Norm and Bill are at it again…
I decided to sneak into the office early to try to get some work done before anybody got there. It isn’t that I don’t love my office mates the way John Boehner loves a TV camera. It’s just that, at some point, hearing Gene from marketing describe his 3-year-old as an intellectual giant because he’s figured out how to use a toilet becomes tedious. And listening to page designer Rebecca—with what appears to be a tattoo of a either a tree or a spider web on her neck and a nose ring the size of a door knocker—gripe about her lack of second dates, it’s becoming almost impossible not to walk her into the ladies’ room, point to the mirror and say, “Really?”
An empty office is awesome.
So, I was somewhat startled when there was noise coming out of the palatial suite that belongs to Norm Rosinski, who claims to be a Giants fan—but who roots for the White Sox. And when I say noise, I mean profane shouting about the upcoming BEST Of the North Bay event.
I walked around the corner and into his private sanctum. “Top of the morning, Norm. What seems to be the trouble?” I asked.
He looked up from his computer and said, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad you’re here. Close the door.”
Profane and paranoid, my lucky day.
He continued once the door was shut and he’d finished sweeping the room for bugs. “We’ve been hacked. Somebody has gotten past our firewall and into the database for the BEST OF the North Bay balloting. They plugged in junk numbers and said we’d ‘receive further instructions.’”
“What are you going to do?”
“I found out last night. I’ve been here since 5 a.m. I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “The first thing is, we can’t let anybody know about this. If the integrity of the voting is questioned, the whole event is ruined.”
“Not for me it isn’t. Have you seen the menu this year?”
He shot me a look that would have made Frosty the Snowman shiver. “What I’m saying is, if people don’t feel their vote is for real and their peers are the ones deciding who wins the Bizy, nobody’s going to care anymore. People take this very seriously—and they should. It’s an honor.”
I was sipping coffee and checking emails on my phone, and I was kind of afraid to look at Norm. I could see he was having a moment with himself. I nodded in a very solemn way, trying to assure him that the lump in his throat was normal. I was going to dab at an imaginary tear, but you need to know how far you can push that kind of thing.
He was still staring at me. “Like I said, this stays here in the office. We need to find a way to take care of this and keep it quiet. You have any ideas?”
My idea was to quietly go back to my desk, but apparently, that wasn’t going to work. I had no Plan B. When all else fails, try the truth: “Norm, we’re not technical guys. I wouldn’t know a firewall from a fire truck. And you don’t know how to transfer a call from your office to my desk. How do you see us solving this problem?”
He shook his head and made a suggestion that was physically impossible.
I tried a different tact. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
Norm took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I was at home last night doing a little paperwork. I was putting a memo together about the “BEST Of” and wanted to check some numbers, so I accessed the database and up popped a screen saying I’d be redirected. A few seconds later, I was on a screen with no address, just a gray skull and cross bones and white lettering. The note said our data was compromised and someone would be in touch and, if we contacted the police, there’d be more trouble.”
Norm lit a Winston off a Winston and snuffed out the butt. He inhaled and then blew out the smoke, “Now what?”
“Talk to me about the data. Do we have a physical backup, something crazy old-fashioned—like paper?”
He nodded. “I’ve been printing out daily totals, but we receive votes online, via fax, we’ve even had some mailed in. I have to think that if someone’s gotten into the database, he or she could access everything or even get into the emails and change votes.”
“OK, but as of yesterday, our totals were accurate, right?”
He nodded.
“I have a friend who’s a cyber-geek, but he’s pretty normal. I’ll talk to him and see what our options are. I wonder if we could direct the votes someplace else, short circuit the hack,” I said.
“Were you listening?” Norm asked. “We need to keep this in-house. I don’t know this guy and I don’t know if I can trust him. Hell, I barely trust you.”
That hurt a little. But Norm is from Chicago and a Libertarian; distrust is his default position. On the other hand, he sees my expense reports. He probably had a point about the trust deal.
“This guy is good, he used to work for the FBI and then he decided to make some real money in the ‘private sector.’” I made air quote motions with my hands.
“So, in other words, he’s a crook,” he said.
I nodded. “Sure, but he’s our crook and he owes me. He’ll keep his mouth shut. We bring him in to see what’s up with the hack; tell folks here your desktop picked up a virus from surfing too much porn. They won’t have any problem believing that,” I said, winking at him. “Besides, that’s only part of our problem. If he can fix this, we still need to know who’s doing this to us and turn him over to the cops. Let me get hold of my friend, see what’s going on.”
“I don’t like it. I don’t like using somebody I don’t know. Why does he owe you?”
I shook my head. “You don’t want to know. Let’s find out what the problem is and then let’s see how we can fix it. Norm, trust me, I’m your guy on this.”
He started coughing, sputtering coffee. It might have been something I said.
I texted my friend—whom we’ll call Roscoe—and told him I wished to buy him lunch. I also said I had a job for him.
The deal
We agreed to meet at McNear’s in Petaluma. I got there early and took a stool at the end of the bar facing the door, the gunfighter’s seat. If I was going to do this cloak and dagger junk, I’d do it right. I ordered a martini, shaken not stirred. The bartender rolled his eyes and went to work. A few minutes later, Roscoe joined me and ordered a pint of Lagunitas A Little Sumpin Sumpin, backing it up with a shot of chilled Patron.
After our libations arrived and a little small talk, we got down to business. “So what’s this job you have for me? I’m pretty busy these days,” he said, taking a pull on his beer.
“This is a delicate matter that requires some discretion. I need to have you take a look at our office system and figure out how we got hacked, and then set up a workaround without tipping anyone off. We want to secure our stuff and keep letting them think they’re calling the shots. Is this something you can do for me?”
I made motions to the bartender for another round and some menus.
Roscoe said he wouldn’t know until he saw the database. “And this might get expensive, it could take some time. You good with that?”
I wanted to tell him money was no object, after all, it wasn’t my cash. But I couldn’t do that to Norm, bless his little conservative heart. “You take care of this for me, and we’re even. I might be able to squeeze a few hundred out for you. But it has to happen right away.”
Roscoe was in.
The Setup
I called Norm and told him we were on the way back to the office and to begin acting as if his computer had a problem. “Pretend there’s something wrong, but don’t act too helpless, we don’t want anybody offering to help you.”
“That won’t work. People love me. The intern wants to wash my car.”
“Just act normal, do what you always do. Yell, cuss a lot and slap the side of the monitor. People love that action. We’ll be there in a bit.”
We arrived in almost no time and ran the gauntlet of the sales department and the editorial bullpen; ducking past Roger the intern just as he began what I’m certain was going to be a riveting description of a series of tweets by his roommate. We closed the door to Norm’s office and I made introductions.
Roscoe set to work on Norm’s machine and suggested we go for coffee to get us out of his hair. He said he’d call with the best news he could muster.
I grabbed my laptop and we made our way to a Holy Roast Coffee Co, sitting on the patio where Norm called clients and chain smoked while I wrote badly and watched the parade of people getting their afternoon caffeine fix. My day had started here with a cup of black coffee to go before I got to the office at the crack of dawn. My day had gone to hell. I made a mental note to never again show up for work before 10 a.m.
It was almost 5 p.m. before Roscoe called. “Hey, I think I have it isolated,” he said. “The guy isn’t bad but he’s sloppy. He left a trail in and out of your system. I have his IP address so you can track him down. What I’m going to do is set up a program that will post ghost votes that he can access so you have activity he can see. In the meantime, I’ll redirect all of the real votes to a new, secure server that only you or Norm can access. Why don’t you come back to the office and I’ll try to explain it to you guys. Oh, and bring a checkbook.”
He hung up.
In the car on the way back to the office, I explained to Norm that we were half way home. The BEST Of was once again free from tyranny. And with some luck, we could track down the hacker and maybe teach him a lesson, “the Chicago way”—doing my best Sean Connery from “The Untouchables.”
He just shook his head. “They’d eat you alive on the South Side.”
When we arrived, Roscoe explained that he’d set up the system so there was no evidence he’d made any changes, and he gave Norm a new web address to access the accurate Bizy votes. He also explained that the hacker had gotten into our email system, “but that’s a good thing if you want to get to him,” he said.
“You mean we could set him up, give him a false message or something, right?” I said.
Norm rolled his eyes. “Of course that’s what he means. Try watching a little more ‘NCIS’ and less ‘Dancing with the Stars.’”
Roscoe ignored both of us. “You could give him a message that might flush him out, get him to show himself.”
So we hatched a plot. We planted an email from Norm to me, saying we’d taken all of the pre-hack data and were taking it home for safekeeping and would simply ignore the hacked data. We said the data had been loaded into Norm’s car, dropping a hint about which car it was.
The bust
We then headed out to my car at the other end of the lot and had an old-fashioned stakeout. “We need a few rules,” I said. “No smoking. My car, like my body, is a temple. Also, no oldies tunes.”
“Your car, like your body and your desk, is a dump. Trouble is, I’m out of smokes,” Norm said. “Hopefully, he’ll show up soon.”
The next couple hours passed like a kidney stone.
Just when I was plotting a way to duct tape Norm’s oversized noggin to the headrest, a strange car entered the lot and a nervous girl began scanning it. She then got out and walked over a couple spaces to Norm’s car, which was conveniently unlocked and filled with three boxes of “data.” She took another look around and began helping herself to the boxes, loading them into her car. We waited until she was on her third trip between cars and sprang into action like a couple of jungle cats.
All right, jungle cats on their seventh life and waking up from a nap after munching a dead hyena that had been in the sun too long.
Still, we caught up to her quickly enough so that Norm could deliver his big line. “A, um, what are you doing in my car?”
OK, he was no Sean Connery. But it was enough to freeze her in her tracks. “Who are you?” she sputtered.
Norm was ready to take a second swing at the witty comeback dept. “We’re the guys who know you hacked into our system and have iPhone video of you breaking into my car. Who are you?”
She explained her name was Jennifer and she was all of 17 years old. Then she started crying. She said she’d hacked into our data for a very good reason. “My dad owns Gurden Vineyards. It’s our family business. He works really long hours and I don’t see him that much. Everybody says our wine is really good, but my dad is always saying that our winery needs to be discovered, that it would make all the difference. And I think the bank is talking about taking our property. So I figured if I could rig your Bizy thing so that my dad’s wine won, things would be easier and we could pay the bank and keep our land.”
There’s nothing like the guilt that comes from setting up a 17-year-old girl trying to save her family’s business to make you feel like you love your job.
Then Norm did something that surprised me. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, and handed it to Jennifer. I didn’t think Norm carried handkerchiefs. Also he was melting alongside the crying teen.
“Jennifer, what you did was wrong, and it really caused a problem for us. But I also think what you did was a little, maybe, brave. And while we can’t give your dad’s wine a Bizy, maybe we can do something else. How about if I call him and ask him to come to the BEST Of the North Bay party and pour some of his wine? The exposure could help him.”
The smile that she showed us was almost worth being stuck in a car with Norm for two hours.
We pulled the boxes out of her car and she hugged us both. Norm told her she could keep the hanky.
We began walking back into the office and I said, “You know, that was very nice thing you did. It certainly belies all the other things you do around here. People would never believe it if I told them.”
He smiled for maybe the first time all day. “Then don’t. Remember we need to keep this thing quiet.”
Bill Meagher is a contributing editor at NorthBay biz , a business journalist and an author. He says that Norm isn’t as bad as his portrayal in this story, but we need to keep that quiet. You can reach him at bmeagher @northbaybiz.com.
