THE OFFICE

around these places, rather as their organic equivalents infest hospitals
with lax cleaning regimes.

But Renu took his security seriously and persuaded the Java Bean's
manager to install a special program on the café's systems called Deep
Freeze. This restored the hard disks to an earlier configuration, which
ensured that the network was no longer able to 'see' any malware it
might have downloaded during the day, thus rendering the bad stuff
ineffective and enhancing Renu's protection.

If the Java Bean was Renu's office space, then the filing cabinet that
contained the secrets of DarkMarket consisted of a tiny memory stick.
Renu usually kept this portable hard drive literally close to his heart.
When he arrived at his office, he would plug the memory stick into
one of the computer terminals and start working on DarkMarket.

Once logged in, Renu donned his pirate's mask to become JiLsi,
one of eight administrators that ran DarkMarket during the site's three-
year existence. Never more than four-strong at any one time, this team
was one of the most influential units on the global carding scene. This
most senior post did not bring them much in the way of extra revenue,
but it was a privileged position that generated considerable respect
among hackers and crackers. They also enjoyed access to great stores
of information and held the key to virtual life or death - the power to
exclude members for real or perceived transgressions.

There were two major drawbacks to attaining the exalted position
of administrator. First, it was very hard work, regularly involving fifteen
to seventeen hours of keyboard-hammering a day. There were no holi-
days for these people - they were expected to be on permanent call,
every day of the year. Master Splyntr, for example, always carried a
cellphone that alerted him when one of his fellow DarkMarketeers
needed him and he would respond whenever it rang. JiLsi complained
that he would log on at nine in the morning and would still be sat
there at ten in the evening. Much of the work was drudgery: monitoring
posts to check that the members were abiding by the forum's rules and
that they were posting messages in the right section. Much of the time
it was mere bureaucracy, mostly trivial and mind-numbing.

Second, the admin team was forever accessing the inner workings
of the criminal websites. The digital trail it left behind on the Web was
potentially much more visible than that identifying ordinary members,
making them the primary target for cybercops.