Social Engineer Read online

“It’s not a fake,” said Brody.

  Seven Weeks Ago

  Brody waved his pass at the underground station turnstile. The barrier opened and he waltzed through. Behind him, Mel did the same. He held out his hand. She took it and together they ran up the steps to the streets above.

  Laughing, they jogged along Tooley Street, which ran parallel to the south bank of the Thames. It was eerily quiet, this early on a Sunday morning. Through gaps between office buildings, Brody occasionally caught sight of boat masts on the Thames and the iconic Tower Bridge. They reached a small side street and turned into it, coming to an abrupt halt when they saw the crowds of people and parked vehicles ahead of them.

  Mel squeaked in delight. “Do you think we’ll see ’im?”

  “According to the filming schedule, they’ll be here all day.”

  She squeezed his hand in anticipation. Together they approached the crowd. Film production crew vans were parked up alongside the road, in front of a tunnel that disappeared under the railway lines above. Film cameras were positioned high on cranes, along with powerful lighting.

  As they neared, a barrier blocked further access. A group of fans stood around it, buzzing in anticipation. Brody and Mel joined them, blending in. As if on queue, a door to one of the cast caravans, parked up beyond, opened and a figure descended. The women in the crowd around them began screaming.

  Brody observed Mel’s jaw drop at the sight of the Hollywood A-lister. He had seen some of the heartthrob’s action movies, and hadn’t been particularly impressed. The star seemed to always play himself, rather than the character written in the screenplay. Brody thought about some of the social engineering charades he had pulled off over the years and wondered if perhaps he might be the better actor. After all, his performances had to work first time; there was certainly no opportunity for a retake.

  The leading man waved at the crowd of fans, a huge grin overflowing with white teeth plastered on his made-up face.

  “He seems smaller in real life,” whispered Mel to Brody, cupping her hand around his ear so that the other onlookers couldn’t overhear.

  “Yeah, I wonder if he’ll film the scene standing on a box so that he’s eye-to-eye with the other actors.” Having overheard Brody’s quip, three of the onlookers turned around and gave him daggers.

  Brody held his tongue while they watched the scene being filmed. Finally, after a rather painfully repetitive hour, the director shouted, “Cut!” There was a small ripple of applause. Taking a bow, the actor seemed about to return to his caravan but diverted towards the small group of onlookers when he heard his name shouted by his adoring fans. Smiling genially, he autographed a steady stream of photos and any other memorabilia that they had brought with them. Mel, who hadn’t been quite as prepared with the short notice Brody had provided, stuck out her bare arm in the hope the star would sign it. Unperturbed, as if it happened every day, the actor dutifully scribbled his name on her forearm. Mel promised him that she would never wash it again, prompting laughs from everyone in earshot, the actor included. Delighted, Mel grabbed Brody’s hand and led him back in the direction they had come, her schoolgirl-like giggles rebounding from the side street around them.

  They breakfasted together in Joe’s Kitchen and Coffee House, a casual eatery near Borough Station. Brody introduced Mel to the delights of bubble and squeak, which she ordered with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce. To compliment her choice on something so quintessentially English, he ordered a very French Croque Monsieur, topped with a fried egg. They chuckled their way through breakfast, casting doubt on the logic behind their respective countries’ cuisines.

  Afterwards, they walked along the south side of the embankment, all the way to Westminster Bridge, opposite Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. It had become a beautiful summer morning. They took selfies with each other on their smartphones, posing alongside human statues. They listened to jazz musicians inside the foyer of the South Bank Centre. They experienced a slow loop of the London Eye, a whole capsule to themselves, admiring the capital’s distinctive skyline.

  The day passed in a carefree blur.

  And later, when Brody walked her to her flat in Chalk Farm, his body tensing in nervousness as he neared her front door, she laughed freely and teased him about his English reservations. She stood on tiptoes and, without hesitation, kissed him, both arms wrapped around his neck. When they pulled apart, she quickly opened the door and pulled him inside.

  CHAPTER 3

  Today, 9:22am

  Jacobsen was angry. “Are you saying that Colin Renshaw just gave you his pass?”

  “Kind of,” said Brody. “Let me play you this audio.”

  On his tablet, he opened up an MP3 file with a media player, and the recorded voices from both ends of a telephone conversation could be heard.

  “Hello, Colin Renshaw speaking.”

  “Hi, this is John from HTL Security.” It was Brody’s voice. “We’re just finishing the upgrade for all the ID badges for the new security system at head office. You should have upgraded your pass by now, but my records here say you haven’t registered it yet.”

  “No idea what you’re on about, mate.”

  “Didn’t you get the email?”

  “No, mate. I get hundreds of emails a day. Must have missed it.”

  “That’s okay, we can sort it out tomorrow when you come into the office.”

  “Sorry, no can do. I’m off on my hols tomorrow.”

  “Oh dear. My boss, Jacobsen, will kill me if I don’t get them all done by the end of this week . . . Tell you what, I’ll arrange for a courier to pick it up from you today. I’ll get it upgraded and then I’ll leave it with reception for you to pick up when you get back from your holiday. Going anywhere nice?”

  Brody stopped the audio. He said, “I picked it up personally that afternoon. The pass is sitting downstairs with reception right now.”

  Slamming his fist down on the table, Jacobsen shouted, “You used my fucking name in your scam you conniving little —”

  “Paul,” interrupted Moorcroft sharply, “enough.”

  Jacobsen stopped himself, but his fists remained clenched around his Montblanc pen as if to crush it.

  “LinkedIn and Facebook again, I presume?” asked Wilson.

  “Actually, no. I would have used them if there’d been enough R&D personnel listed on LinkedIn, but they don’t seem to bother too much with it. I got creative.” Brody found it hard to keep the pride from his voice. He pulled up another audio file and pressed play.

  “HTL help desk. Can I help you?”

  “This is John from the CEO’s office.” Brody’s voice again, but in a confidential manner. “Listen, I need you to keep this to yourself. Mr Musgrave, our CEO, is launching some new employee morale-boosting initiatives. The first one is a chance to win two weeks’ hire of an Aston Martin DB9.”

  “No way!”

  “Yes, really. But keep it to yourself. Anyway, to have high impact, we’re looking to schedule an all-staff meeting some time over the next week or two. And Mr Musgrave will draw the winner from a hat, live. The car will be presented to the winner there and then, assuming they’re on site. And he wants everyone to see it in the car park every day for two weeks!”

  “That sounds fantastic.”

  “Yeah, I know. But here’s the problem. We want to make sure that anyone who’s on holiday at the time doesn’t get drawn. I know it’s unfair for them, but it would lose the impact Mr Musgrave wants to have by handing over the keys personally.”

  “Uh, right?”

  “Would you be able to do a search and let me know all employees who’ve booked annual leave during the next two weeks?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  “You’re not on holiday are you? It’d be a shame for you to miss out now you know about it.”

  Brody stopped the playback. On the other side of the oak table, the executives’ jaws had dropped open and they were shaking their heads.

  Brody said, �
�Like I said before, help desks like to help. That’s their flaw.”

  “But he didn’t even ask for your employee ID, raise a help desk ticket or anything,” stated Hall, the exasperation clear in his voice.

  “It’s basic psychology. As far as he was concerned I was representing your CEO. And I let him into a secret. He’s drawn in and motivated to help.”

  “Why didn’t you just use Colin Renshaw’s pass to get through reception?” asked Wilson.

  “Good point. It’s because receptionists are the people most likely to check the badge of someone they don’t recognise. And I look nothing like Colin Renshaw and no amount of make up is going to fix that. You’ll see later that no one really checks my badge once I’m through the secure doors. They rely on that having already been done.”

  Brody brought the video back up. It showed him enter a large atrium open to all three floors. A bank of four glass lift doors lay immediately in front. To the left, a glass staircase offered an alternative to the glass pods that silently glided up and down linking suspended walkways. HTL staff quietly went about their business. A group of three were engaged in conversation on the walkway immediately above. Two women exited a lift and walked towards him. As they approached, they stared directly at the camera.

  “They’re checking out the Cisco logo on the cap rather than Colin Renshaw’s identification pass pinned to my fleece,” Brody commented.

  On video, Brody made his way up the staircase to the top floor. At the double doors controlling access to the north wing, his yellow pass obligingly turned the light green. He pushed open the doors and strolled along the corridors, passing staff going the other way. No one took any notice of him.

  The onscreen Brody made it through another security barrier successfully. Brody remembered thinking at the time that it had almost been too easy.

  At another set of security doors, the video showed Brody’s hand wave the yellow pass at the sensor. But this time the light above the sensor flashed red. Abruptly, he stepped back from the doors and retraced his steps, the camera pointed at the floor rather than straight ahead.

  Five Weeks Ago

  “Brody?”

  Brody immediately recognised her voice with its beautiful French accent. Fuck. He couldn’t believe his bad luck. What the hell was Mel doing here, of all places?

  He turned around slowly, forcing a wide grin across his face. She was sitting in the reception area of the law firm head office he had just been about to social engineer his way into; his latest pentest assignment. Dressed in a navy jumpsuit with a Domino’s pizza logo he’d had embroidered onto the chest, he had completed the imposture by carrying in four large flat cardboard boxes containing pizzas. It was a sure-fire way to blag it past any security-conscious receptionist.

  He pivoted away from the reception desk — he couldn’t continue now — and walked over to the waiting area where Mel was sitting, pulling the boxes up to cover the Domino’s logo.

  “Well, this is a pleasant coincidence,” he said, as amiably as he could make it. She stood as he neared. Leaning forward to give her a kiss, he awkwardly clutched the pizza boxes to his chest. She hesitated, looking him up and down suspiciously, but stood on tiptoes and accepted the peck on her lips.

  They had been together for three weeks now and Brody was utterly smitten. Whenever they were apart, his thoughts frequently drifted to her; either reminiscing over their last date or anticipating the next. They saw each other every few days; working around her care home shifts and the weekends she usually spent protesting for animal rights with her activist friends. Occasionally, she stayed over at Brody’s apartment and so he had been forced to introduce her to Leroy and his boyfriend Danny. His friends were pleased to see Brody so obviously happy, and particularly delighted that the cause of his happiness was because of someone in the real world rather than the virtual.

  Leroy’s favourite rant involved Brody’s proclivity to prioritise relationships built electronically rather than through interaction with real humans. Brody didn’t see the problem, citing Leroy as the exception that disproved the rule. Online, Brody went by the moniker Fingal and had forged friendships and acquaintances with fellow computer hackers from all over the world. He was very active in the hacker forums, always aiming to strengthen his elite hacker status by sharing code, blogging or exposing unknown Advanced Persistent Threats that he’d identified during his pentesting assignments. APTs were crafted by nefarious ‘black hat’ hackers, often members of mafia-funded cyber-gangs, whose aim was to surreptitiously install them on corporate networks, where they ran undetected, replicating themselves and sending back intellectual property which the hackers could then sell on or ransom. One Russian mafia-backed cyber-gang had even put up a large bounty for any information that led to the unmasking of Fingal in the real world and, for that reason, Brody took extensive efforts to conceal his trail online. Over the years, Brody had worked hard to maintain Fingal’s infamy; always ensuring a clear line of delineation between his online and offline worlds.

  Spurred on by Mel having met Leroy in his offline world, she had then set up a night out with Joyce, her closest friend in London, and her fiancé Neil. By weekday, Joyce was a lawyer and Neil an accountant. By weekend, both were fellow activists, Mel having first met Joyce three years before at a rally in London. Despite his dismay at being stuck with three activists for the evening, Brody had cheered up the moment Mel had casually introduced him as her boyfriend. It was the first reference to them as an official couple and his mood brightened completely, even outlasting the inevitable boring conversations about drug companies and their immoral use of animals in research.

  The only downer was that as their relationship started to become serious, Brody felt ever more guilty about his dishonesty to Mel regarding his online and offline lives. He was stuck in the lie with no obvious way out, reinforcing it that evening whenever Joyce or Neil led the conversation towards him and his background.

  “What are you doing ’ere?” Mel asked, suspicion still lining her face. “I thought you were in Brussels, scouting locations.”

  He thought quickly. “We finished a day earlier than planned. I just got back in on the Eurostar a couple of hours ago. I was going to surprise you later, but obviously that’s ruined now.” He gave her a sad look and then asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m waiting for Joyce to come down. As it is one of my days off, we decided to — how you say — do lunch.”

  “Joyce works here?” Brody couldn’t believe the coincidence. Mel had introduced her friend as a lawyer, but it had never occurred to Brody that she would be on the payroll of the exact same law firm on which he was being paid to carry out a pentest.

  Mel furrowed her brow. “But what are you doing ’ere, Brody? And what is with the pizzas?”

  Brody continued improvising. “I was just getting provisions for the second unit location team. We’re in the middle of some long negotiations between our lawyers and the lawyers who represent the owners of Tower Bridge. We want to film an action scene with some boat stunts under the bridge, but they’re concerned about potential damage to it from any explosions. I think it’s going to be a long day.” He shrugged. “Didn’t realise our lawyers were from the same firm that Joyce worked for.”

  Mel studied him, dubiously. “Brody, why are you meeting with lawyers wearing a jumpsuit?”

  Yes, that was a good question. Why was he wearing a jumpsuit? The truth was that he was dressed to look like a pizza deliveryman. But he could hardly say that.

  “I accidentally spilled a load of coffee over my business suit earlier. This was the only clean thing anyone here could find for me — one of the cleaner’s overalls.”

  She didn’t look convinced. He wouldn’t have been either. Brody spotted movement in the reflection of the large windows behind Mel. The lift doors were gliding open and Joyce began to walk out. He had to move quickly.

  “Damn!” he exclaimed. “I forgot the drinks. Look, I’d better pop back ou
t and get them.” He headed for the glass revolving doors that exited back onto the street. “I’ll call you later. We’ll go out for dinner.”

  Today, 9:32am

  It was time to explain what had happened next to the HTL executives. “So I’ve reached the limits of Colin Renshaw’s access,” Brody began. “At this point, I’m aware that an alert has gone off in a security control room somewhere. It’s likely they get quite a few each day from real staff inadvertently trying to gain access to the wrong doors. After all, the corridors in this building of yours all look the same to me.”

  On the screen, he entered a Gents toilet. The video lowered to near ground level as Brody checked the three cubicles for the presence of feet.

  The video cut to show a cleaner’s cupboard.

  Brody had edited out the part of the video where he had stared at his reflection in the large mirror above the sinks, exhaling deeply and telling himself aloud to calm down, the adrenalin causing his hands to shake. If anyone had been in the corridor when he had failed to gain access to that last set of doors, it would have made them instantly more vigilant and very likely caused them to properly check his ID, resulting in a security alert. And, now that he had met Jacobsen in the flesh, Brody doubted that he would have survived such an encounter without it becoming physical. After all, he would have been caught red-handed trying to break into HTL’s most secure area. And explaining about a pentest sponsored by Moorcroft would probably have fallen on deaf ears, at least initially.

  The cleaner’s cupboard had a mechanical combination lock with two vertical rows of seven buttons, labelled with numbers and letters, above a hexagonal handle. That meant many thousands of potential codes. His hand punched in a six-digit code and the door opened.

  The off-screen Brody moved his mouse to pull up another audio file.

  “Let me guess,” said Jacobsen. “You phoned the cleaning contract company we use and pretended to be a new cleaner.”