Take the Fourth (11 page)
Authors: Jeffrey Walton
I
t wasn’t hard to hack the President’s password, the biometric scan of his finger was not needed for this point of entry, which only got you into the network, he was already hooked into the network but he needed the password for the box itself. People are creatures of habit, that’s what made the hacking of his password like child’s play. Habit—the habit of using the same old passwords over and over… why does one need to remember separate passwords for Amazon, Citbank, E-Trade, your email, your network, your voice mail, your laptop, your life… . when one will do… the same one over and over. Most people do this, all people do this, that is if they don’t write them down somewhere, somewhere close. The human mind has a limited capacity to remember insignificant strings of letters and numbers, so people stick to easy things to remember like names and special dates. The President, like everyone else, was a creature of habit and to expose his habits the first place to look was the In-Q-Tel network. In-Q-Tel is a nonprofit venture capital firm that invests in information technology for the CIA. One of their key goals is to tie company databases together through the wording that was put in place by the Patriot Act. Any company that has an online database could be searched for information in order to protect the American citizen. A series of scans within the In-Q-Tel lead to several companies that kept passwords stored in the clear, in other words unencrypted, a bad idea and unacceptable in this day and age but it still happens even in this day and age. People are lazy or just don’t know any better. Anyone can create a website today and anyone with an idea to sell—be it porn or popcorn, can make money by providing an online point of sale. Give the public a false sense of security by asking them to supply a username and password before they supply their credit card or bank information, after all, who is going to hack into a website’s database that sells dog toys or gummy worms—the government that’s who. Again, people just don’t know any better. They store this personal information—user name, password, credit card number, address, and phone number, right into an open source database, thinking their eyes are the only ones looking. It’s the ignorance of the public that really makes his job easy. After only a few minutes Greg had several likely candidates for passwords. All of them were created before he became president. One password was from a flower shop for roses which seemed odd since most secretaries were given the job to keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, one came from a rare online book store where he paid fourteen hundred for a first copy of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, another from a cigar website where he bought a fifteen thousand dollar humidor to be used as a gift since he bought three of them within six months, and there were a few others as well. The passwords were all pretty easy to decode, there was m3llss4 which is number letter substitution for Melissa, which was not his wife and correctly deduced that’s who the flowers were for, another was abc123, which is a very common one, then there was sdfghjkl, which at first glance, maybe even second third and fourth looks very random but turns out it’s just sequential letters on a keyboard. Then there was 3dogmai, *dogmai, and 1dogmai. It looks as though he found a pattern, more importantly he found the President’s pattern, his old standby, his forget-me-not, his password. On top of that he found the President was way overly conceited.
With a few passwords in hand he was about to do the unthinkable but he wasn’t about to do it alone. He was going to try to log in as the President of the United States, the repercussions, well, he couldn’t even begin to imagine if he got caught—he dialed Jorja.
“I think I have a way in.”
“Come to my office.”
Within minutes Greg was within the walls of Jorja’s office after making a brief stop for yet another caffeine buzz. He walked behind her desk, placed his Dew on the desk blotter and pulled up a chair. He felt very comfortable sitting close to Jorja and noticed she changed her perfume.
“A new scent?”
“Pardon?”
“You’ve changed your perfume.”
“Good nose.”
“Why thank you, now before we get started I need you to get me the President’s login name.”
“I should be able to get that,” and within minutes she had it
“Here it is, CICJW54.”
“So I’m betting he was born in 54.”
“Who? The President?”
“Yes.”
“How do you…”
“Commander in Chief Jonathan Whitaker, 1954,” before she could finish her question. “Okay, are you ready?”
“I guess.”
“Listen, there are going to be some red flags going up if I hit this server with incorrect passwords, I don’t know how much time I have before that happens but once in I should be able to find the files that hold the passwords and statistics and reset them.”
“And if you don’t?”
“I’d rather not worry about that, beside I’m going to try and mask your IP address and make it look like it’s coming from the White House, that will at least buy us something… . what though I’m not sure.”
With that idea, Greg accessed some of his special software located on his home computer and after about fifteen minutes he was ready for his first attempt.
“Okay my dear, are you feeling lucky, well are ya punk, which one would you like to try first? Here’s the list.”
“First off the exact quote is… . I know what you’re thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .forty-four Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”
“I thought sci-fi was your forte?”
She smiled, then Jorja perused this list of six passwords, all of them looked very much the same, with the exception of a number before or after the main body of letters, then asked, “Are you sure about these? They don’t… hold on dogmai… is that Latin?”
“No, but trust me, if you know Jonathan, one of these will work… . think, think onomatopoeia.”
“Like pow, kaboom, bang… I always think batman with those words.”
“No, sorry, I always get them confused… . I mean… . a… palindrome I think… . well sort of.”
“Like Able was I ere I saw Elba?”
“You’re good, very good but I was always keen on rise to vote sir.”
She nudged him in the ribs and said, “Ha, I see it now, 1dogmai… you’re right, then again you’re mostly right.”
“Mostly?”
Ignoring a replay, “How about we go with 2dogmai?”
“Sure why not, it’s your neck in the noose,” then he created a connection and the prompt LOGIN: was staring him right in the face. His fingers tensed and his breathing had almost come to a halt, the idea of hacking the President’s password was again causing his stomach much upheaval.
He entered CICJW45 and just before he hit return Jorja shouted, “Wait!”
He saw his nervous mistake, damn transposition he surmised, always got him into a heap of trouble. He backed spaced and entered CICJW54. PASSWORD: Now the moment of truth. He entered 2dogmai.
“Invalid Login or Password.” replied the IP address ending in 12.168.
“Jorja are you sure about that login id?”
“Pretty sure.”
“On a scale of one to ten?”
“Eight… maybe seven.”
Greg rolled his eyes and thought to himself, “a difference between a B and a C, not up to my standards.”
“Do you want to try another one or a variation of this one… . you know like substitute the o for zero or i for one?”
“No, I want to try another one.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,
for
I
am
positive, make it so,” accenting the “for I am” in her best Jean Luc Picard voice.
And without another word Greg entered CICJW54 being mighty aware of his first error, then slowly and methodically, using his old hunt and peck mode, he entered dogmai4 and hit return.
“Invalid Login or Password,” replied the IP address ending in 12.168
“Shit,” was Greg’s answer to the message, “That’s not good, we’re done for the day.”
“Done? Why?”
“I told you about those red flags, we just failed twice, one more failed attempt and I am pretty sure, no… . one hundred percent certain, we will lock out the President. Then when he goes to enter this machine and gets a user blocked error all hell will be loose.”
“But I know the reason.”
“I don’t care Jorja, we can wait, we must wait.”
But before he could say anything else, Jorja grabbed the keyboard and starting typing. She hit return.
“Invalid Login or Password,” was not the reply from the IP address ending in 12.168.
Instead both she and Greg were starring at a dollar sign prompt.
$
“Holy fucking shit Jorja, that took some balls, what did you enter?”
“Come on genius, surely I haven’t stumped you,” he was, “Now what?”
“We take a look around.”
“That’s a Unix box.”
He entered his first command which did not work, then Greg spotted the caps lock key light was still on. He wasn’t stumped anymore, just one more reason to love that woman.
Greg entered a few commands and the machine seemed to be at his beck and call. On the monitor now was a list of all the directories on the machine. He printed them off. Then he did the command ps—ef and hit return. A list of all the processes this machine had running was now displayed on the monitor. He printed that as well and at the $ prompt he entered exit and hit return. The screen went blank.
“Why in the hell did you do that?” Without a word Greg went to her printer and gathered the papers, then handed them to her. She looked them over, and then spotted what Greg saw just moments ago. Two of the processor belonged to the President. They being one of them, the other meant the President too was online, dangerous territory they were in, shark infested waters, yes shark infested waters with blood. Hopefully no one noticed.
They were out of the machine but they had plenty to do. They had to analyze the directories and processes if they could. This would be a good spring board as to what this thing was doing on the network. They had “the who,” “the where,” “the what,” now they needed the why… the how would come later.
They each had their adrenalin rush for the day and they each needed to calm their nerves. Greg suggested getting Jorja a coffee but she declined and instead joined him in his quest for another can of caffeine. During idle chit chat, Jorja was running things in her head, she knew damn well Greg wouldn’t leave well enough alone but she had to convince him to lay low. Meanwhile she wanted to take control, she knew her way around a Unix box and she had one thing Greg did not… . she had the President’s daily itinerary, which meant there was a very good chance she knew when the President would most likely not be in the system.
“Greg, I don’t want you in that system unless I’m there right beside you.”
“I understand.”
“Greg, I mean it, if you go in and get caught I cannot help you, it’s my responsibility, got that?”
“No, no, I understand fully, so when’s the next time you want to do this?”
“How about this coming Saturday, the President has his banquet with his dwindling allies in the Middle East.”
“Sounds like a plan… I’ll bring the wine.” Deep down Greg was thinking about abandoning her words, deeper still he realized he would do anything for that woman even take the fall for what they just had done but even deeper the idea of working besides Jorja on a Saturday night, he couldn’t plan for a more romantic evening, hacking code with his green eyed boss, yes, yes, yes he will stick to his words. He then slipped a dollar bill into the vending machine, pushed one five seven, watched the item drop, reached in, and handed Jorja her very own Kit Kat Bar.
“You scare me sometimes.”
“Everyone knows your mid afternoon snack,” Greg then calculated about just how many people that might be and that he knew he was the full majority. He had the facts on green eyed Jorja Carson, most of them anyway.
. . .
A
fter dinner he finished watching the local news, then the world news, and even watched the first round of Jeopardy, in the first round he rarely got any answers so why watch the Double Jeopardy round, although he was in full glory when he answered a $100 or even $200 dollar question and considered himself a top contender. He shut off the boob tube then finally made his way downstairs to his little dark room. His little girl was again awake but she laid in silence on the bed. No food or drink was touched so he assumed she stayed where she was. He just watched his little girl in silence and deep down he felt a sense of joy he hadn’t felt in a long, long time, almost a giddiness. She was the one, she was his little girl. After about forty minutes or so, Ripley climbed out of bed and made her way to the bathroom. Ten minutes later she was out. He noticed she was such a good girl she even used soap and rinsed her hands. Her mother taught her well. She then went on an exploration of her room. Ripley first went over to the food. She was starving. She grabbed her favorite right away. She liked them because they were fun to eat. She peeled back the barely ripe banana and broke off a piece of the tip and placed it gently in her mouth… almost like she was unsure of how it tasted. It must have tasted like she remembered because she continued breaking off pieces and eating them like there was no tomorrow. She held the empty banana peel and looked for a place to throw it away. There was no waste basket to be found. He cursed himself as he watched, “how could I be so stupid?” She placed the peel back in almost the same place she found it. Next she grabbed the red bottle of juice and took a sip. She made her yucky face, probably because it was very warm. She took another sip and decided against it. She placed the cap back on and placed it in almost the exact place she found it. He made two more mental notes, one that she was pretty tidy and another was he needed to find a way to keep the juice cold—he’ll use the ice chest he concluded and smiled yet again at his wisdom. She didn’t touch any other food at the moment. She then knelt down besides Barbie’s Dream House and glanced in the windows. She didn’t touch it. She just looked with that child wonderment. She spent almost an hour on the floor and he was beginning to get antsy and uncomfortable. He stood up to stretch and knocked the box of tissue on the floor. She turned towards the sound, towards the mirror. It wasn’t a loud sound, just a small slap of cardboard hitting concrete. She got up and walked right in front of the mirror. On the other side he was motionless. He was in awe. Ripley was more beautiful than he could have ever imagined. That blonde hair and those steel blue eyes… everything he remembered. His girl was beautiful. The two stood and stared at each other, only Ripley was staring at herself unknowing of who or what was on the other side of the glass. To her it was just a mirror; to him it was a window into his soul. Unphased by the previous sound she went towards the closet and opened it up. She glanced through all the clothes like she was looking for something; she then made her way to the bureau and again rifled through all the clothes like she was looking for something. She looked again in both the closet and all the drawers. She was seemingly becoming upset. Earlier that morning she had a fight with her mom because she wanted to wear her favorite lime green shirt with the embroidered rainbow turtles on the front—it was a gift from her granddad when he came back from California. She couldn’t find it, she couldn’t find it anywhere. She knew none of these were her clothes. She immediately went to the steel door again and tried to open it, again it did not budge. “Mommy,” at the top of her lungs, then a change of tune… “daddy… daddy… daddy… I want out daddy… please daddy… please.” He so wanted to say something right there and then but he needed more time. The sobbing worsened. It turned into sheer panic and screams… “Mommy… daddy… . mommy… daddy…” and so it went on for at least an hour. He knew she was going to cry but he expected nothing like this… he too was beginning to panic. He couldn’t bear it any longer. He exited out of his watching room, went upstairs, peeked at his watch and got ready to go to work
. . .