Chapter 5
One
Jamal Davis returned to his office the next day. Kendall was gone and he thought the meeting with Kyle had gone better than planned. No doubt it would be a big day over at the DOJ. He imagined the scramble and meetings going on over there as Kyle brought his bosses Jamal's care package. He thought, You are welcome you fucking pencil pushing weasels. Jamal had no patience for prosecutors. They were the bottom of the barrel when it came to attorneys. He considered them incompetent and lazy who took cushy government jobs when their lack of ambition, vision, and skills kept them out of private practice or corporate litigation where the money was. Yet somehow those worthless bureaucrats decided who was charged with a crime and who was not. It was ridiculous but Jamal was confident he could wipe the floor with most of them. Not all, but most.
He was feeling particularly good, especially after his illicit tryst in a whore house in Long Island with the two boys and a girl he had ordered. He had to send another five thousand to the service to cover some damages. One of the boys would need a couple of stitches but it had been worth it.
He unlocked his office door and found a yellow envelope at his feet. That was odd, but he picked it up and went to his desk. He sat down and opened the envelope. Inside was a letter of resignation from Mindy. That was a good thing. He never liked her and he knew about her relationship with Jacob, whatever that was. She was a nice piece of ass and Jacob had his kinks. That had amused him at first, but he grew bored with their exchanges. She was just Jacob's most recent piece of ass. Jamal didn't blame the man. Everyone needed a piece of ass once in awhile. But Mindy had an influence over Jacob too. That was all well and good when he was a nominal vice president, but with him as CEO she might get aspirations above her station. He was glad she was leaving.
But there were other papers in the envelope too, and he flipped to the next page.
As he read, his mood went sour and a ball of anger began to form in his stomach. He sat back and screamed at no one, "Fuck".
He was suddenly in a rage. He stood up, picked up one of the monitors on the desk, and threw it at the door. It crashed to the floor, shattering, an electrical spark dancing out of the back of it as whatever was inside monitors, exploded onto the floor.
He took two steps toward the broken monitor and stomped on it twice and screamed, "You fucking cunt."
His tirade lasted one full minute and then he sat again in his chair, staring at the printed page on the desk. He had an urge to go to Mindy's quarters, kick in her door, and strangle her. He imagined the satisfying sound of her neck snapping as he throttled her. His head pounded with his heart beats as he thought about it. How had this happened?
After another minute he closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair and thought, always another fucking problem. He had been so pleased with his plan to eliminate Jacob as a threat, and here was another one. And this one from a god damn secretary. He sat for five minutes and then reread the letter. The bitch was threatening him.
He stood again, full of nervous energy, and stared out his window. He said to himself, "Okay, okay, you can deal with this." Maybe it wasn't as bad as it seemed. Maybe. He imagined standing in a court room defending himself. He would probably win, but winning wasn't enough. The accusation alone would be enough to keep him from becoming CEO. Hell the accusation was enough to have the board quietly fire him. Jacob couldn't do that, but if the board wanted him gone, they could. Shit.
How had this happened? He thought about that for a long time and finally picked up the phone on his desk and dialed the number at the security firm. The man answered and said, "Jamal? What's going on? It's Saturday."
Jamal said, "Shut up and listen. I think we may have had a security breach of our systems. I need to know how someone might get into our files. You set this shit up."
The man got defensive and said, "You were hacked? The system I set up was hacked? That's not possible."
Jamal fought the urge to scream at the man. He said, "I'm telling you we were. Now I need to know how it could have happened."
The man went quiet for a moment, thinking, and finally said, "There are only two ways. Your system at the estate is completely isolated from everything, including the corporate network. You have encryption software that the NSA would take half a century to break and that's only if they knew what they were looking for."
Jamal said, "Spare me the technical bullshit and tell me what are the two ways?"
The man said, "Well its technically possible that if someone knew the network, got access to the data center in the basement, and had a network sniffer, they could grab packets of data between two endpoints, but they would have to have the encryption keys to unlock the data. I don't think that's possible since we use an encryption vault and even I wouldn't know what the keys are for any particular data set."
Jamal was getting inpatient and said, "Don't fucking tell me how they couldn't have done it. Tell me how they did."
The man thought about it and said, "Someone would have to have access to your password and your computer. That's the only way. But we put safeguards for even that. It's why we have cameras everywhere. Did you look at the feeds to see if anyone accessed your computer?"
Jamal closed his eyes. There were cameras everywhere but he didn't like the idea of being recorded in his own office so he had disabled them as the security administrator. He said, "How could someone guess my password? It's twenty characters of nonsense, it's not written down anywhere, and I change it every week."
The man thought quietly again for a minute and said, "I don't know Jamal, maybe a keystroke logger, but they would have to have access to your system for that."
Jamal said, "What the fuck is a keystroke logger?"
The man said, "It's a device or piece of software that records all of your key strokes on a keyboard. You come in, turn on your computer, and type your password. The key logger grabs all of that and stores it. That's why we recommend two factor authentication."
Jamal said, "Are you fucking kidding me? We pay you motherfuckers millions of dollars and someone with one of these, key logging things, can record everything I type?"
The man once again grew defensive. He said, "Jamal, what the hell is going on?"
Jamal said, "How do I know if someone did that keystroke thing?"
The man sighed and said, "Well if it was software we would catch it in a security scan. Same with a hardware logger if its still active. If it was a physical tracker it would have to be within range of your keyboard and connected if its blue tooth; or it could be in a USB port. I can have someone come over and do a thorough investigation if you really think you have had a breech."
