Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2)

by Wallace, Pendelton

  “I guess a week on the Big Island is worth a little hassle, huh?” Acting friendly with the help desk agent was a big part of social engineering. Justin had to put her at ease so she was less likely to question his identity.

  “John, what is the name of your wife?” the voice on the phone asked in its heavy Indian accent.

  “It’s Sandra.”

  In his Google search Justin found all sorts of interesting information about John Potter. He thought back to a picture of Mr. Potter and his wife at a fundraiser with the caption “John and Sandra Potter dance the night away at the Black and White Ball.”

  “OK, John. I’m resetting your password to ‘Wednesday’ with a capital ‘W,’ you will need to reset it as soon as you log on.”

  “Thanks, Hamsa.”

  That was it. He was in. He had the keys to the kingdom.

  From John Potter’s account, it was child’s play for Justin to shell into the operating system. He had spent a lifetime stalking Windows vulnerabilities. In five minutes he set up a system administrator account for himself. Now, as far as Millennium Systems was concerned, he was God.

  Chapter 2

  Ted sat anxiously at the conference table with a couple dozen other twenty-somethings. He wanted to get this over with. He was still trying to figure out how he fit in. After only two weeks at his new job, he wanted to make a good impression.

  The entire staff was called in for an eight o’clock meeting on a Friday night. It was supposed to be a big surprise.

  Ted glanced around the large conference room. Four guys played Foosball at one end of the room. A heavy guy in thick glasses tossed a wadded-up napkin at the Nerf basketball hoop on the back of the door. The walls were covered in white boards. Schematic diagrams and computer code that he didn’t understand yet filled the walls from floor to ceiling. The wall-mounted giant TV played a familiar theme song.

  “Hey, you guys, pipe down.” Justin McCormack, wearing his trademark shorts, sandals and tank top, stood and raised his hands. “It’s about to start.” His long brown hair, pulled back in a ponytail, dipped halfway down his back. His bulging muscles didn’t impress Ted. After four years of major college football, he was used to guys whose muscles had muscles. It was Justin’s intense brown eyes that commanded Ted’s attention.

  “Good evening.” On the TV a smooth-faced, fortyish blonde smiled to the camera. “I’m Janet Petersen, welcome to the season premiere of News Front.” The theme song crescendoed and the camera panned out to show Janet Petersen sitting behind an ebony anchor desk. “Our stories tonight: ‘Dave Garcia walks the streets of Baghdad.’” The monitor over her shoulder showed a Hispanic man in a flak jacket and helmet walking through a bazaar with armed troops at his side.

  “Christopher Wilson brings you ‘The Housing Bubble: Will it Burst?’” Graphics on the monitor showed a picture of a house and a line graph representing housing prices going sky high overlaid with a giant question mark.

  “But first,” The monitor over Janet’s shoulder changed to a picture of the cover of Time Magazine. “I interview the man Time Magazine has called ‘The most dangerous man in America’ – Justin McCormack, CEO of YTS Digital Security.” The camera pulled back enough for the viewers to see Justin, wearing an immaculate business suit for the interview, sitting next to Janet.

  Justin cleaned up pretty good, Ted had to admit. With his broad shoulders and powerful chest, he reminded Ted of a tiger, about to pounce.

  “Yo, dude,” one of the group around the table shouted. General applause, cheers and whistles rose from the crowd. Irena, her T-shirt pulled tight enough to reveal her nipple piercings, high-fived Justin.

  “Hey, Hero,” Irena shouted across the table at Ted in her slight Russian accent. “How it feels for someone else to be hogging all TV time?”

  In his mind’s eye, Ted saw the missile launch. His blood ran cold. He and his friends had stopped the terrorist attack on the cruise ship. They saved over six thousand lives. But at what cost? Only he and Chris had survived. He had spent the last month under a spot light.

  “Justin can have it.” Ted flicked his hand at Irena, he was sick of it. “I’m done with the limelight.” He wiped the sweat from his brow. “I don’t know why the TV guys are so interested in a Mexican kid from East LA anyway.” He turned from Irena and reached for a paper plate.

  Pizza boxes from Northlake Tavern covered the white, Formica-topped table and a fifty-gallon galvanized tub filled with ice and imported beers and micro-brew sat on the floor. The beer flowed freely as a party mood rocked the room. All eyes were now on the News Front broadcast on the big-screen TV.

  “News Front’s going to put YTS on the map,” the tiny Asian woman sitting next to Ted said softly. “The IPO will make them all rich.” She sipped at her beer. “Too bad we won’t get in on it.”

  “No te preocupes, chica.” Then Ted remembered where he was. “Don’t worry. My mama used to say a rising tide floats all boats. We may not have stock, but if the company does well, we will too.”

  Nan Pok went through new employee orientation with Ted. Tonight she clung to him like he was her only friend in the world. He wasn’t particularly attracted to the small woman with Coke-bottle glasses, but he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “We’re gonna do okay here.”

  “Thanks, Teddy.”

  Ted froze. Meagan had always called him “Teddy.” He tried to shake off the sudden sense of melancholy. He was just coming out of the funk he had been in since returning from Canada.

  For two weeks after their Canadian adventure he practically lived in the hospital room while his best friend, Chris Hardwick, fought for his life. Ted had just re-joined the real world as a junior security analyst at YTS.

  Coming back to work protecting some corporation’s databases just didn’t feel like enough. He felt like he'd been given a second chance at life. He had to give back, to make a difference somehow. Whatever it was that he was supposed to be doing, this wasn’t it.

  “Mr. McCormack, there have been rumors.” Ted’s attention turned back to the big screen TV. “Can you set the record straight once and for all?” Ted knew that Janet Petersen’s million-dollar smile had melted more than one hard case on national television. “What does the name of your company, ‘YTS,’ really mean?”

  On the big TV, Justin laughed. “I’ve heard all of those rumors too, Janet.” His smirk seemed to say, “I know something that you don’t know.”

  After a brief pause, Justin said, “It really doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I’ve heard that you and a couple of buddies thought up the name one night over cheap pizza and way too much beer.”

  There was that smirk again. “Really, it’s just an acronym. It sounded important to us.”

  “Did you hear that?” Nan laughed, putting down her beer bottle.

  “What does it mean?” Ted asked.

  “You’re Too Stupid,” she responded.

  Ted was taken aback. “Say what?”

  “No, really. That’s what it means. YTS means ‘You’re Too Stupid.’ As in ‘You’re too stupid to understand what I’m talking about, so I’ll have to put it in one-syllable words.’ My supervisor told me that Justin and his friends made it up because their customers didn’t understand anything they were saying. They were pitching their products to a bunch of idiotic Luddites that happened to be CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies.”

  “Oooh!” Bear raised his fists over his head and twirled his hips. “The most dangerous man in Aaameeeeriiic-ka.” He threw his head back and kicked one leg up on the last syllable.

  “Dangerous enough to sign your paycheck,” Justin cracked.

  Bear’s face immediately turned red. “Just remember who got you here, big shot.” He sat down and shut up.

  Ted watched the picture on the TV change to a still photo of a geeky-looking twelve-year-old boy. Janet Petersen went into a brief biography of Justin McCormack. Growing up on Seattle’s Eastside, going to Lakeside Acade
my, graduating from the University of Washington at eighteen. Justin wasn’t the average American boy.

  Well, Ted thought, maybe the average American boy who had all the advantages.

  “Is it true, Mr. McCormack,” Janet asked on the TV, “that you hacked into the New York Stock Exchange at age sixteen?”

  “Justin, please.” Justin flashed an embarrassed smile. “When the FBI came knocking on my parents’ door, my dad wasn’t too happy.”

  “What happened?”

  The camera closed in on him.

  “I was just a kid. A group of my friends were into hacking. They’d break into the Department of Defense networks and leave messages or graphics, kind of like gangbangers tagging a wall, just to show that they could do it. I wanted to step it up a notch. I set up an account for myself with the McMillan-Smith brokerage house, then manipulated stock prices to make it grow.”

  “How much money did you accumulate?”

  “I really can’t talk about it, Janet.” Justin flashed her an ‘aw-shucks’ grin. “As part of the plea bargain agreement, I can’t give out any details. Let’s just say it was north of seven figures.”

  “And did you go to prison?”

  “No.” Justin laughed. “My dad’s a lawyer. I was a minor. He worked out an agreement with the DOJ. I got five years’ probation and wasn’t allowed to touch a computer for seven years.”

  “So, if you couldn’t touch a computer for seven years, how did you become one of the nation’s top digital security experts?”

  Ted looked across the room at his boss. Justin was really enjoying this. Well, so what? Who wouldn’t?

  “Let’s just say,” Justin was talking on the TV again. “That the people who were supposed to be monitoring me weren’t too bright.”

  Let’s just say that you aren’t too bound by other people’s rules. Ted sipped at his beer. Why did his boss’ superior attitude bother him so much?

  “By the time the ban was lifted, you were one of the nation’s most promising young digital security experts.” The camera zoomed in for a close up on Janet. “You founded YTS at age twenty-three and had nowhere to go but up.”

  Janet turned to face the camera and spoke directly to her audience. “Tonight, we go along with Justin on one of his digital adventures. We asked him to hack into the most secure computer network in the world: the Millennium Systems network. Millennium Systems is one of the largest computer manufacturers in the world. Of course, this is with the permission of Millennium Systems. We talked to their Chief Security Officer, Richard Freeman.”

  The TV screen cut to a taped interview with a severe looking middle aged man. Richard Freeman was a tall, muscular man with salt and pepper hair cut in a military style. The smirk on his face seemed to say “Me smart. You dumb.”

  “We welcome Mr. McCormick’s attempt.” He smiled. “No one has ever hacked into Millennium systems.” He seemed too smug. “We have one of the most secure systems in the world. My staff works around the clock, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year, three-hundred and sixty-six when we can get them, to protect our company’s data. Let him bang away at it. It’s a good test for us.”

  ****

  Donna Harrison pushed her cart down the long, carpeted hallway of the Millennium Tower, headquarters of Millennium Systems. She had followed exactly the same routine since she took the job a week ago. She stopped her cart outside of an office door. Removing a step stool from the cart, she climbed up a couple of steps and dusted the security camera pointed down the hallway.

  Stepping down from her stool, she removed a key chain from the pocket of her baggy gray uniform dress. As she pulled the keys from her pocket, a plastic name tag fell to the floor.

  “Damn.” Donna bent over to pick up the name tag. She was always forgetting to pin it on her uniform. The name tag said “Betty.”

  Her heart beat accelerated as she unlocked the door and entered a large office. She removed the step stool from her cart and placed it under the office’s security camera. Climbing two steps, she dusted the camera, then lifted the ceiling tile above the camera with her feather duster.

  A mini digital video recorder was attached to the security camera wires by alligator clips. She pushed a button on the device, removed a flash drive and dropped it in her pocket. She took a second flash drive from her pocket, inserted it in the device and pushed the button again. The light changed from red to green.

  Back on the floor, she stopped, took a deep breath and opened the blinds. The countless lights of downtown Seattle and Elliot Bay sparkled below her. Out on the water she saw brightly lit ferry boats making their way back and forth across Puget Sound.

  “What a waste,” she muttered. Not for the first time she pondered on the man who occupied the office. “How can he work here all day with the blinds shut? A billion-dollar view and he wants to live in a cave.”

  A remote control called to her from the credenza. She picked it up and turned on the wall-mounted TV. It was Friday night, she never missed News Front.

  The host, Janet Petersen, introduced her guest for the night. Shit. It was that SOB McCormack. What a publicity hound. How could the rest of the industry do their job when he was always giving away the tricks of the trade?

  Donna went back to work dusting the dark mahogany furniture. She stopped in front of the half-sized book case. There were unusual wear patterns in the carpet. Patience. Intensely aware of the surveillance camera over her shoulder, she didn’t stop to investigate.

  The desk, roughly the size of an aircraft carrier, was empty except for an expensive laptop computer. The computer sat precisely parallel to the edge of the desk in a locked docking station, in front of the padded leather swivel chair. This is where it all happens, she thought. There was no question in her mind, he was the one.

  The occupant of the office demanded precise compliance with his instructions. No dust anywhere, no paper in the trash can, not a pencil out of place. The small refrigerator stocked with exactly two dozen bottles of Evian water. Not twenty-three, not twenty-five. Exactly twenty-four. The bottles to be rotated each day so that the oldest was on the left of the outside row, labels facing outward.

  Her supervisor told Donna that she liked her meticulous attention to detail. Like that was supposed to make Donna feel better about doing this crummy dead-end job.

  If only she knew. Donna wasn’t doing this for money. The adrenaline high was better than sex.

  With a conscious effort, she controlled her breathing and surveyed the office. Cream-colored walls without a single picture or photograph. No plants. No decoration of any sort, just mind-numbing plainness. There was no indication of the personality of the man who worked here. Probably because he doesn’t have one.

  Donna turned her attention to the laptop on the desk. Her breath came in short bursts as she raised the lid. The keys to the kingdom, she thought as she removed an aerosol can from her cleaning cart and blew the keyboard clean. I have to be patient. She worked diligently, cleaning the office from top to bottom to operating-room standards.

  Finally, she closed the blinds, turned off the TV and pushed her cart to the door. A smile spread across her face.

  Maybe the extra money wouldn’t be so bad. Taking her family to Cabo, when winter closed in on them, might just be what the doctor ordered.

  Chapter 3

  “Boo! Hiss!” Someone threw peanuts at Richard Freeman’s image on the big screen TV. Catcalls filled the conference room.

  Híjole, Ted thought, these dudes are wired. He watched the scene on the television shift to Justin getting out of the van in the parking garage of the Millennium Tower.

  Ted had never seen Justin in anything but his tank top and shorts. In the coveralls he looked like any working Joe.

  “We have hidden cameras following Mr. McCormack’s progress.” Janet’s professional voice-over floated through the speakers. “He wore a disguise in case MS security had warned its staff to watch out for him.”

  On TV, Justin steppe
d out of the elevator and looked around the office. People hustled busily about. No one paid him any attention.

  “We’re looking for the department manager’s office, checking out the attentiveness of management and employees.” Justin’s voice-over covered his actions.

  Even though Ted knew the outcome, he held his breath.

  On the screen, Bear stepped behind Justin. The camera hidden in his glasses zeroed in as Justin typed in “JAPOTT” and hit the “enter” key.

  “I was denied access three times,” Justin said. “Then the system locked me out. That’s good security practice.” On TV, Justin picked up the phone. “I called the help desk.”

  He did his song and dance routine with the help desk agent. “We call it social engineering,” Justin told Janet. “Human beings are always the weakest link in any security system. They would have seen from their caller ID that I was calling from Mr. Potter’s desk. They heard what they expected to hear. They reset the password and I was in. I returned to my office where I have better tools and less chance of detection, to hack their system.”

  “Woo Hoo!” The room erupted in applause. People high-fived, fist bumped, hip bumped and chest bumped.

  Caramba, Ted thought, you’d think they just won the Super Bowl.

  “It took you five minutes to break into one of the most secure computer systems in the world.” Janet Petersen’s voice cut through the celebration.

  Ted leaned back in his chair. There was a lot to learn here. If Justin could break into Millennium Systems network, he could hack any system in the world. He smiled to himself. What he can do, I can do. You have been given great power, my son. Use it wisely.

  ****

  Donna put her cleaning cart in the closet, punched out on her time card, removed the rubber band from her ponytail and shook her hair free. She had let the streaks of gray show in her chestnut brown hair for this assignment.