That Time I Nearly Committed Treason, Part One

Allegedly.

Dear reader, this is one of those stories where I simply cannot give the full details.
Some of the specifics: names and places; have been altered to protect both the guilty and the even more guilty.

I called Derek from my cell phone as I sped home in That Damn Car.

“Pigeon hole,” I said when he answered.

It was a code word.
We’d created a whole set of contingency plans, each identified by a different phrase.
Foreseeing disaster had always been a strength—this bitch thinks through, after all.

I hung up immediately.

The top was down. I pulled the SIM card from my phone and dropped it onto the hot car lighter, which had been warming.

At the next stop sign, I tossed the phone under the wheel, backed over it, and ran it over again as I drove forward.

In the rear view mirror, I confirmed: it was satisfactorily destroyed.

Rewind 15 minutes earlier.

I was sitting at my desk at work, deep in logs and BGP configs, optimizing utilization on one of our edge routers.

My direct desk line rang.

I assumed it was the AT&T engineer I’d been collaborating with. The joys of troubleshooting multi-homed connections to the internet as an engineer at a service provider meant being on the phone nearly all day at least once a week. I absolutely detested this part of the job, the being on the phone part, not the troubleshooting part.

“This is Special Agent Steve (last name witheld) with the FBI,” said the voice.

“I’m currently at your parents’ house serving a search warrant. We’d like you to come join us.”

My first thought?

This is a prank.

I said as much.

He told me to call the Greene County Sheriff’s Office if I wanted to verify.

I did just that.

The deputy confirmed: yes, the FBI was at my house.

My stomach dropped out. Like being on a roller coaster when it goes into free-fall.

I called my parents house land line. The same voice that had just identified themselves as FBI answered.

I need you to understand the seriousness of this situation. You need to tell your manager you’ve had a family emergency and head home, or we’ll send someone to arrest you at work

I called my boss and told him I had a family emergency. That roller coaster feeling was starting to feel like nausea.

When I arrived, FBI agents were everywhere. At least a dozen, probably more.
I had to park down near the edge of the property, there were several black SUVs in the driveway and yard, two local deputies cruisers, and a state trooper.

They were carrying out anything that looked electronic.

It looked like a scene from a movie.

Except it wasn’t. This was happening, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Agents carrying boxes out of the house. Other agents with clipboards in hand, overseeing the process.

I was met by Special Agent Steve, the one who had called me earlier, as I got to the top of the driveway.

He was a full head shorter than me, stocky and broad with a chiseled and deeply scarred face. I noticed the Glock he carried on his right side, the blued finish of it deeply scratched from repeated use. I remember his right hand thumb, it was mashed-looking, flatted and darkened beneath the nail.

This guy was the real-deal. My stomach churned as he extended his hand for a handshake.

I was introduced to his partner, Special Agent Joe. He was a stark contrast to SA Steve, tall and lanky. Balding where SA Steve had a head of salt and pepper hair. He wore these gold rimmed glasses, not quite square but not quite circular, with deep green eyes. SA Steve wore no spectacles and had eyes like black flint.

My head spun as he handed me a thick docket of papers. The search warrant there were executing, he explained to me. He flipped through several pages to show me signatures of the Judge who signed off on it.

What exactly had they found?

Which specific crime were they here for?

Had I committed enough crimes to warrant that question?

Yes. Of course yes. I knew I had, and my stomach was sinking faster than the titanic. The only question I had was which crimes were they looking into.

They explained my rights.

I wasn’t being arrested. Not yet.

They had also sent agents to my apartment in Charlottesville.

That was fine, I knew I kept nothing incriminating there.

But my parents’ house? That place was a digital graveyard. Lost and abandoned projects, illicit cracking tools and tons of software I had helped to crack.

Hard drives. Burned CDs. Archives of everything I had ever done.

It was mostly encrypted. Mostly. That’s what I kept telling myself at least. I moved so fast from one project to the next that I knew the likelihood of having absolutely everything encrypted was… not good.

The short list of my activities ran through my head as we walked into the house and into my mothers formal living room. Let’s see:

• I’d left a backdoor at NeXeT when I quit. Derek and I were selling customer identities, including credit card numbers, from their billing system.
• We also used the cards to buy stuff online and subscribe to porn sites.
• We even ran a porn site ourselves, recruiting local college girls and sharing profits.
• I was selling drugs to other folks as well at the time.

As we sat down, SA Steve asked me several questions. Harmless questions, like how was I doing in this moment, and what did I have for breakfast this morning. I said nothing.

Another agent entered the room, and SA Steve introduced him as their cyber crimes liaison. His name was Jeff. He wasn’t a special agent though, just agent.

Agent Jeff then asked about NeXeT, the backdoor, and the warez server I had tied directly to the DS3.

They had it.
With my fingerprints.
That’s how they got the warrant.

Still, I said nothing.

They asked about the hacking groups I belonged to.

I said nothing.

SA Steve then asked about my relationship with Derek.

I said Nothing.

My mom had called Uncle Gary, her sister’s husband.
He was a colonel in Army JAG, and they lived in Roanoke, but had previously been living in Lynchburg when we visited them several years prior before moving to Virginia.

He arrived around the same time Derek showed up.
Derek gave me the signal that his place was safe.
Our dead-drop shipping address?
Now a pile of ash.

Derek was initially questioned a bit upon arrival, but Gary shut all questioning down with just a few words.

The feds stayed several more hours, tearing through the house, but otherwise done talking with me.

The next day, I went to work like nothing had happened.

Only a handful of people, like my colleague Scott, knew the truth about why I left. I had spoken with him about it before leaving, him being the only other person in the office we shared, and I was in a bit of shock from the phone call.

What I wanted to know, the only burning question in my head since yesterday:

what *did* the FBI actually know?

So I made a mistake. A classic me mistake. I made it my mission to find out.

Despite their sweep, I had backups of everything.

War-dialing logs. Scripts. PGP archives. All of it. I kept them on tapes I stashed away in my work office.

Wasting no time I took a computer home from work. And then I dug in, looking for any attack vector that I could exploit.

I found a modem line connected to their Richmond field office.
I got in. Very limited access, but it was the start I was hoping to turn into a way to do my own counter intelligence from.

It was a huge mistake. Colossal mistake.

And what did I find on that remote system?

Not much.

There was an out of date payroll system.
No case files. No intel on me. Just some employee pay records that stopped with a date about three years prior.

But I figured maybe I could use that information to impersonate an agent. There were, after all, names and addresses and employee IDs in the data I gained access to.

If I could use the data to get access to another system, then maybe I could jump from there to systems that held information about investigations.

I didn’t get the chance.

They summoned me to the Richmond FBI office on a Thursday.

Gary came too. We met in the parking lot before heading into the office. Gary made it clear I was not to talk unless he told me to.

They laid it all out.

They had circumstantial evidence of the credit fraud. They had circumstantial evidence of the software piracy. They had a former coworker and once friend of mine on record talking about how I had collaborated with him to reverse into our customer’s systems.

I stayed quiet at Gary’s request the entire time. My best poker face on display, I tried to not even flinch. I think I pictured myself as the hero of some unwritten hacker movie at this point, trying to not be terrified at the threat from law enforcement.

Then…

Then they brought up the most recent piece of evidence. The phone and access logs from the accounting system I managed to worm my way into.

They had everything I touched from the breach.

One agent said something to the effect:

“We got nothing from the original seizure. The encryption’s too good.
But now? You breached a federal system.
That’s treason.”

Gary said he couldn’t do much.

They asked:

• Who ran the hacking groups?
• Who else knew I had breached their systems?

“Just answer honestly,” Gary said.

“Give us names,” they offered.
“We’ll cut you a deal. All we want is the person in charge.”

Thing was, I was the one in charge.

I was the founder of the so called hacking ring they were investigating.

They didn’t know that. Or didn’t seem to. I suspect if they had, we would have been having a much different conversation.

At least I had that going for me.

It was several seconds before I spoke.

“I don’t know anything,” I finally said.

“There’s a guy. He’s in Iowa. Or maybe Oklahoma. Some bumfuck place.
I’ve got his IRC handle.”

“How do you know he’s in Iowa?”

Gary nodded. Go ahead.

“We’ve talked on the phone.”

It was a lie.

“He’s the brother of the guy in charge. His handle is Warlock.”

Their eyes lit up.

They asked more questions. I deflected as best I could, and lied my ass off where I couldn’t.

Eventually, we started talking about a deal. They called what they were going to offer me a “Pre-Trial Redirection”.

I would document everything I knew about this “Warlock” person, in exchange for effectively being not indicted on any criminal charges.

A month later, I met with them again.

Gary had brokered it:

• I would give them the credentials to decrypt my PGP key.
• I’d give them contact info for Warlock.
• In return, my case would be deferred to pre-trial redirection.
• I could join the military in lieu of prosecution.

It was a solid deal.

No requirement for arrest or indictment of anyone else.

I gave them everything they needed to contact Warlock.

To the person I put them in contact with:
I’m truly sorry.

Because that person?

They had nothing to do with the piracy group.

Just a gamer friend I’d talk to online. But he made for a great scapegoat at the time.

To be continued…