“Even the best of them seem to get caught eventually,” said Ben.
“Not all,” said Jim.
After their break they visited a few more booths and then decided they had had enough. They piled into the car and Ben drove them back downtown. On the way they spoke about their chances with the various companies to which they had applied. Cindy was again sitting in the back seat of the car, leaning into the front seat as much as the seat belt would allow.
“Where do you see yourself in ten years?” Cindy asked Jim.
“I’d like my own company and enough income so that I can buy a pastry without Ben’s help.”
Cindy smiled. “What about you Ben?”
Ben thought for a moment. “I’d like Jim to have his own company and enough income so that he can buy a pastry without my help.”
They all laughed.
“Seriously Jim,” began Cindy. “You must make basically the same money as Ben and me. Why are you always short of cash?”
Jim avoided the question. “You never told us where you see yourself in ten years Cily,” said Jim.
“I don’t know,” she said pensively. “I think I would be content to just be an artist. Any time I’ve really enjoyed my job it was when I didn’t have to do any programming.” She paused and then looked directly at Jim. “But you didn’t answer my question,” she said. “Why are you always short of cash?”
“I guess you could say I have an expensive hobby,” said Jim.
Ben turned to look at Jim. “What kind of hobby?” he asked.
“Look out!” called Cindy. The automobile was slowly sliding into the left lane where a large tractor trailer was passing them. Cindy was held back by her seatbelt but she had warned Ben in enough time for him to steer the car back into its proper lane.
“That was close,” said Ben, shakily.
“I’ll say,” said Cindy and Jim together. Then Cindy repeated Ben’s question. “What hobby?” she asked Jim.
Jim sighed. “I guess if almost getting killed didn’t make you leave me alone, I’ll have to answer the question,” he said. “But it’s easier to show you than to tell you. Can we go back to my apartment?”
“Now?” asked Ben.
“Sure,” said Jim.
Chapter 7 - Jim’s Apartment
Mon May 3rd
Ben, Cindy and Jim arrived at Jim’s apartment just before 5:00pm. Jim unlocked his apartment door, opened it, and let Ben and Cindy enter the apartment before him. They walked into a narrow hallway that had three doors along the right wall. The first was a closet, the second was a bathroom, and the third was a bedroom. There were a few pictures hanging on the otherwise barren left wall. The hall ended at a large astronomical poster and then turned left into a large open area that housed the living room, kitchen and eating area. The furniture was inexpensive but functional. As an apartment it was unremarkable.
“Well?” asked Ben. “Where’s the hobby?”
Jim smiled. “Ben, you’re the engineer in our group. What is wrong with this apartment?”
“Answering a question with a question, eh?” asked Ben. Jim did not answer.
The three friends were standing in the entrance hallway. Ben walked down the hall and looked around to the left, peeking at the living room. He then looked back to the front door and then looked into the bedroom. The living room, kitchen and eating area could not be seen from the front door. Sunshine lit up the living room and the bedroom through decent sized windows. Ben tried to map the area in his mind.
“Well?” asked Jim.
“Hold on,” said Ben.
He walked into the living room and looked around. The living room, kitchen and eating area were basically a single rectangular space. Ben concluded that this space took up the depth of the apartment. From the living room the small hallway ended at the door to the bedroom and joined up with the small hallway to the front door. Except for the planetary poster an a few other prints, the hallway walls from the living room to the bedroom were uncovered. Ben entered the bedroom, walked around the room, and then stared at the wall on which the door was hung. The bedroom was also rectangular. Jim and Cindy followed him through his inspection. Ben then walked back to the hall and looked at the planetary poster. He then returned to the bedroom and started nodding to himself.
“Well?” asked Jim.
“There’s another room between this bedroom and the living room,” said Ben. “Initially I thought the bedroom might use the space but it doesn’t.
“Very good,” said Jim. “And you did it so quickly.”
“What does it mean?” asked Cindy. “What good is a room you can’t get to?”
“Who said we can’t get to it?” asked Jim. On the wall hung the large framed astronomical poster which, up close, Ben could see had the constellations labelled on it. Jim grabbed the right frame of the poster and pulled it open. Behind the poster was a standard door frame and door.
“Gee!” said Ben, surprised at his own conclusion. “I was right.”
“Neat,” said Cindy, in a high pitched, excited voice, with a little too much of a squeal for Ben’s taste. Ben winced at Cindy’s squeal, walked into the room, and then tripped and fell onto the floor.
“Sorry,” said Jim. “I forgot to tell you about the raised floor.”
Ben picked himself up. Cindy followed him, making sure to avoid tripping on the step. Jim walked into the room behind his friends. The room was dark and small, perhaps eight feet square. Although there was a window, the blinds were drawn. Tiny red, yellow and green lights were either glowing or flickering throughout the room, but they were mainly clustered in a single area to the left of the door. Jim switched on the lights. Along each of the four walls was a desk, each with several monitors and keyboards. There were also two racks of servers sitting next to the desk at the far left. Wires flowed from the monitors and keyboards over the desks and into holes in the raised floor. The wires from the servers also ended in the floor. In front of a desk with two particularly large monitors was a high-back executive-style chair. The chair faced the window.
“It’s hot in here,” complained Cindy.
“I usually open a window when I’m in here,” said Jim. “Hold on.” Jim opened the window blinds half way and then opened the window. A cool breeze washed into the room over their feet.
“That’s better,” said Cindy, relieved.
Ben walked over to the two server racks and looked up and down the contents. “There’s a fortune worth of hardware here,” said Ben. “My God, no wonder you have no money. I can’t imagine how you afforded this.”
“Debt,” said Jim, laughing nervously. “Just debt.”
“I bet,” said Ben, awestruck. “This is amazing.”
Jim walked over to the server racks. “I have named the servers by group,” said Jim, proudly. “This group,” he said pointing to the top half of the first rack, “is Hound Dog.” Then pointing to each of the other four groups in turn he continued. “And these are Elephant, Beaver, and Parrot.”
“Why the animal names?” asked Cindy.
Jim thought for a moment. “I suppose,” he began, “I feel I don’t get along very well with people.”
“What do they mean?” asked Cindy.
Jim smiled broadly. Ben saw that Jim clearly enjoyed sharing his private world with them. “Hound dog” is what most people would call a spider on the internet,” began Jim. “It goes around the internet looking for something interesting. Elephant is my database or memory. You know, like an elephant never forgets. Elephant stores the information I may eventually need. It stores raw data from the internet and information I derive from hacking. Beaver is my hacking program. You know, gnawing away at the data, trying to break security and so on. And Parrot is the server that houses my set of application programs. Using information I have hacked, I use Parrot to log into security systems.”
“I get it all,” said Ben. “Except for Parrot.”
“Oh,” said Jim. “Sorry. Parrot does what I pro
gram it to do. You know, it simply repeats what it is told.”
“How big is your database?” asked Ben.
“15 terabytes and counting,” said Jim. “But I can hold twice that.”
“Shit!” said Ben.
“Do you want to see it in action?” asked Jim.
Cindy’s eyes twinkled but it was Ben who said, “Duh!”
“Good,” said Jim excitedly. He sat down in the executive chair and touched several keys on the keyboard. The large monitor in front of him came to live and displayed “White Cell” across the top of the screen with an animated logo of a human white blood cell moving slowly around the top of the screen, devouring small dots, presumably viruses. A large password dialog box then appeared on the screen.
“No way!” exclaimed Ben.
“What?” asked Cindy.
“Don’t you get it?” asked Ben. “Jim is White Cell!”
“Oh,” said Cindy very quietly.
Jim typed in his password and a large number of icons appeared on the screen. The title and animated icon remained at the top of the screen. Jim pressed keys so quickly that when icons appeared, neither Cindy nor Ben could digest what they had indicated. Finally a screen came up that said Ontario Ministry of Transportation.
Ben and Cindy were awestruck. “Is that real?” asked Cindy.
“Yep,” said Jim. Then he turned to Ben. “Remember that ticket you got today?”
“Sure,” said Ben.
“Give me your driver’s license,” said Jim.
Ben passed him his driver’s license. Jim swiped it through a magnetic reader glued to the side of the monitor. Almost immediately all of Ben’s particulars showed up on the screen, including his address and picture. There was a line where the current ticket appeared on the screen.
“Want to get rid of it?” asked Jim.
Ben’s face started to glow red. “I … I … I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, I do,” said Cindy. “He does not. What if someone found out?”
“No one will find out,” said Jim. “The beauty of this connection is that this is what the police would do if they wanted to delete the charge.”
“Do it,” said Ben.
Jim clicked one several icons with the mouse and the line with the current charge disappeared.
“Done,” said Jim.
“Wow,” said Ben.
“I hope nothing bad comes out of this,” said Cindy, shaking her head.
“Don’t worry, Cily,” said Jim. “Nothing bad will happen. By the way, I never do stuff like this. I only use my system to find and fix viruses. I have never used it to fix a ticket.”
“How do you know it works then?” asked Ben.
“Just like I said before,” said Jim. “The MOT computer thinks I’m an authorized user so there is no reason for it not to follow my instructions.”
“How do you do this?” asked Cindy. “I mean, the government has security doesn’t it?”
“Sure it does,” said Jim. “And I’m not saying that cracking into the MOT was easy. But what you have to realize is that every system that is not completely isolated from the rest of the world is vulnerable.”
“But surely the MOT is not connected to the internet,” said Ben.
“And you’re right,” said Jim. “This connection is not strictly speaking over the internet.”
“Huh?” asked Cindy.
“The MOT uses leased lines from Bell Canada. These leased lines are not on the internet. But Bell Canada is on the internet. Now, strictly speaking, Bell is supposed to keep their leased lines separate from their internet lines but, with tens of millions of customers, it is virtually impossible to guarantee those segregations. It takes time, diligence, and some inside knowledge, but eventually someone can hack in.”
“I think I’ve seen enough,” said Cindy, sounding unconvinced.
“Me too,” said Ben, but he was not at all displeased. “I want to have plausible deniability at the trial.”
They all laughed. “Come on,” said Jim. “Let’s go sit down with some beer.”
Once they were seated in Jim’s living room with a bottle of beer each, Ben asked the all important question.
“So if you don’t steal or fix tickets, what do you do with all of this stuff?” asked Ben.
“Just White Cell,” said Jim.
“Christ,” said Ben. “That’s awesome. And the logo’s cute too!”
“What’s White Cell?” asked Cindy, embarrassed that she had not understood most of what had been going one.
“White Cell is a famous white hat hacker,” said Ben. “He is probably the most admired and most sought after hack in the world.”
“Is it true Jim?” asked Cindy, looking to Jim.
“It’s true,” said Jim. “I’ve always been drawn to computers and I spend about half of my free time looking for viruses. I spend the other half trying to kill them.”
“What if you ever got caught?” asked Ben.
“I’d be in big trouble,” said Jim. “Big, big trouble,” he repeated. Jim had a sip of his beer.
“So you do this after work?” asked Cindy.
“Sometimes I do it all night,” said Jim.
“That explains it then,” said Cindy.
“Explains what?” asked Ben.
“That explains why Jim looks so tired all the time,” said Cindy. “He’s up all night doing … doing whatever it is he does in that room.”
Ben ignored the conclusion. “How do you get decent bandwidth?” asked Ben.
“I’ve got super fast DSL connections on two separate lines and then I also have high speed internet on cable. Between the three connections I’ve got about ten megabits of speed downstream,” said Jim. “And redundancy,” he added. “I thought about getting a T1 line but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. So I stuck with residential services.”
As Ben and Jim had been discussing the technicalities of Jim’s hidden room, Cindy’s mind had been wondering.
“This is gobbledegook to me,” said Cindy. “I’m going to change the subject.”
“Fine by me,” said Jim.
“Jimmy, have I got a girl for you!”
“What?” asked Jim. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No, I’m serious,” said Cindy.”
“You want me to go on a blind date?”
“It’s not like that,” said Cindy. “I have a friend who has just moved here from Toronto. She doesn’t know anyone. This would just be a nice way for her to meet someone else.”
Jim stood up and walked around the living room. “Introduce her to Ben then.”
“I’ll do that too. But I really think you two might hit it off.”
“What’s the name of this barker?” asked Jim.
“She’s not a barker, Jim,” insisted Cindy. “She’s really cute. Really! She’s just new in town. Her name is Penny and she’s cute as a button.”
“I’d rather have the button.”
Cindy did not laugh. “Come on Jimmy. It’s a nice thing to do. You’ve got nothing to lose.”
“Just my time,” said Jim. “Haven’t you heard? I’m a busy boy.”
“You’d be better off with Penny than with your … your servers,” said Cindy. “Just tell me you’ll think about it.”
“Fine Cily. Fine. I’ll think about it. But I’m not promising anything.”
Ben changed the subject. “How much time do you really spend in there?” he asked, pointing to Jim’s covert server room.
“A lot,” said Jim. It’s like an addiction and I just can’t stop. Like I told you, I often hack all night long. Some weekends I hack right through. I quite often fall asleep in there. I’m hooked.”
“You have to stop this,” said Ben. “Before you get caught.”
“That’s like asking a heroin addict to stop buying,” retorted Jim.
“You have to stop,” chimed in Cindy.
“Someone has to help the little guy. If I don’t stop the black
hats, who will?” asked Jim, referring to the malevolent hackers that created destructive viruses. “Haven’t you seen the write ups on me? I’m doing good stuff.”
“Who do you think you are?” asked Ben. “Spiderman?”
Jim looked thoughtful. Then after a few seconds he answered. “Yeah,” he said. “I like it! I am like Spiderman because I am the ‘man’ on the ‘web’.
Cindy laughed out loud despite herself. “Spiderman,” she said out loud. Ben looked at her sternly.
“I can’t help it,” said Cindy.
***
After Ben and Cindy left the apartment Jim retrieved another beer from the refrigerator and sat back in his executive chair in the server room. He picked up the pile of mail on the desk and began opening the envelopes. The first envelope he opened was a bill for one of his internet accounts. Across the page was the word “Overdue” stamped in large red letters. Jim moved the opened bill to the bottom of the pile and opened another envelope. This one contained his hydro bill. Stamped across this bill were the words “Final Notice”, also stamped in large red letters. Aside from some junk mail, which Jim discarded, the other envelopes contained similar news.
After he had opened all of the mail, Jim put the bills aside and logged onto his bank account. There he found himself well over his overdraft limit. Jim leaned back in the chair and looked up at the ceiling. His face turned beet red as if he were going to explode. He looked back through the bills sitting on his desk. Then he looked back at his bank balance on the monitor. And then, not being able to deal with it anymore, he did explode, screaming wordlessly at the monitor, and then picking up and throwing the bills at the wall. The envelopes and pages fell like confetti throughout the room and landed randomly over the floor.
By 1:30am Jim was still in the server room, looking at his monitor. The statements and envelopes were still strewn all over the floor but now beer and chips were also spread all over the desk. Jim was trying to continue working with his computer but his heavy eyes had long ago started to close. Finally, head slumped onto his arms, a temporary respite from his bills.
Chapter 8 - Solving the Credit Crunch
Tue May 4th
White Cell Page 8