📸 Photo

Master Splyntr

Taking up one floor of a lime-green office building on the bank of the Monongahela River, the National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance was far removed from the cloistered secrecy of Washington's intelligence community, where Mularski had cut his teeth. Here, dozens of security experts from banks and technology companies worked alongside students from nearby Carnegie Mellon University in a cluster of neat cubicles, surrounded by a ring of offices that followed the smoked-glass walls around the building. With Aeron chairs and dry-erase boards, the office had the feel of one of the technology companies that provided the NCFTA with the bulk of its funds. The FBI had made a few changes before moving in, transforming one office into an electronic communications room, packed with government-approved computer and crypto gear to securely communicate with Washington.

In his office, Mularski looked over a "linkchart" Crabb, the postal inspector, had e-mailed him—a massive organization schematic showing the disparate connections among 125 hard targets in the underground. Mularski realized he'd been going about it all wrong by waiting for a crime, then working to track it back to the culprit. The criminals weren't hiding at all. They were advertising their services on the forums. That made them vulnerable, in the same way the New York and Chicago Mafia's rituals and