He looked up. Maya was already walking away, smirking.

By morning, she had handed a full dossier to federal authorities: the C2 server’s physical location (a co-working space in Minsk), the Bitcoin wallet used to pay for the fake LinkedIn premium accounts, and the hash of the master backdoor.

To counter Trojans and backdoors, implement the following measures:

“LinkedIn is the perfect vector,” Maya said, already dialing the client’s CISO. “Trusted domain. SSL encrypted. No one inspects traffic to LinkedIn. And recruiters are the one group everyone opens messages from.”

She paused.

Within minutes, “Sarah K.”—or whoever controlled the puppet profiles—sent Maya a connection request. She accepted. Then she opened a private sandbox environment, logged into her dummy corporate account, and let the profile load.