💾 Archived View for clemat.is › saccophore › library › shorts › defcon › 29 › The_Indomitable_Signal… captured on 2022-06-04 at 01:04:46.
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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Submission to the DEF CON 29 Short Story Writing Contest: https://forum.defcon.org/node/237748 title: The Indomitable Signal author: Panda It was challenging for him to contain the excitement of going to DEF CON. His dimly lit room partially brightened by all the RGBs coming from the keyboard, mouse and liquid-cooled CPU passively mining the crypto. Bee Gees were singing “Stayin’ Alive” on his levitating neon blue speakers as he hummed his way to the cupboard to grab his hoodie and jeans. Juggling between packing his bags and the imagination of all the things he was going to do in Vegas, he almost forgot the essentials - deodorant and his HackRF One. Once he felt the bags were satisfyingly stuffed, he went back to the system to notify IRC about his arrival time and plans to catch up. His mind already forming the words he was going to type. Except the IRC didn’t load. He quickly glanced at his router - all the 5 status LEDs blinking green as they should, it wasn’t the ISP this time. He hit the WinKey+R. Instinctively refreshing again and again. No change. The IRC room had simply vanished. He froze for a moment, trying to make sense of it. The puzzling thought process was going out of control. IRC rooms formed and closed every month randomly based on current affairs but this one room with 3 close friends never went down. And now there being no trace of it, it started spiralling down to questioning his sanity. Because of the inherent risks and need for anonymity, they never connected outside of the IRC. Most they knew about each other were the initials of their names - which is how they picked their pseudo names. The pandemic had unleashed an unfathomable amount of uncertainty and pain that year. And with his anxiety falling to a new low every week, Bastet forced him to seek therapy. He couldn’t answer the question when his therapist asked what finally encouraged him to seek help. It wasn’t his ability to look after himself, it was Bastet caring for him. But anything that went on IRC was never to be disclosed in real life. It held way too many sensitive threads, way too many secrets to put everyone in danger in an opaque world with a trust deficit. And now with absolutely no trace of its existence, he wondered if at all it was real or just his caffeine overdose playing with his insomnia. He could sense the migraine slowly creeping in again. Suddenly his watch vibrated to bring him out of that trance to remind him it was about time to leave for the airport. ——— [A few months ago] It all started from the Incognito movement run by an army of hacktivists running DDOS attacks from their basement. They were able to coordinate massive traffic on the servers, more than the servers could handle and crashed them within 15 minutes. He sat at the table, clicking the keyboard through most hours in the day. He liked to think of it as him being “wired-in”. Much of his daytime was spent hunting bugs for bounty while nights were the thrill of being virtuous, upholding hacker ethos to build resistance against tyrannical regimes. What started as a passion gained a new layer of meaning for him when he got into hacktivism. All of them joined together not by identities but by shared motif and principles. So it was unsurprising for the IRC rooms to eventually turn into a virtual cult with pseudo identities. In the never-ending changes of IRC, its subjects, and users, the only thing that remained constant was his 3 close friends whom he met online. “Anyone coming to DC Vegas this year?”, he asked in the private IRC chat. Apis: probably not. chances are slim Khepri: nope, too far Apis was the master of recon while Khepri was a leet in crafting malware for the oppressive government sites. Apis was motivated by the cult status they were making while Khepri did everything just for the 'lulz'. He sighed from the lethargy accumulating inside him since the time he went total AFK, which was a longer time than he could recall. But the only person he was impatiently hoping to hear from was Bastet. His closest aide in the digital world. It wasn’t uncommon for them to find themselves on the same side during intense socio-political IRC debates. Among all the friends he made through his anonymous hacktivism, these 3 seemed to stay in touch better than the rest. He glanced at the clock on the top right corner of the screen. 12:49 AM. Bastet would usually show up at 1. He learned a little more about her every day as they talked more and grew closer. With friendship came sharing deeper parts of each other. In a way, breaching their own self-imposed IRC rules by sharing more of their personal, vulnerable side. But then the year was turning unendurable and loneliness was eating him alive like termites carving the furniture from inside. He went to the kitchen to grab his late-night protein bar and refilled his peach coloured coffee mug. IRC never had a break from sociopolitical debates. But all of his attention was occupied by Bastet. And with her reply, he was secretly joyed. Bastet: I am coming Finally, there was an occasion to meet her IRL. Despite never actually having met her, she became his only close companion. His only escapism from the existential misery. ——— He landed in his hotel room the night before DEF CON. After throwing his bags on the bed, he casually switched on the TV to fill the silence as he headed to the washroom. News flashed on the 32-inch screen. “Breaking: Resistance grows to new extreme yesterday in the middle east…..hacker group Osiris said to be behind restoring communications during ongoing protests" “General Muzaffar has ordered probes into the information leaks” His heart skipped a beat. He instantly came out of the washroom, to make sure what he heard was right. Part of him wanted to draw the uncanny relevance, but then knowing Bastet was probably at risk wasn’t a helpful thought either. His mind was going haywire with unimaginable threats coming their way and equally diverse were their outcomes. He could feel his pounding heart synchronizing rapidly with all the news that the TV was dispensing one after another. He stood frozen, unable to process the information and unable to comprehend its consequences. It felt like the calm before the storm. It wasn’t the first time he felt helpless, but this time it felt like his brain was going through the Blue Screen Of Death. ——— In the midst of all surrealness, it was relieving that the conference enforced strict rules on wearing masks and social distancing. Enough reasons for him to put on his hoodie and oversized n95 mask in an attempt to cover half the face. After picking his badge in the conference, he was on his random stroll down the convention centre. Running his eyes through one village after another and all the talks and activities ongoing. As enticing as the CTFs were, he wanted to just tiptoe through the conference. Occasionally sitting in for some talks that sounded interesting. Every face seemed to tell a unique story. The thought of Bastet likely being here, maybe one of them in this conference, was intriguing. As previously observed in DEF CON’s badges, it encouraged attendees to socialise and explore more. This year’s badge was no exception to that as it came preloaded with bewildering puzzles and a unique data exchange mechanism that shared contact cards between the badges. For the first day, he spent his time only wandering around observing minute details and people. He returned to the hotel, making his coffee from the machine. His cup reflecting the LEDs on the badge blinking in a rhythmic fashion. Lost in his thoughts sipping on coffee, until he recalled from the welcome note that badges reflected differently depending on what activities the attendee did. It was quite strange of the badge to blink any way because he didn’t tag it with anyone. The closest human contact he had was accidental when a curly-haired girl in a teal shirt bumped into him. Between all the apologies beneath the mask, all he could see of her face was neatly semi-circular eyebrows and her momentary eye contact. He plugged the badge into his system. And to his surprise, it showed one unnamed contact card, though it seemed to show some random gibberish of data in details. He wondered if it was part of the badge puzzle. Sleep was not going to be any companion for this night either so he started analysing the hex dump. It seemed to hold an encrypted string but needed a key to decrypt it. He tried to look for clues on the badge hacking server. But there was no mention of such a challenge. Once he was somewhat convinced it had no reason to be there apart from being a signal to him, he got his guessing game on for the decryption key. After running through the entire “rockyou” list, he started trying the user ID of every person he talked to on IRC. For inexplicable reasons, his IRC rooms always seemed to draw inspiration from ancient Egyptian cultural references. And so he started brute-forcing all the possible keywords he could derive from there. For a long time, nothing seemed to work and it was turning into a futile exercise. Maybe the data was corrupted? Maybe the badge had some coding error during manufacturing? Maybe it was just a coincidence. Pacing nervously in his room to and fro, he was trying his best to recall all the random details of his conversations on IRC and the girl he bumped into. And when nothing came up, he stared from his hotel window. Lost in perpetual contemplation, he gazed at a fleet of middle eastern airlines parked at the airport due to travel bans. Their olive green body featuring a falcon logo on the fin. And then it hit him. The answer was hiding in plain sight all along. As he worked his fingers through the keyboard and decrypted the string, he whispered to himself “of course” with a smile. The string seemed to hold some numbers in binary apart from the letters N and E. ——— Horus was Osiris’s son. When Osiris was killed, his wife Isis retrieved all the dismembered body parts of her murdered husband to conceive Horus. IRC room, after all, was not a facet of his imagination. After General Muzaffar ordered probes into the information leaks, Bastet immediately had to wipe out her entire system and drill holes in her hard disk to leave no traces behind. She had been helping the peaceful protestors deal with frequent internet shutdowns. And with General’s men on hunt, the group had to vanish like dust in the air. After her instant reflexes clearing off the last byte of data, she sat down on her bed flummoxed with a question. When does the trail we follow in the desert suddenly disappear with a gust of wind? How do you cross the unbounded darkness when bridges crumble against the storm? She was always enthusiastic about bringing out the rebel in her. In her college days, she wrote an app to communicate via Bluetooth protocol, which became an instant hit among protestors during internet shutdowns. But there was seemingly no way to escape this obliterating comms blackout. General’s men were not giving up anytime soon, rumours were that they already were a part of some of the core groups on IRC for a couple of weeks. She felt the need to go AFK for at least the time being was substantial and there was no better occasion than DEF CON. This year’s badge provided a port to reprogram the micro-controller, allowing her to hack the badge and write her own custom script that exchanged her cryptic information only and only when the opposite badge shared the same contact name initials as his. Hiding beneath the encryption were the coordinates and time. All she had to do was gather patience on a secluded rooftop and hope the signal reaches. ——— The location was miles away from the downtown. He got down from the cab before the adjacent block. Enough to come off as just another passerby and not a visitor. Walking through all the dodgy lanes and worn out structures, he was keeping a keen eye on the surroundings and people passing by him. The map stopped at an abandoned building. The lights were entirely out. All the windows had were rusted edges of broken glass panels reflecting the neon lights from the opposite motel. As he entered the building, it didn’t take him long to notice the elevator being dead too. He sighed as he started stomping his feet and climbing the floors of the uninhabited building one by one. He never felt so intrigued in his life. All the decisions he made led to him being there, taking that chance. He could never restrain his insatiable curiosity to discover anything and everything that fascinated him. He told himself that he did not choose the signal, rather the signal chose him. As he reached the rooftop, he saw the girl gawking at him. It was hard to make out if she actually was surprised or smiling beneath the mask. “Couldn’t you fancy a cafe or something?”, he complained. “So the signal seems to have reached the right place” “They can’t stop the signal”