By this time, he had completed most of his analysis and in the process cleaned up several problems. Prior to boarding the plane to San Diego, he’d brought other problem areas to the attention of the company’s IT director. His personal fixes had included patching the operating system and encrypting the bank’s database of customer account passwords, steps that should have been unnecessary if the bank had followed standard cyber-security hygiene. Now he was assured that the bank was logging all Internet traffic to a separate database from their front-end servers. In the event Anonymous managed to infect those servers and delete the local logs, Jeff hoped to be able to see where the attack came from and deal with it at that end.
He uploaded his final change — for now. When he had more time, he’d backtrack and be certain he’d secured the system to the best of his ability. And he’d check to confirm that the IT department had acted on his recommendations. Jeff glanced at his watch again. He just had time for a quick shower before heading to CyberCon.
He’d arrived late the previous night and only slept a few short hours as the RegSec project was so urgent. He couldn’t help but wonder why the company hadn’t hired him once Anonymous had threatened it rather than wait until after the DDoS attack. Well, too often that was the way these cases started.
He’d worked all morning, and was sorry to have missed the opening of CyberCon and in particular the morning talk and demonstration of an Android zero day vulnerability exploit. He’d been curious to see if it was one that he and his partner Daryl, also his girlfriend, had already discovered while working on a government contract for that purpose.
CyberCon was the creation of Clive Lifton, a diffident, slightly scholarly man of middle years. He owned a small but highly regarded security training and consulting company of about thirty employees. Clive ran the conference as an indirect way to advertise his company and its services to the security community. This year CyberCon was cosponsored by Combined Technologies International (CTI), a major DOD contractor. Upward of fifty of its employees were in attendance.
Clive was an old colleague and friend with whom he and Daryl frequently traded information concerning attack techniques and security gossip. He’d tried to hire them some months earlier but they’d preferred to continue working for themselves. Jeff was looking forward to seeing him again.
Showered and dressed in casual slip-ons, tan Chinos, and blue travel blazer, Jeff headed out of the hotel into the sun. He spotted the wide delivery alley he’d used earlier as a shortcut and ducked into it. There were two vans and one delivery truck busy off-loading. For a moment he caught the slightly unpleasant odor of rotting vegetables. He walked briskly the short distance to the next street, looked left, then right, before jaywalking to the hotel entrance where CyberCon was held. He’d booked too late to get a room there.
As Jeff stepped through the doors he heard a voice call his name. He looked over and there was Dillon Ritter, a well-known programmer with CTI. “Running late, aren’t you?” he said as the pair shook hands. Ritter was of average height and recently had grown overweight. He wore frameless glasses and had already lost most of his hair. Jeff had heard of his recent divorce.
“Busy. I want to catch the panel. Aren’t you on it?”
“Relax. I’ve got ten minutes. Come on. I’ll show you where.”
“Is it true Anonymous is taking part?” Jeff asked as they went to the registration desk to pick up his credentials. Several attendees, two or three from CTI, spotted Jeff and nodded their head in recognition.
“Yes, it is.” Ritter’s tone voiced his disapproval. He was well known for his hard line against hacktivism. He’d published several articles on the subject.
There were about six hundred attending this year’s CyberCon, which made it a midsized conference, one of the more intimate. There was a ring of booths around the perimeter, some with scantily clad women known as booth babes. There were two rows of booths on the floor itself as well. These were run by various computer and Internet companies, some household names while others were known only to those working in the cyber-security industry. As always, there were fresh names Jeff would want to check out.
It was ten men to every woman, as was typical at these events. Dress ran from business casual to the genuinely nerdy and was an uncannily accurate means for predicting what the wearer did. Those in the occasional suit were either with one of the traditional computer companies or were from the FBI or another law enforcement agency.
“All the talk’s about the Anonymous RegSec D-DoS,” Ritter observed. “That was something, especially after the CEO said it couldn’t happen.”
“Not the smartest of moves. So how’s Anonymous going to be here?”
“They’re putting a monitor on one of the stools. Someone representing Anonymous is supposed to participate, using Skype.”
“This should be interesting.”
Ritter shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know why they’re giving these criminals exposure. It only makes them appear legitimate.”
Jeff had thought the same thing. “You have a point.”
“When’s your talk?”
“This afternoon at three thirty.”
“Here we are,” Ritter said, and directed Jeff into a large meeting room. It was filled to overflow what with the rumored appearance of Anonymous. Love it or hate it, no one was neutral about the group, or about hacktivism for that matter.
“I’m glad I ran into you,” Ritter said, pausing at the entry to the room. “Want to grab a drink and then dinner after your session?”
“Sure, it would be good to catch up,” Jeff responded. A major reason to attend conferences such as these was to network with other members of the cyber-security community. Even if Ritter wasn’t one of Jeff’s favorites, their relationship went back many years and Jeff had been too busy leading up to the conference to set up dinner plans.
All the seats were taken so Jeff stood at the back of the room with other latecomers. He recognized the short woman to his left and nodded to her but couldn’t recall her name or where he’d last seen her. Ritter was up front now, taking his place as Clive fixed a miniature mic to his lapel. He’d be moderating this discussion himself.
There were five people taking part on the panel, seated on stools. A large monitor was sitting conspicuously in the center stool and a huge screen to the right of the stage displayed a live image of the panel. Ritter was on the end while Jeff’s friend, Janata Chacko, sat next to him. Chuck, as he was known in the West, was just shorter than average, stout, and with wild black hair. He had become a sloppy dresser since he’d left the CIA but had cleaned himself up for today as the discussion was being streamed live over the Internet.
Beside him, wearing her trademark purple plastic-framed glasses with neck lanyard, sat Agnes Capps. Approaching fifty, she’d carved a name for herself by publishing articles and books related to computer and Internet security and to government policy. Outspoken and popular with the media, she had no respect within the cyber-security community as most people believed she was faking it — she simply didn’t understand certain key issues. She was a clever writer and combative interviewer, though, which she’ parlayed into a successful career.
On the other side of Anonymous was a man in his early thirties, new to Jeff, wearing a dark suit with a neatly trimmed reddish beard. FBI, he thought at once. FBI agents were tolerated at these conferences as most attendees recognized the need for a law enforcement presence on the Internet. These cyber feds generally knew their stuff when it came to computers though they lacked the eccentricity of the committed professional hacker.