Daniel Ganninger - Icarus Investigations 01 - Flapjack by Daniel Ganninger Read Free Book Online Page B

It would be a lucky break for us, but knowing human nature we knew Dart would have to look.
    We disguised the email as a consultant to Genesis named Charles Tanqueray and sent it late in the day.  Hopefully Dart’s knowledge of 19th century liquor distillers was poor, or he didn’t like gin.  Mr. Tanqueray was of course the namesake for Tanqueray gin and a man who came from three generations of clergymen.  He didn’t go the religious route, however, and began to distill gin in 1830, shipping it to the colonies of the British Empire where people began to develop a taste for Tanqueray and tonic.  Despite this bit of historical information the email read as this:
     
    To: Dart McLeod, Project Engineer
    Subject: Sensitive and Confidential, Problems with Adamanthea
    Product
     
    My team has identified and modified key design flaws in the original
    design of the Adamanthea prototype product that would have
    increase d production costs dramatically and not allowed ample
    physical computing space for safe and effective operation of the
    product.  We have made modifications to the product’s internal
    design .  The updated schematics have been included as an attachment
    to this email.  These modifications will reduce production costs by 50
    to 75 percent of the original estimates.
    You are to immediately implement these new design changes into
    development by order of the Genesis CEO Frances Drake.  This
    information is highly
    sensitive.  Please review these plans in the attachment to this email
    ASAP.  Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.
     
    Sincerely,
    Charles Tanqueray, Sinclair Consulting Associates 
     
    The email was so completely far from the truth that we were bordering on a Nigerian money email scam.  We hoped we hadn’t written too much fiction.  If our calculations were correct, and they seldom were, Dart would open the attachment and unknowingly install the keylogger program while looking at a mess of useless computer schematics.  Alex insured us it couldn’t be picked up by any of the spyware or anti-virus programs Genesis was running.
    We now waited to s ee if Dart would take the bait and access his Genesis account after reading our email.  This is where we would get his username and password into the Genesis system.  If Galveston’s knowledge of human behavior was correct, we would soon have our answer.
    We began to panic as they hour stretched past 5 P.M.  A full day could be lost, or suspicion could be raised , if Dart didn’t open the email attachment.  It was time we didn’t have. 
    Finally we saw words cross the screen in front of Alex’s computer as the keylogging program sent us Dart’s keyboard inputs.  We knew Dart had read the message and almost simultaneously opened the attachment placed in the email.
    “ Naughty, naughty.  You should never open email attachments that are fishy,” Alex said.   
    We had now added another broken law to our books, computer fraud.  Dart accessed the email late enough in the day that he wouldn’t be able confirm its authenticity until the next day.  If he had accessed it only a few hours earlier and did some investigating then we would have been sunk.  Our timing couldn’t have been better.
    It was as if we had strings attached to Dart’s arms and legs.   He rapidly sent off a reply to our email saying there was nothing in the attachment and questioning our role in the product.  He wasn’t going to get a reply.  We still needed Dart to want to check the authenticity of our fake schematics with the real plans.  Again, our puppet didn’t fail to disappoint.
    Dart immediately logged into the Genesis system and meticulously keyed in his username and password for entry into the system.  We all wrote the keystrokes down in unison, giddy at the find.   He must have pulled up the plans for Adamanthea on his computer and looked them over and been thoroughly confused.  Now we had to get into Genesis that night.

-Chapter