Hacked

by Tracy Alexander

  ‘We’ll have pudding when we get back,’ he said to Mum.

  ‘Come on, Dan,’ he said to me. ‘Let’s go and see if we can wake up that friend of yours.’

  I followed him out to the car. He hit the key fob and as the doors unlocked the mirrors folded out. Smooth!

  It took twenty minutes to get to Frenchay Hospital. Not long enough to prepare yourself. We parked and paid two pounds fifty. Rip off!

  ‘You all right?’ said Dad.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  Anything but.

  Forty minutes later we were back in the car and I had post-traumatic stress disorder.

  We’d got there to find Ty’s dad in the corridor, looking grey – and I don’t mean the hair. He shook our hands and went for a cup of tea in the canteen.

  We rang the bell and a nurse came to let us in.

  Dad sat by Ty. I sat at the end, near his feet, already freaked out. I concentrated on breathing, and not blubbing. I don’t know what I looked like but my face felt as though it belonged to a Ken doll (but less expressive). The ward was like Casualty – wires, bleeping, red lights, white sheets, grey metal bed, grey floor, uncomfortable chair. It wasn’t like the maternity hospital, which has rooms decorated like bedrooms. But that’s for the beginning of life, not the end.

  Trash that thought.

  Dad took Ty’s hand.

  ‘Rotten bit of luck, Ty. But I know you’re going to be fine. That head of yours needs some time out to get better but a day or two and you’ll be up and about. If anyone can brush off a spat with a white van, it’s you. I remember when …’

  Every so often he turned to me and smiled. Waited to see if I was going to speak …

  When I didn’t, he patted my knee with his free hand and on he went, steady pace, telling a few stories about us as kids …

  ‘Buzz Lightyear and Woody! You two insisted, even though it was Halloween … had a full-on scrap in the playground with a pumpkin.’

  Ty didn’t flinch, twitch, open an eye. When the blind panic subsided, leaving only normal panic, I studied him. He was breathing with a respirator and had a heart monitor and a tube for his pee and a drip in his arm. There was a gash above his eye but no other signs of violence. I couldn’t believe he could hear Dad wittering on, he was too … flat-looking. The idea that he might be already dead, his soul gone, his dreams of doing surgery on other people’s heads over, made me gag a bit on my own spit. I saw the sheep’s eye, wondered what they do with human eyes in a post-mortem, pushed the thoughts away. Dad droned on.

  ‘Don’t get too comfortable in that bed, Ty. Your mum relies on you to keep those brothers of yours in line …’

  A rush of air and fast footsteps announced the arrival of a nurse.

  ‘Time for his obs,’ she said, like they were dog treats.

  I moved out of her way, grateful for an excuse to get up, and, because I didn’t want to look at Ty any more, I kept on walking. Through the double doors, along the corridor, back towards the main entrance. If Dad called after me, I didn’t hear him.

  Finally outside, I leant against the wall, next to the bandaged and slippered patients who were enjoying an after-dinner fag. I waited, trying not to breathe in their cancerous smoke.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Dad as he came out. ‘It’s not easy seeing a friend in that state. You came, that’s what matters.’

  Dad was right. It wasn’t easy. And neither was getting access to a satellite, but it was worth a try. What if Ty ended up needing twenty-four-hour care? That would cost money. The van driver needed to pay for what he’d done. That’s why I settled in for an all-nighter with Red Bull and Dairy Milk. That, and the fact that I didn’t trust myself to sleep. Who knew what nightmares having a brain-dead friend would bring?

  One thing that was clear from my research was that there are zillions of satellites dotted all over the sky, controlled from loads of different locations. Somewhere, something would have been overlooked. It was a question of patience. And patience I have a lot of. All I needed was a chink in the system that would let me in. If the banks and the oil companies couldn’t protect themselves from exploiters, maybe the military weren’t immune either …

  Later on in my story, when my world went pear-shaped, people were astonished that I was just a kid. But the elite are all young. The internet is like playgroup, full of toys. We’ve grown up with it. Look around. Jonathan James, aka cOmrade, hacked the NASA computer system when he was sixteen. The Netsky and Sasser worms that infected millions of computers were written and released by a teenager. The people in authority are old and ignorant – they see code as something that has to be stuck together like Lego. They don’t see what we see – that code is like clay that can be moulded, shaped, manipulated. They have no idea what time and determination can achieve. Or how to stop us.

  9

  I’d never gone out much, but with Ty in hospital, Soraya off with her new beau and Joe climbing the walls (ha!), there was even less reason to leave my room. Hacking a spy satellite was a challenge I wasn’t prepared to fail. I was already mentally committed when it occurred to me that satellites look down, not along. No chance of reading a registration plate from above. So unless the white van that hit Ty had a massive logo on top, the task was pointless. But the task itself had become the point.

  It was a laborious process – too long to measure in comedy shows. And I was getting nowhere fast. You need to understand that real-time hacking is nothing like what you see at the cinema. In a film, if a computer nerd has to crack a code to open a door or a safe, he uses a laptop to cycle through all the possible combinations and find the right one before the FBI arrives/the hero explodes/the human race ends. This is not possible. A computer takes between four days and nineteen years to crack a 128-bit encrypted code. A computer in the hands of a very clever hacker still takes between four days and nineteen years.

  No surprise, then, that hackers don’t bother with code breaking – they find another way in. It’s like a burglar prising open a window, rather than attempting to get through the mortice lock and security chain on the front door. However, what really speeds up the process is to find a way round the security and a clue. We’re talking social engineering – jargon for using the fallibility of the target being hacked. Someone once tried to do it to my gran. Luckily she has me as a grandson.

  ‘Do you know, Dan, I had a phone call from the bank this afternoon?’

  ‘Did you, Gran?’

  ‘I did – some little beggar had taken money from my account, no less!’

  ‘Are you sure?’ At this point I wasn’t really listening, just responding to keep Gran happy. I thought she’d bought something and forgotten about it.

  ‘It was sorted out ever so quickly.’

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  ‘All I had to do was confirm my details and that little number on the back of the card and he said he could sort it out and I’d get all the money back.’ She smiled, pleased with the result. ‘He was called Andrew.’

  My head caught up with what she was saying. I got Dad, he rang the bank, and Gran got the money back even though it was her fault. Dad made her promise to never give any personal info to anyone she didn’t know.

  ‘But he was from the bank,’ she said.

  See? Duped by a combination of coding and social engineering.

  (Btw, my gran’s not stupid – loads of people fall for those scams.)

  Anyway, if I was going to successfully hack a spy satellite I needed a clue. One tiny bit of help to lower the odds. And I got it, thanks to Dad.

  A week and a half after Angel first suggested I infiltrate the security of the great US of A – which equates to maybe … eighty hours of computer time – the parents arrived at the door of my room (with El listening in from hers). It seemed I’d been on their radar for a few days – evidently only so much geek behaviour could pass as normal …

  ‘We need to talk, Dan,’ said Dad.

  For a crazy moment I thought they
were about to say they were getting a divorce. That was the tone.

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not healthy to spend so much time on your own, darling,’ said Mum.

  ‘You need to get out,’ said Dad.

  Relieved that I wouldn’t be the child with two bedrooms and no clean pants in either, I nodded, ready for the usual five minutes of advice before reverting to situation normal.

  ‘You’re only sixteen and we think you need some rules.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘I want you downstairs in the evening after your homework and no computing late at night,’ said Dad.

  ‘OK,’ I said. And then, because I seemed a bit too willing, ‘But I don’t see why. I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re very pale,’ said Mum. ‘And I think too much looking at a screen is bad for your eyes. They’re slightly bloodshot.’

  *wink*

  Dad’s bright idea was that I come down at nine o’clock every night and watch telly with him. Why swapping one screen with another would help, who knew? I agreed anyway. Previous experience told me no one would enforce it.

  They were leaving, satisfied with our little chat, when Mum said, ‘We’ve had a letter about the geography trip. Mr Richards says you need to go.’

  ‘I’m not bothered,’ I said. ‘I can get the data off someone else, and it’s quite expensive.’

  ‘You’re going,’ said Dad.

  Great! A bus journey to West Wales, all afternoon taking measurements of a river, sharing a room and a loo with people I hardly know from the other class, a whole day of experiments about speed of flow and direction and dead ducks and cold feet and misery, a second night away with unfunny teachers and fake teambuilding, a debrief and, eventually, home. Just what I needed.

  They disappeared, but at nine o’clock El came to say goodnight and reminded me I was expected downstairs – smug look on her face. I told her where to go but Dad started yelling at me so I gave in and trudged downstairs. Other kids row with their parents but I choose the path of least resistance and mostly things blow over. A few nights of compliance and Dad would go quiet again – I’d stake my Pay As You Go fund on it.

  I didn’t exactly have high hopes of my hour bonding with Dad in front of a whodunnit, but for once he let me choose so we watched a documentary about Afghanistan. It was interesting – although remind me never to respond to those ads that make the army sound like Go Ape. More importantly, it gave me a clue about where I might find a window I could prise open. Thank you, Channel 4.

  Around four o’clock the next morning I had a breakthrough. I didn’t need to infiltrate the Pentagon, or any other major headquarters, because a remote base station in the field near Camp Bastion let me inside the US Military network. It’s complicated, but all you need to know is that I searched for big chunks of data moving between Washington IP addresses and an area of Afghanistan occupied by the Americans, identified the military set of numbers and then sent random emails until I got an out-of-office reply confirming it was a military location. Knowing the location was the ‘clue’.

  I got inside and started sniffing IP traffic. The NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) operates all the satellites so I scanned live video streams in and out of the Pentagon, looking for those initials. How authorities dare protest about their systems being hacked, I don’t know, because that was all it took. I identified a server, found my way in, picked a random location and was rewarded by the feed from a satellite live on my screen. All I could see were fields, with the time, date, co-ordinates and other stuff that I didn’t understand superimposed – but that wasn’t the point. I cracked it – that was the point.

  10

  I went to school the day after my moderately impressive hack and walked home with Joe.

  ‘Not going to the climbing centre tonight?’

  ‘I’ve strained my wrist,’ he said. ‘Might take two weeks to get better.’

  ‘Bad luck.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Did you go and see Ty yesterday?’ I asked.

  ‘Yep. Nothing changes.’

  ‘Do you think he’s still there?’

  ‘Of course, idiot.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He’s still breathing. I think that’s the usual way of telling.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ I said, a bit irritated by Joe’s blind faith.

  My message alert went off. A short burst of Darth Vader – sad but true. I took it out of my pocket and yelped. Seriously, I yelped.

  Ty is awake and talking. He’s going to be fine. Love Mum x

  ‘He’s more than breathing,’ I said, showing Joe the text.

  Joe flung his arms round me and I slapped mine round him, which was odd but good. It wasn’t like I’d been worrying about Ty all the time, but knowing I didn’t have to was a big relief.

  ‘Shall we go and see him?’ said Joe.

  I hesitated, because I was keen to get home and have a proper play with the US reconnaissance satellites. Before breakfast I’d mapped the controls onto my phone so I could manipulate the camera, but had only managed to follow New Yorkers jogging through Central Park before Mum shooed me off to school. I didn’t even know if American satellites were trained on South West England but that was my next step, just in case the evil van did have some markings I could see.

  Anyway, after some mental wrestling I made the right decision. I figured stalking the planet could wait. I texted Mum to tell her what I was doing and we caught two buses to the hospital – same route I used to take to see Grandad.

  ‘Do you remember anything?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’m called Milly. And I live on a cloud,’ he said. Dreamy voice. Googly eyes.

  I started laughing but Joe looked terrified, which made Ty laugh. Good to see.

  Talk about ‘off’ and ‘on’ switches! Ty had been ‘off’ for thirteen days. But he was totally back ‘on’. His blond Tintin quiff was restored, his light blue eyes were open, they’d taken away all the beepy stuff and the cut on his head was just a red line.

  ‘Are you completely better?’ asked Joe, clearly freaked by Ty’s little joke.

  ‘If I could pee, I would be.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’ said Joe, looking traumatised again. He really needed a sense of humour overhaul.

  ‘I wish I was.’

  Joe’s eyes flicked to halfway down the bed sheet. It was too funny for words – he clearly thought the accident had damaged Ty’s ‘equipment’.

  ‘Happens to women if they have an epidural when they’re giving birth,’ I said. Was there no end to my knowledge?

  ‘They said it’s because of the catheter,’ said Ty. ‘My brain has forgotten how to tell the muscles to let go. Or my muscles have forgotten how to respond. Either way, they won’t let me out till I pee.’

  ‘Come on, then,’ I said.

  Joe protested, worried that Ty shouldn’t get out of bed, keen to call a nurse, but I knew what to do thanks to Mum’s dinnertime tales from the maternity ward.

  I turned all six taps, hot and cold, on full and let the water run down the plughole. Ty got the idea and stood at the urinal, staring down.

  ‘Not even a dribble,’ he said.

  At the risk of my two friends thinking I was making a gay pass, I unzipped my fly, stood at the urinal next to him and peed. Joe stormed out of the loos, which started us laughing all over again, during which time Ty peed. For about ten minutes!

  ‘Sorted,’ I said to Joe as we came back out. He was leaning against the wall opposite the loos, looking cool without trying. (Think Harley from Rizzle Kicks.)

  ‘Thank you, Dan.’ Ty shook my hand, and announced his success to the nurse on our way back.

  ‘Does that mean I can go home?’ he asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Sorry, Ty, we need the doctor to see you before you can skedaddle, and that won’t be until the morning.’

  He looked really disappointed.

  ‘It’s only one more night,�
� I said.

  ‘And I don’t remember the others,’ he said.

  We stayed until his mum came. To pass the time I filled him in on my failed attempts to identify the van driver. He was horrified that I’d hacked the council cameras, and apoplectic (excellent word) when I mentioned spy satellites. It was predictable, given his attitude to the Pay As You Go episode in my life, but I’d hoped he’d see it as loyalty.

  ‘You’ve crossed the line,’ he said, which was a bit dramatic.

  I tried to defend myself.

  ‘I tapped a few buttons on the keyboard and it led me there. It’s not like I’m planning on spying on Iran.’

  ‘It would have been epic if you could have got the reg,’ said Joe.

  ‘Epic-ally illegal,’ said Ty.

  ‘Can you spy on whoever you like?’ asked Joe, seeing possibilities for my hack.

  I nodded.

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Not cool, not even to catch criminals. Because it’s criminal.’ Ty was getting agitated, which probably wasn’t good for him.

  ‘Can’t you see where the van went?’ said Joe. ‘Maybe he hit Ty and drove home. Get him that way.’

  Talk about a light bulb moment.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Ty, just as his mum walked in. She gave us both a hug and thanked us for being such good friends. (Secretly she thinks I’m a ‘bad influence’.) (But not that secretly or I wouldn’t know.)

  ‘We’d better go,’ I said.

  ‘Have you heard of Gary McKinnon?’ said Ty quietly.

  Of course I had. He thought the US Government was hiding evidence of UFOs so he hacked the military computer system looking for proof and got himself arrested. So what? There are millions of hackers and Ty only knew the name of one.

  11

  The parents were out to suffocate me. Two nights running I’d watched telly with Dad, summoned at bang on nine o’clock, and gone to bed straight afterwards – boring programmes seemed to trigger hibernation. Or maybe it was because the alternative was staying up and trying to sew together the archive material to follow where the van went. I’d seen the collision, which, weirdly, wasn’t as distressing as I’d expected. One second Ty was stationary, and the next the van had nudged him and he was on the ground, and then a person came running. That was it. All over in a second, and not a drop of blood on camera. It was tracking what happened next that wasn’t going so well – too many satellites sweeping the earth.