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“Why are you putting your coat on?” Greg asked while peering over the cube wall. Marty slid his arm into his jacket and sighed. His small surge of excitement deflated a bit as now he had to enter into the inevitable argument with his coworker. “I need to go see Carl.” “Carl? Really?” “Yes. Carl. But don’t ask to go along. You know you freak him out.” Marty replied. “I do NOT freak him out. Let me look at my schedule. I think I am free.” Greg spun around to his computer and clicked into his well-organized yet overly committed Outlook calendar. Marty closed his eyes and started his small ‘please have some meeting that fosters your ambitions, gets you out of my hair and takes care of some annoying administrative issue” prayer. “OOoooo.” Greg’s voice descended in disappointment. “I have that meeting with the vendor management team. I wonder if I can have them move it…” Greg stood to see Marty’s back; Marty’s legs furiously pumping and propelling him down the aisle. “That’s a shame, Greg. Maybe next time.” Marty called back over his shoulder as he rounded the corner. A few passer-bys eyed Marty in his jacket. The sun warmed him as he followed the wall of windows towards the mini-data center in the middle of the building. The weather outside didn’t warrant a slight sweater much less a jacket but Marty knew better. He paused before a set of nondescript double doors guarded by a single badge reader and the darkened globe of a CCTV camera innocuously positioned in the ceiling. A blast of chill hit Marty in the face as he opened the door. He always relished that first startling flash of super cooled air. As he stepped into the data center, rack after rack of glorious gleaming servers welcomed him. The blinking lights. The hollow sound of his footsteps on the raised floor. The polished white tiles and walls. The expertly coiled and intertwined cables above. Marty paused and took it all in. It was like coming home. He inspected the brightly colored bundle of Ethernet cables trundled above the racks of servers. Not bad, he thought. Whoever they have running these cables these days has skills. He quickly ducked behind one server rack, eyed the cables running down the back and fingered the little labels attached to each cable. Efficient, neat…Yep, skills indeed. For a moment he felt the pang of excitement he had when he used to run these cables. Under the watchful eyes of Carl, a young Marty once clambered beneath the floor, skittered on ladders, meticulously typed labels and otherwise flourished in the euphoric world of the data center. Marty wound his way towards the back of the large spacious room. He pretended he was Luke Skywalker weaving through the swamps of Degobah as he ducked under a string of cables hanging loosely from the ceiling. Marty arrived at a door in the very rear of the data center hidden behind a row of storage arrays and ancient racks of mainframe tapes. He rapped lightly with his knuckles. A muffled “Come in” replied. ****** The Hunter stood over the wizened old man sitting on the floor hunkering amidst a pile of papers. The man’s wrinkled hands shifted paper against paper, sorting, re-sorting, arranging and rearranging. In the quiet dusk of the room, lit only with an antiquated lamp swinging from the ceiling, the dust swirled and danced as the old man grunted. “For goodness sake, how can you work in such conditions?” The Hunter exclaimed. He marched to the window and with a flip of his wrist released the shade. Bedazzling light poured into the room, nearly blinding the old man who emitted a growl of displeasure. “There.” The Hunter pronounced. “Now, I can see what you are up to.” The Mentor looked up at his protégé with eyes gleaming. His pupils quickly adjusted and the clear blue irises contrasted sharply with the large, bushy grey eyebrows. “I have been up to everything…and nothing, you impetuous imp. These messages are leading me nowhere.” The papers the Mentor had been scrutinizing crumpled in his fists. He flung a few of them at the Hunter. They skittered to a stop at his boots. The papers were the copies of messages the Hunter had been collecting as they kept surveillance on the mysterious men discovered skulking about the Kingdom. The Mentor had meticulously cataloged each message, taken each apart bit by bit. The result was a pile of papers and no answers. “Nothing?” The Mentor stood up gingerly and then with the grace of a dancer pranced over to a wall. As old as he was, the Mentor still had control of many facilities. It was his patience that had vanished in the many years in the service of the Wizard and his temper had sharpened to a deadly edge. The Mentor though was still the most knowledgeable person in the Kingdom when it came to riddles, puzzles, conundrums and any other befuddling thing. He pointed at the many strips of paper hanging on the wall. Each strip had a series of numbers. “I have broken down every message that you gave me. Studied every octet of numbers. I find some common strings but it is all gibberish.” The Mentor then paraded through and over more paper strewn on the floor to a wall of massive books. “In addition, I have analyzed every string of numbers against all of the codes I have previously broken. All to reveal – NOTHING!” He snorted and kicked a sizeable book lying on the floor. It zoomed across the rough planks and slammed against the wall. “Interesting. So this is something you have never seen before and you can’t find any real connection between messages. What kind of code do you think it is then?” “I don’t know yet. I still have some ideas to work through.” The old man’s tirade quickly subsided and he sat down on an old chair in front of the massive bookshelf. He picked up a large, smoldering pipe and puffed mightily. A gigantic ring of smoke escaped from his mouth. “How did these men get into the Kingdom?” The Mentor asked quietly. “That might tell us at least some more information. I don’t know if it will help with these messages but it would be good to see where they came from.” “I haven’t interrogated them yet. I was hoping you might have some answers or information I can leverage when I spoke with them. They are biding their time in the company of our illustrious King’s Guard. I am sure they are not enjoying their time in the accommodations.” “Well, you know as well as I do, that according to the King’s rules, they can’t be held long. We have to move fast to get some answers. I suggest you pay a visit to the Gate Keeper.” The Hunter sighed. “Yes, I supposed I was going to have to do that.” “Look, son”, the Mentor pointed at the Hunter with the mouthpiece of his pipe, “You know as well as I do that she knows what she is doing. You might not get along – and I have a pretty good idea why – but you need to put your big boy pants on and go see her.” Come back on Tuesday for the next episode! The post E2: The Maestro’s Score – Opening Salvo appeared first on Speaking of Security - The RSA Blog and Podcast. |
