Black Hat Blues (7 page)

with can.”

“What’s that?” He smiled. This was a guy who liked to be needed.

“We know that the Congressman has worked closely with Ken Clover

over at Clover and Associates, and right now he’s not taking on any

new clients.”

“Clover, sure. He plays it very close. I’ve met him a few times. I didn’t

know he wasn’t taking new clients though.”

“Apparently he’s very picky for a lobbyist. But my research shows that

he can pull a lot of strings that would be helpful. Plus his pull with the

Commerce Committee chairman might be crucial. Do you think the

Congressman might be willing to extend a hand on our behalf in this

matter? We’ll certainly step up to the plate with regards to billables and

backing of course.”

“That might work. Clover and the Congressman are tight. I’ll take it

to the Congressman certainly.”

“I appreciate it, Danny. Obviously he’s not the only person we’re

talking with, and I have meetings with Senate staff later today, so there

should be some added cover for you there as well. This is a top priority

for us, and we’re willing to throw all our support and resources behind

the effort. But it’s important for now that we keep it as quiet as possible.

This Mobbitt thing is still mostly in the hands of nerds and techies right

now—it hasn’t gone mainstream. We don’t want any publicity at all

that might drive more users to it before we find a way to shut it down.

I’m thinking maybe we can attach it to another bill or get it added in

during conference. Something like that. So keep it on the QT, just your

staff and your trusted allies. I know there are people on the other side of

the aisle who would leak this whole thing just to fuck with my clients.

We’re counting on our old friends like the Congressman.”

Rick Dakan

31

“Of course,” said Danny. “I agree completely. We’ll keep it off the

floor, no problem.” He looked at his phone. “So how does this thing

work now?”

“There should be a start icon in your expanded menu now. See that?

Activate it and it’ll bring up the interface and start matching with other

phones in the area. Hopefully mine is the only one.” Of course hers was

the only one—the program was designed to do three things—connect

with her phone and download three songs to his phone, return the

favor by downloading anything in his music folder to her phone, and of

course own the phone completely so that Sacco sitting behind her could

take over his Blackberry, access his passwords and files, and clone the

phone so they could use it without his knowledge. Five minutes later

it had done all three, impressing the target with the two functions he

was aware of, and driving home her point that Mobbitt was the greatest

threat to western civilization since Al Quaeda.

As they stood up and shook hands to part ways, Chloe looked down

at the target’s shoes. “Did you step in some paint, Danny?”

“Damn protesters,” he said, leaning over and picking at the dried

paint with his fingernail. “I don’t even know what the hell they were

upset about this time, but they were outside my apartment building and

were yelling at all the staffers who live there as we came out.”

“Cretins,” Chloe said. “You’d think they would’ve learned by now

that none of that nonsense makes a difference.”

“Ohhh, they never learn. How smart can they be, standing outside

all morning in this cold?”

They both laughed and went their separate ways. Chloe promised to

check in with him that evening. Sacco had already slipped out ahead of

them, his work here complete. She put her gloves back on and headed

back towards the Metro a few blocks away. Everything seemed to have

gone as planned and thus she was nervous. No battle plan survives

contact with the enemy. At least his Blackberry had been secure—

that would have been so easy she might have really been freaked out.

As it was, the months of e-mail correspondence, campaign donations,

and background work establishing her false identity as Lisa Kross, Los

Angeles based lobbyist for shadowy recording industry interests had

paid off. She didn’t claim to work for the RIAA or the MPAA, but

she had actually done some real lobbying in their interests. That fact

alone had made some in the Crew, including Paul, feel dirty, but Chloe

didn’t mind. To be honest it wasn’t a big issue to her—people would

pirate music and there was no stopping them. If the RIAA wanted to

waste money fighting it, that was their problem. She figured the whole

32

Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues

industry would be dead in a decade anyway. In the meantime their bull

in a china shop tactics provided cover for their real agenda. The target

hadn’t seemed to doubt she was who she said she was for even a moment

and once he got in touch with Clover directly, they’d be in business.

Assuming c1sman delivered of course, but Paul was on top of that.

She ducked into a drug store and found Sacco in the cold remedies

aisle, where they could quickly debrief. He was almost too good looking

for this kind of covert stuff. Sandee had literally dressed him down in

ill-fitting cheap chinos and a baggy sweater and baseball cap to hide his

better features. Standing there he looked like a handsome, dashing guy

who was hung over and grungy, but could bounce back to ladykiller

looks with just 15 minutes in the bathroom and a change of clothes. She

sidled up next to him and started reading cough medicine labels.

“Got it,” he said. “We own his phone.”

“You just like saying that cuz it rhymes,” she said.

“It rhymes and it’s true. Double bonus.”

“And your kids are in place and ready? I saw they got some paint on

him this morning.”

“They’re good like that. Yeah, they’re ready to go.”

“And you’re wishing you could be out there with them. But you can’t.

They’re a distraction, we need to keep you behind the scenes.”

“I always prefer to be where the action is.”

“I know, that’s why it was so easy for me to find you.” She picked a

bottle and turned towards the front of the store. “Besides, you should

know by now, I’m where the action is.”

“Well then, I’ll stick close to you.”

She smiled. “Of course you will.”

Sacco loved HOPE. He wished it came every year instead of every

other. As much as he hated midtown Manhattan and all its bour-

geois nonsense, he loved the creative, anarchic energy of the con, the

weird juxtaposition of the chipped and faded majesty of the Hotel

Pennsylvania mixed with the bodged together wiring and haphazard

organization of the volunteer staff running things, all combining to

provide a social petri-dish for hacker memes with a purpose, cutting

edge technology that could actually cut, and a wildness of mind that he

adored. Not that there weren’t lots of things to hate. The smell would be

ripe by Saturday night, with the shower-phobic hackers’ odors boosted

by the sticky, clinging July heat outside. There would be idiots doing

stupid shit, as always, and ill-prepared talks that went nowhere and

had no point. And the lack of organization would drive him crazy

sometimes—like now, where somehow he’d ended up as the only person

responsible for unloading a half-ton of t-shirts and old issues of
2600

Magazine
and transporting them up 18 floors through two different sets

of loading elevators. Or the fact that, even at this late hour, the NOC

still didn’t have the network up and running. But that was all surface

bullshit and didn’t speak ill of the soul of the event—rebellion, freedom,

and technology wrapped into one adorable anarchic ball. Hackers On

Planet Earth might not be the most poetic name out there, but HOPE

couldn’t be beat as an idea.

He didn’t even bother going to any other hacker cons in the US any-

more. Germany was another story—those guys in the Chaos Computer

34

Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues

Club had their shit together and their priorities in line. But over here in

the States, a big chunk of the so-called hacker scene totally eschewed

anything to do with politics, which was, quite obviously, total bullshit.

Hacking was, as much as anything, a political action, and anyone who

ignored that fact was either living with their head buried in the sand

or was part of the freaking problem. Def Con used to be cool, but now

it’d become it’s own for-profit company and not only welcomed the

Feds, but actually had them as invited fucking speakers. That’d been

it as far as Sacco and a lot of his friends were concerned. And most of

the smaller cons were the same—corporate security professional types

mostly, holding out the lure of big blood money to young kids who

didn’t know any better. Where was the rebellion in any of that? How

the hell was that making the world any better?

Some of his friends tried to straddle the fence and keep a foot in both

worlds, and it was something they argued about a lot. It might work for

old timers like Simple Nomad, but he was his own thing for the most

part, and none of the guys in Sacco’s group, Hacks of Rebellion, had his

cred or rep or, aside from maybe Sacco himself and one or two others,

the skills. That left Sacco in the odd but exciting position of being the

most radical member of a self-described radical group. Well, someone

had to be the conscience of the team, and no one else was willing to

step up to the plate, so he was it. It had taken him he didn’t know how

many hours on encrypted IRC channels arguing that they should in

fact release their newest creation to the public in this most public of

hacker venues. They were scared, they’d argued against him, but he’d

taken the moral high ground and defended it tooth and claw. Saturday

night they’d all see that he’d been right all along.

As he heaved another dolly-load of boxes out of the service elevator

and onto the eighteenth floor, Sacco grunted in exasperation. He wasn’t

even halfway done. He’d just seen another dolly in one of the service

halls on his way up here, so he decided that he needed to press some

other volunteer into service right away, if he was going to get this shit

done in time to grab a shower before opening ceremonies. He wondered

what the hell the organizers had planned on doing about this truckload

of crap if he hadn’t shown up. No doubt some other eager volunteer

would’ve done it. That right there was what he loved about hacker con-

ventions, especially this one. People just pitched in and got shit done,

maybe not in the most efficient way possible, but it got done.

He took the public elevators down to the ground floor and wheeled

his dolly through the marble hotel lobby full of black t-shirt clad

throngs waiting in the painfully slow check-in line. At some point the

Rick Dakan

35

hotel had bought out the department store next door and turned it

into a rather dingy but serviceable convention center. Here attendees

picked up their badges, registered to be volunteers, and bought junk

food and energy drinks. Sacco didn’t see any idle hands he could press

into service, so he wrestled the dolly onto the escalator and took it up

to the main “convention” level. The bare concrete floors, broken up at

regular intervals by heavy, concrete pillars were in full chaos mode. To

his left people were setting up tables and chairs for the open network

area. To his right they were adjusting a large screen and laying out

rented individual hammocks for the movie and vendors area. Beyond

he saw someone zipping around the floor on a Segway at what looked

like almost maximum speed. He’d definitely have to try that, maybe

even before he found someone to help with the unloading.

He passed through the empty stretch of what would eventually be

Lockpick Village, towards the vendor area. A few booksellers and one

hardware vendor had already set up. And there she was, browsing the

books. Not just browsing the books, but picking one up and actually

asking questions about it. He moved closer to see if he could get an

angle on what she was looking at. Ooooh, Kropotkin’s
The Conquest

of Bread
. Nice. She gave off the vibe of a certain rare type of hacker

chick that he always sought but seldom found. She was hot as hell for

one thing, with a great body. The pink hair was certainly punk, but the

jeans and black t-shirt were understated enough to make him think

the hair wasn’t purely a poseur punk attitude thing, but maybe a real

aesthetic choice. Plus she looked like she showered and, as he came up

behind her she smelled good, too. He reached over and tapped the back

of the Kropotkin book as she read it. “That’s a classic.”

She shifted away from him as she turned to see who was talking, but

not in a panicked way. Plus as soon as she saw him, she smiled, which

was usually a good sign. “Oh yeah? I don’t know how much time I have

for classics these days.”

“I should have said timeless classic,” Sacco said, smiling back and