Day 2: Deploying the Rogue

It was late on Saturday night and Flir had gone back to the lab with his backpack . Luckily for Flir, the budget that provided for Computing Resources employees to monitor the labs had been cut several years back, resulting in decreases in both student work-study positions and computer lab physical security. This resulted in some amount of additional machine theft, but it also gave Flir the opportunity to work without being detected .

Flir sat down at the desk farthest from a door, where he wouldn t be easily observed by passersby. He pulled the desk away from the other desks to expose the normally inaccessible inside back panel of the desk with its attached power strip. He taped his laptop, hub, USB wireless adapter, and patch-style antenna against the back panel with a tremendous amount of black duct tape, almost fully covering each device with crisscrossing strips . After almost fully expending the formerly thick roll of duct tape, he set about to make the connections. He connected the USB wireless adapter to the laptop and plugged the external patch-style antenna into the adapter. He plugged the power adapters for the laptop and the hub to their devices and plugged these into the power strip. He plugged both orange network cables into the hub, plugging the end of one into the laptop s Ethernet network card. He taped all of the cables into place to prepare for his final step. He reached up to the computer sitting on the desk, the legitimate one, and pulled its network cable. He plugged the cable into his hub s crossover port and plugged the hub s free cable into the desktop s network port. Finally, he pushed the desks back together. He now owned a laptop on the lab s network that he could control from as far away as he could stretch a wireless network link.

Stretching a wireless link wasn t difficult. Though most wireless cards seemed to rarely make the 100-meter range they were claimed to achieve inside, one could beat that by far with a good antenna. The WiFi Shootout at Def Con 11 had brought that into the collective consciousness of geeks everywhere. The Adversarial Science Lab team had built a directional antenna that could establish a connection over 35 miles, using less than $100 worth of parts bought entirely from Home Depot. Flir wouldn t need that kind of distance and the ASL team s antenna was too big anyway. Flir decided to use the solution created by one of the other Shootout winners, APP. Their directional antenna achieved a connection at 5 miles and was made of two soldered-together Hormel chili cans. This could be placed on the ground, just poking out of a backpack. He knew the computer lab s building s walls would cut down on the distance that he could achieve, but he only wanted to clear the fifth of a mile distance between the quad and the lab. He went back to his room to fashion the antenna.

A few hours and 4 ruined Hormel chili cans later, Flir had his antenna. Luckily for his GI tract , he hadn t eaten their contents, electing instead to pull an unspeakable prank ^[ii] on his rival Kent.

Jordan didn t even ask about the antenna, as she had been operating on the frame of the Prius with a circular saw the entire time Flir was making the modifications. Again, Flir s homemade noise-canceling headphones saved his sanity . He fell asleep while compiling tools on his other Sony laptop, Controller.

^[ii] No, we re not going to describe the prank. It s just too unspeakable. You re going to have to use your imagination .