War With Black Iris (Cyber Teen Project Book 2) Read online

  “Yes, Jerri—”

  “No spoken names here, Byron. If you like, I can always put you back in the pit where I found you.”

  “No . . . sir,” Byron said in a weak voice.

  The man smiled.

  Byron wrote something down then handed it to the man, who snatched it out of his hand.

  “See? I knew you could be reasonable,” the man said as he left Byron to his thoughts.

  Chapter 4

  Jake was having a good time with the upgrades via a Dark Glider server that Nigel provided. I love this power, now the game doesn’t suck so much, Jake thought. Donnie, Jake’s best and only friend was playing with him remotely.

  “That twerp, Nigel, doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Jake said.

  “I don’t think we should take over random microcosms. The Game Player Managers (or G.P.M.s) will be up our ass for sure. I’m surprised they aren’t already,” Donnie said.

  “The G.P.M.s are off for the holiday. Now is the perfect opportunity to reclaim these virtual constructs so we can build our base,” Jake said.

  “I dunno, man.”

  “Stop being such a wuss and help me. I gave you your powers for a reason. Now, quit your whining and help me make this game our own.”

  With the help of Dark Glider, Jake’s character had become an overpowered brute. One of the security measures that Gregor had programmed into the Colossal Machine was an anti-cheat system. Gregor had taken the protection mechanisms offline just before getting burned. The anti-cheat mechanism alerted system admins if a character advanced to a level greater than what was possible in a given time span.

  Jake had broken nearly every rule that Gregor had created. Jake took Pretzelverse’s lack of action as a green light to proceed.

  “How many micro-spaces do we have now, Donnie?” Jake asked.

  “I’ve been able to liberate four microcosms.”

  “Good. I want enough space to build a castle.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, Jake. You cannot combine microcosms into one big city, but you can connect them.”

  “Then start connecting them—” Jake was cut off by an explosion. His ears rang from the loud ambient noise from his headphones.

  As the smoke from the explosion dissipated, a winged character appeared just in front of Jake. He was carrying a sword that was much larger than Jake’s hammer.

  “Donnie, someone just showed up. Is it a G.P.M?”

  “Does the character have a hooded, purple robe?”

  “No, this guy has a white robe, wings, and a sword.”

  “Then he’s just another player. Maybe we took his microcosm?”

  “Too bad for him if we did.” Jake started laughing.

  The winged figure raised the sword and then uttered some words that Jake couldn’t understand. Jake was catapulted back before falling on his ass. Donnie’s character was cut off from Jake’s, and the internal chat system was offline.

  What just happened? Jake thought, before belting out, “Who are you, and what do you want?”

  “You don’t belong here!” the winged figured said.

  “I’m taking over these micro . . . somethings, so get out of my way.”

  The figure instantly teleported to Jake, swung the sword, and penetrated Jake’s armor. Jake’s hit points went from 2,000 to 2 in one hit.

  “Do you yield?” the figure asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” Jake said as he raised his virtual hands in surrender.

  “You shall not play the game in this manner. You are ruining the spirit of what Pretzelverse has set forth,” the figure said.

  “Yeah, man, whatever you say.”

  Jake saw the winged figure raise his sword one last time.

  Alexei Breven, the CEO of Collective Systems pulled up the latest statistics for the Colossal Machine. A large patch had gone out just days before the Christmas holiday that laid the groundwork for the expansion, and Alexei wanted to see how players were adopting it. Of all the new features added, the most controversial remained the Dark Web elements; they gave players direct power over another player’s experience by becoming Dark Denizens. The players just needed to know how to access them.

  As Alexei read the report, he realized that he had made a mistake in releasing the Dark Web content so soon. There were too many access attempts from Dark Web MORP exit nodes. What really had him concerned, however, was the imbalance of the Dark Web content; too many microcosms were being disrupted. Some were being raided. Customer complaints were also at an all-time high. Alexei needed to take control of the situation, and with Gregor burned and Nigel recovering, he had limited options. Alexei dialed Viktor, his chief fixer. He needed reinforcements.

  “Viktor, can you talk?”

  “Da, where have you been, boss?”

  “Long story—don’t have time to explain. Need you at the cottage as soon as you can get there.”

  “On my way.”

  About an hour later, Viktor let himself into the subterranean office where Alexei preferred to take care of sensitive business.

  “You look like hell, boss.”

  “I feel like I haven’t slept in days.”

  Alexei brought Viktor up to speed on the interactions with the Shadow Dealers and Black Iris. Viktor seemed to consider this for a long time.

  “What can I do to help, boss?” he finally asked.

  “I have been getting disturbing reports from our bug hunters. Unreleased, proof-of-concept game technology is being exploited against other players. We also have reports of cyberbullying and griefing. I already have our support staff fully engaged over the usually quiet holiday weekend. That is where you come in.” Alexei paused for emphasis. “Are you opposed to doing a little wet work over the holidays?”

  Viktor smiled.

  “No, boss. I already had Christmas dinner with my mother, so I’m ready to work.”

  “Here are the details . . .”

  A loud pounding awakened Sasha. The cottage is quiet during the holidays. What is so urgent? He tried to wait it out, but the pounding became even more incessant.

  “What?” Sasha said as he opened the door.

  Viktor stood there, giving Sasha an impatient and disapproving look.

  “Boss wants you—now!” Viktor snapped.

  “What’s this about?”

  “Boss will explain,” Viktor said as he led Sasha down the narrow hallway.

  Sasha was staying at the cottage, Alexei was just down the hallway so didn’t have to walk far.

  “Sasha, glad you could make it,” Alexei said upon their arrival to his office.

  Sasha nodded.

  “Since Gregor is no longer in our employ, you are the closest technical person I can trust.”

  “I’m not a security person—I’m a strategist,” Sasha said.

  “I know it’s not your forte, but I hope you are a quick study, because we need help securing the Colossal Machine from intruders.”

  Sasha looked surprised. Alexei gave him the highlights of the situation.

  “I shouldn’t need to tell you that this war not only threatens our livelihood, but it also sends a message to other Dark Web cartels that the Collective is weak, and weakness is bad for business,” Alexei said. “You and Viktor are my boots on the ground in this war. We need to strike first—while we can.”

  Alexei noticed that Viktor had that mischievous grin that Alexei knew well. He enjoyed laying out some much-deserved punishment.

  CloudShield is an internet defense company famous for stopping distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS), Nigel typed on his group text to Natasha, Jet, and John.

  Looks like their defenses went offline an hour ago, and infrastructure on the East Coast is being disrupted, Jet said. Nige, do you have your computer back up?

  My mom’s coming back any moment with the replacement power supply. Worst case: I will grab Ralphie’s computer, Nigel replied.

  No worries, I have your back!

  Based on the interne
t map I have my on tablet, the internet backbone is being targeted.

  That will disrupt all downstream traffic. We will be cut off from the net once all of the pipes have been saturated. Jet texted.

  That’s not all—other systems such as cell phones will fail, too, Nigel texted.

  Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen!

  Jet typed in a series of commands.

  That is interesting! Jet wrote.

  What is? Nigel asked.

  The bot activity is all coming from MORP exit nodes.

  The bots must be getting instructions from servers on the surface web and the Dark Web.

  Probably different instructions, judging from the network traffic patterns I’m seeing here.

  Check your routing tables! Nigel texted.

  Jet typed in a series of commands to list the network routes that were cached on her laptop.

  It doesn’t make any sense! She wrote. Looks like the border gateway router from our ISP has been reprogrammed to send network packets upstream.

  Nigel slammed his phone into his forehead in frustration. What is happening? He thought.

  He checked the network flow map on his cell phone again. Why did my power adapter have to die at a time like this?

  I got it! he texted.

  Got what?

  Jet held off asking more questions, as she could see the three dots that indicated that Nigel was typing in his reply—a long one, from the looks of it.

  An attack on the Eastward International Airport (EIA) is imminent! Nigel wrote.

  How can you tell? Jet asked.

  Look at the network flow patterns. There is a ton of packets moving in the direction of the airport. Normal usage patterns don’t look like this.

  Jet opened a window that displayed her local ISP’s network flow traffic. Normally this information was private, but Jet had a way to access them.

  Confirmed. Before the flow changed, there was a number of network packets with little data, which is a classic sign of a command and control (C2) server instruction, Jet wrote. We have to warn them.

  Agreed. Try to divert the packets while I contact the others, Nigel replied.

  Nigel started a new group text with Natasha, Cassidy, Milo, and John Appleton.

  EIA is the target. Your network taps will be useless because of current routing patterns. Nigel texted.

  The plan to add physical taps to the local ISP network failed. Network activity was routed away from it.

  Traffic is bad here—traffic lights are out, and we haven’t been able to move in twenty minutes, Natasha said.

  Nigel checked the traffic map on his phone. All roads around Natasha’s location were blocked, and the highways looked much worse. Nigel relayed this.

  Nigel tried to text his mother. She had been due home hours ago.

  Can you call my mom to see if she is okay? Nigel texted John Appleton.

  After several minutes, Nigel received a reply.

  I spoke to her briefly, and she said she was almost home, but we got cut off so I don’t know where she is, John wrote.

  Nigel thanked him for the update then pulled up the Find Friends App. After a longer time than is typical, Nigel was able to see the location of his mother’s cell phone. It appeared to be off the main highway by several yards. Probably a glitch. Signal has been spotty, Nigel thought.

  Nige, did you see that? At least a few thousand more bots are headed toward EIA, Jet texted.

  There must be an attacker leveraging a zero-day exploit. If you look at the patterns, many of these bots appear to be in the Milford area, Nigel replied.

  Let me triangulate.

  There was only so much Nigel could do on his phone. His tablet had a terminal program, and with it he could access his lab workstation at Milford High School and have a chance at retrieving better data samples. Nigel grabbed it and brought up the terminal program on his tablet, attaching the keyboard after doing so. With this, he would have a better chance of actually doing something useful. With the help of a reverse shell exploit, Nigel was able to SSH into one of the lab workstations. He downloaded a packet capture, sniffing, and analysis tool called NetMine. He connected to one of the ISP’s VPN tunnels that he’d set up earlier to the packet sniffer tool. After a few minutes, he stopped the sniffer tool and turned on the analysis mode. He followed the packets until he could see the patterns. There were a lot of requester packets with little data being transferred. Classic signs of a remote C2 infrastructure, Nigel thought.

  It appears that the attacker is using a C2 server in the Milford area, he texted.

  Can you figure out the address or approximate the location? Jet texted.

  I will try.

  Nigel followed the C2 packets to a couple of relays in the area. There were three relays in total, with two being used as conduits for the server with the most power. He tried diverting the packets to a black hole, to no avail. After additional analysis, he was able to determine the public IP address of the most powerful server affected.

  He launched his exploit program, but he needed to see if he could get in. The Netsploit hacking tool prompted him to download the latest exploit modules. Nigel installed them without even thinking about it. MORP exploits. Interesting. He was connected to the affected machine, and it was easier to get into than he was expecting. Within seconds, he was at the console, and then he froze. He recognized the command line interface because he remembered customizing it. It was Jake’s Dark Glider machine.

  I found the location of the machine, Nigel texted.

  Is it close? Jet replied.

  A little too close for comfort. It’s at Jake’s house!

  What! How is that possible?

  Well, I sort of set him up with a Dark Glider leveling machine, Nigel texted.

  You did what?

  Nigel cringed. Not my finest hour, he thought.

  Didn’t you set up a VPN for him? Jet asked.

  I did, but he must have rebooted it and forgotten to start it.

  Nigel then forwarded the text conversation details to Natasha. Natasha texted something very unladylike before adding, I will handle him!

  We now have reinforcements being sent to Jake’s house, Nigel texted.

  Good, I hope she scares the hell out of that jackass, Nigel thought.

  I think she will do more than that, Jet said as she let out a chuckle.

  Natasha, John, Milo and Cassidy were using John’s hotel as a base of operations while Nigel, and Jet worked remotely.

  “Milo, Cassidy, stay with John. I need to take care of something,” Natasha said, heading towards the door, car keys in hand.

  “Wait, are you taking the car?” John asked.

  “Yes, I need to shut down the bot network that is sending thousands of commands to summon bots to attack EIA. It must be stopped . . . now!”

  “Hang on, Natasha. I suspect that Ellen is in trouble. I didn’t tell Nigel because he has enough on his plate. I think we should try to reach Ellen’s last known coordinates from the Find Friends App that we installed,” John said.

  “Okay, change of plans,” Natasha replied. “We will stop the botnet, and then find Ellen.”

  John nodded as he followed Natasha outside and got into the car. Milo and Cassidy jumped in the back seat.

  The road was jam-packed with cars.

  “We are going nowhere fast in this traffic,” Natasha growled.

  When she finally noticed an opening in traffic, Natasha turned the car in the wrong direction, several times narrowly avoiding getting hit before turning onto a side street. The car slid around as she maneuvered it through the snow and ice. If growing up in the Ukraine had taught her anything, it was how to drive in inclement weather. John gave Natasha a look of respect.

  “What?” Natasha said.

  “You drive better than anyone I’ve seen at the bureau.”

  Natasha smiled.

  About twenty minutes later, they arrived at Jake’s house. Natasha parked, and then rummaged through her
bag for the proper badge displaying her fake FBI credentials.

  “John, come with me. The rest of you, wait here.”

  Natasha and John knocked on the front door. A haggard middle-aged woman opened the door. “Can I help you?” she asked.

  Natasha waved the counterfeit badge in front of the woman.

  “Gretchen Lewis, FBI. We’re coming in.”

  “What! Do you have a warrant?”

  “We have probable cause. Which means if we suspect a crime in progress, we can search the premises,” John said.

  Natasha gave John a nod, and then barged through, almost knocking the woman to the ground. John followed.

  After a few minutes of searching the house, they came to a closed door with a poster of a scary-looking skeleton playing a guitar. John turned the doorknob, but it wouldn’t budge—so he kicked it in. A teenage boy was in the middle of playing a video game in his underwear. Natasha recognized the game. He was playing the Colossal Machine.

  “Hey, what gives?” Jake yelped.

  Natasha pushed the boy aside and then brought up a command console. After typing a few commands, she noticed that he was playing an exploited version of the game. On the screen, Natasha could see another player with wings and a large sword. She typed in a few more commands to bring up his identity. She logged his avatar as “FreemanRising.”

  “Are you a real FBI agent?” Jake said.

  Natasha ignored him as she glanced around the room for the source of the Dark Glider server. The boy’s machine was not powerful enough to run a Dark Glider server, which required a MORP relay.

  Natasha grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck and yelled, “Where is the relay server?”

  “What?” the boy asked in a scared voice.

  “The Dark Glider relay program!”

  The boy pointed to the closet.

  Natasha opened the closet door. A small box with several wires running to what appeared to be a router was on the top shelf of the closet. Natasha unplugged the box.

  She pulled out her phone and texted Nigel.

  Check to see if the bots are active.

  After a few minutes, Nigel confirmed that the bot activity had stopped.