Caitlin exhaled, and did her best to pretend she knew what the heck Wong was talking about. The teacher finally came up for air a couple of minutes later.
“Does that help? I can tell you more, but you don’t look terribly interested.”
Where in God’s name did you learn all this? “No, that’s fine. Lisa, I need you to do something for me.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
Caitlin sat up and adjusted the iPad in her lap. She looked for any sign of life from her parents’ bedroom. There was no spillage of light into the West Sitting Hall. It was apparent the president and first lady were done for the night.
“Lisa, I’m going to send you an email I received this evening. I want you to take a look at it and tell me what you think.”
Wong checked her watch, then nodded. “Very well. Send it over.” Again, the teacher pointed. “But I am not happy with your little email stunt. Do you hear me?”
Chapter 7 White House Family Quarters 9:41 PM
Caitlin dozed in the wing chair until she was awakened by the chiming iPad. It was Wong and she looked perplexed.
“This is real strange, Caitlin.” The teacher rubbed her eyes. “Let me start from the beginning. I was able to view all of the Internet headers associated with the message you sent. Some services allow users to see the complete list of headers and some won’t. Fortunately, your service is a bit more user-friendly than most.”
“You mean there are more headers than date, to, from and subject?”
“You’re kidding, right? Tell you what. I’ll email the expanded headers from your message so you can have a look. Hold on.” Caitlin’s iPad chimed a few seconds later. “Have it?”
The first daughter brought up the email message.
Return-Path:
Delivered-To:
Received:
Delivered-To:
Received:
Received:
Received:
Message-ID:
Received:
X-Originating-IP:
X-Originating-Email:
X-Sender
From:
To:
Bcc:
Subject:
Date:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type:
X-OriginalArrivalTime:
“Okay, I’m looking at it.” Caitlin squinted at the screen. “Lisa, what is this? I don’t even know where to—“
“This is all the information you need to know about this message. Who sent it. Where it’s going. The date. Time sent and so forth. Whenever I analyze headers I always start from the bottom and work my way up. My father taught me that. Okay, take a look. The first seven are pretty self-explanatory, wouldn’t you agree?”
Caitlin looked them over. “I guess, except for Mime-Version.”
“Don’t worry about that one. Just look at From. It’s the eighth header from the bottom. This is what confuses me. The sender of this email could have pulled off a clean header, but instead chose the words Apparently From to appear at your end. I thought I’d have a breakthrough when I reached the originating and received headers further up the line, but no such luck.”
“I’m still not getting this,” said the first daughter.
“Look at the header X-Originating-Email. Middle of the pack. See it?”
“Got it.”
“This is where I thought I’d nail this guy. See, the amateurs spoof the from line but often forget about this particular header. This header cross-references the From header, and is simply another way to identify the sender. Only this guy has covered his tracks really well. Then he went to even greater lengths to hide his identity in the four Received headers near the top of the list. I can’t crack them, and I tried everything I know.”
Caitlin sighed. “Well, that’s solved.”
“This has the making of an ingenious email, but the contents in the From header look as though they were written by an idiot. Why go through all the trouble to send an untraceable email, and then screw it all up by letting the recipient see the Apparently From header?”
Caitlin thought for a moment. “Because the sender wanted me to know this was fake mail.”
“Good guess. But why?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? What kind of game was this person playing? The emails demonstrated technical ability, not to mention a calculating mind. But whose calculating mind? Normally she wouldn’t care, but the references to Uncle Terry and Mrs. Ponder had Caitlin tied up in knots. She had to know.
Caitlin stood and stretched her legs. “Tell me this:” she said, padding to the other side of the Center Hall, “how can the sender’s return information be hidden that well? I thought everything on the Web could be traced.”
Wong quickly explained that some companies (the ones with paranoid clients) offered anonymous email at a price. They guaranteed SSL Encryption, clean headers (which this guy had obviously eschewed) and, of course, an anonymous IP. They kept their servers in foreign countries and far away from developed nations in North America and Europe—the nations with snooping governments, competent law enforcement agencies and crafty lawyers.
“What countries are we talking about?” Caitlin wanted to know.
“Bolivia, Panama, Laos, Malaysia. Places like that. And some of the more secretive companies move their servers every few weeks.”
“You’re saying this mysterious sender is using anonymous email?”
Wong nodded quickly. “I guarantee it.”
Wait a minute, she thought, circling back to the gold wing chair. “I’m going to break away for a few minutes and look for something.”
“Look for what?”
“I want to see if I have any other messages with that strange header.”
“You think you have more? How long has this been going on?”
“I’ll call you back.”
“It’s getting late, so hurry up and send what you have. My dad’s the real expert. I could get him to take a look—”
The first daughter snapped, “NO. Keep this between us.” Caitlin watched Wong shrug from the other end. “Do you hear me? I’m not fooling around.”
“Why do I have the feeling this is going to land me on the Secret Service shit list?” said Wong.
Caitlin rifled through her inbox. It was a hopeless mess. There were 402 messages dating back a year-and-a-half. At least half that number sat in the Deleted Items Folder. She began scrolling. A litany of useless