Zero Days

Many characters take for granted that their personal information will be safe in company databases, leading them to become vulnerable to malware, identity theft, and more. For example, Keeley Winston gives Jack access to all her passwords when Jack says she’s from Sunsmile IT and needs to clean Keeley’s hard drive of malware. Social media only adds to these vulnerabilities because users post personal information that can be mined, used, and manipulated, as Jack does to get past Sunsmile security. Moreover, the fact that companies hire Crossways Security, Jack and Gabe’s penetration testing business, shows the dire need for a greater understanding of technology.

When Jack creates a new Instagram profile to access the accounts of employees of Sunsmile Insurance, she can find a photograph of a Sunsmile employee security badge because dozens of employees had, at some point, geotagged the office. Although companies “had got[ten] much better about not letting employees post their passes, in part because of people like [Jack] telling them about the risks” (203), it takes Jack hardly any time to find such a photo. Next, she looks for a “target” who posted photos that inadvertently signaled that they won’t be in the office that day, and she finds “a photo of a baby covered in small red spots” (204). The baby’s mother, Keeley, is clearly unaware of how this information could be exploited, as Jack then harvests information from Keeley’s Facebook page, which has “very slack privacy settings” (204). What Jack learns about Keeley from social media posts allows her to obtain Keeley’s home phone number from a friend. Neither Keeley nor her friend give a second thought to the personal information they share with fellow users. The ease with which Jack finds all this is astonishing, as is how simple it is to create a badge to get herself past security.

While on the run, Jack uses an app called Signal that encrypts messages, guarding the users’ privacy. She uses this with Hel to protect herself and Hel from the police. However, it would be easy for real criminals to use this app to conduct their business. Moreover, Cole is able to introduce security gaps into the code of some of Cerberus’s most popular apps, and no one notices except Gabe. If Gabe hadn’t examined Cole’s work, then thousands if not millions of people’s personal information would be comprised. Potential dangers abound, mostly because of the characters’ lack of awareness of the dangers of technology. Ware even dedicated the novel to her father, “who was paranoid about online security before it was fashionable” (Dedication). Data breaches occur frequently, hence the need for companies like Crossways Security.