After a week of planning in various internet cafés around Chechnya, Gregor finally decided on several small financial institutions. A large bank with millions of customers would draw unwanted attention, but smaller banks would not have the resources to track back as easily.

Gregor deposited the $7,002 worth of Digibit to cover the cost of the transaction. Seconds later, an encrypted file with digital goodies arrived. He knew that there would probably be some bad identity information in the file, but the seller had a great reputation in the online dark market community for having the best prices and merchandise. Gregor stood up and stretched. Time to get to work.

The room was getting darker. Gregor had to work quickly. The longer he sat on the identities, the more likely they would depreciate in value. He set his plan in motion. He wouldn't just assume the identities; he would own them. They would be owned.

“It’s time to launch Operation Midnight,” Gregor said to himself. He had a codename for each hacking adventure.

Several hours later, Gregor was able to liberate tens of thousands of dollars from accounts listed in the file. He opened lines of credit; it was too easy to buy stuff and have it shipped while “waiting” for the physical credit card to appear. His newly purchased items were on their way to several predetermined drop sites around the world. He crafted messages containing instructions for his network of mules responsible for picking up the items and delivering them to any number of Gregor's safe houses. The familiar glow of sunlight stretched across the horizon.

“It’s time for Operation Midnight’s cleanup phase,” he said to the empty room.

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He moved with the precision of a ninja, carefully closing all traces of his existence. The “cyber-warriors” on the other end had grown sophisticated over the years, but he still schooled them with the cat-and-mouse games he loved to play.

Gregor was living a double life, hacking at night and protecting his company's network by day. His head started to bob like a fishing lure, but he shook off the exhaustion as best he could. During these nighttime adventures, he would only get two or three hours of sleep if he was lucky, but for some reason, he seemed to do his best work when he was sleep-deprived.

At that moment, he couldn't remember the last time he slept. Had it been over forty-eight hours ago? He wasn't sure. Lately his employer, Pretzelverse Games, was under attack by all manner of threats. Most of the alerts were caused by gamers trying to break into the system using bot programs, and Gregor spent most of his time tracing down the Internet Protocol (IP) address of “script kiddies,” called such because minimal skill is required to use their hacker kits.

One major difference between the script kiddies and a professional hacker was the point of entry and methods used. The script kiddies would start their attacks on the game servers directly. The professional hacker would always try to get in another way—through an open port on the email server, through a malformed script, via a phishing link, etc. The professional hacker was always looking for a payday, not access to the game servers to level up characters.

While there was some profit to be had selling fake or stolen game credentials, it was usually not profitable enough for the professionals—with one exception. If the professional hacker could get their hands on the key generator that produced the keys for access into these online worlds, then that was the biggest threat of all. This thought floated through Gregor’s mind as he shut the lid of his laptop. He was starting to see double. He glanced at his watch. 5:32 a.m. He needed to rest before using the goldmine that he just acquired. Only a few hours, he told himself as he reclined in his chair.