DARKMARKET

towards this strategically placed city in western Pennsylvania. Andrij and Julia Warhola, a couple of Rusyns from rural north-eastern Slovakia, emigrated to Pittsburgh in the early twentieth century before dropping the final ‘a’ of their surname and giving birth to one of the most influ- ential figures in twentieth-century art.

Mighty steel bridges and inscriptions to the Norfolk and Western Railway are some of the reminders of Pittsburgh’s central contribution to America’s global economic dominance of the twentieth century. Steel from these factories was moulded into battleships, planes, cars and industrial plant that spread across the world. Decades have passed since the black clouds that spewed from the steel-producing hydra last cloaked the city in darkness, distributing poisonous particles that once conferred the highest incidence of pulmonary disease in the United States.

The smog no longer hangs over the city, and Pittsburgh is now regarded as one of the most desirable places to live in the entire United States. The sun shines brightly and, after fifteen years of poverty and decline, the city quietly refashioned itself during the 1990s as an East Coast centre of the high-tech industry.

Mularski was one of those who fled the city in the 1980s after graduating in history from Duquesne University. At the time, there was nothing left. His father could have been the reincarnation of Willy Loman. One of the first to suffer the downturn in the stumbling giant’s fortunes, Mularski senior was laid off from his sales job in the 1970s and had been unable to find another post. The family lived precariously off the earnings of Keith’s mother, an executive assistant.

Pittsburgh’s population had shrunk by one-third in young Keith’s lifetime. He had no intention of watching it waste away any further, so he moved with his new wife to Washington DC. Taken on by a large furniture retailer that operated countrywide, Mularski demonstrated real skills in management and sales. At first glance, the work of a sales manager appeared to have little in common with cybercrime, but the techniques he learned with the company provided firm foundations for his work as a cybercop with the FBI.

‘Social engineering’ – the art of persuading somebody to do some- thing that is objectively not in their interest – lies at the heart of cybercrime. How, the crook ponders, can I persuade my target to give up their password? To open an email with a trojan hidden within its code? Even to turn a computer on?