It was possible that they simply hadn't seen the sniffer. Leaving it
there had been an oversight. But it was almost too glaring an error to
be a real possibility. If it was an error, it implied the admins
weren't actually monitoring the connections in and out of their
systems. If they had been watching the connections, they would
probably have seen the sniffer. But if they weren't monitoring the
connections, how on earth did they find out his special password for
the login patch? Like all passwords on the system, that one was
encrypted. There were only two ways to get that password. Monitor the
connection and sniff it, or break the encryption with a brute-force
attack.
Breaking the encryption would probably have taken millions of dollars
of computer time. He could pretty well rule that option out. That left
sniffing it, which would have alerted them to his own sniffer. Surely
they wouldn't have left his sniffer running on purpose. They must have
known he would learn they were watching him through his sniffer. The
whole thing was bizarre.
Anthrax thought about the admins who were chasing him. Thought about
their moves, their strategies.
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