Mark Pryor - Cyberian Affair

He entered the kitchen, and his heart warmed at the sight of Vyper. Her silky black hair draped over her green track suit, the zipper resting low enough to tease him with her curves. “You look beautiful this morning. That top brings out the color of your eyes.”

“You are sweet.” She smiled and grabbed two cups. “I made coffee. You want some?”

“Sounds great.” Niko sat at the table and opened his laptop. “Anything from Zatan’s computer yet?”

Vyper handed him a cup of coffee and sat in front of her computer. “Yes, I received the first communication early this morning. Extracting data from his system is a slow process, but this transmission included information about more Onion routers on the dark net.”

“I thought you had full control of his computer. What takes so long?”

“He knows security, which makes it more difficult. The program you gave Zatan was simply a beachhead. Its main job was to discover unprotected methods to communicate—and to do it without being detected. It sent a few documents. I have to study them before I modify the spyware.”

“Did the documents tell you anything of interest?”

“Give me a minute.” She typed a few commands. “Zatan’s computer was on a network in Vladivostok—at a major internet connection point near Eagle’s Nest Hill. It seems he is less technical than you thought. His job is supervisory and financial.”

“That’s perfect.” Niko opened his notes on Zatan. “Who did he supervise? What kind of financial stuff?”

“I am sending you what I received. There is a staff list, payroll, and some financial spreadsheets. If we are lucky, he may have included some bank account numbers. Perhaps some of the staff members will match the visitors to FANTAZIJA.COM.”

Niko took a quick look at the documents. “I can’t help you with this data. It isn’t my strong suit.” He glanced at his news feed. “And my Trotsky communications aren’t working very well, either.”

“What do you mean? The attacks were in the news for quite a while, and the police followed your leads.”

“Yeah, but the investigation has stalled, and the attacks are seldom mentioned any more. The police and the media aren’t treating this as a Russian attack. Their focus is on finding the missing conspirators, and they don’t have any new clues.”

Vyper took his hand. “How much more can you do? You are only one man.”

“One man—that’s it!” said Niko. “That’s the problem. It’s the old way of doing things. It may have worked for Deep Throat during Watergate, but modern communication doesn’t work like that. Today everyone uses the internet—especially social media. It’s time to weaponize Facebook.”

“Like Russia has been doing with our elections?” She clicked away on the keyboard. “I’ve read about it. I understand the technology, but I do not understand what kind of messages to post.”

“Leave it to me. First, we have to come up with a goal and a targeted marketing plan.” Niko glanced through his Trotsky messages. “Our goal is to convince the public that the Russians are bad, and they attacked the United States.”

“Everyone already knows the Russians are bad.”

“I wish you were right, but a lot of Americans don’t seem to care about Russia—either way. We need people running around with their hair on fire, demonstrating against the Russians.”

Vyper giggled. “Hair on fire? Why would anyone do that?”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s just an expression. I plan to engage the emotions of the public. Every time the word Russians is mentioned, I want everyone to think ‘dangerous enemy’. I need to get them excited.”

“How?”

“You gave me those psychographic models and all the Facebook and Google data. Now I have detailed information on the largest groups of like-minded people who are active on the internet. For example, there are those who believe the Russians threw our election, and there are others who believe a deep state is undermining the government. Some groups hate immigrants, others hate guns. There are tin-foil-hat conspiracy theorists.”

“Those people never agree on anything. Which groups do you plan to influence?”

“All of them.” Niko smiled. “Those psychographic models reveal what their hot buttons are, what they already believe, what they don’t believe, how they reach each other online… everything. I need to set up a few hundred identities—liberal, conservative, Christian, atheist—and become a member of each group. I can play on their hot buttons to gain trust, then build suspicions against Russia.”

“I may be able to help. I have a few thousand identities online, and I have bots that can control them as a group. You can pretend to be thousands of people. You decide on the messages and the targets, and I will control them like sock puppets.”

“Thousands of sock puppets? You can control that many? They’d look like a grass roots movement.”

“Sure, let me show you.” As soon as Vyper typed in a command, a warbling sound from her laptop interrupted them. She pounded her fingers on the keyboard in rapid bursts, glared at the laptop, and typed some more.

Niko peeked at the screen but couldn’t make sense of what she was doing. When she finally stopped, he shook his head. “What happened?”

She looked up from the keyboard. “Someone was on an Onion router I just used—a hacker. It accessed the routing tables. I had to stop it and delete all evidence of my communication. Then I scrambled the system.”

“You crashed it?”

“Actually, I bricked it. That router will not come back online any time soon.”

Niko smiled. “I just thought about the poor guy who owns the computer you killed. He probably installed TOR software to pirate some music. I’ll bet he doesn’t even realize he’s on the dark net. Then, unknown to him, two hackers sneak inside his computer and start a fight.”

“If he did not want to pirate music, he would not get caught up in this.”

“You’re right, but I picture him sitting in his bedroom, playing a game, when the computer suddenly shuts down. When he tries to start it up, it just sits there like a brick.”

“I am being cautious. Perhaps it is only a coincidence, but it makes me worry when I see a hacker rummaging through a router I am using.”

“You’re the expert.” Niko scooted closer to her and looked at her laptop. “You were about to show me those online identities I can use.”

Vyper typed a command, and the warbling sound interrupted them once more. “Not a coincidence,” she said, as she bricked another router. “Someone is searching through the dark net, and they bumped into me twice.”

“What can we do? Would it help to sign onto a different private network?”

“Yes. The person who is searching may be looking for Onion routers near the Los Angeles network I have been using. We should switch to Atlanta or Chicago. Better yet, use a different private network each time you go online.”

Niko rested his hand on hers. “If you hadn’t stopped them, could they have located you? Identified you?”

“It is possible. Depends upon who it is.”

“Who could do this?”

“This is beyond most hackers. It was probably someone working for a government.”

“Like Russia?”

Vyper’s smile faded. “Yes, and I believe Sokolov is searching for me.”

“He doesn’t even know who you are. Why do you think he’s looking for you?”

“Last night, a system administrator at the National Bank of Cyprus died. He slashed both his wrists.”

“We stole Sokolov’s money from that bank.”

Vyper nodded. “Two days before you stole it, I broke into the bank’s system and retrieved the passwords to his accounts. They were encrypted, but not difficult to decode.”