Trojan Horse

[Tytor]

Part 1

New Providence, FCD
Federal Republic of Centralia
April 30, 2019 - 7:00 AM

The clock radio turned on, right on schedule.  The voice that issued from it was that of an excited-sounding young man.  "Good morning, New Providence!" it said, "I'm Dan Beesley, and this is KWZM, Big 100.6, broadcasting to you live from the nation's capital.  With me today is my friend and associate, Brett Sanders, who will be helping out with this year's edition of the Countdown to Summer.  We'll be kicking that off this fine morning with one of my personal favorites, which also happens to be one of Centralia's greatest hits.  That's right; today we're starting off with Hotel Caledonia, the most popular song ever released by the Seagulls, who are in turn the greatest band to emerge from the 1970s!  So, without further ado, here is Hotel Cal--"

The radio shut off as Matt Wilson's hand finally found the snooze button.  He groaned, then rolled out of bed.  The dingy apartment he shared with his friends was quiet, and mostly still dark.  Soft snoring from the bunkbed across the small bedroom told him that Michael was still fast asleep; Matt's alarm probably hadn't even disturbed his dreams.

The light was on in the tiny kitchen as he slowly and groggily made his way to  the bathroom.  As he'd suspected, Parker was sitting at the table, methodically polishing off a bowl of cereal.  Kale, of course, was already gone, headed by bike to New Providence University, where he was studying medicine on a government scholarship.

"Mornin', Grasshopper," Parker said through a mouthful of corn flakes, nodding in Matt's direction.  Parker had nicknames for everyone else in the apartment: Michael was Bear, because of his size and general demeanor; Matt was Grasshopper, because of his age; and Kale was Brains, though never to his face.  Parker, of course, was usually just Parker, despite his self-bestowed nickname of Stingray.

"'Sup, Parker?" Matt said, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

"Oh, not much," Parker replied with a grin, "Brains left already, but you probably knew that.  For us, though, it's Day One of our next project.  You excited?"

"Parker, I just got up," Matt said, "I'm still half-asleep here.  Right now, the only thing I'm excited for is a nice hot shower."

"Go for it," Parker said, "I'm not stopping you."

Matt gave a grudging chuckle and wandered the rest of the way into the bathroom.  After finishing his shower, he returned to the kitchen to find that Michael was up and moving about.  Michael made some sort of noise that may have been a greeting, and then headed into the bathroom himself and shut the door.

"Ah, dang it," Parker said, "I didn't get there quick enough.  Now I'll have to wait 'til he's out, and that--"

"That could take ages, yes, I know," Matt said, rolling his eyes, "Parker, you've made that joke about twelve times in the past three days.  Don't you think it's gotten a little old by now?"

"Nope," Parker said as he helped himself to the remainder of Michael's toast, "I think it's funny, and that's what matters to me.  Anyway, it just means that we'll need to put off the start of our project until after he's out.  Honestly, it probably won't take long; he should be running out of hot water just about... now."

There was a strangled cry from the bathroom followed by the sound of Michael rapidly shutting the water off.  About twenty seconds later, he came storming out of the bathroom.  He was sopping wet and had a towel wrapped around his waist.

"Guys, why'd you have to use up all the hot water again?" he demanded.

"Hey, it's not our fault that you stayed asleep too long," Parker retorted smoothly, "You brought this on yourself."

"Did not," Michael said, looking stung.

"What's done is done," Matt said, standing up and moving between the two, "Parker, just apologize.  Michael, go either finish your shower or dry yourself off; you've created a puddle on the floor."

Michael looked down.  Sure enough, a puddle of water had formed around his feet.  Parker sniggered, but quickly went straight-faced at the look Matt gave him.

"Yeah, all right, I'm sorry," he said reluctantly, "It was only a joke, and I probably won't do it again."

"Probably?" Michael asked, the corner of his mouth twitching.

"Probably," Parker said, nodding.

Suddenly, the tension in the room broke and all three boys were laughing.  After a few more minutes, Michael went off to get dressed, still chortling good-naturedly.  Parker grabbed a mop and started cleaning up after him.

"Well, that was fun," he said, "Once Bear gets dressed, we can get started on that project."

"Yep," Matt replied, grabbing a muffin from the cupboard, "Should be interesting.  I don't think we've ever tried hacking something as big and important as Homeland Security."

"You're right, we haven't," Parker said contentedly, "I don't think anyone has.  I think they may be a bit more lax with their security in that case; you know, secure in the knowledge that nobody would dare try hacking them."

"You worried we might get caught?" Matt asked.

"Nope," Parker replied, "This code of mine should be something new to their antivirus programs; something different that they haven't encountered before.  Should be fun."

"If you say so," Matt said, taking a large bite of muffin.

[Tytor]

Part 2

New Providence, FCD
Federal Republic of Centralia
May 1, 2019 - 3:05 PM

The soft whir of the computers was not nearly enough to drown out the sound of inner-city traffic that could be heard through the apartment's thin walls.  Matt, Parker, and Michael were all in the tiny back room, working feverishly at Operation Trojan Horse.  Admittedly, it wasn't a very original name, but it had only taken Parker about a minute to come up with it.

"I've got a few IP addresses over in New Derusmia here," Matt said, breaking the near-silence, "Should I take 'em or leave 'em?"

"Leave 'em," Parker said without looking up, "We don't want to start a war."

"And you think using New Derusmian computers could start one?" Matt asked.

"Heck yeah," Parker said, "Homeland Security's paranoid enough as-is.  You give them an excuse to blame their soon-to-be troubles on another country and you can bet they'll take it.  Besides, we've got no quarrel with New Derusmia."

"All right, I'll write some code to have my program ignore non-Centralian IP addresses," Matt said, already implementing it.

"Oi," Michael said suddenly, "I've got a bot here.  I'm shutting down my program for a bit."

"Dang Homeland Security," Parker said calmly, "Always poking their fat noses into online chatrooms where they're not wanted."

A few minutes later, Michael let out a noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a whoop.  "I've got the bot!" he said triumphantly.

"Wait, what?" Matt asked, startled.

"I've got the bot," Michael replied, a little more calmly, "It honestly didn't have much to it, so I hijacked it."

"Impressive move, Bear," Parker said, finally looking up, "I don't think I've had the guts to try something like that before."

"Aw, thanks, Parker," Michael said, "That's the nicest thing you've said to me all day."

"It's also the only thing you've said to him all day," Matt interjected.

"Hush, you," Parker said with a grin.

Michael chuckled, and the three friends returned to work.  Not long afterwards, the front door of the apartment opened and closed, and a few seconds later Kale walked into the room.

"Hey guys, I'm home," he said, gazing at the three desktop computers and their users with mild disinterest, "Brought you some snacks.  Odie's was having a sale."

"Oh?" Parker said, "Where'd you leave 'em?"

"They're in the kitchen," Kale answered, "I'm not bringing them to you."

"Fair enough," Parker said, glancing back at his screen and standing up, "My program's good for the moment; I'll get 'em."

Kale disappeared into the bedroom as Parker headed to the kitchen.  A moment later, he was back, carrying half a dozen large bags of chips.  As he dropped them on his desk, Kale's voice floated in through the open door.

"If you guys eat all those now, you won't be hungry for dinner," he said warningly, "You know better than that."

"Thanks, mother," Parker muttered under his breath.

"You have a rough day?" Michael called back, "You're not acting normal."

"Yeah, I guess I did," Kale responded, returning to the doorway.

"What happened?" Matt asked.

"Oh, nothing really important, I suppose," Kale said, "I mean, yeah, there was a Homeland Security raid on the James Bower Building-"

"What?" Parker exclaimed loudly.

"Yep," Kale said, "The entire campus was on lockdown for about an hour, and they arrested Professor Redding.  The University's going to have to shut down the biology department until they can find a new department lead."

"What'd Redding do?" Michael asked, looking disturbed.

"Not quite sure," Kale said, "Rumor has it that he posted some anti-government stuff on a blog, but that doesn't make sense.  Professor Redding's not exactly tech-savvy; he wouldn't recognize a blog if it whacked him in the face."

"Well, I guess Pullman's keeping it under wraps, because I've not seen anything about it on any of the news sites I'm monitoring," Parker said, staring at his screen again.

"Well, that's not too surprising," Michael put in, "We all know Pullman's got the news on a pretty tight leash, and no outside reporter's gonna get through the Great Firewall."

"Yeah, Homeland Security's not playing around with this stuff," Parker said,  "But then, most people aren't hackers, so they don't really have to try very hard to keep the general public in line."

"Hey, Parker," Matt said excitedly, "Sorry to interrupt, but I may've managed to crack a police station database."

"Where?" Parker demanded as Kale wandered back into the bedroom.

"If I've got what I think I've got, then it's over in Ashboro," Matt said, "But I also think I should be able to use this info to crack one closer, and it might even help us with Stage 2."

"Neato, Grasshopper," Parker said, leaning back in his chair.  He winked at Matt, who grinned in return.  It was shaping up to be a pretty good day.

[Tytor]

Part 3

New Providence, FCD
Federal Republic of Centralia
May 4, 2019 - 5:15 PM

Kale's slightly off-key singing filled the apartment just as thoroughly as did the smell of the hamburgers he was cooking on the stove.  The singing was loud, and honestly mildly annoying, but the hamburgers smelled really good, so Matt, Parker, and Michael endured it without complaint.  It was day four of Operation Trojan Horse, and the trio had made significant progress in their efforts.  Just that morning, Parker had estimated that they probably had hacked several thousand computers all over the country, and chances were good that none of the owners of those computers were aware of that fact.  What made it even better was that each of those computers had been busy hacking other nearby computers and, thanks to the programs that the three would-be hacktivists had written, each one had snagged between ten and a hundred additional victims.  The idea was that all these thousands of computers, smartphones, tablets, and other devices would target several government websites in a massive DDOS attack, in order to distract Homeland Security from the actual goal: hacking into the Homeland Security Department's databases.  Once the hacking was done, a remote command would cause every computer used in the DDOS attack to erase all traces of the code they'd used.  At least, that was the idea.  It remained to be seen how well Stage 2 and Stage 3 would work.

"All right, you guys," Parker said, "Everything's ready.  Any last words before we launch Stage 2?"

Matt and Michael both shook their heads, so Parker typed a command into his computer, and Stage 2 began.  All over Centralia, thousands upon thousands of internet-connected devices simultaneously pummeled about a dozen government websites with millions of requests per second.  One by one, government servers started to crash.

"Yes!" Parker shouted, "It's working!  Now we just need to let Homeland Security have some time to respond, and then we can start Stage 3."

"We know, Parker," Matt said, grinning, "We were here when we planned the whole operation, remember?"

"Sorry, I'm just excited," Parker said unabashedly, "I've been dreaming of this for quite a while now."

"So have we," Michael said happily, "D'you think we should start now, or after dinner?"

"Now, I think," Parker said, "Homeland Security's attention should be pretty well fixed at the moment."

When Kale entered the room with three large hamburgers, his three friends scarcely looked up long enough to thank him before returning to their somewhat feverish work.  After about twenty more minutes, Parker let out another whoop.

"I'm in!" he said gleefully, "I'm in, and there's so much info here it's not even funny!"

"I should be in pretty quick now as well," Matt said, still mostly focused on his efforts.

"Same here," Michael said, "Not much longer now."

Once all three hackers had entered the database, they began copying files to the flash drives they had ready for that purpose.  Matt saw a few that he thought seemed mildly important, so he deleted them.  After maybe ten minutes of this, they logged off of the database and Parker broadcast the command to end the DDOS attacks of Stage 2.

"Well, that's a job well done," Michael said into the silence following.

"Yep," Parker said with a smirk, "Now all we need to do is get all this info to someone who can do something with it.  You think Anonymous might be interested?"

"When wouldn't they?" Matt asked, "They've been doing things like this for a decently long time."

"Fair point, Grasshopper," Parker said, his smirk widening, "Let's contact them and see what they have to offer."

[Tytor]

Part 4

New Providence, FCD
Federal Republic of Centralia
May 17, 2019 - 10:18 AM

It had taken the better part of two weeks for Parker to finally track down a representative of the ubiquitous hacktivist group known as Anonymous.  Those two weeks had been filled with excitement, though, as the trio continued their activities against Homeland Security.  It being a Friday morning, Kale was off at school as usual, so the tiny apartment was rather quiet.  Parker, of course, was in the back room having an IRC discussion with the Anonymous member he'd found - a fellow hacktivist styling themselves "LazerMuffin" - and Michael was off running an errand for the old man down the hall in exchange for a few dollars.  That meant that Matt was mostly alone with his thoughts.  Well, his thoughts and a second-hand comic book he'd pilfered from next to a dumpster the other day.

The comic book itself wasn't terribly good; it was a local production, nowhere near the quality of such foreign brands as DC or Marvel, and the writing was correspondingly horrendous.  There were immense holes in the plot, the characters didn't make sense, and Matt could tell already that the heroes were going to pull of a seemingly impossible victory through liberal use of deus ex machina.  All in all, it was simply a bad comic.  That said, there was precious little else to do at the moment, so Matt continued to read, sprawled out on the floor.

"Hey, Grasshopper," Parker called from the other room, breaking into Matt's train of thought.

"Yeah, Parker?" Matt called back.

"Come in here.  I need to run somethin' by ya."

"Okay, sure.  Be right there."

Matt got up and tossed the comic book onto a chair before heading into "The Den", as Parker liked to call it.  Parker was, quite predictably, staring at the screen of his computer, feverishly typing out another response to his newfound acquaintance.

"What is it, Parker?" Matt asked by way of a greeting.

"Look at this," Parker said, motioning him forward, "LazerMuffin's offering quite the deal here."

Matt looked.

"Well?" Parker demanded excitedly, "What do you think?"

"We sure this guy's legit?" Matt asked slowly.

"Oh yeah," Parker replied, only half listening, "I've done plenty of backgrounding."

"I... uh, what?" Matt said, momentarily confused, "What is backgrounding?"

"You know, looking into what he's done, the reputation he's got, that sort of thing," Parker said dismissively.

"Oh, you mean you've conducted a background check," Matt said, comprehending at last.

"Whatever," Parker answered shortly.

"Well, that's good," Matt went on, "Does he have the ability to deliver on this deal?"

"Of course he does," Parker said, "Why else would he offer it?"

"I don't know," Matt said, betraying some exasperation at his friend's gullibility, "It could be any number of things.  Heck, for all we know, this guy could be a snoop of some sort."

"I highly doubt it, really," Parker said, "But anyway, if it checks out under further scrutiny-"

"Then we should probably take it," Matt cut across him, "Either way, though, I think Michael ought to have a say in this."

"Agreed, Grasshopper," Parker sighed, leaning back in his chair, "Agreed."