ways. There was the pain in the ass of extra security, and then there was the fact that I had full access to the app from Gwen’s phone and could tear down copies of it as muchas I liked.
While my former classmates at MIT were mounting demonstration projects and simulations to impress their professors, I was interpreting code for the FBI. All other emotions aside, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t also feeling just a wee bit cocky.
Once I was back at my bench, the first thing I did was send another copy of the app from my workstation to a burner phone I’d checked outof the lab. When the app loaded on the burner, I could see the same chat program I’d seen on Gwen’s iPhone. The difference this time was that I could monitor the conversation from both sides and see what the app sent back.
I started with the phone and sent out a simple text.
Hello.
It showed up immediately on my administrator’s screen, and I typed back a quick reply.
Testing, testing.
Not exactly Dostoyevsky, but that didn’t matter. Within seconds, I got a new pop-up window on my admin screen. The only thing in it was a single thumbnail image in the upper left corner. It looked like a white blur, so I clicked it open to full size for a better look. But even then, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.
Before I could figure it out, another thumbnail appeared next to the first. I enlargedthat one, too, and got a picture of myself this time. It was taken from below, practically looking up my nostrils.
When I glanced down at the phone in my hand, the camera was essentially pointed right at me. Before that, it had been pointed at the ceiling. And when I looked up, I saw the glare of a fluorescent fixture over my head. That explained the two photos, anyway. But not whatever the hellwas going on.
I stood up now and aimed the burner’s camera out of the office window toward the water. After a few seconds, sure enough,another thumbnail showed up. This time, it was a shot of Boston Harbor through the streaky glass of our work space.
“Holy shit,” I let out.
Jonas, the other intern, popped up from the next bench. “What is it?” he asked. In the CART, expressions like “Holy shit”usually mean one of two things: something bad has happened, or something very cool has happened.
Or in this case, both.
“Go get Zack,” I said. “Right now.”
Zack Ciomek was the lead investigator in the CART, and this was something he was going to need to see.
While I waited, I put the phone facedown to keep the camera lens dark for the moment. Then I swiveled to search the app’s code on anotherone of my screens, where it didn’t take me long to confirm what I suspected. They’d put a command string right there in the main source code, programming the app to take a photo on a default of every ten seconds.
My heart was going considerably faster than that by now. I knew a hell of a lot more than I had ten minutes earlier, but still nothing about where this was taking us, exactly.
Suddenly,there were voices everywhere. The room had started to fill up. Word had obviously spread fast. I stood up to make room for Zack as he slid into my chair.
“What do we have?” he asked.
“It’s taking photos and sending them back without logging them on the phone itself,” I said. “Which means the user never knows it’s happening.”
“What else?” he asked, and pointed at my screen. “What are these thumbnails?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure,” I said, “but maybe …”
I picked up the phone again and held it out in front of me. Then I did a quick lap around the room. By the time I came fullcircle, we had a dozen new thumbnails on the screen. That was a hell of a lot more than one every ten seconds.
“I think it’s mapping the space,” I said. I was 99 percent sure, anyway. “Some kind of geolocation functionis telling it when the camera’s on the move. If it can track in three dimensions, it knows which parts of the room it’s seen and
While my former classmates at MIT were mounting demonstration projects and simulations to impress their professors, I was interpreting code for the FBI. All other emotions aside, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t also feeling just a wee bit cocky.
Once I was back at my bench, the first thing I did was send another copy of the app from my workstation to a burner phone I’d checked outof the lab. When the app loaded on the burner, I could see the same chat program I’d seen on Gwen’s iPhone. The difference this time was that I could monitor the conversation from both sides and see what the app sent back.
I started with the phone and sent out a simple text.
Hello.
It showed up immediately on my administrator’s screen, and I typed back a quick reply.
Testing, testing.
Not exactly Dostoyevsky, but that didn’t matter. Within seconds, I got a new pop-up window on my admin screen. The only thing in it was a single thumbnail image in the upper left corner. It looked like a white blur, so I clicked it open to full size for a better look. But even then, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.
Before I could figure it out, another thumbnail appeared next to the first. I enlargedthat one, too, and got a picture of myself this time. It was taken from below, practically looking up my nostrils.
When I glanced down at the phone in my hand, the camera was essentially pointed right at me. Before that, it had been pointed at the ceiling. And when I looked up, I saw the glare of a fluorescent fixture over my head. That explained the two photos, anyway. But not whatever the hellwas going on.
I stood up now and aimed the burner’s camera out of the office window toward the water. After a few seconds, sure enough,another thumbnail showed up. This time, it was a shot of Boston Harbor through the streaky glass of our work space.
“Holy shit,” I let out.
Jonas, the other intern, popped up from the next bench. “What is it?” he asked. In the CART, expressions like “Holy shit”usually mean one of two things: something bad has happened, or something very cool has happened.
Or in this case, both.
“Go get Zack,” I said. “Right now.”
Zack Ciomek was the lead investigator in the CART, and this was something he was going to need to see.
While I waited, I put the phone facedown to keep the camera lens dark for the moment. Then I swiveled to search the app’s code on anotherone of my screens, where it didn’t take me long to confirm what I suspected. They’d put a command string right there in the main source code, programming the app to take a photo on a default of every ten seconds.
My heart was going considerably faster than that by now. I knew a hell of a lot more than I had ten minutes earlier, but still nothing about where this was taking us, exactly.
Suddenly,there were voices everywhere. The room had started to fill up. Word had obviously spread fast. I stood up to make room for Zack as he slid into my chair.
“What do we have?” he asked.
“It’s taking photos and sending them back without logging them on the phone itself,” I said. “Which means the user never knows it’s happening.”
“What else?” he asked, and pointed at my screen. “What are these thumbnails?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure,” I said, “but maybe …”
I picked up the phone again and held it out in front of me. Then I did a quick lap around the room. By the time I came fullcircle, we had a dozen new thumbnails on the screen. That was a hell of a lot more than one every ten seconds.
“I think it’s mapping the space,” I said. I was 99 percent sure, anyway. “Some kind of geolocation functionis telling it when the camera’s on the move. If it can track in three dimensions, it knows which parts of the room it’s seen and
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