Bitcoin Clowns, page 22
part #3 of Master Shanghai Series
“How do I get this stinking thing off my head?! It’s weighing on my earrings!” Paula said. “Jong I told you I could handle everything by myself. Why’d you have to barge into my life again?! Look what you’ve gotten us into?!”
The space reverberated with more of Paula’s angry slurs, intermingled with the heavy grunts of Axe and insults from the boyish tantrums of Jessie that did not sound age-appropriate at all, likely having learnt them from his mom.
“Okay, I’m muting them again,” Cao made an executive decision. “Let’s focus. You can’t go anywhere for the next thirteen hours anymore anyway.” He touched some buttons in the air and suddenly a computer screen that occupied the full size of the window of the spaceship blinked into life in front of my eyes. “Five million, Jong. We need only five million!”
A projected keyboard flashed into existence right under my paws. I logged into my Bitcoin Core IDE account and the Remix Ethereum IDE account, and started scouring through the code of the different crypto-wallet repositories, testing them with scripts when I spotted something that might just be it.
And boy oh boy. Staring at lines after lines of boring, dry code that I had no intention to break made me want to fall asleep.
Chapter 40: Tweet
Social media presence of a coin could tell one a lot about them, especially because most secondary sources of information were likely to be watered down or downright wrong, because of the highly sophisticated and complex nature of cryptocurrencies that came in large varieties. I was scanning Twitter for info when suddenly something caught my attention. It was a twitter announcement from the CEO John Delaware of one of the ICOs on Rx’s list called POSH.
Hello everyone, we are offering a bounty for anyone who can produce a unique bug that is able to: 1) Cause nodes to crash via plugins and API. 2) Send a contract into an infinite loop 3) Cause a contract to use large amount of memory 4) Crash nodes with a contract 5) Trigger unauthorized actions on accounts. Payment will require ID. $10K per unique qualifying bug decided at our sole discretion. This offer may be terminated at any time.[7]
The tweet was made only five days ago, with no new update afterward, only a bunch of losers complaining that the bounty of 10K was too low, but hey, 10K for me meant sincerity. That was way more than what the Rx Club would be paying us even when we fill Kushkin’s five million quota. And most importantly, this guy saved my life. Before reading this, I had some vague ideas of what I need to look for (I mean not everyone was constantly dreaming of ways of crashing cryptocurrencies. I was a total newbie on this!) but now the rules of the game had been spelt out for me. I had now so many more dimensions to look at the problem. And more importantly, the smart contracts for this coin were written in C++. C++! And C++ was notoriously prone to one kind of attack, the ‘Buffer Overflow Attack’.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t know the difference between ‘buffalo attack’ (animal was involved) and ‘buffer overflow attack’ (no animal was involved). What matter was, I knew exactly know what I needed to look for in their code. And after testing my theories with a bunch of scripts, I was able to figure out a way to upload a piece of code that allowed me to take over a node in their network, and whatever the hell I want finally. I could send myself five million or fifty million dollar worth of this coin if I like! It might be summarized by a few sentences but that was the result of eighty billion neurons coordinating, sending and deciphering hundreds of thousands of electrical signals effortlessly and selflessly towards the one goal of treasure hunting in my head.
Mission accomplished!
I threw my hands up instinctively in excitement. Cao the raccoon was stirred by my sudden movements and looked up from his own screen. “What? Did you find something?”
“No,” I lied and scratched my head. Flakes of dead skins fell like snow on my beautiful AR uniform. “But I’m close,” I said, to keep the raccoon happy.
All of a sudden I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder weighing my emotions down. “You’ve found it,” it was the voice of Da Ming. He did not sound angry or upset, in fact, he seemed cheerful and upbeat. “Try this,” he bent over (I couldn’t really see him through the glass but I could felt his presence) to type something on my keyboard and ran the new script. While I was happy to know that he thought I was dumb enough not to have noticed what I could do, I was absolutely boiling inside as I witness him break through the security net of POSH.
“We did it!” He gave me a hug. I felt my helmet banged against his muscular abs as my ears and nose got squished against the side of it. “Now Jong just needs to send out some fake smart contracts and write the coins to our address, and then sell them to convert them into Bitcoins or Ethers!”
“Really? That sounds simple enough. I like Bitcoins. Let’s keep everything in Bitcoins.” The raccoon was now standing on his chair, trying to take a better look at the code which was likely gibberish to him anyway, and he cheered. “Awesome guys! High five!!”
I saw him high-fived to the invisible Da Ming in the air in panic and adjusted my helmet with my trembling hands.
“Will we have five million?”
“More than enough I think. POSH raised 1 billion so far,” Da Ming looked up the info on the internet. “And people expect it to soar after the mainnet deploys. A lot of people will want to buy their coins off our hands.”
“Great! Now get it done!” I watched Cao jumped off the chair to make a call, likely reporting it to his boss Kushkin.
“Nice job,” Da Ming padded my back once more and walked off after Cao.
“Tssssp!” It was Paula, trying to get my attention by kicking the back of my chair and hissing at me. “Jong, did you find money online?”
“No.” Whatever anyone asked me, the answer would be no from now on. I needed to change my name to ‘Jong I-did-not-find-Bitcoins He’ if I get out of here alive, taking example from Vit[8].
“Be honest with me. I know you did. Everyone knows you did. The look on your face is just so obvious.” She sniggered. “Hey, Jong, listen to me. I say we send some money to our own accounts, you know? You don’t have to send everything into their account.”
I turned around and squinted at Paula, the lady Triple X, daughter of a big-time criminal and serial felon. Somehow I was not surprised to hear her make that suggestion.
“You have to pay yourself, too! Don’t forget the pain and suffering they are putting us through, plus you can use it as a fail-safe, in case they go back on their words about letting us go,” she said, trying to justify her greedy nature. Suddenly she kicked my chair again, “Stop ogling at me and get to it! They might come back real soon!”
“Okay! Fine!” I turned back around and held the sides of the keyboard tight in my hands. There was no choice. I must do what I have to do. Sometimes in life one just doesn’t have a choice.
My fingers sprang on the keyboards and produced a series of melancholic code. Every punch on the key felt like a note in Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique (Yes, the sad, pathetic song actually exists), tearing at my heartstring.
At the last moment, I hesitated, but Paula kicked me once more. I instantly felt the power of a mad bull on my back and my body was thrust forward so hard I hit my nose on the enter key of the keyboard. The corrupted smart contracts were deployed onto the POSH network and when the music of Beethoven ended in my head, I was sprawling on ‘dashboard’ of the spaceship, hugging my keyboard, completely, utterly defeated.
There was no turning back. I had officially become a cybercriminal.
Chapter 41: Kitties
I was there.
It was the world cup qualifier against Japan. Our coach asked for a time-out and I was called to the field at the 89th minute of the game to substitute a player number seven who was Zhang Yuning[9]. Everyone was clapping and chanting his name as I jogged into the field, trying to get eye contact with my teammates, but they were exhausted, and there was only a minute plus a few additional seconds on the clock. They had a 1-0, they didn’t really care if I went in or if the mascot went in and do a chicken dance to fill that last minute.
But then I saw my opportunity. I caught the ball from my teammate and ran it all the way to the other side of the field in front of the goalie, who hadn’t even realized what was happening. I kicked the ball and it flew in a beautiful arc forward, grazing the bleached blonde hair of the goalie who stretched out his arms and dived for the opposite direction of where the ball was going. It hit the net where it should be.
The crowd went mad for this! We were already winning, but apparently my extra goal got us enough points to directly qualify us for the World Cup without having to play another game!
My teammates ran towards me and embraced me as I was still standing there panting heavily and recovering from the run down the field. I spotted some familiar faces. Little Buddha, Brother Fei, Brother Chong, Brother Lui, Huskie, The Bus, Trainee Samuel...they carried me in their arms and cheered like madness as a massive amount of confetti rained down on our heads. I saw my face blown up across the big screens inside the stadium and I thought I caught myself getting emotional. This would be the first time China had ever qualified for the World Cup since 2002! A tear ran down the corner of my eyes as I thought about the arduous journey that my team and I had been through to get to this point.
Suddenly someone doused a bucket of iced water at me. Bearing my teeth in a stiff smile, I saw our coach bearing the opposite of a smile on his face holding the emptied bucket looking at me. “Quit dreaming!”
I was annoyed. Why couldn’t he just let us enjoy a moment of glory? I was almost certain that it wouldn’t happen a second time again in my lifetime.
“Wake up!” The coach slapped me squarely on the face.
Did I put the ball in the wrong goal or what? I began to doubt myself now. What did I do to deserve abuse like this if not something totally ridiculous?
He slapped me a second time on the other cheek. Indignant, I blinked in pain and was about to shoot my mouth off, when I realized that I was…I was staring directly into Kelvin’s face. He was wearing our soccer team Pudong Hero team jersey.
“Why the hell did you slap me twice for?” I shot up and grabbed him by the collar in rage.
“Whoa! Look at this ungrateful bastard!” Saying to no one in particular. We were alone somewhere I had never been. It seemed to happen a lot these days, and unfortunately without a hot naked girl next to me. “You were in a freaking coma and if it wasn’t thanks to me you would have crossed the bridge of Nai river already to the other side!”
I let go of him in silent exasperation. I couldn’t possibly tell him he had just ruined the dream of a billion Chinese people who wanted nothing more for their country but to qualify for the World Cup.
“The doctor said you’ve collapsed from exhaustion and might not wake up for a few days. You should really thank me, otherwise you’d have missed the breaking news!” He pointed at the television screen across the room.
On the screen, I saw an unbelievable drama being played out by a series of familiar faces — Rebecca Li and Teddy Wang were being handcuffed by the police at Bilious; a team of menacing financial crime police officers led by none other than the smug Officer Henry was ransacking our offices. Clips of the burnt interior of the server rooms flashed by, as a smaller screen on the left corner showed Lt. Wu speaking to the media about the operation. There was also a warrant out for Simon Li, who had apparently fled to America while in police custody at the hospital after learning that he had been charged with serious traffic violation causing injuries.
“What’s going on?!”
“Well, justice is being served, that is what’s going on.”
“No, be serious. What happened? And why am I here? Where’s Paula and Jessie? What about Axe? Did you see him?”
“They’re safe. You know what? Somebody dropped you bunch outside of your apartment in Pudong yesterday night. No word, no nothing. They just let you guys go. But then everyone was showing signs of mild poisoning. They were puking and having diarrhea, but you have it worse. You didn’t wake up at all. Marv didn’t know what to do, so she called me, and we took you to this place. — It’s a private clinic. It’s off the radar. The bad guys, whoever they are, won’t find you here. The doctor has given you the drip. Hopefully whatever bad stuff you have is now flushed out of your system.”
“Gosh,” I looked down at the IV needle in my vein of my hand and shuddered. I had always hated it. “They let me drank this coffee thing...” I tried to recall what happened. “They have these strange capsules that looked like Nespresso blisters. They are definitely spiked.”
“Damn, what else did you see?” Kelvin said in excitement. “What did you do? Was there a gunfight?”
“Maybe.” I teased him with ambiguity. “So where’s Marv? Is she alright?” I inquired, worried. Marv and I had been ‘occupying’ Paula’s apartment while she was gone, but now that she was back, I wondered what happened. Hopefully there weren’t any cat fight, because I would not want to miss it (just kidding, of course).
“Don’t worry, she in the pantry, eating lunch. She didn’t have anything all day.”
“Lunch? What day is today?”
“First of March.”
“First of March!” Another night had passed since the so-called Judgment Day. I had completely missed it.
The news now showed a haggard-looking Rebecca being lead into the back of the police car. The media followed her with their cameras through the wire mesh of the window. Unlike her usual poised self, she was tired and frazzled, as if a deer in the headlight.
A thick row of rolling text at the bottom caught my attention. It said, ‘Chief official of Norwegian Bilious Bank Shanghai subsidiary was arrested for exchanging hundreds of thousands of clients’ private data to an unidentified hacker group in return for lost cryptocurrency last week. Damages valued to be over 11 billion dollars. Norwegian headquarters denied to comment at this moment.’
“That’s not possible!” I shouted at the TV. Why would Rebecca do something like that? That couldn’t possibly be true. I ran to the side of the television holding the IV stand and switched through the channels one by one. There was no other big financial news apart from this one about Bilious. But how could this be? It was Rx Club’s Judgment Day yesterday. Supposedly there was an array of attacks on financial institutions around the world on and offline. Shouldn’t there be at least some news about them? Maybe traditional media hadn’t yet caught up with what was happening in the crypto space?
“Where’s my phone? Do you have my phone?”
“I only found a Huawei on you. It didn’t look like your normal phone.”
“That’s the right one. Give it to me!” I snatched my dad’s phone back from Kelvin and immediately went online to check for signs of Rx Club’s operations. But apart from the usual coin launches and never-ending debates about what the price changes of the night meant for the future of Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies, there was nothing special.
A theory formed in the back of my mind. It would have been terrible if that was true. Only the sickest criminal could have come up with something like that. And only your closest family could have snuck up on you like that unnoticed.
I checked my messages, and as expected, there was one from the same unknown number that was from the Rx Club.
“Congratulations on gaining permanent membership at the Rx Club!
Wait a second. I’m just kidding, Jong! The Rx Club doesn’t exist. Happy February 29th!
XOXO,
Alex Kushkin, the man who doesn’t exist.”
Happy February 29th…
Could you imagine how I felt at that moment? There were times when I really thought I had it all figured out, but now the big reveal came and I found myself not one step ahead of the criminal but two steps behind. It was an awful feeling, a direct assault on my very existence. For someone who prided himself for being the brainiest and smartest one among all the kids in the family, if not all kids in all of Shanghai’s families, I could not believe that I had actually been defeated by what I thought was just a lackey of an international hacker group.
Alex Kushkin existed, and he was none other than Cao himself. Technically the Rx Club existed too, but not of hundreds of people around the world, but just four Chinese. There was no permanent membership and I was not even a recruit. From the very beginning, Cao had eyes on luring me and distracting me from what was happening at Bilious. It did not help that Teddy and his new team were completely useless under Simon’s command. They were more worried about mining the new PissCoins than the security of the bank.
And the phishing website they were building was in fact made for our very own Bilious bank customers. Whatever I did for them that day on the other companies was only to further take my attention away from that. Why did I realize this sooner?!
I pounded the top of the TV desk in frustration. The accusation that we were selling data to the hackers was absurd and illogical. What happened, I finally realized, was that we had been phished.
Phishing scams were not unavoidable. If only Teddy or myself had been on duty properly the last couple of weeks, perhaps we could have the proper security net running to detect and catch any malware that was used to compromise our email accounts. With the usernames and passwords of our clients, Cao must have stolen copies of their data. That must be it! I had to explain everything to the financial crime unit.
“Lt. Wu, it’s me!” I called the lieutenant immediately. “I’ve fallen for a bait and switch. An actual, physical bait and switch. And I think I’ve committed a crime trying to appease the criminals but I’ll tell you more about it later. Rebecca is innocent…”
