Technocracy of War, Part 8

Once the pattern was established and compared against the Tor perimeter traffic, it really wasn’t that hard. Mantis and his assistant detected a lot of similar traffic and found there were a half-dozen systems traipsing all over Washington DC and suburbs, using Internet cafes and any unsecured wifi node they could find. Naturally, most wifi routers were poorly secured, if at all, particularly in the places most closely associated with political power and money.
Best of all, he had a pretty good idea what those devices looked like, since they were all Macs.
For now, he had nothing which would justify bringing it to anyone’s attention. Since his office was just a short drive from DC, Mantis decided to make a few forays in some of the areas where they seemed to operate most. He put his assistant to live monitoring for any appearance of the signature they had established, and keeping an encrypted voice link with GPS tracking via cellphone.
The first couple of days he kept finding himself too far away to walk or ride any public transportation to what the approximate location. Driving and hoping to park would have been insane. Finally he scheduled a long afternoon out of the office and was determined to at least get close to one of crackers.
Only in movies would it have been very dramatic. Within fifteen minutes, his sergeant told him he was almost on top of one. The IP address, were it not being spoofed, should have been just a half-block away. But the wifi router was probably somewhere above street level in an office tower. Still, it couldn’t hurt to see if the user might be in a cafe or park bench somewhere. He was shocked it turned out to be so easy, though.
At one of the outdoor tables in front of an Asian restaurant, there sat a figure hunched over a MacBook Air. By checking with his assistant, the person’s activity almost perfectly matched what was visible on Tor node, with long pauses for whatever was happening on the other end. This was too easy, Mantis thought, so he sauntered closer, daring to take a glimpse at the screen from fairly close. While chatting on his cellphone, he turned it slightly and videotaped what he saw. Sure enough, the display showed a Terminal window with an SSH session to some distant server, and it was compiling software.
Mantis walked on, then turned and sat down at another empty table. While chatting on the phone, he took several still shots. The face was Asian, but the features, hair and manner of dress were ambiguous enough Mantis couldn’t guess the gender. He ordered coffee when the waiter came, using his phone as an excuse to avoid chatting. He paid when the coffee arrived. If his target noticed, there was no indication, so deeply buried in the activity on the screen. With matching notice from his assistant, Mantis watched the figure end the session, close the MacBook and walk away.
He decided against trying to follow. A few minutes later he regretted it. His sergeant told him there was an urgent call from Jimmerson, then patched him through. When Peter was finished, Mantis shivered — a multi-platform virus tailored to military networks. And the timing could not have been worse.
He sat there just long enough to upload the video, pictures and a brief outline of events to his NSA superior.