DarkMarket_ Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You - Misha Glenny [95]
Unproductive days went by and Inspector Sen decided he should return to headquarters in Ankara. Weeks passed and he began to experience a familiar despondency. But then, just over a month later, some good news came through from Istanbul – a man had entered one of the shipping companies with a package bound for Finland. It turned out to be a skimming device. The receptionist was calling from the back office with the news that the package had also included a PIN pad.
‘Bingo!’ thought Bilal, telling the receptionist to let the sender go: they had already captured his image on CCTV. After many months the Inspector had at last hit upon a lead. Unsurprisingly the man had used a fake ID, but then Bilal got a second break. The suspect had also given the courier company three phone numbers – and one of them was a real. They checked the name to identify the legal owner of the phone: it didn’t seem to belong to a criminal. But they monitored the mobile number, and the man with the package was using it – the phone was active.
‘This might be the guy who will lead us to Cha0,’ thought Bilal.
But he was faced with a dilemma. It was at about this time that the news organisation, Haber 7, published the photograph of the humiliated hacker, Mert Ortaç, and pressure was ramping up both on the Istanbul police, who were tasked with finding Ortaç, and on Bilal, whose primary target was Cha0. Bilal had to speed things up, but he knew he must not allow impatience to jeopardise the operation.
By abducting Ortaç, Cha0 had betrayed anxiety and vulnerability for the first time. But why had Ortaç’s revelations in Haber 7 so unsettled him?
Cha0 knew that Ortaç was Turkish. Cha0 also seemed to believe that Ortaç was a police informant. Furthermore, he had worked out that Ortaç was on the run and in a state of fear. If the police had picked him up before Cha0 did, there was a real risk he might start blabbing.
But who on earth was Mert Ortaç and how had he become involved in this extraordinary criminal affair? It had all begun the previous spring when, unbeknownst to Ortaç, Matrix and JiLsi were about to be arrested, marking the end of Phase I in Operation DarkMarket and the beginning of Phase II.
Part III
ORIENTATION
Within a year DarkMarket had taken me a long way from the headquarters of Google to a restaurant in Cihangir, the chic district just below Taksim Square in European Istanbul. Opposite me danced the effervescent smile of Mert Ortaç. After spending several hours in his company, I concluded that the adjective ‘mischievous’ had never fitted anything on this earth as snugly as it did Mert.
During one lazy dinner in Kadiköy, my friend, Sebnem, and I had our iPhones lying on the table. Suddenly, they alerted us to the simultaneous arrival of text messages. My message had been sent from Sebnem’s phone. Sebnem’s from mine. Both read, ‘Greetings from Mert!’ As we read the texts, Mert’s bubbling laughter burst from across the table, along with an explanation that he had successfully hacked the international roaming system. As a result, he continued, he was in a position to send a message from any mobile phone in the world to any other – in the wrong hands (like Mert’s), such a skill could turn life into an endless series of Shakespearean plots based on misunderstandings, both tragic and comic.
I had been corresponding with Mert while he was in jail, from where he had sent me snippets of a tale that outdid all other DarkMarket legends in its sheer invention. Whereas I was conscious, when talking to most other characters involved in DarkMarket, that they were holding things back, Mert was overflowing with information, anecdotes and mind-boggling stories.
It is critical that hackers, cyber criminals and cybercops maintain a full grip on their compartmentalised lives – they must know the boundaries between the real and virtual, and they must be able to disengage as they move from one life to