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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 unques- tionably 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.

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