43
Innocence
Lost
(A short story)
By Jack Little
Authoro s note:
The events of this story are completely based on fiction. Despite some futuristic programs, this could happen. Read On.
Will it?
Day One:
Unnamed Location. USDCW facility Delta One Foxtrot.
Quentin Hall was a programmer on Operation Knowledgeable Ghost. He was a MIT grad and had twenty years of experience in cyberwarfare. K.O., as it was known, was a program designed that could, in theory, take any piece of information from the World Wide Web, steal it, and make it look like it was never there. In the wrong hands, no piece of information is safe.
The room was brightly lit and was further illuminated by the twenty computer monitors lining each wall. Hall was usually first in, last out here. There was one other guy, Jim Hawke, rookie from the NSA. Everyone knew Quentin. They thought he was nice enough, even though he pretty much stayed to himself. No one thought he could be responsible for a cyber 9/11.
Day Two:
3205 Avenue,Brooklyn, New York, New York
Alec Chambers was thirteen, living in a small apartment with his father. His mom had died after a car wreck when Alec was eight. His father worked as a tech consultant for the company of Hadricorp, a corporation specializing in weapons development. His dad worked weekends, which is exactly what it was. Alec had built his first computer at age nine. He wrote his first program at age ten. He had been developing a firewall for two years and considered his computer extremely secure.
That is why he opened all of his emails. He had fifty-plus accounts and had little devices he planted around the world on his fathero s business trips. They opened their own IP addresses and could o bounceo messages and then hide the sendero s IP. His father, an ex-military hacker, set up computers and had his son hack it and steal as much information as possible.
Alec had no one he could trust. His father stopped caring about him ever since he got that promotion. o Assistant Vice President on Technological Developmento . His friends never talked to him. He never cared for them. At around age ten they all became the most querulous people you could ever find. His mother was dead. So he took to technology. He already had hacked numerous times into Hadricorp without anyone noticing.
He ran a website that was supportive of complete internet freedom. He was known online by only one name: Echelon. That alone was enough to give some software companies shudders. Once, a website had shut itself down after he logged in. It was an online store and had closed due to concerns of o customer safetyo . In reality, if he had wanted to steal credit card numbers, he would already have them.
The government of England, where his site had a lot of influence, tried to shut it down. They disabled one of his five MHDs (Mobile Hosting Devices) in London. Quentin was a supporter of internet rights. That is why he sent the email to him. That is why this all happened.
Day Three:
Alec scrolled through his email. There was an interesting message from qhall@USDCW.mil. The title was: Echelon, take this. Alec opened it and downloaded the file. He ran it and he saw a slot in the GUI for IP address, and then a button that resembled an open file. He typed in his Dado s companyo s ip address and selected a file called o Birthdays_TechDevWing.o When he hit the run file, he noticed the file disappeared. The file then popped up on his computer.
o Huh,o said Alec, nonchalantly. He had no school today, so he flipped on the news. The headline was PENTAGON CYBERWARRIOR ARRESTED FOR TREASON. His named was Quentin Hall. He was arrested for emailing a top-secret program to an unknown person, by the name of Echelon. Alec didno t flinch. That name had been on the news about a hundred times. He got an email from a friend (just online) called Quasar. He said to run and hide. Alec didno t agree.
Day Thirteen:
Alec had been using the software for ten days. No FBI, CIA or NSA had shown up. He lived for the thrill. That had been the fun part. He found it too easy now. Not that he didno t like it. He now had twenty-five hundred credit card numbers. He could buy nearly anything he wanted to.
What amused him, with all the digital trails and traces he had left, there was not even a name or country placed on him. He realized that he had more power than anyone else on the planet. He could access anything as long as it was connected to the internet. Medical records, military codes, and bank accounts were wide open.
Nothing was safe.
Day Fourteen:
He had decided to take things a step further. He had bought a massive hard drive from an online store. The package had arrived without a hitch. It was an amazing computer. It was black with green trim and was rather large. He hooked it up to his current computer. It boosted its power from 15 rams to 25 rams. He could now support the 125,000 daily visitors to his site. Alec was wondering if he should release the program. It would destabilize the world, but all information would be liberated. He thought, o Well, no. Io ll keep it.o He pounced onto the couch and turned on his Xerces music player. He was listening to his favorite song of all time, American Idiot by Green Day. It was an oldie, but a goodie. He had more power than anyone else on Earth.
Alec snored loudly. He was well asleep and it was ten o oo clock at night. He had made a huge mistake. He left his window open. A man crawled through, wearing all black and a beanie. The man whipped out a flash drive and stuck it in the USB slot on the computer. The intruder dragged the file onto the drive and took it out.
dAY fIFTEEN
Alec opened up the computer and looked at the file. His cursor hovered over the icon for the Program. It said: Duplicated at 9/18/32, 10:00PM. That was last night. He turned on the news without hesitation. It kept talking about a cyber attack on the power grid. Another channel said that the missile defense systems were down. Computers across America and Europe were crippled. Some were speculating that it might be connected to the email sent a few days ago to the unknown hacker Echelon. The President was slated to give a speech to the nation and the world in twenty minutes. Previously, the Defense Secretary had confirmed the entire West Coast had no power.
Cell phones were working, so it was not an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). Many thought Iran or North Korea were responsible. Al-Qaeda had not claimed responsibility, despite that there had not been a significant attack in years, they were still a possibility.
Reports were blaring in that there was mass looting and chaos in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Local governments across California have declared martial law. The stock market was having the worst day since the beginning of the Great Depression.
All because of Alec. He had three choices. One, negotiate a deal with the FBI, and serve time, but work with them for less time. Two, just turn himself in and take the fall. Or three, find this hacker and bring him/ her down.
He sat down on his chair. He decided to bring down this hacker would be the safest and the most moral route. He hacked the power grid with relative ease. From there he went to the database where every access and the IP of that access point. All he had to do was find the outlier. It was radically different from the other addresses. The similar ones were probably in the same building or complex. This one looked to be out of state. That struck him as odd.
If the attack was carried out after 10 PM, but before 6 AM, that means there could have been eight hours for the hacker to get out of state. The closest airport was Newark. The hacker probably wanted to leave as soon as possible, so Alec assumed that he went through that airport. There were eight flights in that timeframe and Alec had the list of names.
He also had access to the terrorism database. And billing addresses for the credit cards used to buy the tickets. Only one had used cash. That was odd to Alec. He made note of the name and photograph. He moved on to print out the list of photos.
When he was eleven, he wrote a program called FaceTrak. He could access personal records by way of a simple picture. He opened multiple windows and plugged in all the faces. Everyone but a few had clean records. One was an acquitted kidnapper. Another was a thief.
One was an ex-con. He was arrested for cyber-espionage. He looked like the one who payed with cash. His name was Maxwell Curtis. He flew out to Albany, which was not that far, for trying to escape a massive terrorist attack. This guy had committed a cyberattack of massive proportions. Smart choice. The authorities probably were looking for people who flew out of country.
He emailed the name and address to the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA. It was over. He had solved a case. He had stopped the hacker from doing more evil. But his innocence was lost.
Lost
(A short story)
By Jack Little
Authoro s note:
The events of this story are completely based on fiction. Despite some futuristic programs, this could happen. Read On.
Will it?
Day One:
Unnamed Location. USDCW facility Delta One Foxtrot.
Quentin Hall was a programmer on Operation Knowledgeable Ghost. He was a MIT grad and had twenty years of experience in cyberwarfare. K.O., as it was known, was a program designed that could, in theory, take any piece of information from the World Wide Web, steal it, and make it look like it was never there. In the wrong hands, no piece of information is safe.
The room was brightly lit and was further illuminated by the twenty computer monitors lining each wall. Hall was usually first in, last out here. There was one other guy, Jim Hawke, rookie from the NSA. Everyone knew Quentin. They thought he was nice enough, even though he pretty much stayed to himself. No one thought he could be responsible for a cyber 9/11.
Day Two:
3205 Avenue,Brooklyn, New York, New York
Alec Chambers was thirteen, living in a small apartment with his father. His mom had died after a car wreck when Alec was eight. His father worked as a tech consultant for the company of Hadricorp, a corporation specializing in weapons development. His dad worked weekends, which is exactly what it was. Alec had built his first computer at age nine. He wrote his first program at age ten. He had been developing a firewall for two years and considered his computer extremely secure.
That is why he opened all of his emails. He had fifty-plus accounts and had little devices he planted around the world on his fathero s business trips. They opened their own IP addresses and could o bounceo messages and then hide the sendero s IP. His father, an ex-military hacker, set up computers and had his son hack it and steal as much information as possible.
Alec had no one he could trust. His father stopped caring about him ever since he got that promotion. o Assistant Vice President on Technological Developmento . His friends never talked to him. He never cared for them. At around age ten they all became the most querulous people you could ever find. His mother was dead. So he took to technology. He already had hacked numerous times into Hadricorp without anyone noticing.
He ran a website that was supportive of complete internet freedom. He was known online by only one name: Echelon. That alone was enough to give some software companies shudders. Once, a website had shut itself down after he logged in. It was an online store and had closed due to concerns of o customer safetyo . In reality, if he had wanted to steal credit card numbers, he would already have them.
The government of England, where his site had a lot of influence, tried to shut it down. They disabled one of his five MHDs (Mobile Hosting Devices) in London. Quentin was a supporter of internet rights. That is why he sent the email to him. That is why this all happened.
Day Three:
Alec scrolled through his email. There was an interesting message from qhall@USDCW.mil. The title was: Echelon, take this. Alec opened it and downloaded the file. He ran it and he saw a slot in the GUI for IP address, and then a button that resembled an open file. He typed in his Dado s companyo s ip address and selected a file called o Birthdays_TechDevWing.o When he hit the run file, he noticed the file disappeared. The file then popped up on his computer.
o Huh,o said Alec, nonchalantly. He had no school today, so he flipped on the news. The headline was PENTAGON CYBERWARRIOR ARRESTED FOR TREASON. His named was Quentin Hall. He was arrested for emailing a top-secret program to an unknown person, by the name of Echelon. Alec didno t flinch. That name had been on the news about a hundred times. He got an email from a friend (just online) called Quasar. He said to run and hide. Alec didno t agree.
Day Thirteen:
Alec had been using the software for ten days. No FBI, CIA or NSA had shown up. He lived for the thrill. That had been the fun part. He found it too easy now. Not that he didno t like it. He now had twenty-five hundred credit card numbers. He could buy nearly anything he wanted to.
What amused him, with all the digital trails and traces he had left, there was not even a name or country placed on him. He realized that he had more power than anyone else on the planet. He could access anything as long as it was connected to the internet. Medical records, military codes, and bank accounts were wide open.
Nothing was safe.
Day Fourteen:
He had decided to take things a step further. He had bought a massive hard drive from an online store. The package had arrived without a hitch. It was an amazing computer. It was black with green trim and was rather large. He hooked it up to his current computer. It boosted its power from 15 rams to 25 rams. He could now support the 125,000 daily visitors to his site. Alec was wondering if he should release the program. It would destabilize the world, but all information would be liberated. He thought, o Well, no. Io ll keep it.o He pounced onto the couch and turned on his Xerces music player. He was listening to his favorite song of all time, American Idiot by Green Day. It was an oldie, but a goodie. He had more power than anyone else on Earth.
Alec snored loudly. He was well asleep and it was ten o oo clock at night. He had made a huge mistake. He left his window open. A man crawled through, wearing all black and a beanie. The man whipped out a flash drive and stuck it in the USB slot on the computer. The intruder dragged the file onto the drive and took it out.
dAY fIFTEEN
Alec opened up the computer and looked at the file. His cursor hovered over the icon for the Program. It said: Duplicated at 9/18/32, 10:00PM. That was last night. He turned on the news without hesitation. It kept talking about a cyber attack on the power grid. Another channel said that the missile defense systems were down. Computers across America and Europe were crippled. Some were speculating that it might be connected to the email sent a few days ago to the unknown hacker Echelon. The President was slated to give a speech to the nation and the world in twenty minutes. Previously, the Defense Secretary had confirmed the entire West Coast had no power.
Cell phones were working, so it was not an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). Many thought Iran or North Korea were responsible. Al-Qaeda had not claimed responsibility, despite that there had not been a significant attack in years, they were still a possibility.
Reports were blaring in that there was mass looting and chaos in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Local governments across California have declared martial law. The stock market was having the worst day since the beginning of the Great Depression.
All because of Alec. He had three choices. One, negotiate a deal with the FBI, and serve time, but work with them for less time. Two, just turn himself in and take the fall. Or three, find this hacker and bring him/ her down.
He sat down on his chair. He decided to bring down this hacker would be the safest and the most moral route. He hacked the power grid with relative ease. From there he went to the database where every access and the IP of that access point. All he had to do was find the outlier. It was radically different from the other addresses. The similar ones were probably in the same building or complex. This one looked to be out of state. That struck him as odd.
If the attack was carried out after 10 PM, but before 6 AM, that means there could have been eight hours for the hacker to get out of state. The closest airport was Newark. The hacker probably wanted to leave as soon as possible, so Alec assumed that he went through that airport. There were eight flights in that timeframe and Alec had the list of names.
He also had access to the terrorism database. And billing addresses for the credit cards used to buy the tickets. Only one had used cash. That was odd to Alec. He made note of the name and photograph. He moved on to print out the list of photos.
When he was eleven, he wrote a program called FaceTrak. He could access personal records by way of a simple picture. He opened multiple windows and plugged in all the faces. Everyone but a few had clean records. One was an acquitted kidnapper. Another was a thief.
One was an ex-con. He was arrested for cyber-espionage. He looked like the one who payed with cash. His name was Maxwell Curtis. He flew out to Albany, which was not that far, for trying to escape a massive terrorist attack. This guy had committed a cyberattack of massive proportions. Smart choice. The authorities probably were looking for people who flew out of country.
He emailed the name and address to the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA. It was over. He had solved a case. He had stopped the hacker from doing more evil. But his innocence was lost.
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