Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) (39 page)

Brody abruptly stood up from his desk, clenched his fists and stomped away from his computer. He paced three circuits of his living room before throwing himself onto the leather sofa and burying his face in the cushion, which muffled his bellowed groan of despair.

“Did you say something?” asked a cheerful Leroy, leaning his head out of the kitchen. Leroy held a half-full glass of red wine in his hand and was wearing an apron displaying the image of a white, muscly naked man sporting a massive, erect penis. Against a soundtrack of loud drum and bass blasting from the kitchen speakers, he and Danny were concocting a romantic meal for themselves to dine in on later. They had already set the table for two in the seldom-used dining room, lighting candles and laying down enough cutlery for four courses.

“No,” said Brody, the pillow failing to stifle his exasperation.

“What’s wrong, mate? This one got you beat?”

“Go away, Leroy.” At that very moment, Brody wanted his apartment back to himself. He wanted peace and quiet. Room to think. To strategise. 

“Uh, excuse me,” retorted Leroy. “But aren’t you the one who should be
going away
? You do remember offering us the flat to ourselves for the night to celebrate our fifth anniversary, don’t you? You promised you’d be missing in action tonight.”

“Did I?” But Brody knew full well that he’d offered them this as an anniversary present to them both. He’d just forgotten all about it in the midst of the SWY hackathon.

“You know you did, mate.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I do remember,” he said, sitting upright.

“Why don’t you work some more magic on that hot police lady tonight?”

Brody glared at his best friend. Leroy retreated into the kitchen.

A beep sounded from Brody’s tablet PC. He sat back in his chair. It was a message from Doc_Doom inviting him to a private chat room for a catch up. Brody clicked on the link.

Doc_Doom:
Hate to state the obvious, but you’re running out of time. You making progress, Fingal?

Fingal:
Hi Doc. I thought I was, but it turns out my whole strategy was flawed.

Doc_Doom:
Anything I can do?

Brody thought for a moment. He hadn’t accepted anyone’s offer of help since he was a kid. Everything he’d ever done in his life, online or in real life, he’d done on his own. But then he’d never failed to overcome an obstacle before. He found himself not quite accepting, but going a step further than he’d ever expected.

Fingal:
Actually, I’d appreciate walking you through things so far. Perhaps another perspective will help.

Doc_Doom:
Well, if I can help, it would be a real pleasure, especially for someone of your ilk.

Fingal:
Enough with the flattery.

Doc_Doom:
LOL. Okay, where shall we start?

Fingal:
Right here goes. As we discussed last night, the site is exceptionally well defended. No frontal assault I can come up with gains any traction and I can’t find any zero-day exploits on the deep web that will work with the site’s configuration . . .

Brody added the ellipses and pressed enter as a form of online chat pause, just in case Doc_Doom wanted to jump in with anything. He did.

Doc_Doom:
Yeah, you mentioned you’d found a back door.

Fingal:
Ah. Yes, I did, didn’t I? Well, turns out there is a back door, but I was looking for it in the wrong place.

Doc_Doom:
?

Fingal:
From what I can tell, the webcams are all physically located in the UK. My back door was to find one of these webcam locations and track the route that the webcam feeds take back into the SWY site, in the hope it was less well defended.

Doc_Doom:
Wouldn’t that be hard to do from over there in Australia ;-)

They were back to that old chestnut: Doc_Doom trying to get Brody to admit he was physically in the UK. He could bluff as usual. Or should he consider trying the truth for a change? But trusting someone in cyberspace whom you’ve never met in person was a difficult step to take. Brody recalled his argument with Leroy just two days ago about the quality of online friendships over real world ones. Although Brody had defended his cyber-friendships strongly, in the face of making a leap of faith, he did accept that Leroy had a point. Without being able to physically look someone in the eye, trust was much harder to achieve online. You really did have no idea who was on the keyboard at the other end of the chat. He and Doc_Doom had been online friends for three years now. Maybe it was finally time for him to take another step and break his own rules. 

He hesitated before typing.

Fingal:
Okay, okay. I’m trusting you here, Doc. I can trust you, can’t I?

Doc_Doom:
Of course Fingal. I would have thought you’d have figured that out by now.

Fingal:
Fine. And yes, you’ve been right all along. I am in the UK, not Oz. 

Doc_Doom:
I knew we were both English.

Fingal:
I didn’t say I was bloody English! 

Doc_Doom:
LOL

Well, it was done now. He had crossed a line he never thought he would. And, surprisingly, it actually felt good.

He decided to get them back on track.

Fingal:
So I tracked down one of the webcam locations to an address in the real world . . .

Doc_Doom:
Blimey. That’s impressive. How’d you do that if you couldn’t hack into the site?

Fingal:
Trade secret :-)

Doc_Doom:
Okay, smart arse! Did you go there?

Fingal:
Yes. Figured out the webcams all send their video streams wirelessly to a network video recorder PC on the same local wireless network. The PC is accessed by a website called HomeWebCam.com. The owners of these webcams log into it remotely to view their webcam feeds.

Doc_Doom:
Sounds logical. Let me see . . . so you thought SWY was also logging into the same network video PC and stealing a copy of the webcam streams and then publishing them without the knowledge of the owners?

Brody was impressed at how rapidly Doc_Doom figured that out.

Fingal:
You got it in one. But . . . 

Doc_Doom:
SWY isn’t getting the feeds this way?

Fingal:
Yup.

Doc_Doom:
How can you be sure?

Fingal:
I hacked into the concentrator PC itself and looked at every packet going in and out of its network interface.

Doc_Doom:
Okay, that’ll do it! Hmm, that only leaves one other explanation: SWY must be getting its video feeds directly from HomeWebCam.

Fingal:
Agreed, it’s the only other source.

Doc_Doom:
Do you think HWC is in on this?

Fingal:
Not sure. I’ve been searching for a link between the two sites for the last few hours. Short of hacking in, which I’m pretty sure I could do given a day or so, all I’ve found out so far is that HWC is hosted in Delaware in the USA and SWY is hosted somewhere in Russia. 

Doc_Doom:
That doesn’t mean they’re not run by the same people behind the scenes. If I’d set up an illegal site like SWY, I’d host it in Eastern Europe.

Fingal:
Agreed. But HWC seems to be completely above board. It’s got helpdesk phone numbers, the lot.
Whois
records even point to the same people listed on the about pages on their website.

Doc_Doom:
Have you talked to them?

Fingal:
You mean phone their helpdesk and say, “Hi, just wondered if you realised some of your webcam feeds are being rebroadcast on a dodgy website called SecretlyWatchingYou?”

Doc_Doom:
I see your point. But anyway, what if you phoned the guys at the top? I’m looking at their website now. Their CTO is called Dwight Chambers. Give me a minute and I’ll track down his mobile number for you.

Fingal:
How’re you doing that?

Doc_Doom:
Trade secret ;-)

Fingal:
Touché!

Brody really would be impressed if Doc_Doom could pull that off. Brody had already done a preliminary background check of the HWC owners, including Dwight Chambers, the Chief Technology Officer. The best he’d managed to get so far was his email address. However, Brody hadn’t got serious yet. 

Brody’s laptop beeped with another instant message. It was from Doc_Doom. He shook his head in disbelief. It contained an American mobile phone number for Dwight Chambers followed by a smiley face. How the hell had Doc_Doom done that, and in less than a minute? It reminded Brody that perhaps he didn’t know every trick in the book. Brody thanked him.

Brody checked his watch. It would be morning in the USA. He inserted an unused pay-as-you-go SIM into his phone and dialled the number. 

The phone was answered immediately.

“Dwight here.”

Brody thought swiftly. “Hello Mr Chambers. This is DCI Frank Burnside with the Met Police in London.” Brody had automatically recalled the name of a well-known character from an old police British TV series called
The Bill
.

“Yes?”

“We’re investigating a site called SecretlyWatchingYou.com. Have you heard of it?”

“Nope.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” Suspicion oozed over the line.

“Mr Chambers, do you offer any content sharing services to partners for video feeds on your HomeWebCam site.”

“Of course not. Our customers expect a fully secure and private service. Why on earth would we share their content? It would completely ruin our credibility.”

“Well sir, that may be so. But we have reason to believe that video feeds from your webcam sites are being rebroadcast on their site.”

“That’s impossible! What’s the site again?”

“SecretlyWatchingYou.com.” Brody could hear the CTO type on his keyboard. Brody assumed he was online, looking at the SWY site.

“I see it.” There was a pause while Chambers looked around and whistled. “What a strange site. Is it legal?”

“No. It’s breaking every invasion of privacy law here in the UK.”

“So you think that some of these video streams are sourced from HWC cameras?” Brody liked that Chambers also shortened his own site’s name for convenience.

“Exactly.”

“Well, theoretically speaking, the only way that could be achieved is if this SecretlyWatchingYou site was also accessing the HWC server based in the same location as the webcams, forcing the PC to send its feeds to two places.”

“We’ve checked that, Mr Chambers. It isn’t, yet the feeds are on both sites.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Can I ask you to check your network and firewall logs, please?”

“You think this site is somehow getting its feeds from us? That’s ludicrous!”

“We’re just trying to eliminate all possibilities, sir.”

“Fine. I’ll check it out, but it will take a while. Can I get back to you?”

“That would be great. Can you ring me on this number? Look for any activity to the IP addresses for SecretlyWatchingYou. Do you want me to give them to you?”

“Mr Burnside, I’m the CTO of a publicly listed company. I think I can handle looking up an IP address.”

Chambers put the phone down.

Before he had time to bask in his own glory for his intuitive improvisation, Brody’s phone rang. He picked it up, thinking Dwight Chambers had been far too quick, but it was silent. Then he realised it was his other phone ringing.

He saw Jenny Price’s name on the cheap handset’s screen and answered it without hesitation.

“Brody, I think you’re right about the site being used by the killer to stalk his victims,” she stated.

“How come? You didn’t seem that convinced earlier.”

“Yeah, well that was before I discovered that the first victim I told you about had a webcam in her bedroom that she didn’t know about.”

Brody thought for a second. That would mean a second location. This was perfect. If he was able to visit this second location, he could determine if it was set up the same as the Saxton household and whether its video streams were also being sent to HWC.
And
SWY. 

“Okay, how can I help?”

“Can you come over to Charlton? Now?”

“Sure.” Brody smiled to himself. “What’s the address?”

A few minutes later, Brody grabbed his jacket and shouted out to Leroy and Danny that he was off out.

“Really?” asked Leroy, poking his head out again. Seeing Brody grab his jacket and car keys, he said, “Aw thanks, Brody. You’re a real mate. You really are.”

* * *

You can’t believe how smart you are. Your new plan is just perfect. You’ve executed it to precision. The wheels are all set in motion.

This time you’re scheduling it for the morning, not after work. When the building will be full of people and it will all be going on right under their noses. Just the thought of it makes it even more exciting. It will be like having a workplace romance. Albeit a very brief one. You’ve always wanted one of those.