Hacking Cybercrime

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The inhabitants of the vast, pale gray cubicle farm were more restless than usual on an early Friday afternoon. The endless rows of low fabric walls normally created a muffled silence long before five o’clock, neat desks abandoned as soon as possible for weekend freedom.

This week, though, end of quarter deadlines loomed over everyone’s heads. The prospect of missing their bonus numbers tended to drive the insurance agents and adjusters more than a little bit insane.

Dana Sanderson guarded the calm routines of a programmer more fiercely than usual as muttering, pacing, and understated cursing swirled around her.

The new so-called team-building pods—otherwise known as introvert torture chambers—didn’t bother with full-height walls. She had to make do with barely shoulder-height protection on three sides.

As a mid-level code cruncher, Dana knew it would be years before she’d have the simple pleasure of a door she could close. Even if she hunched behind her monitors, the sense of exposure never quite left her.

On the whole, the job was better than most she’d had over the last ten years. The building was in the middle of a typical soulless industrial park, but it was on the CommuShare transit line. When Dana had to drive for some reason, she could plug in to free charging stations. The cafeteria was subsidized and surprisingly good. The huge selection of free holo-training, covering everything from programming languages to online security to financial planning was the best she’d ever seen. Best of all, outside of the four manic times of year, she could work from home at least one day a week.

If only her micro-managing boss would close his own door a little more often, Dana could probably get away with the great sin of listening to her own music. She sat close enough to his office that she would see the gate to his inner sanctuary opening in time to stash her contraband headphones.

Mr. Redmond would never tolerate such a lack of control, though, certainly not during crunch time when he prowled around like a big cat anxious for his feeding. A white noise machine placed carefully between her and the most fidgety of her co-workers helped. A little.

The soft, unobtrusive, and therefore maddening chime broke through Dana’s concentration. She would have sworn her workstation had a sensor rigged to go off when she was really focused.

Sure enough, the incoming work request icon flashed red on her second monitor.

Before she could pull up the message, scratching noises against the metal cubicle frame behind her knotted up her already tense shoulders. She spoke without moving.

“Hi, Mr. Redmond.”

“Ms. Sanderson. Just sent you a work order. Wanted to make sure you saw it.”

Dana stretched her face into a silent scream, then shifted to polite curiosity before she turned around. Her manager wore his usual dark gray suit even on casual Friday, a walking sign of approval for the dreadfully bland office décor.

An odd scent competed with his normal expensive cologne of the month, soft floral notes clashing with assertive spicy musk. At the very least he livened up the stale, recycled office air when he circled by.

“Yes, sir. I have the work request right here.”

Mr. Redmond nodded gravely. “It’s marked urgent.”

“I do see that, yes,” Dana said, grasping on to her politeness.

“Let me know if you have any questions.”

He walked away, jingling the change in his pockets, surely kept just for that irritating purpose. Not even Dana’s grandparents had coins anymore.

“Yes, Mr. Redmond, I do have questions,” she said under her breath. “Why do you think I can’t check my own work reqs? Why do you scratch instead of knocking? And where do you even get that blasted change to jingle these days?”

She blew air out through her lips, then turned to see what was so vitally important.

Dana was shaking her head before she got through the first paragraph. No, this wasn’t her department, not her job at all. Eleven cases, all young and healthy, death benefit claims under dispute. She was a programmer, not an insurance adjustor, no matter who paid her salary at the moment.

Her remarkably annoying manager had not only managed to send the job to the wrong person, he’d followed up before she could even open the silly thing.

She grabbed the mouse to bounce it right back to him, but a flashing note beside the Reject button caught her attention.

Investigation of underlying algorithms required before claims may be processed.

“Can’t get out of this one so easily, Dana,” she whispered as she picked up the phone. If she had to dig into code written before she was born, she wanted backup from someone who’d been with the company at least that long.

“Jackson here.”

“Hey Gayle, Dana here. Listen, I just got a work req that doesn’t make any sense. Did you work on the original algorithms for the risk rating tables? The ones for—”

“Yeah, your numbskull manager wouldn’t get off my back about that. I’m the one suggested you. Need a fresh pair of eyes. Redmond’s sure they don’t work. I’m sure they do. Sorry, kid.” And she was gone.

Dana snorted and hung up. Her grouchy old mentor was the one throwing her into this particular mess, not offering her a way out. Well, wrong department or not, she was stuck. She skimmed the notes again.

Six men, five women. Eleven marked at the lowest mortality risk, all dying far too young of natural causes over the past month. They lived in different parts of the country and didn’t know each other. The only common thread was their life insurance company and their unusual deaths.

She drummed her fingers on the desk, vaguely aware she was contributing to the anxious noise in the office for a change. Dana clicked through to the individual files, but they didn’t make any more sense. No evidence of any risky habits or hobbies in the investigation reports.

Only heartbroken families.

This kind of thing was exactly why she hated getting into this side of the business. The code and numbers might frustrate her, but they never depressed her.

She’d do her best, but she secretly hoped the claims held up. Some of them were even younger than her twenty-seven years.

Three hours later, Dana stood and stretched, grimacing when her back and neck crackled. The code wasn’t the problem here. Every line was as perfect as Gayle said.

Dana kept her smile to herself as she walked to Mr. Redmond’s office, rehearsing under her breath.

Sorry, sir. We have to pay up, and expedite it for pain and suffering because we delayed in the first place.

The source of her manager’s strange smell was clear to Dana’s nose sooner than her eyes. The sweetish stink came from a new diffuser gadget sitting on Mr. Redmond’s massive glass desk.

He had the overhead lights off, as usual, so only faint sunlight from outside competed with the spherical steam machine’s blue glow.

No doubt yet another miracle cure he’d soon try to force onto all of them, just like yoga, meditation, and sunlight bulbs over the past several months. He never seemed to notice he was increasing everyone else’s stress by pushing the next sure-fire solution he’d found while desperately trying to reduce his own.

“No, there’s something going on here, some risk we’re not seeing,” Mr. Redmond said when she finished explaining what she’d found, leaning back in his high-backed brown leather chair. Dana wondered how many decent programmer’s chairs the company could buy for what that high tech ergonomic miracle cost. “It may be a weird food trend or cure-all supplement they’re taking now.”

Dana forced herself not to add a snarky comment about the smell.

“I’m not sure what I can do about miracle cures, sir, long as they’re legal. Everything I can see checks out.”

“Well, you haven’t checked everything. This is a huge pool of claims, Ms. Sanderson. If these pay out, we’ll have to recalculate all the damned tables and formulas. No one wants that. I have to be sure everything is on the level. I need you to dig into this, see what you can come up with.”

“Beyond looking into the code, I’m not sure what I can do.”

Mr. Redmond sat forward and folded his hands on his desk, staring into her eyes.

“I’m not supposed to bring things like this up, but I know about your past, Dana. You’re the poster child for turning your life around after a rough start.”

Dana stared at her own hands twisting in her lap, willing her face not to turn red. No one was supposed to know about her troubles as a kid, hacking into far too many phones and webcams and online accounts, learning the hard way that it wasn’t a game after all. She struggled to keep her voice from shaking.

“If you know about me, you know why I can’t get back into hacking, Mr. Redmond. That part of my life is over.”

“I’m not asking you to get into their bank accounts. Just find the common thread. Take a look, a careful look, and see what you come up with. Don’t worry about your usual projects for now. There’s a full year’s salary bonus for whoever works this out.”

“A full…” Dana shook her head, quite certain she’d misunderstood. “You’re offering me a year’s pay? How could it be worth that?”

She didn’t have to do the math. That much money would pay off her college debts and everything else she’d racked up putting her past firmly behind her. The prospect of returning to her hacker life, even temporarily, felt slightly less dreadful now.

“These were all in our lowest risk pool,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Several of them had policies worth ten times your salary. Trust me. It’s worth it.”

“Is it worth paying for meals while I’m stuck here?” she said, not sure why she was still resisting. “I’m not about to do this on my own computer at home.”

“I’ll get IT to give you a secure link out, and a laptop to use at your place if you change your mind. Here or there, use your company expense account and feast away. As a matter of fact, we need to keep this one confidential as much as we can until we know what we’re dealing with. It’d be best for everyone if you wouldn’t mind working from home.”

Dana got to her feet. The chance to work at home for as long as this took, away from the glaring lights, constant mutter of other people—and Redmond’s maddening scratching—finally met her selling point. Even more than the money did.

“Okay. Have them set it up and give me the laptop. I’ll start Monday.”