Someone was shaking Doug by the shoulders. A red
sweaty moon of a face was staring at him from less than a foot away. It was the
fat girl from the bike in front.
“What happened?” he stammered, feeling dizzy and confused.
“You were just sitting there with your eyes half open and your lids fluttering
rapidly. It looked like a kind of fit. Are you okay?”
“I think so,” he said cautiously, glancing around the room and feeling relieved
to see they were alone. “It might have been a partial seizure. Ever since I got
knocked on the head the other week, I’ve been having some strange turns, and
the doc just told me I might have epilepsy.”
“I’m sorry,” said the girl with genuine concern. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No, it’s really not so bad. Just kind of like a weird dream, in fact. I feel
fine now.”
“You’re Doug, right?” she said, her frown turning into a tentative smile.
“Yes…you’re…on my computing course this term, aren’t you?”
“It’s Becky. And yes, except that we’ve been taking the same course since the
first year.”
Doug was confused. He had only started to notice this girl since the beginning
of term. There was simply no way he could have overlooked somebody this fat for
two and half years.
“I wasn’t always this size,” she added in explanation, her cheeks growing more
flushed as she turned away in embarrassment, “…and I was off most of last
term recovering from surgery.”
“I’m sorry,” said Doug feeling suddenly ashamed.
“I had a tumour in my pituitary gland.”
These words seemed to trigger something deep in Doug’s mind. “Cushing’s
syndrome?” he heard himself ask.
Her head jerked back in surprise. “How on earth would you know that? Yes, not
many people have even heard of the disease, let alone know what can cause it.”
“I have absolutely no idea how I knew that. I suppose I must have read it
somewhere, or seen it on TV or something.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Well, you obviously have a great memory!” Then
the smile returned. “As well as being a great programmer.”
Doug looked at her blankly.
“I spoke to Tenhagen, our computing tutor yesterday. Apparently you and I were
the only ones to successfully complete that last assignment. But yours, he
said, and I quote, was the most elegant solution he had ever seen in all the
years he’s been setting it.”
“Really?” said Doug, excited and surprised in equal measure. “I was stuck on it
for ages, but then suddenly, while I was lying in hospital last week, it just
came to me.”
She nodded, with a thin smile that seemed to say, Yeah-right.
Doug studied her face again, trying to remember her from before, but again
failing. “You say we’ve been on the same course since year one?”
“Don’t worry,” she continued. “Hardly anybody recognises me now. Thanks to
Cushing’s, the whole shape of my face has changed…along with this thing that
used to be my body.” She looked down at herself in disgust. “Anyway, the
tumour’s finally gone, so I’m hoping it’s just a matter of dieting and exercise
now.”
“Well I’m very glad to hear that,” said Doug, “and thank you again for pulling
me out of that …fit or whatever it was. I appreciate it.”
She smiled, turned towards the changing rooms then turned back. “You know what
the worst part of being fat is?”
Doug shook his head.
“The way people write you off. They take one look at this body and affix in
their minds some “idle glutton” label, without bothering to find out what’s
underneath. Even before I became ill, I was no Angelina Jolie, but at least
back then people used to treat me with some respect – even if they didn’t
always notice me.”
“Look, I’m really sorry, I…”
“It’s all right, I wasn’t referring to you particularly. Everybody looks at me
like that. It just pisses me off, that’s all.”
“I can imagine - and you’re right, that is probably what went through my head
when I saw you before. I’m really sorry.” He paused, “Listen, I was thinking,
can I buy you a cup of coffee once we get out of here?”
“I really don’t need your sympathy … and you don’t have to feel guilty.
Before I got ill, I had the same attitude to fat people myself – which makes it
even worse, somehow.”
“Actually, I didn’t offer out of guilt… You just seem like an interesting
person, and I thought it might be fun to finally get to know one another. Plus,
I want to hear more about all the wonderful things Tenhagen had to say about my
assignment,” he added with a cheeky grin.
She hesitated a moment, looking uncomfortable, then smiled. “Okay,” she said,
“why not?”
“Good. See you outside after we’ve changed.”
Leaving the locker room, he checked his mobile and
noticed a missed call from Peter. He quickly dialled the number, eager to find
out whether he had managed to recover the Dream-Zone combo file.
“Hello, this is Peter,” his voice raised against a background of road noise.
“Peter, it’s Doug. Sounds like you’re still on your way back to Bracknell. Did
you get the file?”
There was a pause. “No, I didn’t,” he said, sounding tired and exasperated.
“The software didn’t work?”
“I never had a chance to find out. The PC was stolen during the night.”
“You’re kidding me!” said Doug incredulously. “Really? While you were there?”
“I know, it sounds unbelievable. I hit the mother of all traffic on the way up
and by the time I arrived, it was just so late, I decided to leave the files
until morning. Just my bloody luck! Out of all the things they could have
taken, they picked the bloody PC.”
“Was it a laptop?”
“No, it was a desktop. That’s what’s even more crazy. They left all the
valuable stuff like jewellery and silverware. They didn’t even touch the
high-def plasma, or home cinema gear in the lounge. All they took was an old PC
base unit and a cheap Hi-Fi midi-system.”
“Maybe it was just a bunch of kids, and they bottled out.”
“I don’t think so, you know. I heard their voices and they were definitely
grown men - East European I reckon, by the sound of them.”
“Well, at least you and your sister-in-law are okay.”
There was another pause. “Yes, I suppose so,” said Peter finally.
“So what are you going to do?” asked Doug.
“We’ll just have to recreate it the same way Kal did. Any idea what editing
software he might have used?”
“No idea, I was trying to figure that out myself.”
“Okay. Well, I’m almost home now, let’s talk again soon. Thanks for calling
back.”
Doug hung up, reflecting on Peter’s intonation. There was something else
troubling the man this morning. Then again, he had just made a long and
ultimately futile trip, not to mention being robbed in his sleep. It was hardly
cause for celebration.
He stepped out into the crisp sunshine where Becky
was standing awkwardly, fiddling with her mobile. Her red hair was still damp
from the shower, but combed back neatly, framing the wide, but now healthily
glowing face. A long blue cotton dress and baggy jumper went some way towards
disguising the unfortunate shape of her body.
“Nice dress,“ said Doug.
She stared at him for a moment, as though trying to gauge the level of
sincerity, and then smiled appreciatively. “Thanks.”
They started to walk back to the centre of campus.
“I’m sorry about Kal, by the way. You were good friends, weren’t you?”
“Best friends,” replied Doug, sadly. “Did you know him at all?”
“No, not really. We only really spoke a couple of times. Quite recently in
fact.”
“Oh yeah, what about?” asked Doug, hoping to goodness it wasn’t anything to do
with their bet.
“He approached me a couple of weeks ago asking if I knew of any open-source
video editing software. He had this home-grown graphics program from which he
wanted to create some kind of video. Apparently none of the commercial packages
would accept the format, so he wanted to find something he could hack.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. I was literally just discussing this on the phone
with someone. It was to do with a paper we wrote together. So you helped him
create the video? Can you remember how he did it?”
“Well, I suggested some Linux shareware I’d come across and then later on he
thanked me saying it had worked really well …but I don’t know exactly what he
did with it.”
“Could you at least show me which shareware it was sometime?” asked Doug
excitedly.
“Sure! I could show you now if you really want,” she said. “Are you in one of
the towers?”
“Yeah – would you mind?”
“Of course not – you can make me that coffee while I find it for you.”
They switched direction and cut across the park towards William Morris,
chatting easily now as though they had been friends for years. Becky, Doug soon
realised, was one of the sharpest and most friendly people he had met since
coming to Essex. Once again he felt ashamed that it had taken him so long to
discover this.
Back in the tower, Doug stuffed his dirty laundry
into the bottom of the wardrobe and hastily cleared some desk space around the
booting laptop. He then logged on for her, and went to make the coffee. As he
came back with the two mugs, Becky was peering intently at some lines of code
on the screen.
“There’s something weird going on with your computer,” she announced without
looking round.
“Like what? I’ve noticed it’s been running a bit slower than usual. I was going
to try the de-frag tool, but hadn’t got round to it.”
“It’s not that,” she said, continuing to scrutinise the screen. “One of your
virtual ports is open that shouldn’t be.”
She had now opened up several more windows, but was switching between them too
fast for Doug to follow.
“Here!” she exclaimed. “Thought so! You’ve been infected!”
“What – like with a virus, you mean?”
“Err…worse, I’m afraid. Looks like some kind of key-logger.”
“Are you sure? I mean, I always keep the antivirus software updated.”
“Well…unless of course, you happen to have written your own root-kit to hide
away under the operating system and periodically send large text files to this
host-name,” she said, pointing to the screen.
Doug looked over her shoulder. Sure enough, the code was instructing the
computer to transfer a hidden file called cap32log to some remote server.
“Let’s see what secrets this little package has been pilfering,” she said
eagerly, punching a few keys and invoking a large block of text. “Please tell
me you don’t bank online!” she said.
“Oh shit!” said Doug, as a sickening feeling took hold of his stomach.
“This little beauty is sending absolutely everything you type - your emails,
your assignments, IM chat sessions…and along with it, any login and password
information to your online accounts!”
“Oh shit!” said Doug again, his mind racing back over everything he might have
done the last few weeks.
“You’re going to need to change all your passwords and check your bank
statements. But first of all, let’s just try to disable this thing and make
sure you haven’t got any other nasties lurking in some dark corner of the disk.
On second thoughts, you should probably re-install the operating system.”
“Bloody hell! Thank God I bumped into you today. So how come you know so much
about this stuff?”
She turned, displaying a wide and capricious grin. “You know how most school
kids get holiday jobs at like bars or cafés to earn a bit of extra pocket
money?”
“Yes?” he replied slowly.
“Well I discovered I could make more money dreaming up novel ways of driving
internet traffic to online advertisers.”
Doug processed this for a moment. “You mean you wrote adware?” he finally said.
“All those annoying cookies and pop-ups that make our online lives a misery?”
Becky flushed with embarrassment. “Please don’t tell anyone, but yes, for a
while I did venture over to the dark side, and among other things, I created
adware. It was kind of fun at first, but then it all got a bit too serious.”
Doug just looked at her in amazement. “You know, I would never have taken you
for a hacker.”
“I suppose I should take that as a compliment,” she said with another grin,
turning back to the screen and starting to type again.
“Have you installed any suspect software recently?” she asked.
Doug thought for a moment. “Suspect? No not really. I took a look at this data
forensics tool the other day, but the vendor seemed pretty reputable. Other
than that - oh and the driver software for a 3G dongle I borrowed – they were
the only things I’ve installed in ages. Why?”
“It’s just that this doesn’t look like a usual mass distribution thing. It
looks like it was physically installed on your PC - perhaps as part of another
programme. You see, if it was the result of some drive-by download from a dodgy
website, I would have expected it to leave some tell-tale fragments of code
here and there, but it hasn’t. Also, your browser and operating system have all
the latest patches, the firewall is still enabled and as you say, the antivirus
software is fully up to date which, means that whatever infected you hasn’t
been out in the wild long enough to earn a detection signature.”
“That’s weird!” said Doug. “Are you saying I’ve been personally targeted by
someone?”
“Impossible to say for sure, but yeah, that’s what it looks like.”
“But who the hell would want to target a penniless student for Christ sake?”
“I don’t know,” she said, frowning for a moment before the grin slowly
reappeared. “If you want though, we might be able to find out. You see the
first big mistake he made was coding that host-name directly into the software.
From that we should be able to determine the IP address and from there, which
service provider he’s using to connect to the Internet. Once we know that, we
may be able to narrow down his location to a district if not an actual city.”
Becky’s fingers were flying now, as various windows popped up, were minimised
and re-opened, with data being cut and pasted between them. The girl was some
kind of genius, Doug concluded.
“Russia!” said Becky eventually with a note of triumph. “Dot RU is Russia. Your
key-strokes were being sent to a server connected via a Moscow based ISP by the
look of it.”
“So some bloody Boris hacked into my PC?”
“Either that, or this is just a way station, and the file is subsequently being
transferred somewhere else. It’s hard to say really, although I read recently
that quite a lot of cybercrime is currently being funded by the Russian Mafia.”
“So that’s it? The trail goes cold somewhere in the frozen wastes of the former
Soviet bloc?”
Becky turned towards him, her eyes widening with excited malice. “Unless that
is, we decide to hack the hacker!”
“How on earth do we do that?” asked Doug, now feeling completely out of his
depth. Although a proficient programmer, he had never really taken much
interest in the whole sub-culture of hacking, with its black hats and white
hats, and that annoying air of geeky smugness which seemed to be its
prerequisite badge of entry. Given the current situation however, he was
beginning to realise that a better understanding of this, the ugly underbelly
of computing, might occasionally come in rather handy.
“Well, whoever did this must be regularly collecting these files of bundled
keystrokes and analysing them for whatever nefarious purposes they were
conceived.”
Doug nodded thoughtfully, realising there must be more to this than the
apparent statement of the obvious, but unsure of what that might be.
“So we give them another file just like the one they’re expecting, but this
time with a little present attached.”
Doug looked on blankly.
“So it’ll look like a regular text file, but when they try to read it, a small
tracking routine will be executed. Then with a bit of luck, before they realise
what’s happened, it will have told us some vital clues about the machine being
used, and its location on the Internet.”
“And you’re telling me you know how to do all that? That’s …amazing!” said
Doug. “But maybe before you do that, I should reset all my passwords and
rebuild my system. I’ve been thinking of switching from Windows to Linux anyway,
and having seen what Windows root-kits can do, now seems as good a time as
any.”
“I think that’s an excellent idea.” said Becky. “To create the tracking
routine, I’m going to need to use some tools that are back on my PC anyway.
I’ll head back now, and give you a call later, when I have something.”
“Becky, thanks again. You’ve been amazing.”
“It’s been fun,” she said, looking very satisfied. “Oh, and by the way, I left
the link to the editing software on your desktop.”