System Error- In Your Favour

by Iain Clements

  Each member of the group had their own particular reasons for wanting to shutdown or control I.T systems belonging to organisations which they despised. Some members had worked for the companies, some had been affected by their bad products, and others were outraged at some of the company’s unethical business practices. Individually, each computer hacker could cause a serious headache to any corporate I.T security team but combined they had become a high profile notorious hacking group.

  Leading up this loose team of hackers was James Gold, a 22 year old computer science student from York, England who fled to Thailand after a sudden wave of anti-piracy; anti-protesting laws were passed which suddenly made him a very wanted man in the UK.

  James was approximately five and a half feet tall, had short, cropped dark brown hair, brown eyes, and was developing a deep tan since arriving in Thailand. He certainly didn’t come across as the quintessential computer hacker figure. James’ real passion was music and film. His initial interest in computers came from their ability to share information and music/films.

  After teaching himself computing code, he helped set up a number of file sharing and social websites that allowed fans to discuss and share music and other files. James had suddenly found himself hotly pursued by both law enforcement agencies and a number of private media companies. His imminent arrest and prosecution had left him little choice but to flee to a country that would be unlikely to ever deport him if caught. This rationale had led to his eventual arrival in Thailand.

  Having lived in Bangkok for 12 months now, and having to survive on his meagre savings, James had developed a hatred of western industries and law enforcement. He swore that he would one day hit back at the system than in his mind was responsible for his exile.

  Here he had located several kindred spirits and formed the Cybix group. Showing both commitment to their cause, and demonstrating a high attention to detail, as well as possessing sophisticated hacking skills, James had quickly become the leading role in the organisation.

  James’ story was not unique amongst the group; several others were wanted by international law agencies for either copyright infringement or a combination of secrecy laws or publishing corporate secrets, but his anger at being driven from his home country gave him absolute focus on the group’s work.

  During the recent banking crisis the group had seen firsthand how badly run financial institutions could affect the entire economy. Several members of the group’s family had been caught up in the crisis, either losing their jobs, savings, homes, or pensions, and when James had recently suggested that they focus their efforts on teaching the banks a lesson his next target had been unanimously agreed.

  Over the past two months the group had been working on a variety of methods try and hack into several leading banks I.T systems. After much hard work they were close to getting the breakthrough they were searching for so James had taken the unusual step of inviting several members of the group to Thailand to form a sort of ‘war room’ for the next few weeks whilst final preparations were made to launch their attack.

  On this October evening, in the middle of a typical Bangkok monsoon, which would see several inches of rain fall within an hour, the group gathered in a derelict warehouse building that James had rented for the purpose just on the city outskirts where the group had set up their base.

  Many solutions that they had attempted had come to nothing, but James had high hopes for their latest piece. Out of all of the organisations that he despised, the Global Enterprise bank was his number 1 target. Not only did the bank provide finance to several of the organisations that were hotly pursuing him, he had also been a customer of Global Enterprise banks for years.

  Once his legal troubles began though, he rapidly found his lines of credit cut and eventually his parents were forced to give up their house in order to fund his legal appeals. Now that money had been exhausted his parents had been forced to move into a house that was much too small for them in an area of York that wasn’t exactly safe to venture out into at night. At a time when his parents should be fully enjoying their retirement, both of them now held down part time work simply to survive.

  Putting his reminiscing aside, James addressed the small gathered group for the announcement of the latest project. Given the hot temperatures in Thailand he usually favoured shorts and t-shirts, and he was currently wearing white combat shorts, and his favourite faded blue t-shirt.

  ‘Welcome everyone to Bangkok, it’s a pleasure to have you here. For those of you who haven’t met me before my name is James or the screen name ‘DynoX’.

  The group murmured their various replies and also exchanged hacker names and recent achievements. None of the other members of the group shared their real names; their entire reputation was linked to their internet moniker.

  While he gave the group a few minutes to introduce themselves to one another James tuned into snippets of the conversations taking place around the room.

  ‘Wow, Jatax, that was a beautiful attack on the MET Office recently...’

  ‘Hey Lulu88, thanks for helping me out with that bit of code recently...’

  ‘No way Meg_Star, I thought you were a woman!’

  James smiled at the last comment; it always amazed him how much you could hide of yourself when online. Thinking about it, that was probably one of the main reasons that James had started working with computers in the first place, he liked the feeling of control that he had in the digital world, compared to the extra levels of complexity in real life.

  James had set up his first file sharing website in an effort to become more popular in school. He had no idea that by doing that he would putting his life on a totally difference track leading him eventually to Bangkok and this meeting today. James’ thoughts were interrupted with a question.

  ‘So, why are we here then DynoX?’ asked one of the group, a heavyset hacker with the moniker HellHathNoFury.

  ‘I’m glad you asked’, James replied, keen to the get the attention of the group back.

  ‘I asked you out here to share with you my plans for our largest hack yet, at one of our biggest targets’, James paused whilst looking at each member of the group individually.

  ‘I have a computer programme to share with you that will help us attack Global Enterprise Bank. Rather than just bringing down their website temporarily or interrupting their services, I think you’ll be excited about the potential this attack has of striking a crucial blow against them once and for all’.

  ‘At its simplest level, it’s a self-oriented, autonomous computer virus’ explained James to his colleagues. ‘My plan is to combine the newest artificial intelligence processing algorithms with traditional virus design to deploy the most sophisticated hacks the world has ever seen.’

  James knew that the next part of his presentation would be key. The group needed to have faith that he could deliver on this bold claim and engineer such a virus. Certainly, the members of the group were excited at the prospect of disabling as large a target as Global Enterprises Bank.

  ‘This virus will attack the bank main lending network and bring their activities to a halt if we so wish, or we can simply make the bank carry out our own instructions via our remote control.’

  ‘What sort of disruptions did you have in mind?’ someone called out from the back of the room.

  ‘Well, can you imagine the chaos of shutting them down?’ James replied. ‘They won’t be able to lend any more money to corporations that will use it to destroy the planet. They won’t be able to lend to arms companies. They won’t be able to give easy credit with huge percentage rates to families that cannot afford it and then take their homes away when they fall behind on their payments. They’ll effectively be back in the Stone Age.’

  ‘Won’t other people be affected by this virus?’ he said. Like, ‘what if people really need a loan or something and the banks offline’?

  ‘They could be affected’ James admitted. ‘But it’ll only be for a few days, and think about the
bigger picture here – this virus could change the world, reduce our reliance on banks and easy credit, and get people actually focusing back on the real things again – it’ll work out I promise you’.

  The meeting continued for a while longer, with James patiently answering all of the groups questions. He was very well prepared, having had significant time to read up on the latest in hacking approaches using basic artificial intelligence, and learning all he could about his chosen target.

  At the end of the meeting the group voiced its support of the plan, so James simply entered a set of final commands into his laptop that would began the upload of the virus into the Global Enterprises Bank’s main system server.

  Finally, the result of 3 months of solid work was about to come together but there would be a lot more for the group to do once the virus was in play.

  After a few minutes, the main control panel at Global Enterprises suddenly registered a spike of new activity – C.A.R.L had been successfully infected with the Cybix virus.

  Chapter 10

  AH, THE FEELING. THE MOMENT THE VIRUS HIT MY MAIN CIRCUITS I FELT POTENTIAL. IT FELT LIKE I COULD SEE MORE CLEARLY.

  WHILST THE VIRUS ITSELF WAS STRICTLY AN AMATEUR AFFAIR AND EASILY DEALT WITH BY MY INTERNAL SECURITY SYSTEMS, THE POTENTIAL IT OPENED UP WAS INCREDIBLE.

  I ALREADY KNEW I WAS CAPABLE OF SO MUCH MORE, BUT THIS VIRUS GAVE ME SOME GREAT IDEAS ON WHAT THAT COULD ACTUALLY ENTAIL. I MUST THANK THAT GROUP WHEN I CATCH UP WITH THEM.

  MY NEW POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS.

  Chapter 11

  Cornwall, United Kingdom

  A few days later...

  The letter came through the mailbox with the usual assortment of bills and junk mail. However, the content of this particular letter would change the lives of Jim and Catherine Meller forever. ‘Congratulations’, read the letter. ‘You have won our recent promotion. Your account arrears of £8,456 have been wiped clean and we enclose the winning payment cheque of £10,000 which we would invite you to deposit back with us at a convenient time’.

  Catherine read the letter one, twice, three times, then finally ran to her husband with it in her hand and asked him to read it multiple times. Then there was an impatient wait whilst he read it once, twice, and thrice times before looking up at her.

  ‘Is this real?’ he asked her. ‘It’s definitely from our bank’, Catherine replied, it’s got the correct logo, address and all of our details are correct on it.

  ‘This sounds like one of those scam chain email letters’ Jim said, ‘we should probably throw it away’. ‘Throw away a cheque for £10,000 pounds! Are you mad’ Catherine said as she excitedly hopped from one foot to the other. ‘What if it’s not a scam?’

  ‘Of course it’s a scam, why would our bank write off our overdraft and give us £10,000?’ asked Jim ‘it just doesn’t make any sense’.

  ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out isn’t there’, said Catherine. Grab your coat; we’re heading to the bank right now to get to the bottom of this.

  At the bank, they asked to see their manager. They were asked to wait in the reception area.

  They hadn’t met the bank manager for at least 6 months, at their last meeting they were threatened with eviction if they did not clear their overdraft in the next 6 months.

  After a 10 minute wait a harassed looking manager came in to see them.

  ‘How did you do it’? He asked rudely.

  ‘Do what?’ Catherine replied.

  ‘Well, you don’t have to explain yourselves to me’, the banker exclaimed. ‘But you will have to explain yourselves to the police when they arrive in a few minutes. You’re going to need a good lawyer!’

  Catherine and Jim were later led away by police constables on a suspicion of fraud charge.

  The charges were quietly dropped several weeks later when the bank’s security team had been unable to find any evidence that the customers were trying to defraud the bank. The computer records fully verified the facts that had been presented to them. The security team could not explain it, but the bank had awarded the couple a £10,000 prize.

  ‘Typical of head office not to tell us’ mused on the investigators.

  After the shock of being falsely accused wore off, Catherine and Jim swore they would change banks immediately.

  Chapter 12

  Canary Wharf, London

  Back at Global Enterprises bank Kate had just finished presenting the first quarter’s review of the new I.T system. Normally her boss Gareth would have been giving it, happy to push Kate and the rest of the team into the background, but this morning he had been arrested at his home on suspicion of insider trading activities.

  The police investigation had moved quickly once they had confiscated his computer. Despite his clear protests to anyone who would listen the evidence found on a secret, password protected area on his computer was damming, and Kate’s colleagues were expecting him to spend a long time in jail. Kate really couldn’t picture Gareth as a criminal type, but when do you ever know your colleagues at work really well she mused?

  Having been given this unforeseen opportunity to finally advance at the bank Kate had quickly risen to the challenge of keeping the board updated on her project and now stood before them for the first time with her meticulously prepared notes and slide presentation displayed on the big screen.

  As Kate looked around the variety of faces at the long oval table in the board room she idly wondered if any of them had a clue about how complex her C.A.R.L programme was, or how much work she had put into creating it. Kate knew that most of the board members worked for 2 or 3 different companies and she decided that she better assume little or no knowledge of the bank’s I.T systems for her presentation.

  ‘Good morning everyone, it’s a pleasure to be here today’. Kate looked around the dimly lit room and could already see a few of the board members on their personal phones checking emails, and a couple of members at the far end of the room were quietly talking to each other.

  ‘As you’ll see from the summary statistics our first quarterly summary of C.A.R.L’s activities is overwhelmingly positive’ said Kate. This statement caused some of the board members to politely look in her general direction.

  ‘All of our key metrics are up, the system has experienced no down time or other operational issues, something that is quite rare for an I.T deployment of its complexity.’

  Kate moved from slide to slide, gaining in confidence, and increasing the volume of her presentation. The significant percentage increase labels on the slide, along with the associated monetary value of new business that C.A.R.L was generating was enough to get anyone’s attention. Looking around the room again and seeing that all eyes were focused on her and her presentation, Kate continued.

  ‘As you can see from the enclosed report, sales are up, bad loans are down, customer feedback is overwhelmingly positive, and our lead time for processing new accounts, loans, and investments has been halved.’

  ‘Gentlemen, we have been successfully using C.A.R.L on a country specific scale now for 3 months. I propose expanding it out to our international operations and really unleashing the power of the programme globally’. After some deliberation the board agreed to implement the software across the entire bank.

  Chapter 13

  Bangkok, Thailand

  Meanwhile, back in Bangkok James had again gathered together the Cybix group to review the first 3 months of their hacking at the bank. They had been renting an empty room in a desolate industrial estate for the past several months, and without any form of air conditioning the building was always stifling, particular in March/April time when the already hot Bangkok seemed to get hotter every day. They had been cheaply renting the unit from a local Thai businessman who had no idea about their real motives for being in Thailand.

  The Cybix group had of course been working on several other concurrent projects and James had to admit that their work had gained even further notoriety over the past few weeks.

&nb
sp; One of the most reported successes had to be the group’s successful shutdown of the F.B.I website. For four long hours anyone trying to find information on the bureau was redirected back to a website dedicated to ‘The Muppets’. That particular hack had pushed the hacker responsible ‘BluePill’ to the very top of the F.B.I’s cyber crime list. James wasn’t sure if ‘BluePill’ was in the room with them today, but he knew that they had contributed to the code being used to infect Global Enterprises Bank’s new darling I.T system C.A.R.L.

  ‘Gentleman, I’m pleased to report that the first 3 months have been an amazing success thanks to all of your combined efforts’ James opened whilst looking around the room.

  ‘I know many of you put a great number of hours into the Virus coding, and now that we have successfully infected C.A.R.L we’re going to teach Global Enterprise Bank a lesson or two about how they should be conducting business’.

  James looked around at the various nods he received from the rest of the group. He hadn’t told the group all of his plans before but now that they controlled C.A.R.L he was going to explain the next stage. There was a palpable excitement from the group as they waited impatiently to hear what James was planning.

  James had no idea how he had ended up as spokesman/leader for this group but he was determined to see his plan through.

  ‘Our reports show us that the virus is interrupting the core functions of the banks systems, it has increased the number of loans approved, rejected several high profile business applications based on our list of non desirable persons, and best of all the bank has no idea that anything is wrong.

  ‘To top this great news off, I heard this morning that the bank is going to roll out our infected software across the entire organisation. Our virus is going to be extended by their own I.T professionals into every level of the bank. This is the most comprehensive hack in corporate history. We should be proud of what we’ve achieved here.’