Invasion of Privacy

Chapter 4

“Mr Brody! Welcome. Welcome.” It was Stefan the head barista. Brody had never met the eponymous Bruno, assuming he even existed. Stefan, who was at least a foot shorter than Brody’s six foot two, wore an immaculately clean black apron over a white shirt and black trousers. His black hair was slicked back with wax. He whipped the white cloth from his shoulder and wiped the already clean table in the window recess by the front door. “Look, your favourite seat is free. The gods are being kind today, no?” 

Stefan indicated the scratched, studded leather high-back chair next to the now sparkling table. Brody thanked him and sat down. Bruno’s boasted a collection of colourful, worn leather chairs and sofas, randomly arranged in groups around plain brown tables. It was about half full, a few small groups talking quietly and five or six loners reading newspapers or swiping their tablet devices. Italian accordion music piped discreetly from ceiling speakers.

“What will Mr Brody have today? No! Don’t tell me . . . ” He stared intently at Brody as if trying to read his mind. Brody smiled. It was their usual game. “It’s cold and raining out there, so nothing iced I think. Hmm . . . and it’s before lunch so nothing filling . . . I know – a caffè macchiato!” 

Brody stroked his stubbled chin, as if considering. 

“I have it now,” said Stefan, “A double macchiato. Am I right, Mr Brody?”

“Spot on, Stefan. You’re like an Italian version of Sherlock Holmes.”

A few minutes later the barista brought Brody a perfect double caffè macchiato, accompanied by a tall glass of tap water. Brody complimented him on the coffee. The barista, his job done, left him. Brody knew that he could spend hours here without feeling the need to order again. Stefan would occasionally stop by and refill his glass with iced water from a jug.

The shop offered wireless Internet access, but Brody only connected to public Wi-Fi hotspots when desperate. They were completely unsafe. Instead, he’d installed a directional Wi-Fi antenna by his living room window, pointing across the road towards the coffee shop. It boosted the signal of his own private wireless network so that he could securely connect to the Internet and drink high-quality coffee at the same time. The seat by the front window was his favourite because it gave him the strongest signal, not that Stefan was aware of this. 

He’d masked his home wireless network from broadcasting its presence to discourage other casual coffee drinkers from picking it up on their devices. However, a literate computer user could easily overcome that so he had also enabled full WPA-Enterprise security to give him the highest levels of authentication and encryption.

Brody opened his tablet PC, connected to his private network and logged in. 

The browser was conveniently displaying the CrackerHack forum from when he’d closed the computer in the Atlas Brands meeting earlier. He skim-read the chat logs to see what had been posted since Crooner42 had awarded the pentest work earlier. 

Soon enough, Brody spotted a relevant discussion thread. The counter in the top corner showed thirty-two members of the forum were currently online. The actual conversation thread had been started by Matt_The_Hatter and was now between seven or eight of them collectively trying to deduce who had been awarded the job. That meant the rest of them, Brody included, were passively listening in without declaring their presence. Of course, like Brody, no one was admitting to having registered an interest in carrying out the pentest, in order to avoid being shown up as not having been selected by Crooner42. New posts appeared in real time. 

Crooner42: Thanks everyone for the offers of help on SWY.

Matt_The_Hatter: It’s okay Crooner-boy, you can let them know who you’ve asked to do the work. I’m not modest.