Black Hat Blues (12 page)

Office and had been slamming open source and Linux programmers

left and right for writing unsecure code.

As an open source contributor himself, Ollie naturally bristled, and

once he’d heard some of the total bull hockey that those clowns had

been spouting, his ire raised even more. Apparently at least half the

things they were talking about weren’t exploits but just crash bugs they

were presenting as vulnerabilities, and Ollie wouldn’t have been sur-

prised if the rest turned out to be bogus too. He decided to approach

one of the speakers, a hacker named Rstr, and politely confront him

about one of the more egregious claims he’d made.

Ollie tried to be civil. He tried to give the guy the benefit of the

doubt. But Rstr was having none of it, and as soon as Ollie started to

ask his question, the jerk just laid into him. Called him a fat, know-

nothing geek who couldn’t hack is way into a Tiajuana stripper’s pant-

ies. Ollie recoiled at first and started to turn away, but the guy kept

at him. Ollie wasn’t fat first of all. He was beefy. He was big. He also

lifted weights in his garage and could run five miles. Rstr kept gabbing

so Ollie stopped, turned back around and pulled the guy up by his

shirt collar.

He had no intention of hitting the guy, or hurting him. But he did

want to make him listen. He did want the little jerk to understand that

he wasn’t some fat ass sys admin who sat around all day eating donuts

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and deleting spam. He was a freaking penetration tester for the U.S.

government and he knew his freaking shit!

“I have top secret clearance. I go to training sessions run by the

NSA. I make a living breaking into military grade hardened systems.

And you know what I know? I know a lame-ass crash bug when I see

one. I know a lazy mind that can only tear down and never build up

when I see one. And I know someone who couldn’t hack his own dick

out of his pants when I see one.” Ollie let go of the gobsmacked weasel

and headed out to get some fresh air. Behind him people were whisper-

ing. Someone cheered. Then a bunch of people laughed. No one said

anything to him.

A half-hour wandering by the water and a shower and shave in his

hotel room and Ollie felt like his heart was almost back to normal. He

hated to lose control like that, to confront people like that. It was just

lame and it did no more good than arguing with some troll online. He

doubted he’d accomplished anything with that Rstr guy besides pissing

him off and no doubt making him hate Ollie forever, and Ollie hated

it when people hated him. He hoped the guy and his friends wouldn’t

show up here at the party tonight, but he didn’t think they would. He

was far from the only one who hadn’t liked their talk.

Ollie sat at the bar and watched as the place filled up. It was, he sup-

posed, kind of a dive bar, but it was trying to be cool with its red lights

and avant-garde paintings on the walls. And he supposed it probably

was pretty cool. He wasn’t much of a bar aficionado. He decided to

have a beer, which was unusual, as he didn’t much like beer. But he’d

discovered that people in bars were more comfortable talking to him

when he had a drink, and he felt like this was his last big chance to do

some real networking.

The place filled up pretty quick, with no sign or the three jerks (yay!)

or Toni (boo!). He nodded and said hi to people he recognized, and

caught up with a few old acquaintances he hadn’t had a chance to chat

with yet. He bought more than his share of drinks for them, which was

fine since two hours later he was nursing his second beer. Everything

was fine, if not thrilling, and the place was packed. Then they walked

in, all four of them, together.

Toni had Rstr on her arm. She was taller than him, maybe even

heavier too, and he looked like he was just lucky to be with her. She

wore a cocktail dress he could only describe as slinky black, while he

still had on the t-shirt and jeans he’d been wearing when he gave his

talk. They got a lot of looks as they walked through the door, Rstr’s

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59

two friends trailing along behind. Ollie finally gasped for air once he

realized he’d been holding his breath. Well fine, if that’s what she was

interested in. Then fine. Just fine.

He tried to ignore them as best he could, but they were loud and

obnoxious, and ended up forcing their way to the bar only about five

feet from where Ollie had sat perched since he arrived. If Rstr had

noticed him, he was pretending he hadn’t. Ollie decided to do the same.

Now that they were close, he could hear their conversation, and for the

first time he smiled. Rstr was trying to impress Toni; that was clear

enough. But Ollie recognized the patter he was laying out—they were

the kinds of pick-up lines he’d read about in books on seducing women

like
The Game
. Toni was having none of it, turning almost everything

Rstr said into a joke, most of the time at the jerk’s own expense. But

he laughed along anyway, either clueless or, more likely, too fixated on

getting in Toni’s pants to let her know he was offended.

“These guys are all intimidated by me in here,” Rstr said, leaning

with his back against the bar, elbows propped on the edge in a way that

might have been cool if he was five inches taller.

“Intimidated by sweet, little you?” Toni said, sipping a red drink from

a martini glass. “That just doesn’t seem possible.”

“I told you, we kicked ass today. I’ll buy you a DVD of it

tomorrow.”

“Won’t they be free online soon? You should save your money,

dear.”

“I get ‘em free because I was a speaker. You can have it.”

“Isn’t that sweet of you. I am sorry I missed it though. Everyone

seems to be talking about you guys.”

“That they are,” he said. Ollie couldn’t stand the smugness in his

voice. He wanted to point out that they were saying bad things mostly,

but didn’t trust himself not to lose his cool.

“Why I heard you almost got in a fight, people were so upset,” Toni

said. More like purred.

Ollie stared directly at Rstr, who studiously looked every other direc-

tion. “Nah, that was nothing. Just a little disagreement that got out of

hand. Besides,” he said, leaning towards Toni and touching her bare

shoulder, “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

Toni laughed, and not in a way that sounded particularly appreciative

of Rstr’s claim. “I can’t believe that’s true.”

“Why not?”

“Because you spent all afternoon picking fights.”

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“I did not!” Rstr protested. “I was releasing exploits. That’s one of the

reasons we have these cons in the first place isn’t it? I’m holding people

responsible for their shoddy, leaky code.”

“Oh, and here I thought you were just trying to get everyone riled up.

Wait. Are you telling me you were serious this afternoon?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Toni laughed and laughed. She laughed long enough that Rstr started

to laugh along uncomfortably. “Oh dear, that’s just too precious. I

watched the video you know. I swore to my friends that it was perfor-

mance art—a prank designed to poke fun at self-righteous blow hards

who come to these things and try and show off.” She laughed some

more. “But you were serious? Ohh, that’s just too cute.”

Ollie chuckled silently on his bar stool and watched. Rstr had noth-

ing to say, although the look on his face indicated that he was mentally

trying out a number of different comebacks. Finally he gave up and just

turned his back on Toni and started talking to his friends, pretending

that he didn’t even know who she was. Toni looked away, flashing her

bright white teeth at Ollie and smiling at him. He nodded at her, still

laughing to himself. She came over and stood next to him, quite close

in fact, since the bar was so crowded.

“What an asshole,” she said.

“He is that,” Ollie agreed. Her perfume was a little strong for his

tastes, but he decided he didn’t mind. It was worth her standing so

close. “You really put him in his place.”

“You think so? Thanks. Really, I was just sick of listening to him

babble on and on. Plus he needs a shower.”

Ollie was glad he’d showered again before going out. He’d figured

out that not showering during a hacker con wasn’t really a sign of hard

coreness or dedication, but rather lazy and probably impolite. “So,” he

said, mentally pulling up the file with the questions he’d prepared for

this occasion. “Have you been enjoying the con so far?”

“I have!” Toni replied with some genuine seeming enthusiasm. “I’ve

met just tons of interesting folks and maybe even learned a thing or

two along the way. How ‘bout you?” She patted his knee. “You having

a good time?”

“Oh, yeah, of course. It’s a really great con. But what do you do?

Why’re you here?”

“I’m a consultant,” Toni said. “My firm provides integrated solutions

and risk assessment analyses for mid-sized light industrial, service, and

financial service companies in the U.S. and overseas.”

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61

“And you work in computer security?”

“Not even a little bit. OK, maybe a teeny, tiny little bit. No, I’m

tasked with recruitment.”

“So, you’re here looking for recruits?” Ollie had a wild mixture of

excitement and disappointment. On the one hand he felt let down that

Toni wasn’t actually a hacker. It was always nice to meet girl hackers,

especially because they were so rare. He’d kept track over the years and

the number of girls at hacker cons was pretty universally between 5 and

7%, a huge chunk of which were somebody’s significant others who had

come along for the fun of it. On the other hand, she was hiring! “What

kind of people are you looking for?”

“Ohhh, we’re pretty flexible. No, that’s not true. We’re not flexible

at all—our standards are very high and we only recruit the best of the

best. But we’re not tied to traditional ‘good resumes’ or work-experience

patterns. The most important thing is massive talent that’s firmly guided

by a disciplined brain and solid work ethic. Do you know anyone like

that?” She winked at him as she finished.

“Hmmmmm. I think I know a couple people like that. But I only

know one of them who’s thinking about making a career change. What

kind of work does it entail?”

“The jobs vary from client to client and week to week. We specialize

in troubleshooting and high-quality, hi-result testing and evaluation.

Find out what’s wrong, fix it if we can, or farm it off to another com-

pany if the fix is too long term or resource intensive for us.”

“Do you do much pen testing?” Please say yes, please, please say

yes…

“Well, a lot of companies these days are moving away from pen

testing, the argument being that they don’t provide realistic or com-

prehensive pictures of the company’s true security vulnerabilities. But

we disagree. Pen tests are a key part of our consulting packages.” She

grinned at him. “Plus they’re a lot of fun.”

“I agree with all of that. Not the first part I mean. But about being

useful and fun.”

“I should hope so. You’re a pen tester after all.”

“So you’re hiring full time?”

“We don’t quite work like that. It’s a little more complicated at

first.”

“How do you work?”

Toni looked around the packed bar. “It’s loud and crowded in here,

and who knows who’s listening in.” She held out her hand and he took

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it, suddenly surprised that she was pulling him to his feet. “Why don’t

you show me that view of the stadium from your room and we can talk

it over.”

He laughed out of some heady mixture of nervousness, surprise, and

elation. Not sure what to say, he just let her lead him out of the bar by

the hand. Even Rstr couldn’t help but notice them.

You would think a two thousand dollar cell phone would be able to

get a signal inside, but in this case it just didn’t. And it was easier to

walk outside than dig the satellite phone out. And it gave her an excuse

to escape the hotel room. Not that what was going on in the hotel room

wasn’t exciting—it was, but it was also nerve-wracking. Everything

seemed to be working like they’d hoped it would. This wasn’t much of a

surprise though, since they’d tested and re-tested everything they could

and c1sman really was as good as Paul said he was. Equally important,

most of the targets were just as clueless as Chloe had assured everyone

they would be. Live long enough with the kind of knowledge that’s

common in hacker circles, and you start to get paranoid about every

possible vector for attack. Live out in the real world of Washington

politics and you just take the fact that your Blackberry works as a given.

Instead you become obsessed with vectors for political attack. Chloe

and Paul had figured out a way to not only exploit that blind spot in the