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xp_logs2010-09-01 03:30 pm
x-jubilee.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2010-09-01 03:30 pm
Operation: Lie back and think of England: Sneaky Business
Backdated to Friday 1st September 2010, taking place in the hours between 2:36pm and Midnight.
Jubilee flipped open her phone and pressed the speed dial number for Doug's, smiling at the woman who delivered a pork pie to her table. It would appear that one of the things English small towns did well was starchy foods, something Jubilee could get behind.
"How's it going?" she asked, knowing that anyone listening would simply hear a tourist talking to a friend.
Doug shook his head, forgetting for a moment that Jubilee was on the other end of a phone line. "Not bad," he said faux-casually. "About to head into the offices," he continued, shifting a portfolio under his arm. Between them, they'd decided that Doug made a better choice to 'case' the surroundings before sending Jubilee in later, since he was less likely to stand out in anyone's memory. He adjusted his delicate wireframe glasses. "Remind me what you're looking for?"
"Easiest way in," Jubilee responded, taking a bite of her pie, chewing and then swallowing before she continued. "You know these places, always full of traffic. We want to find the most secluded spot. Take a look for security as well, can't be too careful these days."
Talking in code was a pain in the ass, but it was better to stay in view doing touristy things then to skulk about in the dark and leave an impression upon the locals.
"Right, see you on the other side, then," Doug murmured in a bland, neutral British accent in preparation for his appointment and flipped his phone shut.
***
"Right, cut over the security," Jubilee muttered softly, reaching the back door of the townhouse building.
It was a quiet night, the stars above clearly visible even with the light pollution from the buildings around her. Any other night and she might have been out on the roof of the Brownstone enjoying a warm evening.
She focussed back on the job, waiting for word from Doug that she could get to work.
Doug shifted applications rapidly on his laptop, away from some other information he'd been wading through while waiting for Jubilee's word. Several keystrokes brought up a script he'd prepared in advance. "Okay, you're in."
"Cool," she noted, making quick work of the woeful lock and entering the building. She pulled up the map Doug had drawn her in her memory and made her way to the room that the files were stored in, it was child's play really.
Reaching the file cabinents, she quickly opened one after the other, scanning down lists of names with a frown of concentration, when she reached the last she realised they had a problem.
"What we're looking for isn't here," she muttered, closing each cabinent and locking them all back up. "I hate when that happens."
"Which means someone thinks that they're clever," Doug groused, hitting several more keys and pulling up a floor plan of the building before zooming in on the area Jubilee was in. "Okay, so we're looking for something out of place."
"Dude, you've seen the décor in here, yeah? Everything's out of place, even the things that are meant to be in place are hideous crimes against art," Jubilee muttered, moving silently out of the room and heading back down the corridor to the next one. She unlocked the door with only a moment's work; the locks were child's play, barely worth the effort. "Alright, let's do this room by room then."
She surveyed the room, training having taught her what to look for, and what to ignore. There would be nothing in this place; it looked to be the lunch room, in fact. She moved on, locking the door behind her, repeating her search in each of the room's till she found the Manager's office at the back of the building.
"Tell me you've found something useful on the building schematics," Jubilee said.
"Huh." Doug cocked his head at his monitor. He'd seen the manager's office during his impromptu 'casing' of the building, and something about the plans niggled at his brain. "Dimensions on this look...off," he said, unable to quantify the feeling of something not being quite right. "Do me a favor and pace off the room for me?"
Jubilee did as she'd been asked, pacing the room and counting off the steps in her head before giving each total to Doug. "If there's some kind of secret compartment in this place, I'm calling cliché and totally thinking this guy is like, giant dork of the year."
"Well, looks like someone is going to win the 'giant dork of the year' award, then, because the dimensions don't match." Doug smirked. "And there's a reason cliches exist, because there's a nugget of truth in them. Whatever we're looking for is somewhere in the south wall."
Jubilee looked over at the south wall and noted that it was currently covered by a long and very sturdy looking bookshelf.
"Take a look at the guy's public records, yeah? I need to know if he's got any favourite authors, poets or mastermind topics."
She thought they might as well cover all the bases, and it saved her having to go through the entire bookshelf looking for a catch. If they'd gone to the trouble of having the cliché of a hidden room, she figured they probably went the whole hog on the 'false book as activation device' as well.
If it were an electronically controlled activation, that was going to be a little more difficult, but hardly insurmountable.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Doug muttered, attempting to dive into a spaghetti mess of credit card records and the like. "Look for something that doesn't fit the pattern. A book that's too big compared to the ones around it, or an author misshelved."
"I hope you realise how much I hate you right now," Jubilee quipped, examining the shelves closely for anything that didn't match.
What she found was a whole bunch of books on law that looked like they hadn't been touched in years from the amount of dust collected on them.
"Oh, you magnificently arrogant little bastard, you just made my job so very much easier," Jubilee breathed, a grin transforming her face from tense to gleeful in seconds. "Gotta love people who use books as status symbols."
It took her seconds to find the one book that had less dust on it then the others, and with a quick pull outwards an area several feet to her left popped open. She worked swiftly now, reaching in and pulling out what looked to be a hard drive.
She zipped open her backpack with one hand and then pulled out the small, slim-line laptop over her shoulder, settling it on the ground before she attached the hard drive via USB. It was going to be encrypted, nobody, not even stupid arrogant bastards who used clichéd hidden compartments and books as status symbols would leave his data completely unprotected.
"Dude, I've attached a hard drive, I need you to do your magic on it," Jubilee told Doug.
"Blah blah, any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic, blah blah fishcakes," Doug muttered good-naturedly. "I'm dumping the data now." As the data transferred, Doug tapped at his lips with a finger. If they resorted to ridiculous tropes like the hidden compartment triggered by a false book... He brought up the encryption keys to several common encryption algorithms. Too often, people tended to assume that whatever encryption they purchased automatically made things unreadable, and completely forgot that the people who created the encryption in the first place also had to create the tools to decrypt as well...
"Jesus, these people are stupid," he proclaimed after several passes through the data. "Never ever EVER use tools right out of the box without even bothering to change the defaults!" He shook his head. "Not that I'm complaining about their making my job easier, but good lord, they could at least -act- professional."
"I for one, welcome our new incompetent marks," Jubilee noted, pulling the leads out of the hard drive and placing it back in it's alcove before returning the bookcase to its original configuration. "Less work for double the information, what's not to love?"
Making sure she'd secured everything and left no DNA behind, she made her way back through the offices to the back door and stepped outside.
"And I'm done; time to turn all their security back to normal, Dude."
Doug distractedly tapped a couple of keys. "Done and done. Give me a bit with this data, and hopefully we'll have something to share with the rest of the class."
Jubilee flipped open her phone and pressed the speed dial number for Doug's, smiling at the woman who delivered a pork pie to her table. It would appear that one of the things English small towns did well was starchy foods, something Jubilee could get behind.
"How's it going?" she asked, knowing that anyone listening would simply hear a tourist talking to a friend.
Doug shook his head, forgetting for a moment that Jubilee was on the other end of a phone line. "Not bad," he said faux-casually. "About to head into the offices," he continued, shifting a portfolio under his arm. Between them, they'd decided that Doug made a better choice to 'case' the surroundings before sending Jubilee in later, since he was less likely to stand out in anyone's memory. He adjusted his delicate wireframe glasses. "Remind me what you're looking for?"
"Easiest way in," Jubilee responded, taking a bite of her pie, chewing and then swallowing before she continued. "You know these places, always full of traffic. We want to find the most secluded spot. Take a look for security as well, can't be too careful these days."
Talking in code was a pain in the ass, but it was better to stay in view doing touristy things then to skulk about in the dark and leave an impression upon the locals.
"Right, see you on the other side, then," Doug murmured in a bland, neutral British accent in preparation for his appointment and flipped his phone shut.
***
"Right, cut over the security," Jubilee muttered softly, reaching the back door of the townhouse building.
It was a quiet night, the stars above clearly visible even with the light pollution from the buildings around her. Any other night and she might have been out on the roof of the Brownstone enjoying a warm evening.
She focussed back on the job, waiting for word from Doug that she could get to work.
Doug shifted applications rapidly on his laptop, away from some other information he'd been wading through while waiting for Jubilee's word. Several keystrokes brought up a script he'd prepared in advance. "Okay, you're in."
"Cool," she noted, making quick work of the woeful lock and entering the building. She pulled up the map Doug had drawn her in her memory and made her way to the room that the files were stored in, it was child's play really.
Reaching the file cabinents, she quickly opened one after the other, scanning down lists of names with a frown of concentration, when she reached the last she realised they had a problem.
"What we're looking for isn't here," she muttered, closing each cabinent and locking them all back up. "I hate when that happens."
"Which means someone thinks that they're clever," Doug groused, hitting several more keys and pulling up a floor plan of the building before zooming in on the area Jubilee was in. "Okay, so we're looking for something out of place."
"Dude, you've seen the décor in here, yeah? Everything's out of place, even the things that are meant to be in place are hideous crimes against art," Jubilee muttered, moving silently out of the room and heading back down the corridor to the next one. She unlocked the door with only a moment's work; the locks were child's play, barely worth the effort. "Alright, let's do this room by room then."
She surveyed the room, training having taught her what to look for, and what to ignore. There would be nothing in this place; it looked to be the lunch room, in fact. She moved on, locking the door behind her, repeating her search in each of the room's till she found the Manager's office at the back of the building.
"Tell me you've found something useful on the building schematics," Jubilee said.
"Huh." Doug cocked his head at his monitor. He'd seen the manager's office during his impromptu 'casing' of the building, and something about the plans niggled at his brain. "Dimensions on this look...off," he said, unable to quantify the feeling of something not being quite right. "Do me a favor and pace off the room for me?"
Jubilee did as she'd been asked, pacing the room and counting off the steps in her head before giving each total to Doug. "If there's some kind of secret compartment in this place, I'm calling cliché and totally thinking this guy is like, giant dork of the year."
"Well, looks like someone is going to win the 'giant dork of the year' award, then, because the dimensions don't match." Doug smirked. "And there's a reason cliches exist, because there's a nugget of truth in them. Whatever we're looking for is somewhere in the south wall."
Jubilee looked over at the south wall and noted that it was currently covered by a long and very sturdy looking bookshelf.
"Take a look at the guy's public records, yeah? I need to know if he's got any favourite authors, poets or mastermind topics."
She thought they might as well cover all the bases, and it saved her having to go through the entire bookshelf looking for a catch. If they'd gone to the trouble of having the cliché of a hidden room, she figured they probably went the whole hog on the 'false book as activation device' as well.
If it were an electronically controlled activation, that was going to be a little more difficult, but hardly insurmountable.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Doug muttered, attempting to dive into a spaghetti mess of credit card records and the like. "Look for something that doesn't fit the pattern. A book that's too big compared to the ones around it, or an author misshelved."
"I hope you realise how much I hate you right now," Jubilee quipped, examining the shelves closely for anything that didn't match.
What she found was a whole bunch of books on law that looked like they hadn't been touched in years from the amount of dust collected on them.
"Oh, you magnificently arrogant little bastard, you just made my job so very much easier," Jubilee breathed, a grin transforming her face from tense to gleeful in seconds. "Gotta love people who use books as status symbols."
It took her seconds to find the one book that had less dust on it then the others, and with a quick pull outwards an area several feet to her left popped open. She worked swiftly now, reaching in and pulling out what looked to be a hard drive.
She zipped open her backpack with one hand and then pulled out the small, slim-line laptop over her shoulder, settling it on the ground before she attached the hard drive via USB. It was going to be encrypted, nobody, not even stupid arrogant bastards who used clichéd hidden compartments and books as status symbols would leave his data completely unprotected.
"Dude, I've attached a hard drive, I need you to do your magic on it," Jubilee told Doug.
"Blah blah, any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic, blah blah fishcakes," Doug muttered good-naturedly. "I'm dumping the data now." As the data transferred, Doug tapped at his lips with a finger. If they resorted to ridiculous tropes like the hidden compartment triggered by a false book... He brought up the encryption keys to several common encryption algorithms. Too often, people tended to assume that whatever encryption they purchased automatically made things unreadable, and completely forgot that the people who created the encryption in the first place also had to create the tools to decrypt as well...
"Jesus, these people are stupid," he proclaimed after several passes through the data. "Never ever EVER use tools right out of the box without even bothering to change the defaults!" He shook his head. "Not that I'm complaining about their making my job easier, but good lord, they could at least -act- professional."
"I for one, welcome our new incompetent marks," Jubilee noted, pulling the leads out of the hard drive and placing it back in it's alcove before returning the bookcase to its original configuration. "Less work for double the information, what's not to love?"
Making sure she'd secured everything and left no DNA behind, she made her way back through the offices to the back door and stepped outside.
"And I'm done; time to turn all their security back to normal, Dude."
Doug distractedly tapped a couple of keys. "Done and done. Give me a bit with this data, and hopefully we'll have something to share with the rest of the class."