Hacking, Gary reflected, is first and foremost an
exercise of logic.
Sure you hear in movies and stuff that it's all an
art form, and people go on and on about how they broke such and such
encryption. The truth is both much simpler and
in some ways much scarier: Hacking is more about the information people
leave out in the open, than cracking codes, or decryption.
Sometimes
you have to write code, sure. And that code has to do what you want it
to, automate some simple task. But you would
be surprised what information people leave out there in public! They
send it from their phones, they send it over wi-fi, unencrypted, they
leave it on their computers in a text file, heck they even post in on
their freaking FACEBOOK page! And once you have
a little bit of someone's information, you can get more and more. It's
like one little piece can unlock more, then that piece unlocks the next
and so on.
Fortunately a lot of this can be automated. So as
Gary walked down the Chicago street, playing a video game on his phone,
and listening to music, his backpack was collecting RFID, Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth, Near Field Communication, and other forms
of wireless information from mobile phones, credit cards, drivers
licenses, key fobs, laptops, and all sorts of other wireless items and
devices. The computer routine made connections, looked for commonalities
of names, numbers, etc, until it had a nice little
profile.
But of course that wasn't all. It also installed a tiny,
unobtrusive key logger on the device, either phone or laptop which sent a
log of all keystrokes to a private email drop box each time they went
to a new webpage, or sent any information over
the internet.
You would think with all this information and power one would find abusing it to be all too easy. But the concept didn't even occur to Gary. It was all in purpose to The Code.
The Code was the thing Gary was working on. And indefinable spark, a bit of... something. He wasn't sure. Some kind of algorithm that would allow him to create the ultimate programmers holy grail.
Artificial Intelligence. He shivered with the thought.
But of course that didn't pay the bills. So while he was playing the game he was also infiltrating a multi-billion dollar corporate server. It was dull stuff. He used the connections around him to mask his signal, and at random intervals he would swap to another connection.
And all to get the recipe to some stupid sponge cake, that some total newb thought would work better if you filled it with whipped cream.
His phone played the "secret discovered" music from The Legend of Zelda, his notification music. There was a new news notification on his Noozwyre app. His subroutines were ticking over fine, they didn't him to watch over them. He looked at the app.
Then stopped dead on the sidewalk. He closed his eyes, and swallowed, then opened them again without looking at his screen. Then he steeled himself, and forced himself to look at the screen and read the article.
It wasn't long. When it was over he took off his glasses and wiped at his eyes. This wasn't the time to deal with this. He had a job to finish.
The opening bars of the music for world 1-2 of Super Mario Bros. signaled that he had a new email. He opened it up, and saw that it was from Raul.
The actual text of the message was quite long, but it looked like it was written in some kind of code... but something that looked like computer code... only... like nothing he had ever seen. It was too verbose, too... much.
And then he realized; It was another language. A whole other programming language, that no computer had ever been created to read.
He checked the sender. It was Raul. Of course it was. He chuckled a little, and wiped a tear from his eye.
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