please?” the nurse asks.
Grace explains she’s waiting for a friend who asked to meet her here.
Poof.
The trash can ignites: her cue.
Grace, alarmed by the sight, knocks her purse across the counter, its contents spilling onto the desktop and the floor. The nurses rush the fire as a team. Grace comes around behind the counter and begins collecting her spilled items. On hands and knees, she scrambles under the desk’s ledge and, locating the body of the PC terminal, pulls the keyboard’s USB connector. In her hand is a thumb drive, a USB passthrough. One end of the device plugs into the terminal; the keyboard plugs into its opposite end. It’s a Wi-Fi memory stick tweaked to record and transmit each keystroke. She hears the discharge of a fire extinguisher.
“May I help you?” comes a voice from above. “Excuse me, please!” Irritation.
“My purse,” Grace says. “I apologize. The fire . . . I bumped my purse.” She motions to the Tampax on the desk and the lipstick, wallet and change on the floor beside her.
“No problem. May I be of help?” A nurse, by nature, is more kind than suspicious. She’s alongside Grace collecting her personal effects.
“The fire,” Grace says, “it rattled me.”
“Did me the first time as well.”
“The first time?”
“Are you kidding? Some fool dumps a cigarette in there at least once a week.”
Grace had not anticipated this. She fights off a smile.
Back in her seat in the waiting room, her tethered iPhone creates its own Wi-Fi network and is connected to the USB passthrough. She checks the device’s log. The nurse hit the spacebar to clear the screen and then typed her ten-character alphanumeric password. Grace has what she needs. The USB can transmit up to sixty feet.
It’s a waiting game now. Grace has an iPad sideways in her lap, her purse supporting and screening it from view. She can only take over the terminal when the nurse is away, which isn’t often. She builds macros to automate the process. The first time she has access, it takes her over a minute to menu through to records. The nurse returns.
The second time, Grace has only to push a macro button to access the records, saving her the minute. She builds on her past accomplishments: records, sorted by first name, Berna. Now she’s studying the admittance form: last name, Ranatunga.
Her country of residence jumps off the page: Belgium. Her language, French. A runaway, or a kidnap victim. There’s a note:
indigent
. A “citizenship” box
No EU card this time. The Great Wall of corporate IT is passwords. Sophisticated high-bit encryption schemes have made hacking more difficult and time consuming. Cracking a password can take weeks, not hours.
Grace comes prepared, having anticipated certain impossibilities: she won’t be able to get a video camera in place to watch a keyboard; she can’t install key tracking software without the password.
The Achilles’ heel of such systems is complacency. Working a computer terminal has become second nature. Employees are accustomed to the look and feel of the terminal—to switch out a keyboard might sound an alarm or win an inquiry. Conversely, they pay no attention whatsoever to the snarl of wires and blinking lights at the back of the machine, and Grace knows this. This is where she has been trained to attack. She will need thirty seconds.
Phase one is simple enough: a prescription bottle with a small amount of lighter fluid and a cotton wick lit as it’s placed into a trash can. This goes off smoothly. Grace steps up to the counter, her purse open. Inside her head the clock is running.
“Name, please?” the nurse asks.
Grace explains she’s waiting for a friend who asked to meet her here.
Poof.
The trash can ignites: her cue.
Grace, alarmed by the sight, knocks her purse across the counter, its contents spilling onto the desktop and the floor. The nurses rush the fire as a team. Grace comes around behind the counter and begins collecting her spilled items. On hands and knees, she scrambles under the desk’s ledge and, locating the body of the PC terminal, pulls the keyboard’s USB connector. In her hand is a thumb drive, a USB passthrough. One end of the device plugs into the terminal; the keyboard plugs into its opposite end. It’s a Wi-Fi memory stick tweaked to record and transmit each keystroke. She hears the discharge of a fire extinguisher.
“May I help you?” comes a voice from above. “Excuse me, please!” Irritation.
“My purse,” Grace says. “I apologize. The fire . . . I bumped my purse.” She motions to the Tampax on the desk and the lipstick, wallet and change on the floor beside her.
“No problem. May I be of help?” A nurse, by nature, is more kind than suspicious. She’s alongside Grace collecting her personal effects.
“The fire,” Grace says, “it rattled me.”
“Did me the first time as well.”
“The first time?”
“Are you kidding? Some fool dumps a cigarette in there at least once a week.”
Grace had not anticipated this. She fights off a smile.
Back in her seat in the waiting room, her tethered iPhone creates its own Wi-Fi network and is connected to the USB passthrough. She checks the device’s log. The nurse hit the spacebar to clear the screen and then typed her ten-character alphanumeric password. Grace has what she needs. The USB can transmit up to sixty feet.
It’s a waiting game now. Grace has an iPad sideways in her lap, her purse supporting and screening it from view. She can only take over the terminal when the nurse is away, which isn’t often. She builds macros to automate the process. The first time she has access, it takes her over a minute to menu through to records. The nurse returns.
The second time, Grace has only to push a macro button to access the records, saving her the minute. She builds on her past accomplishments: records, sorted by first name, Berna. Now she’s studying the admittance form: last name, Ranatunga.
Her country of residence jumps off the page: Belgium. Her language, French. A runaway, or a kidnap victim. There’s a note:
indigent
. A “citizenship” box
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