Fall 2014
Gavin still seethed at Rohan’s treachery. He channeled the indignation into a renewed enthusiasm for his work. The firm was printing money with Jason and Eric leading the day-to-day, which left very little for him to contribute. The contribution from his French colleagues allowed him to devise an exceptionally successful timing algorithm, one which allowed him to step away from trading activities for hours at a time. The firm’s assets under management continued to grow at astronomical rates, largely due to an influx from Chinese investors. The Communist Party had recently launched a crackdown on corruption and the rich oligarchs needed a place to hide their money. The tech-savvy among them naturally gravitated towards cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin was in a bull market and the new inflow of money only padded their returns. Within weeks Legion was making headlines, in months, they were breaking the internet.
Gavin’s denial of service attack on the banks had garnered him some powerful and well-connected friends. The deep web, it turned out was alive and well, despite the best efforts of the ICC. Over the past few years it had blossomed into an immensely useful network of anonymous actors. There were the FBI informants, the shills, and other riff-raff, but most were interesting and some were exceedingly useful.
One spring afternoon, a man who operated under the alias Badlands, came forth in a chat room with an attractive proposal. He claimed he was a Department of Homeland Security contractor and that he had evidence of some seriously sinister activities taking place, a conspiracy that ran deeper than anything they could imagine. As evidence he shared several videos he claimed he secretly recorded while visiting federal sites. It was disturbing stuff, hundreds of thousands of stacked plastic coffins, giant armories full of heavy weaponry, and the construction of what looked like mass incarceration centers. He held everyone’s attention when he spoke of having evidence he claimed showed the US Government preparing for something massive. A domestic military operation of huge consequence. All he wanted in return was for the group to hack a company he had a personal vendetta against, called USIS. The security firm did background checks on DHS employees, and it had turned up something that cost him his job. For this small favor, he’d give the group everything he’d collected.
After two weeks of failed attempts, Gavin thought, some small favor. Gavin and the others had set about bringing down the firm’s websites and hijacking the front page but it was proving to be far more difficult than they imagined. Many companies had strengthened their security recently due to a raft of DDOS attacks on prominent targets. They began to instrument the DNS infrastructure to detect attacks more efficiently, allowing for quicker failovers. It made overwhelming the servers surprisingly difficult.
The group was draining its resources trying to bring down the USIS site, when a newcomer to the effort offered a simple alternative. He worked at a cybersecurity firm that searched for flaws in firewalls. He said that typically, a netops team might take days to patch a newly discovered defect. If they moved rapidly, they’d be able to exploit the flaw to access private information on the company’s network. After weeks of failure, the surprising ease of their success smacked them in the face.
They waited, but they never heard back from Badlands. After a few more days, they gave up hope of ever getting their hands on the evidence Badlands claimed he collected. There was mutual disappointment, but it didn’t completely dampen their spirits. The group now held personal information of thousands of federal employees, to do with as they pleased. Gavin determined that he would now attempt to take charge.
He proposed that they utilize the employees’ private information to create fake bank accounts in their name. They could take out lines of equity on their houses and max out new credit cards. All the money they amassed would be donated to charity. The group loved it. Conveniently, Gavin already had a way to channel the funds to good causes.
It was lucky that Rohan wasn’t the suspicious type. As far as he was concerned, the Greek bank accounts Gavin created lay dormant collecting interest, month after month. It might still be too small to move the market, but $30 million bought you a lot of quote spoofing. With Legion doing most of the heavy lifting, the additional chaos of small orders might just help defend them from the central banks’ Plunge Protection Teams. He would give the government’s high frequency traders a dose of their own medicine.
Gavin tried to resist, but it was just too good to keep to himself. He had to tell Rohan.
“Been a lot of hacks in the news lately.”
Rohan looked up from his tea. They were seated at Caffe Cordina, in a historic palazzo with awnings draped in ivy. Gavin and Rohan liked the Victorian flair of the tea room and spent at least one afternoon a week there, enjoying excellent Darjeeling tea.
“There have,” Rohan took a slow sip, anticipating where the conversation was heading. “I suppose you want me to guess which one you were behind?”
“You read about the government contractor that was hacked a couple months ago?”
"Which one? USIS?"
"Yep, got background checks and security clearance applications from over 10,000 employees. What hasn't been reported yet is the amount of debt some of these employees took on to donate significant sums to their favorite charities."
“Gavin, are you fucking kidding me?” Rohan spit out his tea. “You robbed a bunch of people like a common thief? This is getting out of hand.”
Gavin sat there, looking with uncontained animosity at the smug creature he felt partly responsible for creating.
“Do you honestly think that a bunch of senior-level guys in the government are worth wasting your breath on? We just appropriated their assets. Assets they were criminally awarded in the first place!”
Rohan shook his head in disbelief. He needed to regain control.
“Okay, okay, you’re right. A bunch of federal employees aren’t worth worrying about. But Gavin, seriously, we’ve gotta be careful with this. I know better than to tell you that, you’re one of the most meticulous people I know when it comes to security, but still.”
“I’m well aware of the gravity of the situation, Rohan.”
“Good. Just keep the money in the Greek banks for now, okay? We might as well collect interest and it’s a lot safer there than in the brokerage accounts.”
Gavin didn’t like being told what to do, but he complied.