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CARDER COURT

access card, keyed in the door code, and locked himself inside. He picked up the secure line to Washington. The FBI agent didn't sugarcoat his report to the brass. After all his work winning undercover authority to take over DarkMarket, getting a buy-in from senior Justice Department and bureau officials, Iceman was going to blow them out of the water just three weeks into the operation.

Max struggled with how to handle the exposé—after his attacks on Dark-Market, he knew his findings would be viewed as partisan mudslinging. He considered shuttering Carders Market before exposing Master Splyntr, to avoid the perception that the whole thing was just another volley in the carding wars. Instead, he decided to send his new lieutenant, Th3C0rrupt-ed0ne, to represent his site.

The trial was held over Silo's "Carder IM"—a free, supposedly encrypted instant messaging program the Canadian hacker offered as an alternative to AIM and ICQ, supported by display ads for dumps vendors. Matrix001 showed up from the DarkMarket side—JiLsi was busy with the fallout from Max's attack on Mazafaka. Silo and two other Canadian carders were also present. Silo opened the meeting by handing out a compressed RAR file containing the evidence gathered by him and Iceman.

When some of the carders opened the file, their antivirus software went wild. Silo had back-doored the evidence; not a promising start to a summit meeting.

C0rrupted and Silo walked them through the case: Silo's document templates showed that someone at NCFTA held a privileged position on DarkMarket, and the access logs Iceman had stolen proved that Master Splyntr was the mole.

"One hundred percent undeniable proof," wrote C0rrupted. "We worked hard to try and make peace, and if we go public LE [law enforcement] is going to come after us HARD. But if we don't say anything, we are responsible for all those who get fucked over."