DARKMARK

administrator. For a long time Master Splyntr had been
arguing that JiLsi should allow him, Kaminski, to take
over the servers. Kaminski argued that he had a much
better security arrangement in place and, if he were
to take over, it would relieve the pressure on JiLsi.

Master Splyntr was JiLsi's reserve choice. He had asked
Cha0 first but the Turk had dismissed the offer,
doubtless not enthused by the thankless work involved in
maintaining servers. Nobody else would commit and so
JiLsi felt he had no choice but to invite Master Splyntr.

Kaminski received the call at about 11.30 in the evening in
early October 2006. 'My servers are ready, JiLsi,' he
said. JiLsi hesitated no longer, happy at last to
relinquish responsibility for his vulnerable servers,
'Okay. Let's move!'

Perhaps anticipating their irritation, JiLsi didn't
consult his fellow administrators when handing over control
of the server to Splyntr, although in the event none of
them seemed to object. They were quickly convinced of its
wisdom - Splyntr proved a more efficient manager of the
service than JiLsi.

Kaminski was as good as his word: his servers were
effective and secure. Not only that, but when anyone
tried to discover where the DarkMarket servers were
really located (whether fellow hackers, law-enforcement,
military or intelligence services), they could not
track them beyond an anonymous server in Singapore.

Master Splyntr was appointed administrator. Traffic
through the site began to grow again. Every time Iceman
hacked DarkMarket and destroyed its database, Master
Splyntr would have it back up and running within
twenty-four hours. And although Iceman was unquestionably
the most gifted technician in the game, his arrogance
had alienated hundreds of carders. DarkMarket grew ever
stronger and nothing, it seemed, could stop its rise to the
top. But Iceman still had one last throw of the dice.