Rogue's Gallery: Entry 0001 - Lance Corporal Toker

I will do some of these every now and again about some of the more interesting people that I meet. To let you all know these are not real names and may or may not be an amalgamation of more that one person. Consider them archetypes or avatars of the people that I have met in Iraq.

Toker, this kid what can I say about him. You ever meet someone who is smart as hell but is short on to common sense side (some people I know would say it about me) that's Toker.

Well let me tell you about this kid. He graduates high school at like 15 or 16 heads to college for a year or two transfers from that college to MIT. He's there for a while and during the summer when he's interning for the US Postal Service his buddy comes to him and tells him he just joined the Marines and that the recruiter is really cool and says that the Marines work with the best computers in the world (jokes on you jack). Toker meets with the recruiter and soon after that the unlucky fuck is digging sandbags at Paris Island. Just his luck the war breaks out and now the kid is cleaning sand out of servers in the middle of the Al Middleofnowherefuckingstan Desert. The guy that recruited him should be moved to the head of psy-ops ASAP.

This is the thing about Toker as soon as he spoke to me I thought,

"This guy is CLEARLY not built for the Military."

He reminds me of the typical net denizen that in real life would be found here asking questions like this.

This kid is simply too smart for military and he has an independent streak that is tolerated by his superiors simply because he is the only reason that his unit is up and running. He his good at his job and he knows this to be true. He does the BARE minimum to tow the line. I see that he gets to talk to superiors in a way that would have many of his fellow Marines, even those of higher rank, out digging ditches for days. Reason he gets away with it is that the people that work with him know NOTHING about computers short of the on and off button. The people in his unit are the type of people that keep Best Buy in business for “professional” installation of anti-virus software. While he is not a Semper Fi for life kind of guy he is good Marine and he is good at keeping the network up I've met a lot of good networking guys but, I don't know many that can monitor network traffic and keep the heart of the system moving while getting shot at.

Well the other thing is this guy is a script kiddie and the military is a virtual nirvana for script kiddies. Toker knows the basic in and outs of Internet Explorer. If you haven't started using Firefox and Zone Alarm this guy is the reason you should stop reading right now and download it. He has organized a group of like mind IT guys and general geeks that call themselves Blue Team the spend their off time seeing how many passwords they can compromise (I'm shocked that people are still using password1) then they report that to the user. Today this guy is performing a noble service however before he joined the Marines he had some less than admirable ambitions, I call it 21^st century joyriding.

The use of some well placed keystroke loggers on non firewalled IP address, execution of some well known IE exploits, and weak passwords he found himself in possession of some mighty fine bank account numbers, SSN, addresses, birthdays, maiden names and stop me if you know where I'm going with this.

Toker's plans were to set up some offshore accounts and create his on fiefdom on some small Caribbean island once he left the Marines. If I know about it that means that there was some fatal flaw in his plan. NCIS pays the guy a visit and informs him that besides using Marine resources to start his tropical kingdom he they also have a signature that they can match to his. Well now they got the kid for petty larceny (he claims that he has more money but, they can't trace it back to the signature or the Marine resources). Now then this is were I part ways with the kid. Obviously he never took crime 101. If they get you on something you shut the hell up about anything else they didn’t get you on regardless what they know and what you agree to. You go to your grave say you never did any crime what they don’t know won’t hurt you.This spree would have a normal person set up for some real jail time but, he isn’t regular person or in a regular situation. By the time this all went down he was either on his way to Iraq or in Iraq and I guess his CO figured that he would be more of a service keeping the network up over in Iraq over keeping his asshole taped up in prison for 2 years. It also helps that his backup is nowhere near as proficient as him. Good kid but if it were up to the backup to perform like Toker then we'd all be speaking Arabic right about now. I don't think the unit wants to think about life without Toker. But, things aren't all good for him once they head back to the States Toker has a nice cell in the Brig waiting for him. He has to do six months in the brig; he is busted back down to PFC, and has to come back to Iraq to support another unit. All and all what he got compared to the alternative is not a bad deal. Yes I know this sounds incredible but, I checked with others in the unit and the story is pretty solid. So basically someone likes the guy and saved him from a dishonorable discharge. The way I see the situation it pays to be well liked by the right people in high places.

All and all I have to say I like him though he's like me in someways. Plus he was able to track me down. I guess that's my fault for being sloppy.