Tracking the Sleeper Cells!

"Can you crack the password?" asked Joy.

"Well, give me a day of two and we will see!" replied Arjun.

Joy and Arjun were students of IIT Kharagpur and were roommates and were sitting in front of the terminal of the desktop in the lab. They had installed a virtual box in the desktop and installed a Kali Linux operating system within the virtual box, which was against the rules yet, they didn't care. They were accessing the terminal of another computer in another lab in the campus.

Joy Ghosh was a very sharp student. Joy had been assigned the task of gathering the necessary information and had innocuously developed a knack of shoulder surfing the passwords of the Professors. Arjun being the mastermind of this operation. Although, Arjun was the topper of the batch of 2005 Computer Science batch of IIT Kharagpur, he wanted the thrill to hack and retrieve data from the networks in the campus.

"A few more hops and I will be able to access Professor Prabitra Mukherjee's computer through the intranet!" said Arjun.

Joy asked, "Are you sure you will be able to crack it?"

"Let's see! A bit of permutations and combinations may work with little bit of information we already gathered through your ground work, my dear Watson! Professor Mukherjee has forgotten to install and securely configure the firewall in his machine I guess! So it won't be very hard either!" replied Arjun.

"Patience is the key is guess!" interjected Joy.

"The plan is to access the Professor's computer through the other computer in the other lab and which was being accessed through the intranet by the computer that we are using. However, care should be taken that we don't leave an audit trail of the notorious plan that we have hatched. Surely we will delete the virtual machine installed here in this computer!"

It didn't take them more than two hours of trying the various permutations and combinations of deciphering the full password. Once they we in, they were euphoric.

They quickly scanned and surfed through the folders of the Professor Mukherjee's desktop and then they decided to copy a certain file. The file was file which contained the resultant marks of the examination results of the students of their batch. They quickly copied the file and deleted the audit trail in the computers and formatted them forcefully and went out of the lab. They quickly took a printout from one of the cafes outside the campus and that night they pasted the results of the exam of the batches in the bulletin board of the students' hostel, when no one was around.

The next day ushered in huge embarrassment for the Professor Mukherjee, who didn't have a clue as to what to be done in this case. The Dean of the Studies called upon Professor Mukherjee and he was absolutely distort as to how it appeared in the Bulletin board. Then the "Whodunit?" game began.

It took around 15 days for the security team to have an idea of how it was done. By then the summer holidays had begun and the students were already gone back home. Asit Singh Rathore, Arjun's father who was a retired Colonel in the Army was sitting in the sofa, when the landline rang. Mr. Rathore answered the ringing phone to answer it only to find that the Dean of Studies saying "Mr. Rathore I want you to come with Arjun to the campus within two days. However, please don't tell Arjun about this. I have a job waiting for him. We need him for some duty for our nation."

Mr. Rathore was very happy and asked Arjun to pack his bags and then they quickly took a train to Kharagpur Junction and then headed for IIT Kharagpur campus in an auto-rickshaw. Arjun was getting tense when he landed in Kharagpur, since he was apprehensive that his misdeeds had been traced. 

However, he couldn't do anything and followed his father, to the Dean's office. On reaching there he found his roommate Joy and his father Mr. Ritwik Ghosh also there. Joy and Arjun's worst fears spread its nefarious tentacles and started tormenting them. They started to perspire, yet they didn't do anything odd. Then they were ushered in in a hall where, there were five gentlemen sitting across a table.

Arjun and Joy was asked to sit in front of the desk and their respective dads were asked to sit behind them. Arjun identified three of the gentlemen who were sitting in across the table. The Gentlemen in the middle was the Dean of Studies Dr. Amartya Hazra, to his left was Professor Mukherjee, and the Hostel warden of Azad Hall of Residence, Mr. Sambhu Pal. To the right of Dr. Hazra were two gentlemen whom neither Arjun nor Joy could identify.

Then spoke Dr. Hazra, "Well, Arjun surprised?"

Arjun kept mum and lowered his head, much to the surprise of his father Mr. Rathore.

"What about you Joy?"

Joy nervously looked towards Arjun.

Then Mr. Pal spoke, "Crime doesn't pay, everyone will be caught!"

Mr. Ghosh, appeared extremely surprised and interjected, "What have they done?"

Dr. Hazra softly spoke, "They have hacked out the results of the exams and pasted it in the bulletin board of the hostel, before the day they actually supposed to be announced, Mr. Ghosh! I must say they have the ingenuity to do the impossible. However, Professor Mukherjee would have lost his job due to this incident, had I not protected him. It has taken 15 days for these security guys to trace their misdeed!" and looked to his right side.

Then he continued, "So tell me Joy, who is the mastermind behind this? You or Arjun?"

 Arjun softly raised his hand and admitted, "I did the hacking, Sir!"

"Atleast, he has the courage to admit this!" said Professor Mukherjee.

Then one of the gentlemen sitting at the right side of Dr. Hazra spoke, "You were almost untraceable except for the printout you have taken from the café! The café owner had identified you guys and then reported this, since you had deleted the audit trail and logs from the computers and formatted them! How did you do it? "

Joy started weeping by then. Arjun had hung his head downwards.

"What to do with you guys then?" asked Dr. Hazra.

"Bloody hell, you have become a criminal!" shouted Mr. Ghosh.

Then he was so perturbed that he went and slapped his son, instinctively.

Dr. Hazra interjected, "Well please refrain from slapping him, Mr. Ghosh! He is an almost an adult now, there is no use using violence here in the campus even if he happens to be your only son!"

Mr. Ghosh angrily replied, "All my life's efforts have gone down the drain. I have a son with a criminal bent of mind! You Professors will never understand! "

Joy had pleaded, "Please don't throw us out, Professor Mukherjee!"

Then Professor Mukherjee did what was seemingly unimaginable and in an unfazed voice replied, "Gentlemen, I am actually proud of these two guys. They have been able to hoodwink a Cryptography teaching Professor like me and has stolen my password and has taken a file out of my computer! This is the first of its kind in the Institute. We would like to know how you managed to do so! I am going to protect these guys, even if I lose my job. They are the actual genius' of this lot!"

This simple observation overwhelmed the students and left the parents confused. The students then repented and said, "We didn't want to harm anyone, it is nothing personal, it was just a challenge for fun!"

"So you guys hack for fun! We need to install CCTV camera in a labs ASAP!" said Dr. Hazra.

"Yes!", replied their warden Mr. Pal.

Then Arjun replied, "Sir I had used a virtual box and installed a Kali Linux and used to hack the systems. Joy used to shoulder surf and get the password of the Laboratory assistants to get the password for the networks and then we used to use our brains to try out permutations and combinations of the same and actually hack the systems."

"Where did you learn hacking my son?"

"Well, self-study regarding cross side scripting, use of network sniffers and some tutorials on the hacking tools and operating systems to use for hacking, actually helped me a bit."

Then the gentleman to the extreme right of Dr. Hazra spoke.

He said, "It is good that you have done so, now we want your services for something more fruitful?"

"Like what?" replied Arjun.

"Well, we want you to be ethical hackers by the way! We need to have your services for the national cause."

Now Mr. Ritwik Ghosh and Mr. Rathore were both surprised.

"On graduation we would like you two guys to work for the RAW!"

"You mean the Research and Analysis Wing!" uttered Joy.

"Yes!"

RAW, being the Research and Analysis Wing, the foreign intelligence wing of the Government of India. However, when national duty calls, patriots like Arjun have to answer them at whatever cost. Arjun would have joined Google but his patriotism took the upper hand and he joined RAW along with his friend Joy Ghosh.

This incident was brought to the notice of all the Indian intelligence agencies, including the two senior officials of the RAW. The Cyber Security cell of the Indian intelligence agency had approached Arjun and Joy and had asked for their services. Although they were reprimanded very much at first for what they had done, however their ingenuity was appreciated very much later.

Dr. Hemanta Shukla, the Director of RAW saw that, Arjun and Joy received special care. Soon Arjun and Joy quickly took their assignments in a like a ducks looking for water. Here, Arjun and Joy learnt Steganography and image processing at the labs.

 Steganography is the art of hiding data within data. Steganography is an encryption technique that can be used along with cryptography as an extra-secure method in which to protect data. Steganography techniques can be applied to images, texts, a video file or an audio file. They can be used to hide secret messages and pass them as video or audio file through the internet file sharing systems and can be used to later decrypt them. This is a major distinction between this method and the other methods of covert exchange of information because, for example, in cryptography, the individuals notice the information by seeing the coded information but they will not be able to comprehend the information. However, in steganography, the existence of the information in the sources will not be noticed at all to the naked eye or notice able audibly in music files. Steganography is being used by the terrorists with specialized knowledge, and the chances of detection remains minimum, unless those files are scanned and processed to decrypt the messages using specialized tools. They learnt that these technique was used by the terrorists to pass messages secretly and had been used in the 9/11 incident of America. It has been used by the military around the world for quite some time. Arjun being a computer network whiz-kid, practically used his knowledge to leverage the software related intricacies.

Arjun's and Joy's first assignment was cracking a case where a religious fundamentalist group was spreading terror inside India. The jigsaw puzzle was huge and they couldn't understand how to solve that initially. Ground Intelligence reports were pointing to the fact that there would soon be a terrorist attack. However the modus operandi was still unclear. Arjun was asked to keep a tab on the possible suspected network IP addresses. However, it was like search a needle in a haystack. Then it was advised by his superiors to check the fact, that if needed, he may take the help of Google. The Indian government's backing helped him to get the possible Gmail addresses linked with that of the suspected terrorists. Then Arjun started monitoring the traffic in those email addresses using network sniffers. A sniffer is a software or hardware tool that allows the user to "sniff" or monitor the internet traffic in real time, capturing all the data flowing to and from a computer by inspecting the data packets flowing to the internet.

He then wrote a program in python programming language to analyze the contents of the extracted data from the sniffers. However, this gave fruitful results as the text-mining was effectively done through the program to identify nefarious activities of terrorists and isolated that from that of unintended mischief. It was a herculean task, though but one fine morning his colleague pointed to the fact that there was a certain email address was being accessed from different parts of the globe. Arjun asked Mr. Tomar Chandra Lal to look into it.

Strangely his colleague Mr. Lal told that, "There was nothing in it since although it had not received any emails since the time of its inception. Although it was accessed, by many IP addresses around the globe. Some originated from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, India and Saudi etc. although the server was located in India and maintained by Google! No email is coming into the account from other email accounts. However people seem to access the account from across the globe!"

Arjun instantly jumped and said, "What it they are accessing single email address across the globe to fund terror?"  

Arjun instantly highlighted the activities of the email address to his superiors. Then they asked the relevant authorities of the Indian Government to ask Google to provide the details of what was stored in the account. It took three days before they got the clearance, and once they did, they understood the real modus operandi of the plot. The terrorists were actually accessing a single email account and saving the messages in form of drafts in the same email account from across the globe. The terrorists had passed messages by saving the information as draft in one account only hoping to elude the security agencies. The email address and the password had been shared to all those who had access to the terror plot. All the IP addresses were identified and the mastermind was located somewhere in the Sindh Province of Pakistan. All the steganographed images and the videos and audio files were retrieved and analyzed using steganalysis tools by reverse engineering, to get the exact messages and now ground action started to nab the culprits. 

The Black Cat Commando teams were formed to nab the culprits inside the Indian territory and all the teams simultaneously converged and captured the terrorists at large. Arjun and Joy received due recognition for the work they did and accolades followed them. They had effectively tracked the sleeper cells that was planning to spread terror and mayhem in the Indian soil. They are still employed in RAW and their present assignment is classified.