Phase Seven: Exfiltration
The atmosphere in the NSA office was thick with tension. Unwound was their carefully crafted plan, slowly unwinding before their eyes. The once reliable implant—a product of countless hours of research and development—now wreaked havoc on the administrator’s computer; its presence was a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode and unravel the entire operation.
The team’s worst fear came true when they saw the administrator planning an appointment with IT support. Panic ran through the room. Deleting the implant was a risky proposition. All that erratic behavior would stop simultaneously, and the administrator could suspect something. Of course, should the implant be found by the IT technician, then not only would the mission have failed, but the implant itself may have been compromised to such an extent that all the dark secrets of the NSA may be on their way to being revealed.
The risk was therefore taken. The implant would be left in place, and perhaps the administrator would not draw any conclusions. It was an anxious week. They even watched and winced as the administrator searched the web for answers to why his system was acting strangely. They then went as low as reading his emails and chat logs, as their guilt started to eat at them more for invading his privacy.
A flicker of hope came, though, when they saw the IT technician finally come towards the administrator’s desk. Thank God the technician had no idea about the real problem and wasted a good part of his time trying to troubleshoot the system. The team was holding its breath, their fingers crossed, praying that nothing would be found out about the hidden implant. The visit seemed to have taken a lifetime, but soon, he left the administrator’s office with a look of exasperation. The team members breathed a sigh of relief, but the mission was far from over. There was still work to be done; the data on hand was the sole reason for such a complex infiltration in the first place.
Back to the Drawing Board
The team needed to regroup with the compromised implant. The original idea of using an administrator’s access to the database had gone out the window. They would have to come up with a completely different idea, something that didn’t depend on the impaired implant. Days turned into weeks, and meanwhile, they reviewed other possibilities. They reassessed and re-evaluated the reports from the reconnaissance phase to identify weak points or access areas that could have been missed. They slept little; the network structure of the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was an overwhelming challenge to them.
An analyst reviewing network traffic logs noticed an anomaly. They eventually located a targeted server that was not connected to the webserver they had breached earlier but had some abnormal traffic at certain times every day. Out of curiosity, they investigated further and found out that it was being used for nightly backups of various databases, one of which included the data they were after. This was their turning point. They could, for all purposes, have hijacked a backup vulnerability to siphon data without having to gain entry into the central database. It was, however, a whole new ball game.
Delicate Steps
The process of backup constitutes moving data around and encrypting it. Exploiting a vulnerability meant they had to do this in a manner that would not disrupt the whole process or leave telltale marks. The team went through the backups’ logs meticulously to inject their code into any possible window available without raising a flag. Timing and finesse were the two critical factors for this operation to succeed. This code had to run only during the backup window, execute fast, and self-destruct. There was much pressure on them. One wrong move could not only jeopardize the mission but also potentially damage the integrity of the backups, causing significant disruption to the Peruvian government’s IT infrastructure.
Execution Day
After weeks of preparation, the day arrived. The team, tense and focused, meticulously monitored the network activity. As the clock struck the designated hour, they initiated their operation. Their hand-crafted code—like a phantom in the machine—slithered into the network, piggybacking its way through the backup that was already taking place. Nervously, they watched as the lines on their screen performed their dance. It gently burrowed into the backup stream, copying the target data, then unspooled itself invisibly without a trace. A sigh of relief swept through the team: mission accomplished, with zero collateral damage.
Exfiltration and Aftermath
The stolen data was exfiltrated with detailed attention from a pre-established anonymous channel, where it could not be traced back to the NSA. Then, scrupulously, the squad wiped out their traces on the Peruvian network—surely all traces, without leaving a shred of evidence behind. The operation, for all of its flaws and close shaves, had been a success. The NSA had secured its prize data but not without paying a price. The breached implant became a stellar reminder of the inherent risks always involved in cyber operations: the thin line that balances the completion of the objectives with anonymity.
