by Chan Ho-Kei
POSTED BY zerocool ON 07-03-2015, 01:56
re: Mastermind behind girl’s (14) suicide?
I’ve thought about this a long time before posting. Long post, sorry.
I’m a longtime Popcorner, but this is a throwaway account. Please don’t try to find out who I am. I have my reasons.
My job is a bit unusual. My title is “Data Security Consultant.” Sounds fancy, but that just means I’m a hacker. Don’t misunderstand, I don’t do anything against the law. People hire me to try to break into their systems, so I can tell them all their weak points. I’m a White Hat, in other words. Just like banks hire locksmiths to see if they can break into their vaults.
Normally it wouldn’t be a big deal to say all this, but here’s why I’m going incognito: because of work, I have to get into some … questionable parts of the net. I often use P2P sharing to download files, though unlike most people I’m not pirating films or music. All I care about is what kind of private data those websites transfer. For instance, telecom companies might leak client names, government departments might lose entire documents, and so on. I never used any of the data that I got in this way, but even admitting that I possessed it would be enough to land me in court.
Last month, while using PD—a type of P2P software—I got a damaged file from a hard disk. I won’t say what kind of file (so you guys don’t go looking), but I managed to unfreeze it and found a heap of personal information, as if someone accidentally installed a version of PD with, uh, added ingredients, and had all their stuff stolen. There are plenty of these altered programs—they basically create a back door to your computer, so your files can be taken without you noticing.
I noticed that these were all from personal computers, so I ignored them—after all, I’m not interested in people’s secrets. (I get files like this once every few days anyway.) But something about the OP’s post reminded me of something, so I went back through those files, and sure enough, I found something shocking.
One of them was a text file, containing exactly the same words as the post from April, the “Fourteen-Year-Old Slut” one. I thought someone must have cut and pasted it from Popcorn, but then I looked more closely.
The post appeared on April 10, but the file I had was created on April 9. So maybe the Popcorn thing was a repost? But I’ve searched the web, and April 10 on Popcorn was the first appearance. In other words, this file might be from the K person’s hard drive.
OP mentioned K might have wanted to hurt the suicide girl. I didn’t know whether to go public with this, then I thought someone’s dead, so it’s my responsibility to say what I know. Hence the burner account. Don’t bother trying to track down my IP address—I’m a professional Data Security Consultant, you’ll never find me.
Violet was ready to faint—lucky she’d been reading this in bed, or she would surely have collapsed. She quickly clicked on the green Line icon to ask her brother:
Hav you ever used a file sharng thing called PD?
She sent it without even stopping to correct the typos—even a second’s delay was too much. After two or three minutes, though, the message still hadn’t been read.
This is important!
He’d once told her not to phone him at work, but to send Line messages instead. And so, no matter how urgent it was, she didn’t want to call.
Five more minutes. Still no reply.
We’re in trouble! This may
Just as she was typing in the third message, “read” lit up. She let out her breath, but the reply ramped up her anxiety even more:
what’s up? sure, i’ve used PD
This confirmed that the Data Security Consultant hadn’t been making things up. She deleted her draft and wrote a new message:
Go look at the Popcorn chat from yesterday!
Two minutes later, he wrote:
don’t worry, it’s nothing
She gawped. How could this be “nothing”?
Nothing?? They have your file!!
It took a long time for “read” to appear. Violet’s stomach hurt, either from the anxiety or because she was still in bed way past breakfast time.
not necessarily mine
i trust my firewall
maybe someone’s computer clock is a day slow
so the date registered wrong when they copied it
Violet hadn’t considered this possibility. Even so, she felt uneasy. What if …
Were the files I sent you stored on the same hard drive?
If those ever get out, we’re in trouble!
She waited.
what files?
His nonchalant reply tipped her into rage:
The ones you made me steal from the school! The pictures, contacts, SMSes and all that from the other kids’ phones! If anyone reveals your ID on Popcorn, you can just say the clock was a day slow or something. But if they find out we know each other, we’re not going to get out of that!
Violet had never spoken to him like that, but she was even more anxious to keep him out of trouble than for herself. After Siu-Man died, Violet imagined the worst-case scenario: if those threatening messages were discovered and traced back to her, she would take responsibility rather than allow him to get dragged down.
In order to deal with Siu-Man, he’d helped Violet gather materials on quite a few of her fellow students. He gave her a little black box that looked like a charger, and as soon as a phone was plugged in, its contents could be siphoned, including photos, videos, contacts, text messages, and calendars. When no one was paying attention, Violet would fiddle with the chargers in the classrooms or the library, stealing more private data. This was all in order to prove a rumor against Siu-Man, one of the ways in which they planned to punish her.
The rumor had long been forgotten—that on Christmas Eve a girl from the school got herself screwed by a gangster.
Violet never said much at school, but she kept her ears open in the classrooms and corridors, gleaning stray bits of information from people’s conversations. She was more or less certain that the girl in question was Siu-Man, but there was no proof—so her brother deployed this next-level strategy. She picked up quite a few secrets this way: who had a crush on whom, who was two-timing whom, who was particularly close to which teacher, and so on. She saw quite a few intimate photos and videos, some of them explicit enough to be used as blackmail material. Yet there was no sign of evidence for the Siu-Man rumor, just a picture of her being groped in a karaoke lounge, which was nothing compared with some of the other stuff Violet found.
With so much material to sift through, she’d sent everything to her brother so he could help. Now she was worried that these files would be what exposed her connection to him. Even if she insisted that she was the only guilty party, other people might not believe her, and he might end up in trouble too. She was still a minor, and even if she were convicted, her sentence would be light. Her brother was ten years older, though, and his treatment would be much harsher.
oh those files
don’t worry
i think i put them in the other hard drive
stop scaring yourself
have a meeting now, chat later
This reply was just as unbothered as before, leaving Violet angry and frustrated. If there was one thing she didn’t like about her brother, it was that he could be full of himself. Of course, in different circumstances, she admired that too—no matter how bad the situation, he’d remain confident in his ability to deal with it. All her subsequent messages went unread, and she had to accept that he was indeed busy.
There were more comments beneath the Data Security Consultant’s post, but they were all pointless ones like “Hope you find the truth” or GIFs of munching popcorn. One was probably by an enemy of SuperConan: “Compared to that blabbermouth StuporConman, ZeroCool shows us a master at work.”
“Don’t … don’t bother coming to cook dinner tonight,” said Violet around noon, as Miss Wong put on her shoes before heading to her next house.
; “Are you going out?” she asked.
“Yes,” lied Violet, nodding. “I’m in my school book club. We’ll be out all day, and I won’t be back till after dinner.”
“Oh, okay. I’d already bought you a lamb chop.”
“Take it with you. Give it to your kid.”
“I can’t do that. If Mr. To finds out, he’ll say I stole it.”
“It will just go bad if you leave it in the fridge. That’s a waste.”
“That’s true …” Although she sounded unwilling, her expression told a different story. “How many days will this book club go on for?”
“How about this—if I’m having dinner at home, I’ll make sure to tell you the day before.”
Miss Wong nodded. She got the lamb chop from the fridge and departed happily. Violet had no extracurriculars, she just didn’t want to be home on her own, driving herself crazy with her thoughts. Better to be in the mall, surrounded by people, where she could distract herself. Her brother once told her that if she started to feel anxious, the best thing was to go out.
That afternoon, she took a bus to Festival Walk in Kowloon Tong. After dinner, she lingered in a coffee shop till eleven before heading home. Lok Fu Place was a little closer to her home, but the cafés and restaurants there closed much earlier. When she met her brother, though, it was usually at the Starbucks in Lok Fu—Festival Walk was much more crowded, especially on holidays; you could end up waiting up to half an hour for a table. They avoided it unless they needed something from there, such as cell phone spare parts or a visit to the Apple store.
Violet was actually much more rational than most people her age. In the library, for instance, she’d known immediately what she had to do to preserve her secret. And now she understood that constantly refreshing Popcorn and waiting for more bad news to arrive was a path to insanity. She knew perfectly well what the consequences would be if she allowed the stress to grow past her ability to tolerate it. She forced herself to relax and go to bed.
Yet this rationality wasn’t able to save her from an assault on her senses.
Ding-ding-dong-dong-ding-ding-dong-dong-ding-ding-dong-dong …
Violet was pulled from her dreams by her cell phone ringing. She thought at first it was the alarm clock, but when she opened her eyes, the sky was still dark, and a glance at the clock told her it was only 3:30 in the morning. No number was displayed. Looking at the screen, with its “slide to answer,” she was suddenly wide awake. Could something have happened to her brother? Most people might have thought of their parents first, but she cared much more about her brother than her distant father, who might as well have been a stranger.
She answered the call. “Hello?”
No sound.
“Hello?”
Abruptly, the caller hung up.
Wrong number, probably. Hugely relived, she was just about to go back to sleep when the phone rang again. Once again, no number was displayed.
“Hello?” she said, a little angry now.
Still no reply, but she could hear faint breathing.
“Who is it?” she yelled.
“Murderer.”
And with that, the caller hung up. Violet sat frozen in bed. It was a woman’s voice—or possibly a boy’s—that had clearly said the word “murderer.”
Just like that, logic fled from her brain. Somehow they’d got hold of her phone number. Someone knew what she’d done. She hastily went into her address book—never mind how late it was, she needed to ask her brother for help. Before she could click on his name, her “Wave” ringtone went off again, as if determined to slice right through the peaceful silence of the room.
“Who are you? What do you want? If you call again, I’ll report you to the police!” she screamed.
“Fuck you! Ha ha.”
A curse word, a couple of barks of laughter, then a click. Even in her panic, Violet noticed this was a different voice—a man this time.
Violet stared at her phone, cold sweat beading on the back of her neck. She couldn’t stop trembling. The phone showed no mercy, but started ringing again. She didn’t answer, pressing the key to terminate the demonic sound.
Ding-ding-dong-dong-ding …
No sooner had she rejected one call when the next came in. She didn’t stop to think, just turned the phone off.
As the screen blinked out, Violet found herself staring into the gloom of her bedroom. Apart from the weak streetlight drifting in the window, everything was in darkness. She felt as if she were floating in a space full of wickedness. It wasn’t cold, but she swaddled herself completely in her blanket, trying to stay calm. The wind outside and the ticking of her clock now sounded like wretched sobbing. No peace for her. She didn’t sleep another wink till dawn.
Click. The front door, a reassuring sound. She’d managed to shut her eyes and drowse a little after the sun came up, until the cleaning lady woke her as she came in.
She glanced down to see her phone on the floor where she’d flung it the night before, and felt a chill in her heart. She reached out for it. Should she turn it on? In the end, rationality overcame fear, and she pressed the button. After all, she’d have to use it to ask her brother for help.
Unexpectedly, the phone stayed silent, though she had more than forty voice mails. She didn’t dare listen to them—nor did she need to, since neither her brother nor her father would have left her a message between four and nine in the morning.
The situation was serious enough that she decided to phone her brother, even though it might disturb him at work. She needed to hear his voice. If she could hear him say just one sentence, she’d be able to calm down.
Ring … ring …
It rang more than twenty seconds, but there was no answer.
She looked at her alarm clock. It didn’t seem likely that he’d been pulled into a meeting first thing in the morning, but when she thought about it, she had to admit it was possible. She had no support, then, and could only steel herself to open the Popcorn page to search for the cause of the disturbance last night. Her intuition told her that this ZeroCool must be behind it.
When she opened the thread, the first post she saw made everything go black before her eyes.
POSTED BY admin ON 07-04-2015, 07:59
re: Mastermind behind girl’s (14) suicide?
Announcement: user AcidBurn has posted information infringing an individual’s personal privacy, breaking Regulation 16. This account has been locked. If you wish to file a complaint, please send a direct message to the webmaster.
*Popcorn Chatboard is a discussion platform and cannot take responsibility for the text, images, video, audio, or any other files posted here. Users assume legal responsibility for their posts.
The words “personal privacy” made her scalp tingle. Going back through the thread, she saw that a post time-stamped 3:15 a.m. had been deleted, leaving only the username AcidBurn. Beneath that were all sorts of comments:
—wow nice work Mr. Z, that’s ironclad evidence that this dude was the bad guy here
—ZeroCool and AcidBurn are both names from Hackers, right?
—There’s even a phone number! Anyone called to check?
—I did, some female answered. Go for it, guys!
—looks like a dude’s name?
—Maybe she has a friend. Something for me too!
—Sure I’ll try I can’t sleep anyway
—remember to enter 133 first so your number won’t be displayed
These started at 3:20 and went on till just after five—about twenty of them. Violet felt herself being enveloped by hatred, even if the contents of these posts were more like playful children teasing someone. She could see the spite and cruelty hidden behind the words. She was done for. This torture was no more than she deserved.
She wasn’t sure at first what “ironclad evidence” was being referred to, until she saw a reply to AcidBurn’s deleted post that stunned her:
POSTED BY kidkit727 ON 07-04-2015, 03:09
re:
Mastermind behind girl’s (14) suicide?
ZeroCool here. The password to this account was in the file I found. I’m 100% sure this bastard has something to do with it.
She’d never imagined that the kidkit727 account could be hacked. This should have been no big deal, given that she and her brother had set it up only to smear Siu-Man and never intended to log on again. But things were different now. ZeroCool finding the password here was proof that the file belonged to kidkit727.
“What’s wrong? Aren’t you feeling well?” asked Miss Wong as Violet walked into the kitchen. She knew what prompted the question—when she’d looked in the mirror a minute ago, her face was stark white.
“I slept badly.” She forced a smile as she went to the fridge for her usual breakfast.
Back in her room, she noticed that her phone had lit up with a new message. Quickly putting down the plate and cup she was holding, she tapped on the screen.
what’s up?
At this point, these words from her brother were all she had to hold up her battered soul.
Did you write down kidkit727’s password anywhere?
Someone from Popcorn hacked in! Go look!
Violet asked urgently. She waited about ten minutes for a response:
i saw
don’t panic, i never wrote down the password
i’ll keep an eye on things
just deny everything if anyone asks
evidence like this isn’t worth anything
Steady as ever. Was he really that confident, or was he bragging to puff up his courage?
Can we talk?
She typed tersely.
sorry, with my boss rn
v. busy today, meeting important client
will call later
This reply arrived after about five minutes. She was frustrated by his cold response, but her fear had turned to rage. All she wanted now was for him to understand how serious this was. She sent him a new message, but it never showed up as “read.”
