He really wanted to take time to work out the intricacies
of this code, but this really wasn't the moment. However now he was far
more motivated to complete his current assignment.
He switched over to his console emulation app, which showed
a string of green text, and code. Most of it was meaningless, except
for a small prompt on the bottom left hand side where there was a green
cursor blinking.
This was the result of a little programming glitch that
Gary had discovered by accident one time while deconstructing his own
operating system. He was getting bored, and he had gone through all of
the allowed remote commands, then the restricted ones, then just for the
fun of it, he started making up commands that didn't exist, like
"Peruse dir.C:" which didn't do anything. After 100 such attempts the
computer suddenly gave a different command prompt. Normally it was a
colon or a drive name, but now it was just a cursor.
He'd tried a few things just to see what would happen. He
found that he was able to do all the things he could do at a normal
command prompt, but for some reason, he also had access to some
administrative functions, like copy/paste, and write protection, and
every directory, including the hidden and protected files and
directories.
In other words, he pretty much owned the system.
Well... it was his system to begin with. But still.
But here's the thing, this was the operating system that
almost every business used. It was versatile, customizable and most of
all: secure.
So of course that meant that Gary had to be very careful
about how he used this little backdoor. Any overt intrusion would be
quickly noticed and shut down.
But there were other little things that someone could do,
like add an address to a mass email to an online dropbox email. Which is
pretty much what he was doing now. Except HE was the one telling the
CEOs computer to send the email, quietly in the background. He opened
the dropbox through a proxy server, while he was connected to the Wi-Fi
network of local Starbucks, then he sent a copy to the company he was
working for, or rather their dropbox, to be picked up later. Then he
walked away from the coffee shop.
He put his phone away from moment and look around the
Plaza. He smiled them, thinking about how many people were around him
and yet how many people he would never speak to you . In a group of
people this large he looked and felt utterly alone.
But that's the way he liked it.
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