That meant Joe was a spook, and he was now dating a girl in Reston, Virginia, which probably meant he was back at Langley.
In the intelligence field it had a name — IDENTINT, for identity intelligence — and although Dalca wasn’t in the intelligence field, he could develop targeting information on virtually anyone, anywhere, with a computer, a phone, and a little time.
This was Dalca’s job. He could out a guy like Joe in a morning fishing expedition, even though spies weren’t his focus. But everything changed for the young Romanian researcher that day the he was taken in to his director’s boss and told that a company called the Seychelles Group had hired ARTD to do some specific work for them.
It would be a gross exaggeration to say that the People’s Republic of China had begun outsourcing its cyberwarfare capabilities, but the case of Advanced Research Technological Designs was not unique. China had been caught in some high-profile hacking operations in the past few years, and the plausible deniability afforded to them by working via corporate cutouts with highly skilled computer experts made sense to them.
They saw these corporations — some based in India, others in Central or Eastern Europe — as wholly financially motivated, and the price paid to them by the People’s Republic of China — again, through intermediaries — was small change for the huge nation when compared to the safety this scheme afforded them.
ARTD had been using its hackers to attempt to break into various American government servers. They targeted civilian firms with access contracts with the U.S. government, to use their data links to try to “swim upstream” into military, intelligence, and other networks.
They’d been at it for more than a year, and it wasn’t something Dalca was working on at all, when he was called into the surprise morning meeting with the director of ARTD himself, Dragomir Vasilescu.
“Dalca,” Vasilescu said, “I am taking you off your other assignments immediately. I have a job for you.”
“Hope it’s something more challenging than that Petrobras account I’m working on. The Brazilians have me digging into the private lives of some of Exxon’s senior staff, the most boring wealthy people on earth. I did it with a phone, a finger, and access to Google. Really, sir, this job is getting too easy.”
Dragomir Vasilescu smiled. Alexandru could build rapport with anyone, even the director of his company, but Vasilescu also knew all about Dalca’s skills, and he was frankly afraid of the younger man. He imagined Dalca was somehow using social engineering to dig into his innermost thoughts right now.
The director said, “This might indeed be more challenging. Our technical staff has gained access to a file from the American government.” He looked down at the paper in front of him. “It’s the complete record on a server at the Office of Personnel Management. Employee records of men and women working for the government who are applying for a security clearance.”
Dalca’s eyebrows rose. “How many records?”
“Over twenty million. All raw data. Application forms and fingerprints.”
“That sounds promising. How did we come across that?”
Vasilescu laughed. “We hacked into an Indian cybersecurity company that had a contract with the U.S. government to do penetration testing on their machines about five years ago. The Indians managed to exfiltrate this data, and apparently they accidentally kept it on one of their servers. They’d never even accessed it. We borrowed it from them to see if it was something we could use in phishing or spoofing operations. The best part is the Americans will never know anything has been accessed and exfiltrated by us, because we took it from a cybersecurity firm that didn’t even know they had it.”
“Beton,” Dalca said. It was the Romanian word for “concrete,” but it was also slang for “cool.” Dalca thought there could, indeed, be some opportunities to make money in these free files. He asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“Our client has asked us to see if there is some way you can use this raw data to run full investigations of men and women currently working in the U.S. embassy in Beijing.”
Dalca said, “So this is for China?”
“Of course not. We work for a company registered in the Seychelles. The Seychelles Group is their rather unimaginative name.” Vasilescu chuckled to himself. “Of course they are obviously a front for Chinese intelligence. So I need you to wade through twenty-some-odd million files and try to associate these records with people working for the U.S. in Beijing. I’m sure the Chinese want to identify spies to throw them out of their country or to use the intel for blackmail purposes. Plus, the data on the U.S. government employees also has records of their foreign contacts. I assume this will help them find their own citizens who are spying against them.”
“I’ll need to take a look at these files and see what I have to work with. But it sounds like something I should have no trouble with.”
Vasilescu said, “I am giving you a month to go over the macro data of the files, just to find out what all is included, and to build a template of how to go over this data and exploit it in keeping with our client’s wishes. You can build tables, databases, and such, and you can have access to anyone and any resource we have here at ARTD. Then I want you to choose a team of researchers to work for you on this project. They will follow your orders on how you want them to exploit the data. We’ve informed the client that we anticipate having a first package of goods to deliver to them in three months.”
Dalca spent the rest of the day clearing other items on his desk, and that evening he took control of all the files exfiltrated from the Indian cybersecurity firm. The raw data was only here, in the hands of ARTD, and kept on a special machine in a room with no Internet or other devices. There was no offsite server, and the client did not even have access to it.
Dalca was given the code for the room and he accessed the data for the first time at eight p.m., and by nine, he was aware of the full scope of what he, and no one else outside the American government, had access to.
Dalca worked through the night and was seated in Dragomir Vasilescu’s office the next morning when the director of the company arrived at work.
As he placed his briefcase on his desk, Vasilescu looked over his twenty-nine-year-old researcher. “Shit, Dalca. You’ve been here all night, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well… What’s on your mind?”
“The SF-86.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a one-hundred-twenty-seven-page form that the United States government makes everyone fill out if they are applying for a security clearance. It has all the raw data on the applicant at the time the application was made. We have every single application processed by the U.S. government from 1984 until a point about five years ago, when the Indians exfiltrated the data. Do you realize what we can do with all that information?”
The director said, “Of course I do. You can use it to obtain the information asked of us by our clients.”
“It’s bigger than that.”
“No, Alexandru. It’s exactly that, because that is the wish of the Seychelles Group.”
Dalca said, “They aren’t thinking very big, are they?”
“What do you mean?”
“Using this data to find their own traitors? Small potatoes compared to the information’s real worth.”