Mr Thomas part 4

03:03:2004
Part four of the unpopular and critically ignored 'Mr Thomas' story. In this part (a bit shorter than usual) Mr Thomas asks some advice from a fat guy he hardly knows...
"Erm, Johansen...?"

Mr Thomas stood in the dorway of Cablecom's onsite laboratory. He had chosen a quiet time for this visit; the other Techs were all out. Clive and Mohammed were in the canteen, Sanjay was praying to Mecca in the back of his van and Donald was where he usually was at lunch time: the video arcade down the high street. Johansen swiveled his chair round to face Mr Thomas. His bulk must have been perfectly centered above the chair’s fulcrum as he glided to a stop at exactly the right point.

“Hello.” He didn’t look particularly pleased to see him, but Johansen never spent much time with Mr Thomas. In fact this was the first time the two of them had been alone. Johansen was known for two things in the Cablecom lab. His unwavering commitment to pornography and the mechanics of sex toys and his expertise with computer networks. In all probability his computer prowess was just a result of his sex obsession . Not that the Cablecom management seemed to mind. Good network guys were gold dust, and the management were prepared to put up with all kinds of eccentricties in return for a network that didn't go down every other day.

"Erm. Hi. I need your help with something." Mr Thomas didn't really know how to go about asking for advice now he was here. There had been no question that starting his research on Frost and his organisation would require a computer and his home computer would be useless. They had access. Ditto the computers in the office, probably. He had toyed with the idea of going to an internet cafe or a library but had rejected it as well. Although they afforded some anonymity, public computers could be hacked and if they had seen him use one it wouldn't be too hard for one of their agents to gain access to the machine after him and find out what he had been doing on it. Nor could he use a friend's machine because it could be traced back to him as well and anyway he didn't want to get someone into trouble. So what did that leave? In Mr Thomas' case, it left him in need of some outside help.

Johansen raised his eyebrows. "I need you..." continued Mr Thomas "... to help me get online."

Johansen emitted a short explosion of air from his mouth. "Get a modem, Chip!" He moved his right foot back on the chair's star shaped base as if preparing to swivel himself back to face his desk.

"No, it's more complicated than that. I need help getting online so whatever I do can't be traced back to me."

The fat man grinned very slowly. "Oh I see..." he said, "Oh, now I see exactly what you mean. You want to go to certain sites... certain places... get stuff without anyone finding out who you are. So naturally you came to me."

Mr Thomas couldn’t tell whether Johansen’s slightly mocking tone came out of sarcasm or mock pity or if he was just naturally inclined to an air of superiority when someone needed his help. Perhaps the man was just happy to talk to someone. Still grinning, Johansen hopped out of his chair and shuffled over to a whiteboard on which was written ‘2.30pm arsehole’. With a sweep of his arm he wiped the board clean with his sleeve and picked up a black marker pen.

“OK, this is how it works. The Internet is basically a two way thing. You sit at your terminal and ask it to find data from other machines and display it on your screen. That means you have to tell the rest of the network where to send the data. I mean, how are you going to access data on your computer if the machine sending the data doesn’t know where you are, right? Right so far?”

Mr Thomas nodded. Johansen, truth be told, actually wasn’t a bad teacher. He had been drawing boxes and arrows on the whiteboard as he spoke and his words seemed rehearsed as if he had given this talk before. Perhaps he had.

“Right, now in order to receive data every computer needs something called an IP address. This is a sequence of numbers seperated by full stops. Every location on the internet has an IP, and everyone using the internet has an IP. The IP is what the police use to track down internet users who have been... you’re not in trouble with the police, are you?”

“No, no. Not at all.”

“OK. Anyway, You can use a false name on the internet but it’s harder to use a false IP because somewhere along the line you’ve got to have that information coming back to the computer you’re using. Now some people are clever enough to use someone else’s IP as a front. They hack into someone’s machine –someone who hasn’t got proper security- and make it look like they’re doing... stuff online instead of them. Then they have the hacked machine relay that information back to them at their real IP. It’s like you hear these stories sometimes of the FBI tracking a russian money laundering gang, kicking some innocent granny’s door down and discovering that the computer that they’ve traced is just a link to another one on the other side of the world.”

Fronts, money launering, hacking into other people’s computers, the FBI; Mr Thomas began to feel overwhelmed. Then Johansen gave him the bad news.

“The bad news is that using someone else’s IP to cover your tracks isn’t even foolproof. There are governments with crack teams- mostly ex hackers and IT software developers- who do nothing all day but track down criminals, gangs, other hackers – you name it. And they’re very good at what they do. The best in the world are these guys in Finland. A small private company that routinely does work for Microsoft and the US government. Ever hear of the Kaspar virus?”

“No.”

“Count yourelf lucky. Kaspar and its variant Kaspar B would have been the worst viruses ever to hit the internet. Would have destroyed data by the truckload if those Finns hadn’t stopped it. They didn’t publicise it because they’re still trying to figure out how it works and don’t want a panic. You’re not planning to release a virus, are you?”

“No! I just want to spend limited periods of time doing some private research. No viruses, no money laundering, no acts of terorism, just some discrete enquiries.”

“Then why don’t you just use an internet cafe?”

Mr Thomas felt Johansen’s curiosity needling him. The fat bugger really wanted to know what he was up to. There was nothing for it but to give him the impression he was looking for porn.

“I just want to be somewhere...more private.”

Johansen smiled. “Look Chip, whatever you’re up to is none of my business, but I really don’t think you’re going to manage to hack into and set up a whole string of computers with fake Ips and all the rest of it. That’s some big league stuff and to be honest I’m not going to help you do that unless I know exactly what you plan to do and what’s in it for me. The only thing I can suggest is going to a very small, out of the way Internet cafe or... er... No, forget it.”

“What?”

“Well, I was going to suggest Warchalking but I can’t really see a respectable guy like you doing it. Plus you’d need a car, or better yet a van.”

“Warchalking?”

“It’s a kind of wireless phreaking. People don’t really do it for serious hacking because you need to be mobile and you usually can’t stay online for too long, but on the plus side it’s pretty much untraceable.”

“Well, that sounds like just the thing. Can you show me how? Will I need any specialist equipment?”

Johansen laughed. A proper laugh this time, not one of his explosive snorts. His fat frame jiggled and rippled. Suddenly he jumped off his chair and fell to his knees. Oh my god, thought Mr Thomas, please don’t be having a heart attack. Still chuckling, Johansen pulled a big rubbish bag out from under his desk and rooted through it. Several empty crisp bags fell out of the sack, followed by some sheets of paper on which was printed a picture of a yellow snake.

“Here we go!” cried Johansen and withdrew a foot long brown cylinder from the bag. He tipped it over his mouth and some beige crumbs fell out onto his extended tongue. “You’ll need one of these. Take this one- I’ve finished with it.”

Mr Thomas took the cylinder and turned it around. The moustachio’d cartoon face logo of a snack company looked up at him. It was an empty container of Barbecue flavoured stacking chips. He looked up at Johansen, fearing his world was about to once again get more confusing.

“You’ll need a few other bits and bobs, but that empty chip-tube is the most important – and it has to be Barbecue flavour. Sour cream and onion won’t be any help for what you’re trying to do.”


[ Back to the Public Albatross System]