The hack of CSA took longer than he thought it would. The account number and password he extracted from Tom only got him through the credit bureau's front door. But the codes gave him legitimacy; to CSA he looked like any one of thousands of subscribers. Still, he needed to get into the sector that listed individuals and their accounts--he couldn't just type in a person's name, like a real CSA subscriber; he would have to go into the sector through the back door, as CSA itself would do when it needed to update its own files.
Fry Guy had spent countless hours doing just this sort of thing: every time he accessed a new computer, wherever it was, he had to learn his way around, to make the machine yield privileges ordinarily reserved for the company that owned it. He was proficient at following the menus to new sectors and breaking through the security barriers that were placed in his way. This system would yield like all the others.
It took most of the afternoon, but by the end of the day he, chanced on an area restricted to CSA staff that led the way to the account sector. He scrolled through name after name, reading personal credit histories, looking for an Indiana resident with a valid credit card.
He settled on a Visa card belonging to a Michael B. from Indianapolis; he took down his full name, account and telephone number. Exiting from the account sector, he accessed the main menu again. Now he had a name: he typed in Michael B. for a standard credit check.
Michael B., Fry Guy was pleased to see, was a financially responsible individual with a solid credit line.
Next came the easy part. Disengaging from CSA, Fry Guy directed his attention to the phone company. Hacking into a local switch in Indianapolis, he located the line equipment number for Michael B. and rerouted his incoming calls to a phone booth in Paducah, Kentucky, about 250 miles from Elmwood. Then he manipulated the phone booth's setup to make it look like a residential number, and finally rerouted the calls to the phone box to one of the three numbers on his desk. That was a bit of extra security: if anything was ever traced, he wanted the authorities to think that the whole operation had been run from Paducah.
And that itself was a private joke. Fry Guy had picked Paducah precisely because it was not the sort of town that would be home to many hackers: technology in Paducah, he snickered, was still in the Stone Age.
Now he had to move quickly. He had rerouted all of Michael B.'s incoming calls to his own phone, but didn't want to have to deal with his personal messages. He called Western Union and instructed the company to wire $687 to its office in Paducah, to be picked up by--and here he gave the alias of a friend who happened to live there. The transfer would be charged to a certain Visa card belonging to Michael B.
Then he waited. A minute or so later Western Union called Michael B.'s number to confirm the transaction. But the call had been intercepted by the reprogrammed switch, rerouted to Paducah, and from there to a phone on Fry Guy's desk.
Fry Guy answered, his voice deeper and, he hoped, the sort that would belong to a man with a decent credit line. Yes, he was Michael B., and yes, he could confirm the transaction. But seconds later, he went back into the switches and quickly reprogrammed them. The pay phone in Paducah became a pay phone again, and Michael B., though he was unaware that anything had ever been amiss, could once again receive incoming calls. The whole transaction had taken less than ten minutes.
