Before losing remote connectivity with the ground uplink station and active oversight, Jorge calls an on-the-fly bonus action. Using a remote service phone number found on the system administrator’s laptop by one of Doug’s forensic dongles, a rapid sting operation is initiated. The remote system administers are presented with a phone-based service challenge masked as coming from the local director’s desk phone. The call originates from Dawn’s phone, to a lockout leased SBC. This uses a proxy which scrubs and replaces the originating information in the SIP invite message. It outbound calls the remote administrators via the compromised PBX of the warehouse.

Dawn puts the car to circle in auto-drive for the sting. She masquerades as the local International Widget Network Director, furiously angry over her destroyed data center. This requires the remote ‘black hat’ administrators to understand rapid fire Chinese cursing. As this is a language they don’t speak fluently, they route out to a criminal call center. They outsource the call to a multi-lingual call center agent, on contract to respond during their scams. Jorge records the call and tracks call routing.  But soon Dawn fails a predetermined challenge/response and the call center agent terminates the call.  Additional data leaks captured include the IP address of call center and root login of the ‘black hats’ network management cluster.

Doug remarks, “Plenty there for voice metrics identification. The FBI has a pretty complete database of unique voice fingerprints for all of these criminal call centers.  If we bring the FBI on board, they should be able to identify which call center these black hats use.”

Meanwhile, Ninan and then Kiko-Lyn have finished uploading their surveillance and captured data.  Doug responds, “Kiko-Lyn, this is significant data retrieval. How did you manage to do it and stay hidden?”

“Particle swarm optimization is a computationally efficient algorithm,” she responds. “It’s built into the dragonflies and applied autonomously by them to address DIL conditions and WSN issues such as optimal deployment, node localization, clustering, and data aggregation. When set to the power-saving functionality of NB-IoT/LPWAN, it allowed their batteries to last. With active physical camouflage and electronic spoofing as household devices, it allowed me to run a continuous surveillance network, on low power levels, for all of my captivity.  When we needed the bandwidth for the short duration of the hack, I reconfigured them to 5G LTE.

Rachael interjects, “Well and good, young lady.  But, Kiko-Lyn, you will give up the keys to Toby’s camera. It is a good feature. I will use it when he patrols. But I will control all access from now on.”

“Ninan, you have proven yourself and captured my enduring thanks.  If you can continue with direction from Jorge and Doug, I’d like you to stay on and cover getting Kiko-Lyn home. I’m opening an expense account to fund concluding this campaign. Draw on it as needed. Now, the three of you get out of there and go to ground. Kiko-Lyn, I’ll call your parents and cover for you this once; but only this once. No more independent adventures for you.”

At his operations center, Jorge does a recap. “We have turned up some breakthrough data and likely more will follow with continuing analysis. Ninan has supplied high res, 3D scan of the cabinet of curiosities. It includes an image of one of Rachael’s sensors in the display case with a return bill from a repair depo.  Rachael’s records show a new sensor was printed to replace it. While Jonathon’s use of untraceable Zcash blocked the U.S. authorities accounting forensics, this image specifically links Jonathon to the creation of a back door in the sensors. Since it was discovered while we were on a contracted kidnap rescue operation, it might be admissible in Geneva.”

Doug inputs, “Applying graph theory, network cluster analysis, and analytics, our researchers should get a handle on the individuals, communities, and timelines involved in this whole event.  We should see how everything fits together. In other words, we’ll find all the connections that Jonathon has with other players. Our algorithms can also create links among data points, do sorting, quantification, interpretation, and seek out missing information. We will need to apply it to an up to date ‘dark web map’. The FBI has the best ones available along with the biometric database on call center scammers.  So, to engage or not to engage them?”

 “I’ve got a lot to think about,” says Rachael.  “I must consider the risks to myself, my family, and now both of you.  I know this challenge stuff is your business, but I must live with any tragic consequence.  Let me take some time to harden our lives and get back to you.”

Jorge, “Okay, but hurry. This data is only good for a short time.  They will be covering their trail. They have already shown that ‘escalating offence’ is their preferred defensive strategy.”