DARKMARKET

known for its work in the area of computer security. Outside of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Silicon Valley, Pittsburgh arose as a rare outpost of intense geekdom in the United States, with a specialist bent towards security issues.

The expertise of the CMU explains much about the new Pittsburgh, including the emergence in 1997 of the National Cyber Forensics Training Alliance, a not-for-profit organisation with support from the banks and various corporations, aimed at bringing together profes- sionals from academia, the private sector, law enforcement and intel- ligence to act in the face of growing network insecurity. And that is why Keith Mularski returned home soon after the millennium to work in the unassuming glass-fronted offices on 2000 Technology Drive.

As he stared out of one of those windows on the fourth floor, he was aware how he was almost single-handedly responsible for this entire FBI operation. He was working with a great team, but it was he who had persuaded his bosses, in the teeth of deep scepticism, to give him the go-ahead. It wasn’t only the reputation of the Feds and their budgetary concerns on the line – it was his job, for God’s sake.

Then he remembered what he was really good at: sales. Or, better still, social engineering.

When the news flashed around the criminal bulletin boards that DarkMarket belonged to the Feds, he calmed down, reminding himself that self-pity helped no one. He needed to launch a counter-attack immediately. He approached Grendel, perhaps the most mysterious DarkMarketeer of all. In real life, Grendel worked for an entirely legitimate high-end security company in Germany, but he also offered his services against payment to major cyber criminals. DarkMarket depended on his Virtual Private Network (VPN), which was an almost complete guarantee of anonymity – but beyond that, Grendel had also constructed four ‘shells’, software that can render users effectively invisible.

Grendel was able to produce the previous verifiable logins from the shells, none of which mentioned Pembrooke Associates anywhere. Mularski proudly boasted to all members of both CardersMarket and DarkMarket that this was his VPN service, and the only person to have come up with the Pembrooke Associates login was . . . Iceman. Using his sales techniques, the Nemesis Mularski was flipping the searchlight away from himself and shining it right into Iceman’s eyes.