A/N1 Of course I don't own CSI: Cyber. I'm just borrowing a character or two.
A/N2 Thanks for the reviews, the follows and the favourites, always encouraging to know others are enjoying my stories.
FBI HQ 28 days later
FBI Assistant Director Sifter is reviewing the case file with the Director.
"My team has followed every lead on this, as we do on all our cases. Somtimes you just have to wait for the gopher to stick its head out again."
"Gopher?"
"Yeah something someone said to me about Cyber Criminals: they're like gophers, if not caught when they stick their head out... The point is that sometimes a Cyber Criminal is so good at hiding his tracks that even the best people in the world can't get them the first time. With Cyber Crime there are no eye witnesses, no DNA, no fingerprints, and in this case probably no crew. You're left chasing a ghost."
"Hard to believe this is the act of a single individual..."
"Well look at the Kitty case, OK he hired hit-men, but the cyber part of that was the work of a single reclusive individual. Or the bank heist. Or any of a number of other cases. Now if we had better kit it would help, if we had more people it would help. What I saw last week in France, in a regional office of the Gendarme..."
The Director sighed, if he heard about another leg of Sifter's trip to Europe he'd go mad. He'd already heard about work being done in the UK on online pedophiles and in Spain...
"OK, we'll wait, but the President wants an end to this case..."
"As do we all."
Three months later somewhere in the South of France
Colonel Francois Paras of the Gendarme was nervous. His fate if this went wrong didn't bare thinking about. And if it went right he suspected the lazy fool of an investigating magistrate would get all the credit. In truth he had had to work hard to get the bastard to authorise this investigation and this raid and he certainly didn't want it handed over to the Police Nationale.
The raid on an isolated farmhouse was intended to take Jean-Paul Prepain into custody and secure his computing devices for analysis. Jean-Paul was a suspected hacker, thought to be head of a collective responsible for stealing €0.01 a week from each of 20 million bank accounts around Europe. A sharp eyed employee of a bank in London had spotted an attempt to take £0.0078 from his account and had raised the alarm.
"Allez!" Colonel Paras gave the signal to go.
The Gendamerie advanced on the farmhouse, the lights had been out for a couple of hours and all user based internet activity had ceased at about the same time. It was now about 06:00 and enough light was available for the officers to see where they were going.
The front door was of heavy oak construction. Paras had done his homework though and with the assistance of a couple of English 'lost tourists' had identified weaker doors at each side. The 'lost tourists' were actually a Detective Inspector and her wife, a Police Sergeant, who were holidaying locally. Paras had met the DI at a conference in Prague a year earlier.
Paras had split his force in three. Two entry teams, one for each door, would secure all the occupants of the house then the cyber specialists would go in to secure the devices and any associated paperwork. Any runners would be handled by the local Police who manned the perimeter.
The leader of each of the entry teams had a copy of the search warrant. Luckily the occupants had negleced to lock the doors so entry was effected with ease. The main target was found in bed alone. He was secured and taken to waiting transport. Six desktop computers, four laptops, two games consoles, three tablets and four mobile phones were ceased. Also ceased was a variety of other storage media that included a clutch of USB drives and SD cards found in a plastic bag hidden in one of the toilet cisterns. Also ceased was a variety of custom electronics, mainly based around Atmel ATMega microcontrollers, Arduino boards featured heavily.
A search of the grounds by daylight revealed a reserve set of servers in an outbuilding.
This was clearly a major enterprise.
Later that day Gendarme Regional Office Marsaille.
The techs had been working on the servers recovered in the raid for several hours. Other jurisdictions were notified via Europol and Interpol as and when anything that might be of interest to them emerged.
It was about 15:30 when one of the techs noticed the handle 'dUnc3' and contact with the games company revealed an ip address associated with a physical address in New York. The information was associated with a project to build a linux distro on the GameVex console that was probably just about legal, at least as far as the criminal law in France was concerned, but he ran the handle anyway and came up with an FBI alert.
Simon Sifter's office 12:30
An alert came up on Simon's computer, they had a possible address for 'dUnc3'! Courtesy of the French!
Simon called Avery into his office.
"The French had a big raid on a farmhouse this morning. They turned up some information that is of interest to us. An address for 'dUnc3'! In New York!"
Avery's mouth opened but no sound came out for a time. In all the time he had known her Simon had never seen anything have this effect before.
"I need a plane to take Elijah and Daniel to New York." she said once she had her mental balance back.
"I'm arranging that as we speak. Not going yourself?" Sifter was typing into his computer.
"Of course I'm going!"
"You only mentioned Elijah and Daniel… "
After Avery had left the office Simon got on the phone to the Director. He was determined to use this to get better equipment and accommodation.
NYPD HQ about two hours later.
"Intel suggests the apartment is rented by one Raven Ramirez, 18 years old, originally from Concord New Hampshire. She lives alone. Contact with Police in Concord suggests Ms Ramirez left home two years ago. Her father works for the power company." Avery was briefing the SWAT team that would lead the raid. "Intel also suggests that Miss Ramirez will be home this evening."