Jake pulled a chair from a neighboring station and took a seat beside Jeremy. “Are we talking about the same hacker that Stephan used? What does he want?”
Jeremy looked over his shoulder and met Dominic’s eyes. “He wants access to Corisi Enterprises’ server.”
Judy, Jake’s mother, asked, “Stephan wouldn’t have hired him again, would he? He seems like such a nice boy.”
Dominic’s face whitened with anger, but his voice was deadly calm when he spoke. “If he’s smart, he had nothing to do with this.”
Jeremy quickly interjected his gut feeling on the matter. “Dom, I’ve known Sliver a long time. Well, not personally, but via our online clashes. He doesn’t normally take it this far. At first I thought it was about our history, but this is his second swipe at you and he’s escalating with each attack. You may know him. Is there anyone else who would want to sabotage you?” Jake and Dominic shared a look across the room. Right. Stupid question. “I don’t know for sure, but this feels more like a vendetta than one of his stunts.”
Dominic moved closer until he stood right behind Jeremy’s chair. “There is only one way to deal with a cowardly enemy. Lure him out and crush him.”
Jake agreed. “Sliver’s strength is his anonymity.”
As Jeremy switched his goal from code breaking, inspiration hit. Jake’s mother read as he typed and exclaimed, “Oh, that’s good.”
Jake scanned the screen. “That’ll definitely stop him in his tracks.”
“What are you doing?” Alethea asked in a rush.
Jeremy typed even as he answered. “I’m giving him access—but it’s limited. As soon as he tries to use it we’ll trace him back to his hole, then light up the Internet with his identity and location. I don’t care how many dummy IP addresses he uses, we’ll find him, and then so will everyone else.”
Jake turned to Dominic and explained, “It’ll be like handing someone a loaded gun with blanks that has a deadly backfire. It won’t hurt him unless he uses it.”
Alethea strode back and forth behind the huddled team. “But then how are we going to get the network codes?”
Jeremy paused. Tough question. “I’ll make one contingent on the other—like a choreographed hand-off.”
Alethea shook her head. “You need a decoy. He’ll expect you to try to stop him. Put a weak code in the forefront. Let him break through that and think he’s smarter than you. Use his ego against him. Then threaten to link him to the Tenin disaster so he’ll want that crisis averted. You have to give him a reason to want to save our people. He’ll do it if he thinks it takes away your trump card.”
Jake put a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder in support. “That’s a sound strategy.”
“Of course it is,” Alethea said impatiently. “My people are in there. This has to work.”
“Don’t use the standard encryption methods,” Jake’s father advised. “They will be too easy for him. He’ll know what you’re doing. He needs the challenge of breaking a 256-bit cypher. It still won’t take him long, but if he’s as ego driven as you say he is, he’ll think he’s outsmarted you. Send him the authentication information for Dom’s server. Once he’s in, push the 256 encrypted module to him. Let him execute it. Inside of that, hide your call-home code in a far more vigorous protocol. We’ve been working on a new type of file encryption that is as strong as 1028-bit military grade encryption but doesn’t show any signs of actually being encoded. He won’t know you are executing a Trojan attack. In that file, your code will then call back to us over variable proxy servers, distributing the information over https and SSH tunnels while maintaining the encryption. Once it gets back here, we’ll be able to use our decrypter and establish full control over his system. It will take him decades to break it, if he ever does.”
“What will stop him from using another computer?” Dominic asked abruptly.
Everything, Jeremy thought. “Sliver built a life online. We’re about to block him out of all of it.”
Romario stepped forward and asked, “And then expose him?”
Now they’re getting the idea. “By the time we’re done with him, there won’t be a place he can hide online . . . possibly not on this planet, either. We’ll have his real name and access to everything connected to him.”
Judy shook her head sadly. “It’s a shame that someone as gifted as he seems to have ended up on such a dark road.”
Her husband, Jim, agreed and added, “That’s why science is best kept isolated from society. Too many temptations.”
“Wait a minute. Jake, are your parents the Waltons?” Romario’s level of surprise was almost amusing.
Jake conceded dryly, “That is our surname.”
As the full magnitude of whom he was standing beside sunk in, Romario asked the computer icons, “What are you doing here?”
Judy answered him. “We came to have a holiday with our son, but these boys are always into some trouble.” She looked down at Jeremy and said, “Jeremy is one of the greatest minds of his generation. He just hasn’t found his niche yet. When he gets serious, he’s going to change the world.”
“We tried to tell Jake that pursuing money instead of research was a waste of his potential, too, but you know kids.” Jim shook his head at the loss.
Despite the banter going on behind him, Jeremy completed the task the Waltons had outlined. “It’s done. I used all of your ideas. It looks like he’s going to take the bait.”
“Now what?” Dominic demanded.
“Now we wait,” Jeremy answered. “If he believed what I said about Tenin he’ll open the network, because he won’t want us to have that leverage over him.”