A Sense of Justice

by Jack Davis

  At the time, the SUNY system had a monthly backup for all student records on the mainframe. He knew that everything about the students, including their financial history, methods of payment, and bank account numbers, were all in one location. Everything he would ever need was right at his fingertips.

  The night before the backup, he made a slight modification to the program. The program kicked in during the backup process and downloaded one hundred files to a part of the network he could access remotely. He named the script internal audit, knowing anyone seeing it would reasonably think it had been developed to perform independent checks. It worked magnificently

  The man refined the code over time, making it almost undetectable. He was proud of it and felt it was brilliant. At times he wished someone would find it to see what a precise job he had done.

  The program was simple enough and took only five lines of code. It allowed account information for a hundred students to be shipped to a similar database at McGill University in Montreal. He had chosen that school based upon their reciprocity agreement with the SUNY system, and he felt it would be harder for Canadian authorities to catch someone in the United States. The reciprocity agreement allowed trusted users and sys admins to have a higher level of privileges than would normally be expected. With this access, the man was able to find a seldom-used server on McGill’s network and carve out enough memory to house his numbers without anyone being aware of it. Later he would move the data to other servers at other Canadian universities, always being careful not to leave too big a footprint for anyone to notice or care about. With everything else system administrators had to worry about, none cared about a small database marked SUNY school admin.doc. It was encrypted, and the few times someone from north of the border did try to take a look, they couldn’t see anything. Their calls to the SUNY Systems Administrator were directed to the man, who was able to assuage any of their concerns. While not foolproof, it was as close possible.

  Physical Deterioration Leads to Seclusion

  Around the man’s twenty-sixth birthday he noticed how much his eyesight had deteriorated. Between pornography at night and his work on the computer during the day, he was averaging upwards of fourteen hours a day looking at a computer screen. Along with his eyes went his right wrist. It became painful for him to use his computer mouse. The doctor explained he had what would later become commonly known as carpal tunnel syndrome, but at that time in upstate New York, it was called a “kind of tennis elbow in your wrist.”

  It didn’t take a Johns Hopkins surgeon to identify the cause. The patient was told the pain was caused by overuse, and he would have to cut way back on his use of computers. The man, like every good addict, didn’t believe the expert.

  He decided to go to the only truly unbiased source of information: the internet. While he got additional data, it all supported the doctor’s diagnosis. There were recommendations for something called ergonomic devices for his hands and wrist. He charged New York State for the ergonomic keyboard and mouse, since after all, his condition was mostly their fault. He also had them purchase a wrist guard that looked like something he had seen bowlers wear. It helped with the pain but slowed him down. He only used it when the discomfort became too great. He also tried to modify his viewing habits, but also like any true addict, couldn’t. Over the years he tried every possible solution—a left-handed mouse, voice recognition software, touch screens, heat, cold, everything—except what the doctors recommended: prolonged rest and exercise.

  The last computer-related physical ailment to attack the man before he hit the ripe old age of thirty was chronic pain and problems with his back resulting from poor posture. Initially it manifested itself in stiffness or soreness when he woke up in the mornings. He went back to the doctor. Again, the quack told him it was a computer-related issue. The doctor explained that spending as much time hunched over the keyboard as he did was causing a curvature of his neck and spine, and he had to adjust his work environment and his posture while he was at the keyboard. His condition eventually became bad enough that behind his back at work he was known as the Cocktail Shrimp.

  While the physical ailments were easy to understand because of their outward manifestations, more damage—irreparable damage—had been done to the man’s mind. Going days without sleep and keeping himself awake on caffeine and other stimulants had affected his personality. Due to the gradual nature of the changes, he didn’t notice them as they happened.

  The lack of need for human interaction, his preference for being by himself, and his chronic anger at everyone else, exacerbated by his lack of sleep, seemed to feed on themselves.

  Over the course of a decade, his dark, reclusive nature became more ingrained and irreversible. At this time, online services were becoming more prevalent; there were fewer and fewer reasons to interact with other human beings. It started with the automatic tellers in the eighties. He could happily deal exclusively with machines. Online bill paying, self-checkout at the grocery stores, and the rise of emails to communicate all added to his ability to avoid human interaction. Society was truly evolving.

  By the early part of the new century, the man could function at times for close to a week without having to talk to another human being. Since most of his personal interactions in the past had not been positive, the fewer he had to face, the better.

  While he wouldn’t have admitted to it even if he had been able to perceive it, psychologically he was deteriorating. His ability to interact with people at work worsened. Trying to communicate as much as possible via email, he was often unsure about the meaning and intent of the messages. Based upon his suspicious personality, he always ascribed negative connotations to any statement that could be interpreted in more than one way. He was sure people were against him. He read every piece of correspondence with that mindset. His reaction to these perceived slights was to snap back. Half the time this elicited an in-kind negative response, which only confirmed the man’s initial thoughts. His untrusting attitude and disagreeable manner fortified his impression that people didn’t like him, which created a self-fulfilling prophecy. People avoided him and he became more withdrawn. The spiral downward accelerated. It didn’t bother the man; he had his computers, and other friends—online friends.

  Warcraft

  In late 1996, like tens of thousands of other previous Dungeons and Dragons players, the man became addicted to a computer game called Warcraft. The fantasy-based game allowed players to control armies of orcs or humans and wage war on the rival race. As a precursor to the popular Age of Empires game, in Warcraft each side built up resources, abilities, and a civilization while trying to attack or defend against armies controlled by the computer. One interesting feature of the game was that it had, at that time, a unique ability to allow the user to play against opponents online.

  Once the man had mastered the game against the computer, he ventured into the online arena. He thoroughly enjoyed it. Even the best artificial intelligence (AI) could not come close to playing another human being. He spent hours online battling any opponents he could find. Just about the time he had become proficient, the company behind the game, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., came out with the second in the series, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. The man was the first in line at the store to buy the game the day it came out. He played for twenty-six hours straight, completing all the levels.

  The man’s devotion to the game was almost religious. He applied for and was accepted as a beta tester for Blizzard. As a beta tester he was allowed to play prereleases of the game to identify bugs or glitches before they were released to the public. He provided more and better feedback than any other tester for the third and fourth installments of the game. It was one of the only areas in his life where he willingly subjected himself to direction from others. He needed to be at the forefront of the Warcraft development window. By being a beta tester, he saw everything prior to it being officially released. In so doing, the man knew more than ninety-nine percent of all the other playe
rs who had to wait for the new versions to be released. As with everything else, knowledge was power. In Warcraft, the man acquired a great deal of power.

  With the incredible popularity of the Warcraft series, the company satiated its loyal following—or more accurately, addicted zealots—by producing World of Warcraft. This was an online universe based upon the story that had been developed in the original set of games. It became one of the first massive multi-player online role-playing games, or MMORPGs. For a monthly fee, a gamer could create characters of all different races (elf, dwarf, human, orc, etc.) and professions (warrior, priest, wizard, etc.), then interact with the game or other online characters. The point of the game for the characters was to advance in skills and abilities and to complete quests. The quests were generated by the game, but often required cooperation with other online players.

  As with so many areas where people interact online, the virtual nature of the contact allowed individuals to project themselves as someone they were not, someone they wished to be. This was the case with the man. While in real life he was a mid-thirties, out-of-shape couch potato, in the game he was an overly muscled Paladin warrior: defender of the poor and weak.

  He used his experience to help lower-level characters advance. Over time, his main character, Demon-Slayer, became known to just about every player who wasn’t a beginner.

  One aspect of the game that the man came to enjoy more than any other was dueling. Like the name implied, dueling consisted of one player’s character challenging another to a fight. For new players it was a way to hone skills and become more proficient. At higher levels it became a test of abilities against other players that also had built-up skills. Demon-Slayer was seldom defeated.

  While he enjoyed dueling other human or “good” players to help them become better, the man savored fighting the evil horde characters. He sought out areas designated for the horde and challenged anyone he could find. The problem was that when he had defeated his opponent, after the game stepped in and automatically stopped Demon-Slayer, he would manually dispatch his opponent. In a world controlled by computers where there were certain rules that were expected to be adhered to, this was equivalent to executing someone who was trying to surrender.

  Soon Demon-Slayer was marked and hunted by all upper-level horde characters. Being a wanted man, he felt if he was to be hunted by evil people for doing good deeds, so be it! He was convinced of the righteousness of his actions.

  45 | Reaching Back from the Grave

  Endwell, New York, 01-04/00

  In early 2000, things changed irrevocably for the man. He began to see a new category of porn sites listed. It went under many different types of names: MILF (Mothers I’d Like to Fuck), Mature Women, Sex-starved Housewives, Soccer Mom Sluts, Swingers, etc. Every porn website he went to had a subcategory of these types. The basic theme was always the same. A mother and/or housewife would be engaged in some type of sex act. This in itself didn’t bother the man; he had spent years looking at home porn and could rationalize a man wanting to take photos or videos of his wife for his own pleasure. The ones that tripped something inside the man were the ones where the wife was having sex with complete strangers while the husband watched, or worse yet, filmed. There seemed to be no end to the number of crude sites showing wives and mothers performing all manner of sex acts with one, two, or sometimes even more men.

  The man’s mother came screaming into his subconscious like a banshee. It was the first time he became enraged while looking at pornography. He tried to shake the feeling but couldn’t. He became even madder. One of the few activities he thoroughly enjoyed was now disgusting to him.

  The man became more introspective about this topic than he had ever been about anything else in his whole life. He spent three days trying to sort out his feelings. He hated his slut of a mother; he enjoyed and was addicted to pornography. Certain types of pornography reminded him of his mother, and the thought of his mother infuriated him. He could not view porn without seeing references to this type of pornography; therefore, he could not view pornography without becoming angry, which took away any enjoyment. His mother was truly haunting him.

  He was miserable for months. The period happened to correspond with the dreary months of January and February in upstate New York. The depth of his despair was abysmal. His mother was depriving him of something he not only wanted, but needed, and he couldn’t do a thing about it.

  The sun had set on a bitterly cold, overcast February day, when the man, halfway through a family-size bag of Doritos, had an idea start to take shape. It was indistinct at first, but when he turned off the computer monitor and sat for a few minutes in silence, it began to gain focus and momentum. Within ten more minutes, it was complete. If he couldn’t make his mother pay for what she was doing to him, he might be able to make the women that made him think about his mother pay. After all, he reasoned, if they didn’t allow themselves to be used like that, he wouldn’t have these thoughts. He would teach them a lesson. That might make him feel better, or so he believed.

  The man’s first foray into punishing women for the sins of his mother took the most immediate form available to him—denial-of-service (dos) attacks against their websites. He knew the point behind the sites was money, so if he attacked them and took them down, he would be hitting them where it hurt the most. While his attacks achieved their purposes, the results were necessarily temporary. He couldn’t keep it up forever. Technically it was impossible and would cost him a significant number of his zombies, to sustain such attacks.

  Zombies were computers on the internet that the man had taken control of through hacking. Normally, he was able to gain access by sending bulk email with the captions such as Pictures from my vacation, or Your account has been compromised, see instructions. Over seventy percent of the recipients of the emails would open them, resulting in their computers being infected. Once infected, the man took control of the machines and made them do anything he wanted. He looked at all the files on the computer, and in particular, the pictures and videos. After that he checked for any account information.

  While his primary focus was on financial data, other accounts, like email or social networking sites, could also be useful in certain circumstances. Lastly, he put the machine in one of his “armies.” The armies were available for his personal use or for hire. If someone needed to create a DOS attack, for a fee, the man would send a signal from his command-and-control bot to all the infected machines in one of his zombie armies. The infected machines would try to access the target company’s web site all at the same time. The sheer volume of requests would tie up the company’s network and keep legitimate-paying customers from gaining access.

  Most of the porn sites were small, without much bandwidth, the man could clog them easily with a limited number of zombies. He liked the idea of the sluts and their pimps going nuts trying to figure out what was happening. He pictured them helplessly contacting their ISP asking for help but being told there was nothing that could be done due to the distributed nature of the attack. He didn’t think they would be comfortable getting law enforcement involved, as he was sure they didn’t pay taxes on their web-based porn profits.

  Like his good WoW characters killing evil horde characters, the man felt a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when he took five sites offline for three straight days. He looked on it as a public service. Then he thought that if he could take even one of the sites offline long enough for it to shut down, he would have won. He envisioned the frustrated site owners deciding to give up their endeavor and eventually going back to normal lives. In time they would see their whole family would be better off.

  It was while he was thinking through this aspect of his plan that it hit him: family implied children. That was the first time he thought about the children of these perverts, and how they were being affected. It was the first time he thought about what he could—should—do for them.

  The thought of the children of these degenerates was so
intertwined with the man’s own memories that it didn’t take long before his hatred of his mother was projected onto these parents. His hatred for anyone who would subject their children to that type of life grew. The humiliation he had felt, and what they must feel, had to be overwhelming. Soon he couldn’t view any pornography without thinking about the children of women who prostituted themselves on the internet. It became so bad that the man was no longer able to become aroused. This frustration helped move his hatred to the next level.

  The thought of the children was the key to most of the actions that followed. It gave him a sense of helping others, and in his mind, justified his actions. It was the type of moral superiority and self-righteous anger that fueled thousands of barbarous acts throughout history. Now he wrapped himself in the same yard of cloth like a cloak. It was all his warped mind needed to take the next step. He resolved to help the kids.

  Attacking the porn sites via DOS attacks, while initially gratifying, now seemed to be like the carnival game Whack-A-Mole. No matter how many sites the man took offline, he knew others would spring up in their place, even if he put a virus in their machine and destroyed it.

  He decided on a less technical answer, but one he felt would be much more effective. He would contact child protective services, report the parents, and explain what the children were having to endure. This solution was imperfect—as any nontechnical solution would be—but he happily found when he resolved to take the step, he was able to enjoy porn again. It acted like Viagra.

  It wasn’t until the next day after work when he sat down to think through his plan that he found a few important flaws. While hacking into the sites normally provided the man with the information he needed to identify who the vermin were and where they lived, there was no way to determine if they had children. The problem of identifying whether the individuals he hated so fervently actually had kids did not seem to lend itself to a technical solution.