Death and Dishonor

by Abhimanyu Saxena

  She opened her bag and pulled a handgun out. After cocking it, she waited near the front door.

  “What is it, Mansi? Are you waiting for somebody?”

  Tia turned around to see a fellow hostel-mate talking to her. She was staying there under the false identity of Mansi Aggarwal.

  “Yes, my boyfriend.”

  She bit her tongue as soon as she said that. It came naturally to her, and she was dumbfounded by that too. All of her thoughts went spiraling down when she heard the doorbell. She held the gun tightly and opened the door. To her relief, it was Arjun.

  “Did some truck run over you?” she said eyeing all cuts and bruises on my face.

  “Where the hell were you Arjun? It is almost an hour over; I thought you had sold me out to the Police,” she continued.

  “I would never do that to you, Tia.”

  After settling down, she asked about Ajeet.

  “The bastard ran away. I tried so hard but couldn’t get him. But I did get something, he mentioned a flash drive.”

  “What flash drive?” she asked.

  “Beats me. Another open-ended clue. But I bet this has got to be something Aditi was investigating.”

  I scratched my chin. I had grown stubble and looked less hideous when I checked my reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t making any sense to me now. There was a long list of clues which pointed to nowhere – the piece of paper with Ali written on it at Aditi’s apartment, the follow your heart drawing, the piece of torn paper with a triangle logo on it given by Aditi’s mother, Shikha’s bank token and her mobile phone which I had never seen earlier.

  “Here, this was the mobile phone I was talking about.”

  I handed over the mobile to Tia. I had never seen it with Shikha in the past. The mobile was one of the strangest ones I ever saw. It was a simple black colored flip-on mobile with only a single button on the side. I had tried pressing it a lot of times, but nothing ever happened except a peculiar sign on the screen. I doubted whether it actually belonged to Shikha or it got mixed up with someone else’s.

  “This is a grade A encrypted phone. It will require a set of sequential algorithms and decryptors to open up the phone.”

  “What gibberish was that? Can you do it?”

  “No, but I know someone who can.”

  “Who is it?”

  “My ex-boyfriend Sid, he is a devices expert hacker.”

  “Sounds good, tell me if you need me.”

  “Wait, whose car are you driving and what is the next plan of action?” she asked hurriedly.

  “I met Aditi’s brother Akshay. He gave me the car and will help us in clearing this mess.”

  “All the help and still nowhere to go,” she remarked. “By the way what does he do?” Tia added.

  “Um – he is a social activist. I will go now; these injuries won’t heal themselves.”

  “Take care. I will let you know once the phone is decrypted.”

  ~*~

  “Why weren’t you picking up my call?” Tia shouted looking at Sid.

  She had decided to visit him at his place but seeing his face she sensed that something was wrong.

  Sid was a typical nerd. He wore a loose checkered shirt with a cargo pant. His hair was unkempt and falling all over the place. “I tried calling you T, but you didn’t talk.”

  She was about to open her mouth when he motioned her to enter inside quickly.

  “I am in grave danger T; only you can help me.”

  “Actually, I came for your help.”

  “You have got to help me first!”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I may have been hacked.”

  “Make some sense Sid, you yourself are a hacker!”

  “I was trying to erase my loans and debts records of my bank. In doing so, I got a hold of all the account numbers and the amount of dough they have in their accounts. I was curious and downloaded the entire copy of the data. Just a few hours back, I received a mail saying that they know what I did. They are demanding half a million dollars in their account by the next hour. They have set up a countdown timer on my desktop. If I don’t give the money by then, they will take over all of my data and start publishing it.”

  She slapped him instantly without thinking twice. “I warned you not to repeat your mistakes and change your lifestyle, and this is what you are doing. You lost me because of this.”

  “I needed money T, I was desperate, and moreover, you have always known my stand on eradicating debts and loans. The power should lie with the people and not the Government.”

  “Where has this led you to?”

  “I don’t have you now to help me at each and every turn.”

  Tia didn’t say anything. Her lips turned into a line. “You must have left your digital footprints which would have been sniffed and snooped by the hackers.”

  “You are Police. Please help me,” he added quickly.

  “Trust me you don’t need a Police officer to help you out from this mess.”

  “I need help T. Otherwise I am finished.”

  “You know very well that I have left all of this in the past.”

  Sid looked hesitant. “You said you needed my help, help me, and I will help you.”

  “And the award for the ‘most number of times ‘help’ said in a fucking sentence’ goes to you asshole,” she said mockingly.

  She had a sarcastic smile plastered on her face.

  “Please, this is the last time that I am asking for any help. Then I will do whatever you want from me.”

  After some more persuasion, Tia finally agreed. “Do you still have my old gear and setup?”

  “Everything is still the same,” he replied instantly.

  “Let’s get to it then,” she replied taking a deep breath.

  ~*~

  She set up her laptop remotely and connected it to the same network. “How much time is left?”

  “Forty-five minutes are remaining, after that, they will start publishing the data.”

  “Ha! That’s forty minutes more than the time I require to save your pansy ass.”

  She opened a command prompt window and started running her fingers down on the keyboard excitedly. “I am setting up a Backdoor to reach the data and try to destroy it.”

  “T, don’t destroy it. Imagine the benefits if we keep the data and transfer some funds to our accounts.”

  “Are you for real?” she shouted furiously. “I don’t think I want to help a guy like you.”

  “Okay – okay, do what feels right to you,” he replied logging on a different computer.

  “Sid, do one thing. Set up a VPN and create a super-user with root privileges, and try to enter the bank’s portal. Once inside, remove all the traces and digital signatures corresponding to your ID.”

  “Don’t you think that I have already tried it?”

  “Try now, with this backdoor that I have set up. It should be invisible to others but don’t try to do anything else.”

  He nodded and began thrashing his fingers on the keyboard. After ten-fifteen minutes, he finally managed to do it.

  “The backdoor worked magically T; now there is no proof if I ever hacked my way into the bank.”

  “Don’t forget to exit gracefully too, do not leave any more traces,” she replied.

  She had loved this work since her childhood. It was her guilty pleasure. She knew that she was one of the best here. However, her thoughts came crashing down when she looked at Sid’s screen.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? I am doing everything for you, keeping my job at stake and you are still thinking like an ass!”

  Sid was on a transfer funds screen and had typed an amount to steal from someone else’s account. “We will split it, T.”

  “What if I end this backdoor and broadcast your network IP and location to all so that you are behind bars for good?”

  Sid understood the message and closed the screen dejectedly. In doing so, he forgot to exit the VPN gracefu
lly.

  INTRUSION DETECTED!!

  “Sid, you have gotta be shitting me. I told you to do it cautiously. It won’t take more than five minutes to triangulate your location now.”

  “Damn T, I don’t know where’s my head today. What to do now?”

  “Let me think of something,” she replied playing with a fidget spinner in one hand.

  After a few seconds, she looked at him with a cold stare. “We need to create a mock attack or intrusion from some other part of the world. It’s not foolproof, but it will buy us time.”

  “What about the hackers blackmailing me? We only have ten minutes left now.”

  “You dug your own grave on this one. You are like cancer, affecting everyone all around you. I came to ask for a favor and see what you dragged me into.”

  Sid was at a loss of words; he kept looking at her like a lost puppy. She cleared her throat.

  “How much money do you have?”

  “I am not giving them anything. If I am getting fucked then let it be in a glorious way. At least it would be revolutionary.”

  She scoffed. “Nothing is revolutionary in stupidity. You will be forever remembered as a dumb idiot, who bit more than he can chew.”

  “Use the virtual network and try the brute force attack to log in and let it ping to as many zones or countries possible. We want the route to be as difficult to trace.”

  He nodded and started doing the same. “I am creating bots so that all bots point to different regions.”

  “Finally you are making sense Sid.”

  “I think I know the hacker group that is blackmailing you. They are called Atticus; they feed off small-time hackers like you. You do all the hard work, and then they enjoy the riches.”

  Sid scratched his belly. “I have heard of them.”

  “You are gross!! I am checking the origin for the mail and the source code running behind the damn countdown on your system.”

  “I don’t know what would I have done if you hadn’t come today.”

  It was five minutes left when Tia’s eyes gleamed. She had bifurcated the code and fed it in the compiler. It was definitely Atticus. “Sid, the news has spread that there is a massive cyber-attack on Globus Bank.”

  “Fuck, we need more time,” he exclaimed.

  “Do one thing, use one of the bots to kill their login page so that no one can log in. Their first priority would be to fix that.”

  “How do you expect me to execute it? They must be having failover and backups.”

  “Build a code that tries to login numerous times every second. The ID doesn’t matter; what matters is that we crash the login.”

  Sid understood and ran the code for a Denial of Service attack. “Done, it should be down momentarily. But they will recover that in no time.”

  Tia sighed. “I just need the heat to shift somewhere else.”

  At that moment, a chat window opened up on Sid’s affected laptop.

  Your time is up, start transferring the funds now or we expose you.

  Both of them looked at each other for what felt like an eternity. “We lost,” he said.

  “We cannot afford your data to be compromised otherwise you will be caught in no time. Do one thing, initiate some kind of transfer with them. I want to snoop in on their network.”

  Sid nodded and typed back on the chat window –

  Can you please give me more time to arrange the money?

  Tia started finding the route of the message that they received. It pointed its origin to be somewhere near Middle East of the world. She tried to look around more but got an error on her screen.

  FIREWALL BLOCKED YOUR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS

  “Damn!”

  “I am thinking of surrendering Tia, maybe take down Atticus with me. I will say that I was a member of them and tried to topple down the economy.”

  “They won’t be caught, whereas you will be in the maximum security prison for your entire life.”

  “Then what else can be done?” Sid asked, clueless.

  “I may have a solution for that. Do one thing, let them start taking your data. At that time their network will be the most vulnerable. If I could upload a custom code packet in your affected system during that and then run it remotely, it should do the trick.”

  “Do you mean the same piece of code that led us to meet? It was glorious!” his eyes gleamed.

  “The very same, it is my signature move,” she added with a wink.

  Without warning, Sid lost control of his primary laptop, and only a black window was visible. It displayed all the files that were getting moved.

  “Tia, anytime now will be good,” he said hurriedly seeing his data vanish in front of his eyes.

  She tried to access Atticus network and succeeded in the first attempt. “The bitch is back!”

  Sid saw all the files being moved and then saw a familiar filename getting transferred - W3lc0M3.bat. He remembered that file name. Tia had uploaded the same file on the college network causing all hell to break loose. She was the creator of that genius code.

  “The file is transferred, now execute that T!”

  “Wait for it. I am thinking of collateral damage here.”

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Killing two birds with a single stone. Be a doll and upload the same file on the bank’s database server too.”

  “Tia, they are already on the prowl. We would be like sitting ducks in front of them.”

  “Trust me, I have got this.”

  Reluctantly, he proceeded ahead to upload the same code on the bank’s database server.

  “Terminate the virtual network when I say so, not one second early and not one second late.”

  He nodded and placed his hand on the exit network button. Within a single second, Tia executed the code file and all of its copies executed too.

  “NOW!”

  Sid terminated the network immediately, and then a couple of things happened instantly. The data being moved from Sid’s laptop by Atticus stopped, and they exited the bank’s portal gracefully too clearing all of their digital signatures and traces. Instead of Sid’s data, the bank’s data started getting uploaded at Atticus end; what made it worse was that the Cyber team could easily see who was stealing their data.

  “Take that bitches!” she shouted gleefully.

  Sid still couldn’t understand the reason of her happiness. “What just happened?”

  “Globus bank thinks that the intrusion and the stealing of data is being done by the hacker group that was blackmailing you. I saved your ass once again.”

  “What the fuck?” he replied unable to believe whatever just happened.

  He jumped up and kissed her excitedly. “Thanks, baby.”

  She pushed him to the side. “Let’s not get too excited in the heat of the moment. We are not together.”

  His face dropped instantly.

  “T, you know you like it. You are one of the best hackers that I have ever seen.”

  “I don’t care whether I am good at it or not; I promised my Baba that I will leave that life behind.”

  He nodded and took a sigh of relief, but a tight slap on his face confused him.

  “Now is not the time to relax. You have all of the data backed up, right?”

  “Yeah, why did you hit me?”

  She took a screwdriver and started opening both of his laptops. Within a minute she removed the hard disks from both of them.

  “What are you planning to do T?”

  She pulled a mini drill from her bag and drilled multiple holes inside both of them.

  “Don’t do it. We are safe now. There is no need.”

  “I am not going to take any chances. Once she had drilled enough holes in the hard disk, she threw them in the microwave and started it.”

  “No – not my microwave!” he shouted with his hands on his head.

  “Screw your microwave; I don’t want anything to lead this back to us.”

  He nodded and
saw fireworks coming from his microwave. “Thanks for everything today!”

  “Now is the time to return the favor.”

  “Anything.”

  She pulled Shikha’s phone out of her pocket and gave it to him. “I need this decrypted now.”

  He looked at the phone curiously and then took a deep breath.

  “It is one of the most securely encrypted phones. It will take at least twelve hours to decrypt it.”

  Her lips turned into a line. She called Arjun instantly.

  “It would take at least twelve hours to get it decrypted. Can I give him this phone as I have some shit to take care of?”

  “Okay, do you trust him though?” asked Arjun.

  “He is the best option that we have,” she said.

  After a minute, she disconnected the call and went towards Sid.

  “This is of the utmost priority so don’t fuck it up.”

  He nodded and started working on the phone. Tia left the place, still smiling at the day’s adventure with a single question in her mind – did she choose the right career path?

  FAIRYTALE

  The morning after was far from peaceful with the loud church bells stirring me up. If John’s fidgeting around the room wasn’t enough, I was wide awoken by the loud ring of my cellphone “What is it?” I groaned.

  “Oh, sleeping, are you?” Tia barked, “I should be the one to get some sleep, but I am busy looking out for you, remember?”

  “Someone is spreading cheers this morning,” I said, getting up slowly now. John couldn’t understand my sarcastic tone and beamed at me. “Any word on the progress with the phone?”

  “Not yet, give him some time, he will get results,” Tia snapped. “In the meantime-”

  “Go get some sleep, woman,” I cut the call and sat back.

  John took the pillow from my cot in a hurry, and it brushed my face.

  “What is wrong with you, old man?”

  John dropped the pillow, lines of shock spreading across his forehead, “what happened, my son?”

  “Your son isn’t able to sleep with all your shenanigans around the room and the church bells and the phone rings and the thousand noises the morning brings.”