"Ms. Stuart?"
"Yes?"
"This is Justin in operations, ma'am," the voice replied. "I'm sorry to bother you on the weekend, but I had note in the log about a file transfer on the financial lines?"
Kerry glanced up at Dar, who was now listening. "Yes. Is it happening again?"
"Well, I'm not sure, ma'am. I'm just seeing a lot of traffic on that line, and it's sort of unusual for a Saturday, you know?"
Dar picked up her laptop as Kerry straightened to give her room.
"Yes, I understand," Kerry said. "Okay, we'll take a look at it, Justin. Thanks for calling me. Did anyone from the bank contact you?"
The tech sounded surprised at the question. "On a Saturday? No, ma'am. They sure didn't," he said. "I've notified my boss, and he's checking it out too, but he thought maybe you'd be interested in hearing it also."
Dar switched off the program she'd been using and opened up her network systems instead. "Got that right."
"Your boss is spot on," Kerry told the tech. "Thanks for calling me, and let me know if anything changes, okay?"
"Yes ma'am, I sure will." Justin promised.
Kerry hung up and squirmed around so she could see the laptop screen. "I am getting really freaking annoyed at all this crap, Dar."
"Mm. Sorry." Dar was typing quickly. "My stupid fault." She accessed the circuit in question and reviewed it. "Damn it, he's right."
She sighed. "Same crap as before. I'm going to just cut it off."
"Don't you want to try and trace it?"
Dar's fingers hesitated. "I don't think we can risk it," she admitted. "I don't know what this is, Ker. It's too dangerous on the bank lines." She typed in another command. "I'll grab what I can, then dump the connection."
Kerry watched in silence as she completed the action, and the activity in the monitors fell to normal levels. "Why didn't Mark do that?" She asked, curiously. "Was he trying to track it down?"
Good question. Dar keyed up her messaging program and typed in a question, then hit send. She reviewed the logs of the router, checking the address sources still held in its memory. "Hmm." She frowned and reviewed them again, then copied and pasted them to her desktop. "Ker?"
"Yeah?" Kerry peered at them. The list of addresses was mostly of no interest to her, save one. "Isn't that one of ours? Is that you or maybe Mark coming in remote?"
Dar checked her laptop's configuration. "Nope not me." She probed further. "I don't think it's Mark."
"Another spoof?" Kerry leaned even closer. "But wait, that's from..."
"Inside our network." Dar completed the sentence unhappily. "Now I hope it's Mark. It's gone already." She searched, but found no trace of the offending station. Her machine beeped, and an answer came back from Mark.
I was trying to get a dump. Got a partial.
Dar typed back a question.
No, that's not me, I'm on the protected security range. Mark typed back. That's one of the pool addy's.
"Shit." Dar sighed again. She typed back. Then we need to find out why one of those pool addresses was inside the bank router. Because it's one of the sources of that data parse.
The screen was briefly silent. That sucks.
"No kidding." Kerry felt a sick sensation in her guts. "Someone inside the company is doing this? Is that what we're looking at, Dar?"
"Maybe."
Well, ulterior motives didn't usually show up on the security checks. Kerry thought back over the recent new hires in their division. "Dar, we haven't hired anyone for three months. Are you saying someone might have been here for that long, just lying low?"
"Doubt it." Dar put a series of controls in place. "If it's a pool, it might not be from IT." She debated a moment, then exhaled. "I'm going to put my program in all the border routers."
Kerry winced. "Is it ready?"
"No. But it's better than nothing." Dar called up the utility and started transferring it from her laptop to the remote devices. "Worst it will do is crash the whole net."
"Dar..."
"I know, hon, but we've got very few options." Dar replied gently. "I'll take responsibility for it."
"That's not my issue." Kerry protested. "It's just really hard to fathom having to explain to a zillion customers that they're down because you crashed us."
Dar chuckled without humor. "I'll take the calls if it happens." She finished transferring the program to the first router, then activated it. "I built the network, I can wreck it, I guess."
Kerry hid her face in Dar's shirt. "Can you program it to scream if it crashes? At least we'll get warning--"
"Hopefully..." Dar finished her work. "Okay, it's in the number one pair." She monitored the devices with some anxiety, despite the confidence she had in her own skills. You just never did know when something you never anticipated would interact with a program, and send everything all to hell. "I think it's okay."
Kerry peeked at the screen. The gauges were steady, but with the same odd flutter she'd seen the last time Dar's program had run. "Can you dump the warnings here?"
Dar drummed her fingers. "Yeah, I better. Ops has nothing set up to receive them." She keyed in the programming change carefully. "Okay...let me get that on the rest of them."
Dar!
"Whoops...should'a warned him." Dar glanced at the message. Sorry. I'm putting my new code in.
Hey, that address was from inside the office! The server issued it at 2pm. I'm calling security to find out who's in.
Kerry reached across Dar's forearms to type on the keyboard. I want to see that list! KS
Dar glanced at her, a grin twitching at her lips. "Should I get the mallet?"
"This is not funny." Kerry growled. "Dar, if someone inside the office is responsible for that, we need to call the police."
"I know." Dar answered. "Let's just find out what's really going on before we jump to conclusions though." She typed further. "Not that there's any legitimate reason for anyone in our office to be in that router, but I do like to have the facts."
"Grr."
"Then we can whack 'em."
Kerry put her head down on Dar's shoulder to wait, watching the screen with impatient eyes. Someone inside. Her eyes narrowed. Didn't that just suck?
ANDREW PUT DOWN the crowbar he'd just been using, and lifted the cover off the crate in front of him. The hold of the ship was thick with workers despite it being a weekend, and he was careful to prop the cover up against the bulkhead out of the way.
It was hot in the hold, and he had to pause to wipe the sweat off his brow. He was glad he'd picked a tank top to wear to work. The sky was becoming overcast and the breeze had dropped, promising rain later but doing nothing to dispel the mugginess.
He hadn't expected to be called in today. The supervisor had been a touch mad at him for running off the previous day, and Andy had half expected the man to punish him by giving him a few days off without any pay.
That would have been just fine, from his view. There was a nice big ocean right out there waiting for them to be driving over it. Sitting at the helm of their boat was a sight nicer than unpacking boxes inside an old metal sauna box.
But the super had gotten a call, and everyone'd been told to come in the next day. So here he was. A quick look over the side of the ship had confirmed that the ship was still leaking oil, and he was pondering what do about it after Ceci had nearly scared most of the fish out of the harbor when she'd heard about it.
Sometimes, he did forget his wife was one of them environmental types. Andrew scratched his jaw, then shook his head, scattering a few droplets of sweat over the box. Ah well. He'd figure something out.