Aspen Allegations - A Sutton Massachusetts Mystery
Page 34
* * *
It was nearly eight p.m. by the time Jason and I pulled into Matthew’s driveway. To my delight he had answered my call and said not only was the drive not yet reformatted but that he was home for the evening and would be happy to have us stop by. Joan was off playing mahjongg and he would enjoy the company.
Ramshorn Pond was dark and silent under the sprinkling of stars, and I wondered if the heron was out in the reeds somewhere, tucked in for the evening. We had seen a hawk in a dead tree on the way home; it had been fluffed up like a football, keeping warm against the encroaching winter’s chill. All signs pointed to a frigid season ahead.
Matthew pulled the door open with a smile, ushering us in. “I have it set up on the kitchen table for you,” he greeted. “Some tea?”
“Sure, I would love some peppermint,” I agreed.
Jason chimed in. “That would fine for me as well.”
Matthew headed toward the kitchen. “Coming right up.”
I settled into the chair before the keyboard and turned on the computer monitor. The Windows screen burbled to life. I brought up Windows Explorer and began with a system-wide search for anything touched since October 1st. I figured that would give me a month’s worth of files to start with.
The screen filled with results as Matthew brought over our tea and settled into a chair beside me. “Anything interesting?”
I shook my head as I scanned down the list. There were updates made to Internet Explorer, updates to the operating system, and various tweaks to Flash and the anti-virus software.
Matthew pointed with a finger. “What’s that one?”
The file name was autoexec.bat, and I shrugged. “It’s an operating system file,” I explained. “Older systems had them to set up drivers and initialize settings.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “but look at the size of it. It’s four meg.”
I paused in surprise. I hadn’t even looked at the size. The file name had seemed so natural that I had skimmed right past it in the long listing.
I right clicked on it and told it to open with Word.
Enter password to open file.
I pursed my lips. “All right, that’s not a batch file,” I agreed. “It’s a Word document, and someone thought it special enough to password protect. Even his main Word document didn’t have a password on it.”
Jason leant forward in interest. “All right, then, what do you think the password is?”
I typed in Eileen and hit enter.
The password is incorrect. Word cannot open the document.
I tried Eileen1968, EileenJohn, JohnEileen, and a variety of other phrases. No such luck.
“Hmmm,” I pondered. “I wonder how many guesses I get until this thing locks me out.”
Jason gave a dry chuckle. “Might want to find that out before you start hacking your way into the file.”
I did a quick google search. A few minutes later I shook my head. “It appears I can just keep guessing to my heart’s content,” I commented. “They even have tools that will sit there guessing away at passwords for you all day and night. Eventually they get in, as long as the password isn’t too long. For example, no matter what combination of case, numbers, or symbols you use, if your password is only six characters long, it can be hacked within a day.”
Matthew glanced at us. “Might be worth a try.”
In a few minutes we had downloaded a tool, installed it, and set it loose. The numbers started spinning as it listed how many combinations it had tried, how much time had elapsed, and how much time remained for passwords of varying lengths.
Jason looked at the output, shaking his head. “Even if you mix case and symbols, it looks like you have to get to eight characters to have it be safe for twenty years. If you reach nine characters, since the hacking utilities go through the shorter combinations first, you’ll be safe for your lifetime, even if it’s just two or three words put together. So it sounds like it’s best to have a password that’s easy to remember, a phrase, and nine or more letters long. You don’t need anything special about it at that point. The hackers simply will never get that far in their processing.”
I smiled. “I imagine in thirty years we’ll have all our data embedded in our brains, and won’t be using hard drives at all.”
I looked up at Matthew. “All right then. Send me an email if it does anything interesting in the next day or two? Once we get past that point, we might as well give up. If it’s something longer, we’re not going to take up your kitchen table for years to figure out what it might be.”
“Sounds good to me,” agreed Matthew. “We’re going away to our son’s for Thanksgiving and will be in and out tomorrow. So it’s fine to keep it going for a while at least.”
“I’ll be interested to see what’s in there, if we’re able to get in,” I held his gaze. “Just what was it that John was so excited about revealing?”
Matthew shrugged. “We may find out, or it may be lost forever. If he chose a twelve character phrase, the aliens may have taken over the planet by the time anybody knows the answer.”
I chuckled. “Thank you for your help, in any case. Let’s hope his password was of the short-complex variety, and he felt that was enough.”