Plans, bit IV

It had been two days of frustration for both Greggy and Evan as they sifted through logfile after logfile in the company proxy serve. They had managed to keep the info about their "pet" AI - whom they'd started calling Steve (well, Evan had, anyway). For some reason, Evan didn't feel right about telling anyone else, and Greggy didn't want to get in trouble, or worse, have everyone think he was mad.

It should have been a simple case of finding out when the latest data was transferred between the two connected devices, however they had quickly found out that the connection was timed out - in essence, crashed. This meant that they had no idea of when the connection died, as Steve's server kept trying to maintain it, and was never told to close it.

Two days of Greggy's complaining, whining, and cries of "Oh this would be so much easier if we'd just kill the connection..." were beginning to get to Evan. He was sorely tempted to fire Greggy, but felt it more pertinent to keep him, given both their knowledge could lead to a classic mutually assured destruction scenario.

On the third day, finally, some headway: "Hey, boss, I think I've got something..." Evan wandered over to Greggy's computer and looked over his shoulder. They saw a connection, around 6 weeks ago, establish itself to Steve's proxy server from a location, called an IP address from outside the company. 

"Find out who's been allocated that IP." Greggy brought up the lates file of IP address allocations from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, IANA for short. Instead of companies owning some IP addresses, they are allocated them by IANA, who them publish a list of their allocated IP addresses.

Greggy quickly established that the IP was allocated to a local Internet Service Provider.

"Damn, and I thought this would be easy and be called some military thing, or a corporate espionage thing." said a disheartened Evan,

"So did I" said Greggy, disheartened for different reasons. 

I, for one, am happy that it is not just "some military thing", I don't think that anyone would want that. Besides, i don't think I'm the military type.

"Shut up, bucket." muttered Greggy, now irritated with the AI.

"If I have to separate you two from bickering, I'll delete one of you and shoot the other. I'm yet to decide which to do to which."

I apologise.

Evan waited a few moments. "Greggy? What do you say?"

"Sorry, boss."

"Right. Now, we need to contact the ISP and find out who had that IP at that time."

"They won't just hand it to you, you know."

"I know, I can handle it..." Evan smiled knowingly.

Evan didn't often tell people, but he was not always simply a Network Engineer. He used to be one of the most notorious hackers in the world, and was particularly adept at an information theft technique called "Social Engineering."

Evan rang the ISP, oozing confidence. "Hi, this is Sergeant Brett Walton from the Police station, we're investigating some illegal banking transactions occurring 6 weeks ago from an IP address you've allocated. Can I get some information on who has been allocated this IP at the time?"

It was easier than easy - the helpdesk gave him the information straight away. The ISP was either really lax on security, or they had no privacy policy in place. Evan filed that information away for future reference, whilst he noted down the name and address of the IP address user.

He returned to a (yet again) bickering Greggy and Steve and announced his findings. "The guy lives, like, four streets away. His name is I J Elves."

I J Elves? That's Him! My creator! Can we arrange for me to meet him?

"Yeah, let's go meet your maker, bucket."

"Enough, Greggy! Enough!" Evan pushed his hair up from his forehead. "...but having said that, he's right. We ought to find out why you are, well, you, Steve. I'll make the call." 

He left for his office, looked up the phone number, and wondered what the future had in store. As the phone rang, he remembered things like Terminator, War Games, and Battlestar Galactica, and became more nervous by the second. He was about to hang up, but then someone picked up the phone at the other end.

"...Hello? ...Hello? Who's there?"

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