Ransomware (3)

Shark Management had gone short early, so it hadn’t taken a loss yet. Even so, this rebound had erased seventy percent of its profits in an instant.

Michael Preston kept his head and thought it through calmly. The company that had encrypted Blackwood’s servers was none other than Great Net.

They were infamous as the worst cybercrime organization in history.

Chairman Taylor’s declaration that he would never negotiate with Great Net had pushed the stock higher, but it was a dangerously risky move. If server recovery failed, he would eventually have to negotiate after all, and become a laughingstock in public. Up to now, not a single ransomware crime Great Net had committed had ever been solved without paying them.

Then what the hell are they so confident about?

Just as Michael was weighing the question, his sister called.

"I did."

Erica Preston sounded delighted.

"Isn’t it incredible? They make money by driving the stock down, and this time they’re making money by driving it up."

There were investment strategies built around moves like that. But how many people had the timing to pull it off flawlessly, and then the nerve to bet everything they owned on it?

When they had first tried to recruit David Lockhart, he had just been an undervalued blue-chip name. But somewhere along the way, he had become a celebrity on Wall Street.

To the point where every media outlet was repeating a story from WST, nothing more than a local online paper.

Damn it. We should have grabbed him the moment Victory Investment collapsed.

Michael wasn’t the sort to regret the past, but David Lockhart was different. He had hesitated for no good reason and ended up doing nothing but making someone else rich.

"I wonder who designed this approach. Was it David Lockhart, or Han Miru?"

Come to think of it...

The investment style on display now was completely different from David Lockhart’s old style. So had that Korean man influenced him somehow?

"For now, even if they manage to push the stock up, it won’t matter if they can’t actually solve it. Until then, they won’t even be able to sell."

After the article ran, Blackwood International’s stock climbed to the $180 range, and trading volume jumped more than tenfold.

As the share price surged, short interest exploded as well.

If they created this kind of situation with a few words and then sold out, they’d be accused of market manipulation.

"David Lockhart publicly said he’d solve it within three days."

"That’s impossible in three days."

"Alex’s brother thinks otherwise."

Alex Preston had been Snow Crash’s CEO until very recently. No one understood Snow Crash better than he did.

He would know whether they really had the ability to defeat the ransomware or not.

"What did he say?"

"He said Syd Lucas might be able to do it. He says there has to be a reason they set a three-day deadline, so keep that in mind."

"Got it."

After ending the call, Michael kept working through the implications in his head.

Did Alex really buy stock after reading Lockhart’s article? Or is he shorting it and feeding out some other information?

Even if they paid the ransom right away and received the decryption key, it was expected to take more than a week to normalize everything.

So there was no way they could meet Continue Capital’s three-day deadline, no matter what they tried.

If they can’t restore operations within the time they promised, the stock will crash again.

The reason short interest was surging now was probably because everyone else was thinking the same thing.

No matter how he looked at it, Lockhart had to be wrong this time.

Then why had he made such an early announcement?

Could he be buying the stock on one side while funneling money into something else through a paper company on the back end?

David Lockhart would never behave so unethically.

But if it was that Korean man...

From everything he had done so far, the man never hesitated to jump into anything that could make money.

Is he planning to keep whipping the stock up and down until the whole mess is resolved? Buying and selling all the while, just to make money off the swings?

In that case, there would be a major drop in the stock price three days from now.

This was a golden opportunity.

Michael Preston doubled his position and shorted more Blackwood International shares than before.

One of the three days he had given them was already gone.

But there was still no result. As the hours slipped by with maddening slowness, an emergency meeting was called.

The reason was that Syd had stopped the recovery work, saying he had something to say.

In the conference room sat Chairman Taylor, Mikkel Durden, the CIO, me, and investigators from the FBI and NSA.

Syd stood in front of them, scratching at his curly hair.

"After I worked on it for a bit, I found the servers were locked down completely. The antivirus doesn’t work, the recovery software doesn’t work, and the command prompt won’t even open."

That was obvious enough. If any of that had worked, they would have restored the servers already.

Everyone looked as though they had expected as much.

"If I had more time, I think I could crack it, but we just don’t have enough time."

I could almost hear Chairman Taylor’s sigh.

Lead Investigator Reed asked, "How much more time do you need?"

"I think about ten days."

Investigator Wilton snorted.

"Ha! Anybody could say that."

Chairman Taylor muttered, almost to himself, "Somehow, programmers always say they need more time, no matter what you ask them ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to do."

At some point, everyone’s eyes had turned to me.

So this was what they were thinking: You talked such a big game, so what happened?

I asked Syd, "Do you have another way?"

Syd nodded.

"Yes. I was thinking it might be faster to catch the hacker than to unlock the servers here. If we catch Netwalker, we should be able to open the locked servers too."

"Right."

If you found the man who put the lock on, the key usually came with him.

Unlike me, who just nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world, everyone else looked stunned.

Investigator Wilton said irritably, "Come on now. How exactly are we supposed to catch Netwalker? Do you think we just haven’t been arresting him because we didn’t feel like it?"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Syd stared at him and asked, "Why are you angry?"

That left Wilton flustered.

"N-no, I wasn’t angry, I was just..."

I told him, "Apologize."

"What? Why should I..."

I ignored Investigator Wilton and said to Syd, "Don’t mind him. Keep going."

"Yes. So I tried hacking Mona App."

At that, Wilton, who had been ready to explode, clamped his mouth shut.

For a moment, the room went silent.

Chairman Taylor frowned in confusion. "What in the world is Mona App?"

Lead Investigator Reed explained, "It’s a messenger app."

To understand Syd’s words, you first had to understand what Mona App was.

Mona App was a specialized messenger app.

Normally, apps were downloaded from a smartphone app store. But Mona App was software that only ran on phones fitted with a particular chip. To use it, you had to buy a special phone on the black market.

And even buying the phone wasn’t enough to start using it.

You needed three existing users to recommend you, and you had to pay. The sign-up fee was five thousand dollars, and the yearly fee was another five thousand.

In a world overflowing with free apps, why would anyone use one that was this difficult and expensive to join?

Because its security was unbelievably strong.

Every message was encrypted in transit, you could set a message to vanish after a certain amount of time, and once it disappeared, there was no way to restore it.

As this became known, it turned into a must-have tool among criminals. Recruiting accomplices and planning crimes through the app became second nature.

Investigator Wilton let out a dry laugh.

"That’s ridiculous."

Syd asked, "Why is it ridiculous?"

"How are you supposed to hack that? It’s impossible."

"Why is it impossible?"

Wilton blinked, thrown off balance.

"Why...? Because it just is."

If someone asked why something was impossible when it was obviously impossible, there wasn’t much left to say.

Law enforcement agencies had been working tirelessly to hack Mona App for years.

And, naturally, none of it had done any good.

They had even seized a terrorist’s smartphone once, only to fail at recovering the messages inside it.

Rather than explain in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠words, Syd opened his laptop and showed them the data he had hacked.

"This, right?"

Everyone leaned toward the screen, eyes wide.

"How did you..."

"No way..."

Their faces said they couldn’t believe what they were seeing, even though they were looking right at it.

Lead Investigator Reed, who recovered first, asked, "How exactly did you do this?"

"I had made a hacking tool a while back."

"Why would you make something like that?"

Syd scratched his head.

"Hmm, just because I was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bored? I didn’t really have a purpose."

"... "

Wilton finally seemed to regain his wits. "S-so, did you find Netwalker?"

"Yes. He’s a well-known figure in this scene. There wasn’t anything in the messages that identified him personally, but I did confirm that one of the electronic wallets was registered with the CoinMax exchange."

The reason they used an exchange was to sell their cryptocurrency and convert it into dollars.

And once you found the linked account, you could trace the owner.

After hearing the explanation, Lead Investigator Reed said, "Can the FBI use this hacking tool?"

"Yes. It isn’t difficult."

Wilton hurried to add, "The NSA needs it for the investigation too."

Mona App was the messenger app criminals liked best.

If they could track just this one platform, they could prevent a huge number of crimes in advance, or catch the criminals themselves.

But that was beside the point now.

I looked at the investigators and said, "What are you waiting for? Call the exchange and trace the account already. If you miss this chance, you won’t catch him again."

My words jolted the FBI and NSA investigators back to life. They all sprang to their feet at once and began calling someone from wherever they stood.

In a sprawling mansion in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, a party was in full swing. Loud music throbbed through the house as young men and women drank and danced.

The owner of the place, and the host of the party, Harry Frank, was lounging on a sofa and fiddling with his phone.

Two years earlier, he had founded FrankCoin, a cryptocurrency investment firm, and struck it rich as a billionaire.

But that was only the face he showed the outside world.

The reality was something else entirely.

Messages were flying rapidly across the screen of his phone.

Up to now, companies hit by ransomware had paid up without complaint. But this time, the situation had taken a strange turn.

They had publicly declared that they would not pay and would recover the servers on their own.

And now Snow Crash had entered the picture.

He had looked into the company’s CEO, Syd Lucas. At barely the age of twenty, the man was already being called Silicon Valley’s greatest genius programmer, and he had the skill to match the reputation.

And yet he still can’t beat me.

Until now, Harry had accomplished things nobody else could. Everyone watched him, and everyone feared him.

He was Netwalker, the leader of Great Net.

What’s the best way to handle this?

After thinking for a moment, Harry Frank typed out a message.

Great Net had been designated a terrorist organization, and Netwalker himself had been put on the wanted list.

But Harry didn’t feel the slightest sense of crisis.

No one in his family knew he was Netwalker. Not even the members of Great Net.

Netwalker existed only within the network.

So there was no chance he would ever be caught.

Harry Frank tapped his phone with one finger.