which need filling in.”
“And when to start taking pics faster because there’s more to see,” Jonas said behind me.
“Exactly,” I said.
“Holy … shit.”
It wasn’t over, either. Another window had just opened on the same screen, with no prompting from us. So far it justlooked like one large, blurred image, but it also seemed to be resolving itself into focus. A thin, striped “thinking” bar cycled along the bottom edge as the pixels arranged and rearranged themselves.
“Is that compiling in 3-D?” Zack asked, his voice rising. It wasn’t really a question. That’s exactly what it was doing, and we all knew it now.
“This isn’t good,” one of the other investigatorssaid.
“Someone call Billy Keats!” Zack yelled over his shoulder.
Already, a recognizable image of the CART was on the screen, with a small navigation tool in the corner. Zack used my mouse to pan back and forth, showing a 360 representation of the office around us, except for a few grayed-out blocks of space the camera had missed.
The implication hit me like bile in my stomach. This meant thatsomeone, somewhere, had done the same thing to Gwen Petty’s bedroom, if not her whole house.
And the thing was, we’d only begun to crack this open. So what else was this app capable of? Or for that matter, how far was our mystery hacker going to get before we reached the bottom of the rabbit hole?
CHAPTER 19
IMMEDIATELY, THE SPECIAL agent in charge of the Boston field office, Audrey Gruss, called a full meeting in the big bull pen just outside the CART.
They had two rows of monitors set up at long tables, with screens on three walls showing crime scene photos, regional maps, screen caps from the app, and CNN on mute.
Keats and his other case agents were there. Also analysts from everydepartment, including my team, physical forensics, and medical. Eve even conferenced in by video. She didn’t waste any time throwing me a bone, either.
“Angela, what else can this thing do?” Eve asked from her screen.
We’d already gotten a briefing from Zack, and now a few dozen pairs of eyes turned to look at me in the back of the room. I probably should have been nervous, but there was toomuch else to think about. Not to mention how badly Eve would roast me later if I didn’t take advantage of the opening she’d just created. So I jumped right in.
“Basically, it’s a Swiss Army knife of surveillance tools,” I said. “It has geolocation-driven imaging and direct listening for sure, all running in the background without the user knowing it. The app doesn’t even have to be open, oncethe operating system is infected.”
It was strange to see all these seasoned analysts and agents scribbling notes in direct response to what I was telling them. On the inside, my impostor syndrome was raging, but on the outside, I kept it cool. I wanted these people to at least
think
I felt like I belonged there, even if that idea was still a work in progress for me.
“So basically,” Zack added,“whoever sends this app out has uninterrupted access to any user’s phone, once it’s loaded. The only barrier is about whether or not the user accepts the invitation to install the app in the first place.”
“Nobody does that anymore, do they?” Gruss asked. “Who downloads unknown attachments like that?”
I thought about Darren Wendt and almost smiled.
“You’d be surprised, Audrey,” Keats answered.“It’s the same kind of spear phishing that got some amateur hacker into the CIA chief’s personal email account a few years back.”
“Or the shutdown of those Ukrainian power grids,” someone else chimed in. “Remember that?”
“Anyway, moving on,” Gruss said with a note of justifiable impatience in her voice. She was the top brass in Boston. At the end of the day, this was on her. “Anything else toadd?”
“The app also names itself for the given target,” I said, jumping back in. “When I opened the copy I sent myself, the
“And when to start taking pics faster because there’s more to see,” Jonas said behind me.
“Exactly,” I said.
“Holy … shit.”
It wasn’t over, either. Another window had just opened on the same screen, with no prompting from us. So far it justlooked like one large, blurred image, but it also seemed to be resolving itself into focus. A thin, striped “thinking” bar cycled along the bottom edge as the pixels arranged and rearranged themselves.
“Is that compiling in 3-D?” Zack asked, his voice rising. It wasn’t really a question. That’s exactly what it was doing, and we all knew it now.
“This isn’t good,” one of the other investigatorssaid.
“Someone call Billy Keats!” Zack yelled over his shoulder.
Already, a recognizable image of the CART was on the screen, with a small navigation tool in the corner. Zack used my mouse to pan back and forth, showing a 360 representation of the office around us, except for a few grayed-out blocks of space the camera had missed.
The implication hit me like bile in my stomach. This meant thatsomeone, somewhere, had done the same thing to Gwen Petty’s bedroom, if not her whole house.
And the thing was, we’d only begun to crack this open. So what else was this app capable of? Or for that matter, how far was our mystery hacker going to get before we reached the bottom of the rabbit hole?
CHAPTER 19
IMMEDIATELY, THE SPECIAL agent in charge of the Boston field office, Audrey Gruss, called a full meeting in the big bull pen just outside the CART.
They had two rows of monitors set up at long tables, with screens on three walls showing crime scene photos, regional maps, screen caps from the app, and CNN on mute.
Keats and his other case agents were there. Also analysts from everydepartment, including my team, physical forensics, and medical. Eve even conferenced in by video. She didn’t waste any time throwing me a bone, either.
“Angela, what else can this thing do?” Eve asked from her screen.
We’d already gotten a briefing from Zack, and now a few dozen pairs of eyes turned to look at me in the back of the room. I probably should have been nervous, but there was toomuch else to think about. Not to mention how badly Eve would roast me later if I didn’t take advantage of the opening she’d just created. So I jumped right in.
“Basically, it’s a Swiss Army knife of surveillance tools,” I said. “It has geolocation-driven imaging and direct listening for sure, all running in the background without the user knowing it. The app doesn’t even have to be open, oncethe operating system is infected.”
It was strange to see all these seasoned analysts and agents scribbling notes in direct response to what I was telling them. On the inside, my impostor syndrome was raging, but on the outside, I kept it cool. I wanted these people to at least
think
I felt like I belonged there, even if that idea was still a work in progress for me.
“So basically,” Zack added,“whoever sends this app out has uninterrupted access to any user’s phone, once it’s loaded. The only barrier is about whether or not the user accepts the invitation to install the app in the first place.”
“Nobody does that anymore, do they?” Gruss asked. “Who downloads unknown attachments like that?”
I thought about Darren Wendt and almost smiled.
“You’d be surprised, Audrey,” Keats answered.“It’s the same kind of spear phishing that got some amateur hacker into the CIA chief’s personal email account a few years back.”
“Or the shutdown of those Ukrainian power grids,” someone else chimed in. “Remember that?”
“Anyway, moving on,” Gruss said with a note of justifiable impatience in her voice. She was the top brass in Boston. At the end of the day, this was on her. “Anything else toadd?”
“The app also names itself for the given target,” I said, jumping back in. “When I opened the copy I sent myself, the
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