Blackhat

(INDISTINCT OVERLAPPING CONVERSATIONS)

(MALE NEWS REPORTER 1 SPEAKING MANDARIN)

(IN ENGLISH) An accident has

been reported at Chai Wan Nuclear Power Station.

(MALE NEWS REPORTER 2 SPEAKING CANTONESE)

(MALE NEWS REPORTER 3 SPEAKING CANTONESE)

(FEMALE NEWS REPORTER SPEAKING CANTONESE)

(ROCK MUSIC PLAYING OVER HEADPHONES)

(PRISONERS SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)

Hathaway. Cell search. Hands behind you.

Open 16.

Go, go, go!

Search everything.

Get off that! Hey!

Take him down!

One, two, three, up!

Stay strong, carnal.

This was found in your cell.

You added $900 to all your pals' commissary accounts

in your cell block.

Is this the attack tool?

With it, you open up a terminal

and that gives you a command line?

That how you broke into the network and plussed-up the balances?

No.

I used it to call Santa in the North Pole

and told him to do Christmas early this year.

(IN ENGLISH) What do we know about this guy?

His grandfather was a military commander

in Shanghai in the '20s,

in the '30s against the Japanese through the Civil VVar.

His father became China's Undersecretary for Trade to the UN.

He came with to New York.

Bronx High School of Science, MIT.

His sister's a network engineer in the private sector.

She grow up in New York, too?

No.

He's a rising star in PLA's Cyber Defense section.

Liaise with them?

It's inviting them into the henhouse, Carol.

Stanley, we go head-to-head with the Chinese

on their cyber intrusion every day of the week.

Not a bad idea to be face-to-face working with them, for once.

You monitor very closely what they do and do not have access to.

Okay?

Okay? Send the code.

Okay-

Let's go somewhere we can talk. Hey, hey...

English might be better. Come on.

Tomorrow? I can't. It's impossible. Why not?

I've got an optical-overlay network

that's got to be up in 17 days.

They sent me some code tonight.

The black hat who hack the Chai Wan reactor.

When I looked at the code, it was, uh...

And?

I have to have a network engineer with me I can trust.

Really trust.

Like, 100%.

When do we leave?

The meltdown in China and the run-up in soy yesterday

was facilitated by the same RAT.

How it got loaded in in the first place, we don't know.

But, once inside, it de-cloaked and became what it really is.

A remote access tool.

A RAT.

The RAT's job was to open a back door in our system and call home.

The black hat then used his back door to inject a second part.

Its payload.

That is what rode up soy.

Now that we're looking at the RAT and payload closely,

we're thinking they were...

Written by different authors.

How we figured that out was through the coding in the RAT.

Though several years old, it is lean, graceful.

The payload's coding, on the other hand, feels frenetic, confused...

Frenetic? Or overwritten?

So, the question we're dealing with is...

ls there somewhere we can talk?

and if it is two, they may not be working in close proximity.

Daniels is qualified in computer forensics.

An intern could have written that report.

Oh, really? And who do we need, if not Daniels?

And "liaise" in "liaison group" implies mutuality.

You don't like our boy, what ideas are you bringing to the dance?

A man named Hathaway.

He's a convicted hacker,

serving 15 years in U.S.P. Canaan in Waymart, Pennsylvania.

You telling me some hacker in prison

is hitting our financial markets?

No. But we want Hathaway on the team

so he can help out the investigation.

He hit four major banks,

ran up $46 million in damages.

And that's just what we know about.

You want the DOJ to do anything other than laugh?

Daniels said two authors wrote the virus.

I don't know who wrote the second half, but the first half, the RAT,

the remote access tool that Daniels called "lean and graceful"?

One of the original authors is me.

I co-wrote it,

as a gag, years ago at MIT.

And my roommate, the genius lead author?

Nicholas Hathaway.

That's right.

The hacker found the RAT online and modified it.

If we want to move around within this code

looking for clues to the hacker's identity,

we need its lead architect.

The reactor in China, I heard about,

but the spike in soy futures...

All right, I didn't know any of this.

We don't get a lot of new news in here.

The US government would like your technical advice on this.

In exchange for that, we're going to furlough you right out of here.

You sign that on the last page,

and we'll get you processed.

You'll wear an ankle bracelet

and be accompanied by a US Marshal.

Your computer access will be restricted.

If you wanna study the whole document, you can go right ahead.

I can come back in a month or two.

No, I'm done.

You didn't sign it.

Yeah. Why would I sign it? Why?

Because of the generosity of the Assistant US Attorney

in granting you a furlough.

Both you and the Assistant US Attorney

can stick that document up your ass.

I'm sorry?

Why are you sorry?

I insulted you. What are you sorry for? I'm not sorry.

Don't think you're gonna... Hey.

You wanna raise me up out of here,

solve your trade exchange dilemma,

and I get a furlough for a couple of weeks? You kidding me?

You have any idea how much progress you're gonna make

on a strike this complex without someone like me?

Zero.

This isn't a negotiation.

I just made it one.

You want me? You pass this upstairs.

If my assistance results in the identification

and the apprehension of the guy you're after,

I want you to commute my sentence.

If I come up empty, you toss my ass back in the can.

Those are the terms.

Guard.

Interview's over.

Barrett, how badly do you need this guy?

It's so good to see you, bro.

Not half as much as it is for me to see you.

Let's get out of here.

So, you planned to reunite with your friend from the moment you landed?

It entered my mind.

You Okay?

Yeah, I'm fine.

Okay. Please keep them out of sight, if you can help it.

See? He ripped off and repurposed our code.

What the hell is this? What?

The agreement was an approval and a presence for his computer access.

I approved it. A DOJ approval.

Now you're changing the goalposts?

Hola, chica. You came to me.

How am I supposed to do my work?

On an abacus or something?

"Chica"? Am I Hispanic?

What the hell's going on?

I advocated getting you over here.

I pulled every string to get your convicted felon sprung, Mr. Chen.

"Captain" Chen. And I didn't ask.

I offered partnership, an equivalent,

or we would do it on our own.

Well, I'll be happy to bust him back to Canaan

and put your ass on the first plane back to China.

He apologizes.

My brother misunderstood our arrangement, Special Agent.

Look around.

I have to run the morning backup.

Your network is sitting behind deep packet inspection,

intrusion protection.

It's extensively firewalled.