After half a day of looking for a way to break the encrypted tunnel leaving Jeremiah Mason’s former facility, Nigel found an unencrypted connection to a ProgHub server.
Someone uploaded an enormous amount of data to one of the ProgHub repositories.
Nigel examined one of the next generation firewall logs at the network perimeter of the Edinburgh facility. He adjusted his filters to capture all unencrypted web communications.
Time to crack a code repo.
Nigel did not know which code repo had the data from the facility, but according to the network logs, the attacker uploaded the stolen code to ProgHub. He consulted his library of exploits, a database of malicious code known to the hacking world, and found one that allowed access to the names of recent uploads. He wrote a script that helped narrow down the IP range used by the Edinburgh facility.
I should be able to find it a lot easier with the script.
Nigel loaded the exploit into the Datasploit program that hackers often used to break into systems. The exploit code worked as expected, and it provided a list of files and directories being uploaded. It also included the target repo.
Finally, something I can use.
When he tried to preview what was in the repository, he received a warning. He found and loaded another exploit that allowed him to download any private files. When he tried to access the files, he was asked for a cryptographic key. He scanned the files to learn more about the cipher and to his dismay discovered that something encrypted them with the highest elliptical curve encryption available.
I’m not breaking that anytime soon!
Nigel rubbed his eyes. He had been at this all day, and what did he have to show for it? His phone chirped; it was Jet.
We are going to send George out for some food. Melissa wants to meet up in the break room for a quick meeting.
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I guess I can use a break.
He was about to depart from the stacks of boxes when an idea occurred to him.
Wait. I forgot to check the code signer. Maybe there’s an exploit?
Nigel examined the security certificate on the ProgHub site. It was created by a third-party certificate authority called Digi-Northstar.
Didn’t they get in trouble for certificate exploitation?
Nigel checked for exploits related to the certificate authority. There were plenty. Nigel downloaded the latest certificate blacklist and checked the ProgHub digital signatures, and it was flagged as being exploited by one malware variant of the Kracken_Hijacker.013 code. This meant anyone who browsed the site could get infected if they didn’t have protections in place. Nigel loaded his special image that contained his hacking tools, then loaded the site. It was time to hack!
This might take a while, so let’s see what the others are doing. Nigel made his way to the break room.
It took Nigel ten minutes to get to the room that served as an impromptu operations center. Brody, Melissa, and Jet were waiting. George, Melissa’s head of security, passed around sandwiches and bottles of water. Nigel tore into his sandwich like he had not eaten in days.
“I wanted to bring us together for an update on Treeka’s condition,” Brody said. “The longer her body is in the shielded room, the more guarded she has become. It’s almost as if she is becoming a different person. When I first met her, she wanted to exact revenge on the people responsible for her sister’s condition. But now she’s becoming unresponsive.”
“Do you think she was being controlled somehow?” Nigel asked.
“All I know for certain is her body is acting erratically the longer she’s in the shielded room.”
“I may have found something very interesting.” Nigel opened his computer. Everyone tried to look at the small screen at once. “Someone from the Edinburgh facility sent an encrypted payload to a vulnerable ProgHub site. The attacker replaced the original certificate with a changed one. The minute we try to connect to it, we will become infected.”
“Then we use a sandbox, simple as that,” Jet said.
“In theory that would work fine, but we still need to decrypt the payload once we download it. I’m running a Dataspolit exploit on the site’s certificate. If it works like I expect, we will have full access to that code repository.”
“Wait, I’m confused. Who did you say uploaded the code from the Edinburgh facility?” Melissa asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it was Delta,” Nigel said.
“Why would Ms. Mason’s cyborg daughter do such a thing?” Brody asked.
“If it’s Delta, then she is trying to fulfill her mission—”
“April is inside the cyborg body with Delta,” Melissa said, cutting Nigel off.
“If that is true, then April may try to warn us.”
Everyone seemed to be considering Nigel’s words as they finished their meals. No one spoke for a long time.