The Awakening - Ordo Tribus XI by Ethan Santiago Read online

  Chapter 16 – Lifting the Veil

  San Francisco

  Lots of tears are shed at Cedric's funeral. Questions are raised about the heavy handed attack and killing of an American citizen. No one has heard about him being a suspect before. The presidential spokesperson says not all the suspects’ name are published.

  Cedric's friends agree to organize and try to solve the case together. They have obtained Cedric's unit from Eldon. They agree that they will carefully comb through the storage of the unit to see what is in there. They decide not to boot the unit in case it overwrites any part of the storage. Eldon joins them and offers them the password which fortunately his brother has told him the last time he came for a visit, when his own unit was broken.

  “We have connected to the unit externally and decrypted the storage based on the password you gave us.” Blake explained to Eldon. “But we have set it to read only so as not to inadvertently write over some sector of the storage.”

  “OK. I got it on my unit.” Jake said. “To speed up the process, we made several image for each of us. We'll comb through the data using a hex editor. Basically we are trying to recover the data from any cache file, which would likely have been written to his storage temporarily while he was watching the video on his unit. From what we know, he did not do much on his unit after watching the video so chances are we can easily piece together chunks of that temporary video files.”

  Cedric's place has about 20 friends and friend's friend helping solve the puzzle. Eldon buys take out lunch to feed all of them.

  New York

  Ray calls George, telling him about everything that has happened. From the electric car they suspect was sabotaged, to their childhood friend Eldon's brother being killed.

  “What can I do to help?” George asks.

  “I was hoping you can dig into your contacts and see what the FBI have about the electric car. And also how Cedric's profile got inserted to the wanted list.”

  “I think you are overestimating my influence.” George starts laughing. But Ray remains quiet so George senses he is not in a joking mood. “Okay, I don't think any of my client have connections with FBI but I'll ask around. Shouldn't Eldon have more connections on police side to see who added Cedric's name to their database?”

  “Eldon is off from work and they have asked him not to get involved in any investigation related to his brother. No surprise there really.” Ray explains.

  “Well, I will do my best, but I can't give any promises.”

  “I understand.”

  Barcelona, Spain

  The hacker world was buzzing with possible coverup of a backdoor exploit in the game 'Izaron's realm.' Cristobal manages to repost the original code of the game, the pre-patch version. This time he posts it to Usenet to prevent it from being shutdown and deleted. Whoever is responsible for the crackdown on their fellow hackers earlier was able to expunge all traces of Cristobal's original post. Even the cache normally present on The Node is non existent. Cristobal's new post comes with a warning about what occurred earlier and asks people to take precaution. Websites can easily be shut down by the government and sometimes disabled through denial of service attack (DDOS). Usenet messages automatically propagate and almost instantaneously copies are stored on servers around the world. It makes it tougher to delete all traces of a message. Usenet uses NNTP protocol just as the web uses HTTP. It is one of the original internet technologies developed for collaboration, sharing knowledge and for scientific research. Internet was also designed to be resilient and to allow access even in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. But there is increasing centralization of the internet especially for the World Wide Web, making it vulnerable for attack and total shutdown. Usenet is one of the oldest internet technologies and remains a promising technology with its decentralized format and structure ideal for discussion and posting files without setting up and maintaining a website. However its popularity has declined with the introduction of graphical interface on the World Wide Web (WWW). Discussion forum on the web also replicates the bulletin board functionality of Usenet. Cristobal has setup a newsgroup, a Usenet equivalent of a forum thread. He named it alt.discussion.hack4truth for messages and discussion. He also sets up alt.binaries.hack4truth for posting related files, codes and attachment.

  Another mysterious message is posted on the newly created newsgroup. The poster's ID has an IP address from a cafe in San Francisco. It talks about Cedric's death and what is suspected to be a cracker breaking into the police database. The Node is also said to be compromised. Cristobal can see that the thread for that post is already growing very fast with lots of hackers getting in and pledging to turn their unit inside out to check for any malicious codes. Hackers start reverse engineering their unit's firmware and software. Codes in the unit used by The Node are also being checked, digital locks be damned.

  Conglomerate's Underground Base, Paraguay

  The cyberwarfare room is increasingly concerned about the decentralized nature of the Usenet and its inability to control it. Orders were given to start uploading the patch that will enable the trigger code with instruction to wait for signal before activating. Computers around the world started getting 'critical security patch' warning, prompting all user to update immediately. For most users, they would not even see the message as the default settings on unit made by The Node is to update critical patch automatically.

  Algonquin Park, Canada

  Orad has gone back to the cottage Barb was staying in soon after she and her pursuer left. Orad remembers Barb saying something about the panic room behind a bookshelf. It did not take him long to find the door. Inside he finds Barb's unit and wonders about Barb's question when they first met at the dock. Barb asks if she can be followed if her cellphone is off. She did not seem to have any phone with her. Nor was she wearing one the night she ran away. But there is the unit. Orad's intends to check the unit and see if it is somehow compromised.

  Orad opens the unit, making sure not to turn it on at this time. He removes the battery although it appears to be dead already. He starts looking through the circuits trying to identify what each one does. His interest in electronics has allowed him to create quite a few projects himself. He tries removing the ROM which stores the hardware instructions, also called firmware. The firmware used to be fixed and read-only, making the hardware pretty cracker-proof. However, firmware nowadays are update-able without a password and this sometimes enables cracker to insert malicious codes into the hardware's ROM or flash ROM. Orad starts decoding the instruction in the ROM.

  Orad soon discovers instruction to connect to remote server. Since this is not included in the software, a software firewall won't catch this. It also appears like it would encrypt its traffic and only send out data during an update sequence. So a firewall would also not detect this as a threat nor would the user think it is suspicious since a connection is expected during update. It can also give instructions to block the internet. Orad finds that troubling. Orad posts his findings using the alias 'Satyagraha' (hold firmly to the truth – a word adapted by Gandhi for his non-violent struggle). Orad wonders if this is limited to Barb's unit or whether it is more widespread. The post soon appears on alt.discussion.hack4truth.

  Grand Stone Ridge

  George gets home after working the whole night and sleeping at his office. He puts his unit and keys down on his bedroom desk and takes a shower. After a few minutes, he thinks he hears a noise and turns off the shower. Hearing nothing, he turns the shower back on. He then hears a louder bang. He turns off the shower and put on the bathrobe. He slowly opens the door and sees Cole going down the stairs. “I did not know you are home. What was that noise all about?” George asks, rather annoyed.

  “I was just closing my bedroom door.” Cole says nonchalantly.

  “Can you close it without banging it?”

  “Anyway, I am heading out to a party at my friend's place,” Cole says and heads out the door.

  “Home for a
few minutes and gone again. Oh Cole.” George sighs and goes back to the shower.

  San Francisco

  Eldon calls Nolan Hudson to help them out. Nolan agrees but says it has to be outside of his work. Nolan starts probing the node, not sure how much he can find without having access to their server where the code actually resides. Eldon wants to find out what Cedric meant when he said that The Node might be compromised.

  Jake notices a new post on the newsgroup. Someone mentions an increased number of critical security patch updates and an overall increase volume of patch update for various apps. The poster wonders what this is all about and if anyone wants to check it out. Bobby decides to look into that. Did The Node find out about a flaw in their system and is it finally fixing it?

  Spheres Inc. Headquarter

  Gracy is just finishing her work for the day when the phone rings. “So you did as I told you? Good, thanks Cole.” She then hangs up. She smiles, thinking soon everything will come to a head. Thankfully she does not have to work too hard to convince Cole to work for her. She goes back to talk to Cole when she tells Ray she is going to the washroom back on the beach at Barcoloneta. She can see Cole likes her and she uses that to her advantage.

  Barcelona, Spain

  Angelino sees Satyagraha's post and starts checking his own unit. He finds an extra chip that appears to be used for storing data. But the data seems to be encrypted. Meanwhile, Cristobal decides to look into all the critical updates. He gets copies of the updates and starts decoding the patch.

  Ray's residence

  Ray is in contact with Eldon. He is talking to him when Gracy comes in. Ray waves his hand to say hi but they are pretty deep in conversation. He then looks at his unit and copies something into a memory chip. “Yes, I am sure George will be able to help with this one. I'll go see him now.”

  “What's up?” Gracy asks Ray.

  “I think we might have a breakthrough. I have something that George might be able to help us decode easily. He was a pretty good hacker in his youth and Eldon and Cedric's friend have seen a partial chunk of the file that seems to have an image and video of someone. From what Cedric has said, a top government official in Canada is involved. The chunks of files should all be here. And if the person in the video is someone influential, George should be be able to identify him or her. I have not seen it myself, but I saved it on a memory chip for George to assemble.”

  Gracy's expression changes and she turns around to hide it. “I'll go with you,” She says abruptly.

  “Okay.”

  “Let me just grab my purse,” Gracy says and heads into the bedroom. She looks behind to make sure Ray is not there and reaches her hands into under the tall dresser. She pulls out a tool tied to the bottom of the dresser and pulls it out. The device looks like a gun but seem to be more modern and have electronic parts in it. Gracy thinks, “I did not think I would need to use this but you threw me a curve ball Ray. Don't blame me.” She puts the gun into her bag.

  She comes out and says, “Tell you what, you go right ahead and I'll be right behind. Just need to touch up my makeup.”

  Ray smiles and shakes his head. “Women.” Then he heads out the door.