Kate Fazzini - Kingdom of Lies: Unnerving Adventures in the World of Cybercrime

Ren Kreutz is only 15 years old, but shes out drinking and dancing in a club on a Thursday after school, in the outskirts of a mid-sized town in Romania.

Its late 2013. Theyre playing her jam. Carly Jepsens Call Me Maybe.

Its the kind of club where the bouncers dont let in too many guys over 18. So she feels safe. And anyway, shes surrounded by her girlfriends. Giggling. Drinking weak drinks.

They dance in a big circle. Occasionally, one will enter the circle and do a particularly silly series of moves, usually something inspired more by their ballet instructor than pop culture. The song is the kind that forces you to bob and weave and shake your hair around, and she does. Its so loud, its hard for conversation, or really anything else for that matter.

Hey, I just met you.

Ren shout-sings along with the song. She bobs her head left to right with an ear-to-ear smile. Her auburn hair flies around, smacks her friend in the face. They laugh.

At the same time, far away in China, a government-backed hacker named Bolin Chou, who has been stealing intellectual property from U.S. companies for the bulk of his career, has left his job. He is drinking a cheap beer in a Shanghai bar for expats, having scored a new gig at a big hotel as a dishwasher. The bartender is glaring at him and he knows hell be chased out soon, since he doesnt fit in with the more upscale, European clientele. Hes surprised they served him in the first place.

With his cell phone, he uses the short time he has left to monitor the computers of all the businessmen connecting to the bars unsecured Wi-Fi network.

He contemplates the possibilities.

And this is crazy.

In Romania, Ren, who has never met someone from China, bobs left to right and spins.

At the same time, far away in Washington, D.C., Admiral Michael Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency, addresses Congress about cyberthreats, contrasting them with nuclear weapons. Thats very different from the cyber dynamic, he says. Where were not only going to be dealing with nation-states, but were going to be dealing with groups, with individuals, when were dealing with a capability that is relatively inexpensive and so easy to acquire, very unlike the nuclear kind of model. That makes this really problematic.

Ren has never met an American. She doesnt know about the NSA, nor what an admiral is.

But heres my number.

In Romania, Ren enters the circle of girlfriends and starts a silly dance. She pretends her drink glass is a microphone and sings along even louder.

Also at the same time, not so far away, in Germany, Sigmar Sig Himelman, an influential 30-something cybercriminal, acknowledges that hes burned too many bridges, including with the local police, and is going to need to make a move. He has already disposed of several computers and hard drives. Hes not answering his phones, and soon those will be destroyed, too. Hes packing his bag and going somewhere else, somewhere safer for hackers who like to innovate: Romania.

Ren has never met someone from Germany. Shes been a bit sheltered. The junior-league clubbing is about as bad-assed as it gets for her. For now.

But in not too long, shell be a more influential cybercriminal than Sig, a competitor of Bos, and one of Rogers new big problems.

So call me maybe.

Also at the same time, Carl Ramirez stands in a room inside a NOW Bank building in Midtown Manhattan that for reasons he has never been able to ascertain is shaped like a plus sign.

He faces a receptionists desk, long abandoned, covered in a layer of dust. Behind the desk, a wall of glass showcases a vivid seven-story drop to a lower atrium where bankers sit, drinking coffee and eating power breakfasts. Unbeknownst to the bankers down below and many of the bank executives above, the financial sector is about to be attacked by terrorists.

Carl, an unimposing, flat-footed bank executive with an engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon and a Gomer Pyle laugh, has come to the rescue. He is here to save the world.

There is nobody here to greet him. Behind him and to the right and left are three locked doors. His cell phone doesnt work. Even though this floor is filled with employees, the lobby is dead silent.

Carl thinks the scene is like something out of an apocalypse movie, right before the zombies appear. Carl tries the doors again. No luck. Still locked.

He picks up the phone on the receptionists desk. The handset has been disconnected. In fact, its been stripped of wires. Four paper clips sit lined up in a row next to two empty three-ring binders, each with a gold-leaf Fleur Stansbury insignia.

Its 2012 and the world is not ending, but four years earlier, someone emptied this desk out in a hurry when Fleur Stansbury dissolved overnight. Fleur Stansbury moved out and NOW Bank moved in. NOW Bank, Carl knows, is one of the biggest banks in the world, by trade volume, by number of branches, by number of customers, and by number of global offices. Pretty much by any standard that you can measure, NOW Bank is absolutely massive. Trillions of dollars flow through the banks extensive computer systems every single day.

Nobody has bothered to clean up the desk or hire a new receptionist because this floor is for technologists, not bankers. No big-shot investors were going to be received in this office. No swinging dicks of Wall Street here. Not anymore.

Carl grabs one of the binders. Tucks it under his arm. He needs someplace to store his security reports from todays event. A dusty relic of Wall Street seems appropriate. Above him, a fluorescent light flickers. There are dead flies inside it.

Carl holds a binder with a PowerPoint briefing about the matter at hand: A terrorist attack called Operation Ababil is about to be executed. It is a well-planned cyberattack, and will likely be well-executed by a shockingly well-resourced group calling itself the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters.

A little history: NOW Banks cybersecurity team encountered this collective for the first time four months ago, when the group attacked the bank. The group claimed their attack was a response to U.S. policies in Syria and other problems specific to Shiite Muslims. Thats when the Izz ad-Din collective took down NOW Banks main website.