The Absolution by Jonathan Holt

Author:Jonathan Holt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-09-12T04:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-THREE

AS NIGHT FELL, the hacker’s real work began.

He knew there was no such thing as a completely secure internet connection. He had to trust that by the time he came to the attention of the world’s security services, he would have moved on, his tracks well covered.

Even so, he took what precautions he could. At the technical college – which was always deserted at night – he first logged onto TOR, then onto a Virtual Private Network service offering anonymous IP addresses, and finally Carnivia. Only then did he access a search engine called Shodan.

Shodan was unique in that instead of searching for websites, it allowed the user to search for devices connected to the internet. Its creator, a twenty-nine-year-old programmer called John Matherly, had said that his aim was to show how large and insecure the Internet of Things had become. His assumption was that if he revealed how lax most devices’ security was, manufacturers would be shamed into recalling their products.

Instead, the manufacturers simply ignored Shodan, or at best issued new, more expensive upgrades.

To date, pranksters – one could hardly call them hackers, since no actual hacking was necessary – had used Shodan to turn car washes on and off remotely, accessed a city’s traffic-control system, and shouted abuse at startled security guards through their own monitoring systems.

It was something rather more than a prank the hacker had in mind now.

Setting one of the parameters to “country: Italy” and another to “architecture: MIPSEL”, he searched until he found what he was looking for.

He clicked on the IP address, adjusted a setting, and went off to do something else. When he came back, the readings on the screen confirmed that he’d just managed to raise the temperature in a power plant in Lombardy by one degree.

Immediately he reset the thermostat back the way it had been, before writing a small piece of executable script and adding it to his files. Then he closed the connection and moved on.

Using Shodan, he wandered right across Italy, choosing his targets. A hospital in Friuli-Venezia. The subway system in Milan. A network of seven thousand police-linked burglar alarms in Lazio. A flood-control system in Abruzzo.

At one point he came across a brand of wireless baby monitors that required no password or login. As he considered whether this could be of any use, he found himself looking at a sleeping baby on one of the company’s products.

As he watched, the baby’s father came into the room, a young man in shorts with heavily tattooed arms. He crouched down beside the sleeping child and, tenderly, planted a kiss on its forehead.

“Sleep well, little fella,” he whispered in English.

The baby stirred, opened one eye, then began to yell.

“Shit!” the father said heavily. Resignedly, he reached down into the cot to pick it up.

Involuntarily, Tareq laughed. The young man froze, then stared incredulously at the baby monitor. Holding the baby to his shoulder, he went out of shot. Over the baby’s squalls, Tareq heard him calling to his wife.

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