Meet At Joe's

9 More FBI More Complications Part 2 A Plan

We moved into the office where we could discuss Pixie's plan in private. The office was a bit crowded with overflow from the storeroom. We had just gotten in a shipment of kitchen supplies. Pixie sat leaning on the desktop. Agent Lee and I found spots to lean against the stacks of boxes and then turned our attention to Pixie.

Pixie began explaining, "The key is to trace the deployed malware back to one or more of the hacktivists in John's group. That would be easy if each hacktivist code was different. Then, we would simply see which hacktivist's code matched the deployed code you've intercepted. Of course, now all the hacktivists' code is the same so that's not possible.

"But what if I created a dozen different improved versions of the malware? If you let us continue to host their Tuesday evening meeting, I could tell John's team that John had created a single improved version that he wanted each team member to beta test separately without comparing notes because he wants everyone's separate views of the changes.

"I'd give each team member a different version, but they would all think they had the same one which they had to evaluate independently. Then hopefully our culprit realizing this code was an improvement would pass it on to their cohorts as soon as possible. When that code gets deployed and we detect it, we will know who leaked it by which version of the code shows up."

"Can you really make that many different versions that will all be improvements on the original?" Agent Lee asked sounding both doubtful and hopeful.

"Probably not," Pixie sighed. "That is where the second part of my plan comes in. If we can narrow our suspects down to two or three, then I would only need to come up with a couple of versions to give the most likely suspects and give everyone else a less convincing version."

"And how do you plan to narrow down your suspect pool?"

"With interviews." Pixie anticipated Agent Lee's next question and explained, "I will explain to the group that John has gotten tied up on a special project. While he is out, he thought we could review the groups security practices. I'll tell them that I was a security specialist in a former life, and that John has asked me to talk to each of them individually to make sure everyone is taking adequate precautions to keep their efforts secret. I will use these interviews to sound out the suspects. I won't explain the depth of my experience or tell them what the FBI knows. I especially won't let them know that the FBI knows the software has been deployed. Hopefully, this will narrow down our suspect pool"

"Your plan is more convoluted than their software," Agent Lee concluded.

"Yeah, complexity is how we programmers get our kicks. They do keep getting harder to find."