Insecure

by Michael Shevlin

  ‘You don’t need to worry about that, it’s more of a contingency plan linked to the first favor.’

  ‘So what is it then?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he could see that I was worried, ’it’s just a little bit of investigation for me, that’s all.’ He was lying again, simple as that. ‘Come on Dan, chill out. Let’s get wasted. Things always seem better through the bottom of a wine glass.’ He leaned back on his chair and plucked another wine bottle out of a case, pulled a corkscrew from his jacket pocket and started work on the cork. ‘Got this one from the bar.’

  I sighed as I watched him, hating him a little bit because of what he’d done. I was scared that a momentum was being started, a roller-coaster starting it’s inexorable run down the tracks and that I was on it, hurtling towards something that I didn’t want but wanted at the same time. But in another way I loved Rich for the way he made things happen, the way that he didn’t think about whether he should or not, but just went on and did it. I would have sat on my hands. The urge would have gone. The moment would pass.

  I was about to do something crazy, and I was about to do something illegal – I was about to do something.

  ‘Okay then, fuck it, let’s get trashed.’

  CHAPTER 3

  Rich poured orange juice into a tall glass which I added an Alka Seltzer to as he was pouring. Disgusting, I know, but I think my stomach could take it, especially after last night.

  True to our word, we did indeed get wasted. Wine, beer, spirits, weed, coke – we did them all and finished up at about 4am back at Rich’s flat with a couple of Rich’s mates playing computer games, and winding down – was how he put it.

  It was eleven or so and my head was feeling a bit furry and fuzzy. Rich and I had only managed to exchange a few grunts since getting up and until after breakfast, I think that it was going to be the general vibe. Rich had somehow managed to get up, negotiate an exchange of money for croissants, coffee and orange juice. All I was capable of right now, on this fine Sunday morning, was Antiques Roadshow with the volume turned down and the Sunday papers on a comfy sofa ‘You better be getting back, it’s nearly twelve.’

  I looked at Rich in as pitiful way as I could muster, not feeling too RSC at the moment. ‘Am I keeping you from something?’

  ‘You got that bloke coming round, can’t remember his name…shit, I wrote it down somewhere.’ He got up and returned holding his jacket by a sleeve, change and match books Jenga-ed onto the floor. ‘It’s in here somewhere.’ He pulled out crumpled receipts and tissues.

  I remembered now that his computer guru contact was due at Pat’s at some point today. Fuck. Some ex-con pulling the innards out of Pat’s PC. Great. Today was going to be a peach of a day, I could tell.

  ‘I can’t find it, he’s got your mobile number anyway.’

  ‘Great. Does that mean the police will be calling me when they find me under Potential Robber in his address book when the frogmen drag his bullet ridden body from the Thames?’

  Rich looked at me and shook his head wearily, ‘you said it was a good idea a few hours ago.’

  ‘I was pissed!’

  ‘Well, you better get going, you don’t want to hold him up.’

  ‘Why? Is he dangerous?’ The thought had occurred to me.

  ‘No, he’s into computers, people like him are only dangerous on multiplayer.’

  Jesus, what had I started. It did seem a good idea when I was pissed. Does this mean I’m going to have to start drinking heavily? Rich sighed. ‘I should have been at the club hours ago –‘

  ‘-You always say that.’

  ‘Well, I should have.’

  ‘You always leave Carrie to open up.’

  ‘One of the benefits of being the boss. Look, I’m gonna drive in, I’ll drop you in Oxford Circus, you can get the bus from there.’

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘You get to see London from a bus.’ He said this with a smile, ‘I’ll get you a Starbucks.’

  The bus ride was uneventful and I arrived at the top of Pat’s road a bit more fresh than when I had started. There is something to be said for negotiating public transport when you’ve got a hangover, being forced to interact with people forces you to confront it.

  I stopped at the newsagents on the corner and elbowed my way through the Chelsea throng. Lots of jumpers draped over striped shirts and over pronounced swear words. Nothing like hearing posh people swear, almost makes a middle class person like myself feel positively swarthy. I grabbed the papers, a packet of cigarettes and a family pack of Twix bars. Trash, fags and chocolate – perfect recipe for a Sunday with a hangover.

  I walked down the street with the TV guide open, looking at the uncharted territory of cable Tv. Not having cable really makes you want to have it, but everyone I know who has it says that they wish they didn’t. As far as I could tell there was masses to watch, all crap, which was alright by me. McDonalds television, just what the doctor ordered.

  As I reached Pat’s house, I noticed that there was someone sitting on the front step talking on a mobile. I tucked the paper under my arm and approached the house, clearing my throat as I did so. The man on the step looked up.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, I extended my hand and he got up and shook it, ‘and you are?’

  ‘Andy.’ He was dressed in jeans and a ski jacket. He had a light rucksack on his back and was clutching a personal organiser / mobile phone in the other. ‘Andy Gibbons.’

  ‘So, you’re the computer whizz’ he looked like him and acne were once best friends. ‘This your only job today?’ He looked at me, pulling an expression like an extra from the OC.

  ‘No. I’m down here visiting a mate, he wants to play online and I said I’d help set it up…’ He looked at his personal organiser / phone and snorted: ‘I’ve been ringing him for half an hour or so, think he might be asleep.’

  I fumbled with the keys and the 24-esque alarm system. Andy waited on the front step. ‘It’s not my house,’ I explained. He nodded and stepped in, peering about.

  ‘Nice place.’ He put his rucksack down and stood there ineffectually. I was expecting …I didn’t know what I was expecting. He looked like every mac-geek operator I had ever seen, but with a cocky sneer that I really wanted to wipe off.

  ‘So,’ I said.

  ‘We better get down to business, I suppose,’ said Andy.

  ‘Okay, what do you need?’

  ‘Where‘s the machine?’ I looked blank, ‘the computer.’

  ‘Oh, right, it’s upstairs.’ I picked up my mug and started towards the stairs. Andy picked up his rucksack and followed. We arrived at Pat’s study and Andy squeezed past me and eyed Pat’s set up. His eyes lit up like a thirteen year old in a porn shop, and he sat himself at Pat’s desk.

  ‘This is a very nice piece of kit,.’ He booted up the machine and checked behind the main bit of the computer. ‘What does this guy do?’

  ‘IT’

  ‘This might be harder than I thought.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Most people use commercial software to secure their computer. People who know their stuff tend to write their own.’

  ‘Is that hard?’ I wheeled another chair over and sat down. We both watched the screen as it booted up.

  ‘The programming isn’t that hard, it’s the encryption that’s hard, you tend to nick that like a magpie and bolt it on to what you’ve written. The best ‘crypt stuff is written by the NSA, so people tend to borrow that.’

  ‘NSA? Who are they?’

  ‘National Security Agency, they do all the intel for the US. They have military budgets, so the software is, you know, military.’

  ‘But isn’t that,’ I made a face, ‘secret?’

  ‘Yes and know. They share the encryption with banks and companies that have online credit card bookings, so that people can’t nick your credit card number and stuff. So it’s out there, people can use it.’

  He pulled the zip on the bag revealing a snake pit of c
ables and various computer peripherals. He delved deeper and pulled out a silver laptop. It had an alien on the top. It looked very expensive. He then opened the front flap of the rucksack and took out a bag that he unzipped. He took out a small torch and shined it over the computer keyboard - the keys glowed fluorescent.

  ‘Figures,’ said Andy.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Your mate Pat doesn’t trust you too well, he’s marked the keys of the keyboard and the boot button of the machine with glow markers.’ I looked at the keys closely and arched my eyebrows. Andy looked at me in with a slight smile, ‘the blank ones are where you’ve been, it takes off the mark.’

  ‘Charming…well, suppose he’s got a point.’ Andy smirked and opened his laptop and booted it.

  ‘Is this the bit you want to get into?’ I peered at the screen and nodded. He clicked on the application and whistled. ‘This is going to be hard’ He swiveled to his laptop and tapped the keys impatiently waiting for it to come to life. He logged on and some graphics whooshed across the screen and he logged in again.

  ‘You take security seriously…’

  ‘To catch a thief and all that…’ he delved into his bag and produced a cable which he plugged into the back of his laptop and led the other end into the back of Pat’s. ‘Just logging in remotely, sometimes easier that way.’ He tapped a few keys and a window came up on his screen. It was all jargon to me, and he seemed to type a bunch of meaningless words.

  ‘You’ve been nosy.’ He scrolled down a window, clicking his tongue. He took a sip of his tea and said: ‘well, you’ve discovered the first rule of hacking: know your subject.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ I was surprised. I thought that I hadn’t left a trail.

  ‘He’s running an activity monitor. It records everything that happens on his machine. We can get rid of that later. I’m just trying to find out if he’s logged into this,’ he pointed to Pat’s monitor, ‘part before and got sloppy…nah, thought not.’ His pointer flashed around the screen of his laptop and he seemed to launch lots of bits of software. ‘I’ll give him this: he’s thorough.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m basically sieving through the trash, like a paparazzi does with a celeb. Going through all the stuff recorded on the monitor, looking through files he’s thrown away, seeing if there’s any traces of the files on the hard drive that’s been deleted.’

  ‘But the trash is empty’

  ‘You never really delete anything when you empty the trash. When you write something on a hard drive it’s like you’re writing on a spiral bound note book and you tear off the page and throw it away when you empty the trash.’ He got up and grabbed a notebook on a shelf and a biro, ‘here, see me writing here,’ I nodded, he threw the piece of paper in the bin, got a pencil that was standing in a desk tidy and rubbed it lightly across the page and then rubbed it with his fingers, ‘see how you can see the writing?’ I ahhed, despite myself, he seemed to warm to his theme a bit more.

  ‘The same thing happens with a hard drive, you leave etchings on the drive and then people like you and me can rub a bit of digital graphite over it and see what’s there.’ He peered at the screen and tutted. ‘He’s uses a scrubber.’ Sensing my bafflement, he continued. ‘People like Pat, and for that matter me, use software called scrubbers that permanently erase information; usually internet caches and histories. What I’m – and I suppose you’re too – hoping is that he got sloppy, or he’s running a schedule and it hasn’t kicked in yet and we may find a useful titbit of information that will get us in.’

  ‘So what you’re trying to do is: instead of picking the lock to the house, you’re looking around in the flowerbeds trying to find a front door key under a stone?’ I asked.

  Andy looked at me, squinting, ‘that’s right, that’s a really good way of putting it…’ he turned back to the screen and hummed, clicking on this and that. We didn’t say anything and he sifted through the files slowly and diligently, nearly half an hour had passed since he’d started the machines

  ‘This may be a stupid suggestion,’ Andy glanced at me and then back at the screen, ‘but couldn’t you, like, just take the wire that connects the drive and stick that wire into the back of your machine?’

  ‘I thought about that but the software is part of the drive, even if you connected it to another machine then you’d still have to log in – though there may be ways around that.’

  ‘Oh right, only a suggestion – listen, do you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘Great, that’d be magic.’ He didn’t look up, and I went down to make the teas. I wandered upstairs with the teas and some biscuits that I’d managed to find in one of Pat’s cupboards. I re-entered the study to find Andy in the same position.

  ‘Here you go,’ I placed the tray beside the monitor, aware that spilling the tea over all this kit would be disastrous. ‘How’s it going?’ I handed him the mug.

  ‘Thanks – slowly, nothing yet.’

  ‘Where’d you learn all this stuff anyway, you go to university?’

  ‘Yeah, did mathematics, but dropped out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It was too hard, I just couldn’t get my head round half the stuff they were on about, so I dropped out. Barney was okay about it, didn’t give me a hard time, which was a relief.’

  ‘So tell me about Barney’

  Andy swivelled round on the chair and looked at me frowning. ‘One thing that I have learnt about the business, is that you do everything on a need to know basis, if anything goes down then you are safe in the knowledge that you don’t know anything.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said this in a small voice, even though I tried to sound cocky. Andy sensed this and softened his tone.

  ‘It’s just easier this way, that’s all, Barney is Barney, it’s better for you – and for him – if you know nothing about each other.’

  ‘Except you’re the link in the chain.’

  ‘I suppose, but I don’t know why I’m doing this, and as far as I’m aware, you’re just a house sitter. I just do a little bit, I don’t ever get to see the full picture.’

  ‘So how did you learn this stuff then?’

  ‘I’ve always been interested in computers and I just learnt more and more about them, built my own and once I cracked my first app then I just picked the rest up.’

  ‘How, on the internet?’

  ‘Yeah, news groups and forums, there’s loads of code and tricks and patches flying about on the web. Websites turn up for a day, get shut down, open somewhere else. You have to keep up with the scene, and once you’re on the wave you learn everything you need.’ He knocked on the screen of Pat’s monitor, ‘something like this, if I can’t hack it, then there’s someone who can.’

  ‘Is anything safe?’

  Andy cocked an eyebrow, ‘sure, this entry is safe – shit, even a supercomputer would take months, maybe even a year, to crack – but the secret of hacking is finding a window open, or a drain pipe to clamber up.’ He picked up his tea and scrolled down some of the numbers and text that he was looking at. ‘But it doesn’t matter how good your software is, how hefty your firewall is, if you use the technique you used then you find the biggest chink in the armor – the human element.

  ‘People create the passwords and no matter how random they think they are, most people follow familiar patterns simply because we have so many passwords and PINs to remember that we would just forget them.’

  ‘I suppose so, but it depends if you have anything worth stealing.’

  ‘Well, Pat does.’ He turned back to his laptop, scrutinizing the list on the screen once again.

  I paused about to open my mouth, and decided to just keep quiet. This was need to know, and Andy didn’t need to know. He turned in his chair and looked at me.

  ‘You’re planning something to do with this bank – you’re not going to try and rob it are you?’ He said this with the merest hint of excitement in his voice.

  I really
didn’t have a clue what to do, or what to say - what was I supposed to say? I couldn’t, for the life of me, think of a half (even a quarter) decent excuse for what Andy was actually doing here.

  ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, it’s something completely different quite private – it’s a personal thing between Pat and me.’ I didn’t even convince myself when I said it out loud, and it didn’t convince Andy.

  ‘I don’t believe you, ‘ he said and folded his arms, as if that settled the issue.

  ‘I don’t give a shit, it’s the truth.’

  ‘Well, we’ll find out soon enough…’ he indicated the computers arrayed in front of him. ‘Just a matter of time.’ He smiled and returned to his work. He picked a biscuit up from the plate and started nibbling on it. It was a Jaffa Cake and he was biting around the edge so that he’d leave the orange bit in the centre for some other purpose.

  He had me by the short and curlies. If I allowed him to look at the files then he’d know that I was changing careers and getting into wearing stockings on my head. If I told him, once he’d cracked the code, to kindly go and play with his RAM, whilst us grownups had a peek at something he wouldn’t understand then he’d have me rumbled for sure. Between a rock and another rock in a hard place. Balls.

  ‘Could you stop doing that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Eating that Jaffa Cake like that,’ I grabbed a Jaffa Cake off of the tray and shoved in whole into my mouth, ‘that’s how you eat a Jaffa Cake, what are you, retarded? Eat it properly.’

  ‘You’re just annoyed because I know you’re up to something.’ He carried on nibbling at his Jaffa Cake. It was really starting to wind me up. He finished his biscuit and made to reach for another one, I lurched towards the tray and caught the edge of the mug of tea, the mug teetered briefly and then toppled over tea splashed across the desk.

  Andy, quicker than a snake, lifted his laptop and with his other hand grabbed the keyboard of Pat’s computer. ‘Fucking hell, now look what you made me do.’ I righted the mug, glaring at him, and darted upstairs to grab some loo roll, hoping that it wouldn’t spread too much before I got back. I pulled the roll freely, like I was cutting corn and bounded down the stairs two at time clutching a large wad of toilet paper.