Ransomware (4)
Women carrying glasses approached him.
“What’s with you? Why are you here?”
“You’ve been sitting there on your phone this whole time.”
Harry Frank lifted his head. A pair of attractive women were standing in front of him.
They were the sort he ran into often at parties.
“Oh! I’ve just got something urgent to deal with for a second.”
“Why? Something happen at the company?”
“No, nothing like that.”
No matter how much money you made from crime, it was useless if you couldn’t spend it.
If you were raking in no legitimate income but still splashing money around like water, anyone would find that suspicious. But cryptocurrency solved that problem with ease.
Without going through any complicated laundering process, you could just move the money from exchange to exchange and make it look as though you’d earned it through crypto investments.
So he had even started a firm that specialized in cryptocurrency investment.
Fortunes made from crypto were being born every day. Thanks to that, no one found it strange that he lived this lavishly.
One of the women snatched the phone from his hand.
“Forget work and come have fun with us. This is confiscated.”
The messenger app was still open.
Startled, Harry Frank sprang to his feet and yanked the phone back with a scowl.
“What the hell are you doing? Why are you touching someone else’s phone like that?”
At his outburst, the woman looked taken aback.
“Ah! S-sorry. I was joking.”
The mood turned awkward in an instant.
Harry Frank realized he’d overreacted and laughed it off. “Sorry. I was in the middle of something urgent. Want a drink?”
He tucked the phone into his pocket.
He decided to leave the complicated thoughts for later and enjoy the party for now.
He was deep in drink and dancing when someone approached him. It was a woman in a suit, probably in her early thirties.
She stopped in front of him and asked, “Are you Harry Frank?”
He looked her over from head to toe.
Oh. Nice.
She had a different kind of appeal from the women he’d met so far.
“Yes. What is it?”
Plenty of women spoke to him. That was only natural—he was the CEO of a successful investment firm.
The woman opened her wallet and showed him her identification.
“I’m with the FBI.”
“What?”
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Maybe because he was drunk, it didn’t make much sense at all.
Why would the FBI be here?
The FBI he’d seen in movies were big, burly men who shoved guns in people’s faces and shouted at them.
Still dazed, he suddenly burst out laughing.
“Oh! Are you a stripper or something? Is this an FBI theme instead of cops? Who hired you?”
Instead of answering, she reached to her waist and produced a pair of handcuffs.
“Harry Frank. You’re under arrest for terrorism, caught in the act.”
Cold metal snapped around his wrists.
The people around them all broke into cheers and laughter.
“Wow!”
“Give it up!”
Harry Frank shot her a wink.
“So am I getting scolded by a sexy FBI big sister now?”
The woman smiled. “Yes. You’re going to get scolded very thoroughly, Mr. Netwalker.”
For an instant, it felt as if the alcohol in his veins had been sucked clean out of him.
“W-what do you mean by that…?”
Before he knew it, three men in suits had surrounded him. They were all broad-shouldered and imposing. This time, they actually looked like the FBI agents from the movies.
It felt as though all the blood had drained from his body.
He tried to wriggle out of the cuffs, but it was useless.
“Hoo!”
“Take it off! Take it off!”
The crowd was still yelling, convinced it was all part of the show.
Frank was in shock.
He had hidden himself meticulously. No one knew he was Netwalker.
He’d believed no one could possibly trace him, so he’d committed crimes without restraint. In fact, while the investigative agencies had spent over a year on the case, they hadn’t managed to catch even a shred of his trail.
But how?
Then a name surfaced in his mind—the person who’d stepped forward earlier and said he would handle this situation.
“Don’t tell me… Syd Lucas?”
No. Impossible. Even if he traced Netwalker, there’d be no way to identify me.
The FBI agents took hold of his arms on both sides.
“Let’s go.”
Because everyone still thought this was part of the show, the cheering only grew louder.
Harry Frank finally came to his senses and shouted as they dragged him away, “W-wait! You can’t just arrest people however you want like this!”
“We can if it’s a terrorist caught in the act.”
The moment he heard the word terrorism, he abruptly realized how serious the situation was.
“Terrorist? How am I a terrorist?”
“Because you carried out a cyberterror attack.”
“What? Cyberterror? I only…”
Destroyed servers with malware and extorted money from people.
He swallowed the rest of the sentence.
“A lawyer! Get me a lawyer!”
One of the FBI agents, Tanya Woodfill, answered him kindly, “You’d better hire a good one. You may have to spend the rest of your life in prison.”
The FBI and the NSA moved quickly.
They sent a warrant to the CoinMax exchange, secured the connected accounts, and then contacted the relevant financial institutions to trace them further.
If the money had been routed overseas and laundered several times, it would have been difficult to track. Fortunately, these were domestic corporate accounts in the United States.
The likely reason he hadn’t bothered with elaborate laundering was that he never expected his electronic wallet to get exposed.
Once the FBI had the address, they stormed the location immediately.
With Netwalker in custody, the rest fell into place easily. The members of Great Net didn’t know Netwalker’s true identity, but Netwalker knew all of theirs.
The FBI launched a sweeping arrest operation.
I watched the investigation unfold in real time.
Using the messages exchanged through the Mona App, they identified the individuals involved, and one by one, the Great Net members were taken down.
The investigators looked at Syd with something close to reverence.
“Could you tell us how you broke the hack?”
“Please, can’t you just explain it to us?”
“I’m dying of curiosity here. At least give us a hint…”
A few of them kept pestering him, hanging around like barnacles and relentlessly asking how he’d done it. They looked like children begging a magician to reveal a trick.
But Syd didn’t say a word.
I was curious too, so when we were alone I asked him, “How the hell did you hack it? Wasn’t Mona App supposed to be impossible to hack?”
Syd said it like it was no big deal, but it was actually absurd.
Every message on Mona App was encrypted in transit, and once it was deleted, it couldn’t be restored.
It had the strongest security of any messenger app in existence.
That was why criminals and top-tier hackers alike trusted it.
Over the years, all kinds of specialists from investigative agencies had thrown themselves at it, trying to break through, but nothing had worked. And yet Syd had done it on his own.
No matter how much of a genius he was, it was still unbelievable.
Syd grinned playfully. “Mm, it’s a secret.”
“Is it?”
Well, if he had some special know-how of his own, he probably wouldn’t want to share it. Besides, even if he explained it, I wasn’t sure I’d understand.
Still, that wasn’t the important part.
“The FBI and the NSA will probably ask for the hacking tool so they can keep using it in future investigations.”
That was something anyone could predict, even without seeing the first timeline. Unless they were fools, there was no way they’d use something this useful just once and throw it away.
“They already came to me and said something similar.”
“They did?”
So they’d already approached him.
“What do you think?”
A hacking tool was essentially a master key.
If someone told me to hand it over to someone else, I’d probably feel uneasy about that too.
But Syd nodded readily.
“Just give it to them.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I don’t mind. It’s for a good cause.”
I had expected him to agree; after all, in the first timeline he’d also provided the Mona App hacking tool to the authorities.
Even so, this was too easy.
Rolf Buchi might have handed it over simply to polish his own reputation, but I was different.
“Then can I negotiate with them?”
Syd thought about it for a moment, then said, “Yes. I’ll leave it to you, Hyung.”
With Netwalker arrested, the decryption key for Blackwood’s servers was handed over.
“Wow!”
“Yes!”
Everyone cheered, but the job still wasn’t finished.
Chairman Taylor asked, “How long will it take to restore the servers?”
CIO Durden said, “It should take about a week.”
But Syd said something different.
“One day is enough.”
Chairman Taylor lit up. “Really?”
Syd nodded absentmindedly. “Yes.”
Then Taylor turned to the other employees and barked, almost scolding them, “What are all of you standing around for? Hurry up and help CEO Lucas. Move!”
While the server decryption was underway, I met separately with the FBI and NSA investigators.
Their attitude was completely different from before. Just a few days ago, they had felt like they were treating me as a con artist.
Lead Investigator Reed said, “To be honest, we were a little suspicious.”
Investigator Wilton nodded as well. “We didn’t really believe you when you said it would be solved within three days, either.”
If I had been up to something else, the safest thing would have been to keep an eye on me while accepting my help, despite their doubts.
“Think nothing of it. I’m just glad the doubts have been cleared up now.”
Even if I’d solved the server issue through skill alone, suspicion of a staged operation would have been hard to avoid. But that had been cleanly dispelled once all the Great Net members were arrested.
They were clearly trying not to show it, but both men were brimming with excitement.
I told them, “Congratulations.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll be getting promoted when you go back, won’t you?”
After all, they had been conducting a joint investigation into ransomware incidents for years, and the number of cases in which they had actually caught the criminals was tiny.
No matter how often they complained that these cases were hard to trace, the public only cared about results.
People had been blasting them from every direction, asking what exactly they were being paid taxes for.
They’d been missing time after time for years, and now they had pulled off the enormous feat of nabbing both the mastermind and the entire organization in one sweep.
“Ah, yes.”
“Well, that’ll be decided by headquarters, haha.”
Headquarters was probably already churning out press releases in high spirits, so a promotion and commendation were as good as guaranteed.
That was why they looked so pleased.
I asked them, “Was there something else you wanted to talk about?”
Sure enough, they’d asked for this meeting because they had another matter to discuss. Reed and Wilton exchanged cautious glances.
Reed was the first to speak. “Would you mind keeping it secret, for the time being, that we hacked the Mona App?”
“What do you mean?”
“As you know, Mona App is an essential tool for criminal organizations.”
Wilton took over. “Among them are terrorists who threaten national security, as well as drug cartels. If we can hack Mona App, it’ll be a huge help in investigating them.”
I nodded as if I understood. “Ah, so you want to keep the hacking hidden and keep extracting information from Mona App users to use in your investigations.”
My words made their faces brighten.
“Exactly.”
“That’s right.”
I admired them. “Wow, as expected, the experts really are different. I mean, if it became known that someone succeeded in hacking it, everyone would stop using Mona App and switch to a different messenger.”
The Mona App hack was something no one had imagined.
Not even the media knew about it yet, and neither did the criminal organizations. It would be a waste to use it once and then end it there.
“All right. If it’s necessary for the investigation, then of course that’s what we should do.”
Their expressions brightened.
“Really?”
“Yes. I’ll keep the hacking secret. But…”
I looked at them and went on, “We had the hacking tool, so it worked for us. But it won’t be easy for the FBI and the NSA. No one could hack it until CEO Lucas did. Still, give it a try. I’ll be cheering you on.”
At my words, both men looked flustered.
“Pardon?”
“What do you mean by that…?”
Watching them, I thought to myself, So you want to eat the hacking tool someone else made for free?