Operation IoTopia

Operation IoTopia, a Malaysian thriller novel by Bruce Allsman

A white hat hacker has to rescue two of his friends held captive by a mercenary at the behest of his frenemy, a diabolical billionaire technopreneur with a sinister plan.

White hat hackers, Din Kamal and his wife, are professional penetration testers, freelance cyber security consultants based in Penang, Malaysia.

When Gary Ang, a whistleblower at IoTopia Berhad, secretly copies his employer's top secret data and tries to escape with it, he finds a mercenary pursuing him. While speeding away in his car, realizing the urgency, he uploads to his personal cloud the most important encrypted file and sends Din, the only hacker friend he could trust, a link to the file. During the subsequent high speed car chase across the Penang Second Bridge, Gary crashes his car. He dives into the sea, manages to escape, and calls Din from a budget hotel at Batu Kawan. Unfortunately, the mercenary abducts him just before Din arrives.

Later, after failing to decrypt the file he had downloaded, Din realizes the gravity of the situation and enlists the help of Shila, his sister, a cyber crime investigator of the Malaysian government's cyber crime division to track down the mercenary's identity and employer. Further investigations reveal the identity of the mercenary and his employer, the founder and owner of IoTopia Berhad, a billionaire technopreneur from Penang and Din's longtime frenemy. Din enlists the help of Kumar, a hacker friend to hack into IoTopia Berhad's computer servers to uncover more information. Kumar attempts a hack but fails and suffers the same fate as Gary.

Consequently, Din organizes a team to help him rescue Gary and Kumar. While formulating the rescue plan they uncover a sinister plot, code-named Operation IoTopia. What is it exactly? What are its true objectives? How will Din and his team mount a rescue operation and foil the sinister plot?

Operation IoTopia, a Malaysian #thriller #novel