The Hacker

Melody was a little annoyed… and curious. From her time doing surveillance on Amy and Jack, she knew many of their friends, at least she knew what they looked like, but not this guy.  She was trying to figure out if he was even in high school.  If so, he was a big guy.  She estimated that he was six-two or six-three, and probably between two-fifty and two-seventy-five.  He had a mop of light brown hair and a scruffy beard… like he wanted to grow one, but his chin wasn’t cooperating. 

“Mr. Prince, there is a gentleman here to see you,” Melody said into the phone, “he didn’t say, but he says he is a friend of Amy’s.”

A moment later Bill Prince stepped through the door.  He looked at the only person in the waiting area aside from Melody, and surmised it was his guest.  After just a moment’s hesitation, “Terry, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Sir,” Terry responded, impressed that Mr. Prince had remembered him. 

“Two years ago… Amy’s party.  I showed you the garage and you also ran some interference with Paul Murphy.  Come on in, what’s on your mind?”  Then he turned to Melody, “can you grab us a couple of Cokes and maybe some snacks, Melody?”

“Sure thing, Boss,” she said, rising from her desk to get the drinks and food.

Bill Prince ushered Terry back to his office, curious about what was troubling the young man.  He recalled that Terry was a friend of Jack’s and had tried to occupy Paul Murphy, his daughter’s former boyfriend, while Jack was trying to ask her out.  And with Paul’s temper, that was a physically dangerous undertaking. 

“Here, Terry, have a seat.  And please, call me Bill.  What’s on your mind?”

“Well, Mr. Prince… Bill… I recall Amy saying that you were involved in the computer business, and you dealt with computer security, and I need some advice.  I think I might have done something, and I might be in real trouble.”

“Well, I am involved with computer security.  But I really need to know more about what you might have done to know if I can help you.”

“I think I hacked into the Department of Defense… maybe.”

Bill’s eyebrows rose.  He had received a couple of memos about a security breach at DoD in the last few days.  The FBI was trying to track the hacker.  According to the classified memos he had access to, there hadn’t been any malicious activity, but it was a very secure area of their computer network that had been accessed… classified documents relating to personnel.  In fact, one of his own employees, Steve Evans, was involved in trying to track how the breach occurred, who might have been involved and how the hole could be sealed up. 

“Do you mind if a call in one of my guys?” Bill asked as Melody entered the room with a tray of brownies, cookies and several soft drinks.

“I guess not… I mean I don’t know how many people should know about this.”

“Melody, could you grab Steve, and then join us in here?  Terry may have an issue that needs our assistance.” 

“Sure thing, Boss,” she said as she left the room. 

“Terry, I need to be VERY clear here.  You can talk about this openly with us, but nobody, NOBODY else.”  He then casually picked up a brownie and a can of Coke from the tray.  “You should try one of these.  Jack’s sister is an amazing baker and she makes these for us,” he said with a smile. 

Terry was never one to turn down a brownie… or a cookie… so he picked up one of each to try, just as Melody and Steve walked into the office. 

“Terry, let me make some introductions,” Bill started, before he introduced Terry to Steve and Melody.  “Let me level with you, Steve is currently working on a DoD breach that was reported a few days ago.  If you are the breach, he will know from how you entered and what you did.  We aren’t looking to get you in trouble.  We just really want to know more about how you might have accessed the network.”

Terry looked around the room nervously.  At that moment he felt like he was standing in the lion’s den, dressed as a gazelle. 

Steve took advantage of the momentary silence, “Terry, mind if you tell me the method you used to get in?”

They talked for a few minutes, going back and forth about hacking tools and how he found the back door.  Bill and Melody looked at each other, not really understanding the technical conversation.  After they slowed down, Bill looked at the two men, “So, it sounds to me like Terry is who the FBI is looking for.”

“No doubt, Bill,” Steve replied.  “He’s the hacker.”

Terry felt his stomach drop two feet. 

“I didn’t mean to do exactly what I did,” Terry said in self-defense.

“It’s ok, Terry.  There are a couple of things you should know.  First, we aren’t the FBI.  Second, I actually employ ‘white-hat hackers’ that test system vulnerabilities so that we can figure out how to fix them.  Third, you didn’t do anything malicious. 

“I’m more likely to hire you than turn you in to the FBI.”

Steve grinned, “Terry, I’m impressed.  I’ve been working to hack the system for a few weeks.  They just upgraded security and it was from a different vendor.  We were trying to get the contract, but they took another bid.”

Much, but not all, of Terry’s nerves calmed.  These guys were smiling about what he did and didn’t look worried at all.  But the FBI was still looking for him.  That wasn’t good. 

“Are you still at Phoebus High School, Terry?” Bill asked. 

Steve shook his head, knowing the hacks came from ODU.

“No, Sir.  I’m taking classes mostly at Thomas Nelson Community College.”

Steve interjected, “Computer Science classes over at Old Dominion University?”

“Yeah… how’d you know?”

“The IP addresses of the computers used in the hack are from their computer science lab.  I hadn’t told the FBI about that yet.  I was going to go over there and hang out to see if I could figure out who was doing it.  If it was someone like you, I was going to see if we could recruit them.”

Terry was surprised at that revelation. 

Melody piped in, “Look, Terry, it’s obvious that you are good at this hacking stuff.  We’d rather see you hacking ‘ethically’ than sitting in a jail cell.  The bigger question is whether we can get the government to agree.”

“That’s about the size of it, Terry,” Bill said.  “Let me call some people and see what I can find out.  Can you give Melody your contact info?  Also, here is one of my cards.  If, by some chance, you get picked up, call me.  Not a lawyer, not your parents…  Call ME.  I don’t think they will figure out who you are, though, before I can talk to my people at DoD and FBI.  I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”

Terry stood up and thanked everyone for helping him as he shook their hands.  He also grabbed an extra cookie and another brownie on his way out. 

“The kid’s a damn genius,” Steve said to Bill quietly a moment after the door closed.  “He bypassed security I have been struggling with for a week.  Where I saw Fort Knox, he saw a wall of Swiss cheese.  You gotta hire him.”

Melody walked back into Bill’s office and picked up a brownie, “Think he’ll work for us?” she asked.

“Wow… I guess we’ll find out.  Let me make some calls and see if I can get him out of the cross-hairs first.”

Steve and Melody excused themselves to go back to work for the rest of the day while Bill made some calls to see how much heat there was.  The tactic he planned on using was to see what his National Security Council contacts thought of the idea of him trying to recruit the hacker.  He didn’t want to give away that he knew where the hack came from, much less who the actual hacker was. 

After a few phone calls, he managed to get a little breathing room from the FBI, if he could recruit the hacker.  But he needed to get to him first.  And they didn’t know the hacker had accessed the DoD from ODU. 

Before he called Terry, he wanted to refresh his memory by checking with two of his operatives that knew him… his daughter and her boyfriend’s sister. 

“Hey Sugar, can you see if the Dixon’s want to come to dinner?  I need to talk with Amy, Jack and Nicole about someone that I talked to about hiring today.”

…

“Thanks, Babe,” he said to his wife before hanging up the phone. 

“Melody, can you call Terry and ask him to swing by tomorrow as soon as he’s done with classes?”

…

“Spring Break… should have guessed.  Fine.  First thing, then, I guess.”

“Nicole, when can you make more cookies and brownies?  I’m going to have to invest in a commercial kitchen for you, my people are killing everything you send over,” Bill said to Nicole Dixon.

“Thanks, Bill.  I should have some more for you tomorrow afternoon.  I’ll be baking all morning.  Maybe you should talk Dad into investing in it…” she replied, winking at her dad as she said it. 

Nicole had graduated high school last June, and she was funding culinary school with baking and catering.  A lot of it was for Bill’s company and her father’s company, but she was building an outside client base as well. 

“Maybe I will… perhaps we should sit down and look at a business plan, Nicole,” Ed said, winking back at his daughter. 

“Jack, what can you tell me about your buddy, Terry Gates?” Bill asked, getting to the point of the dinner. 

“Did he come to you looking to do computer work, Bill?” Jack asked back.

“Something like that.”

“He’s a really good guy.  And he knows what he is doing with computers.  Last year, at school, he went into the school system’s computers and added messages to the teacher’s paychecks at Phoebus.  He didn’t add anything bad, he just wanted to see if he could do it.”

“Interesting.”

“Oh, and don’t tell the school system… they don’t know who did it.  But I really have to say, he does things like that because it’s like a game to him.  He would be great to have on your security team.  If there is a hole, he can probably find it.”

“You’re welcome, Dad,” Amy said.  “I told him last year that he ought to talk to you about the hacking business.”

“Thank you, Amy.  I do appreciate it.  I wonder why he waited so long,” Bill said, knowing exactly why he came in when he did.

Chrissy said to Bill, “I also think he’s a nice guy.  Remember a couple of years ago when Jack was asking Amy out and he was doing everything he could to run interference between Paul Murphy and Jack?  That took guts to jump between a bully and his intended target.  I would say he deserves a shot just because of that.”

“I don’t disagree, Baby.  I’m going to talk with him tomorrow morning.  I had Melody set up an appointment for him to come in.”  He didn’t mention to his family that Terry had already come in because he was worried about getting arrested. 

After dinner was done, Bill stepped out to the patio to clean the grill.  Ed volunteered to help. 

“Bill, is Terry the DoD hacker?” Ed asked.

“Picked up on that, did you?” Bill replied with a smile. 

“All the clues are there… talented hacker comes to you a couple of days after the DoD gets hacked, and you all but hire him on the spot.  I didn’t know it was local, though.”

“The FBI hasn’t really figured out it’s local, either.  And now I’m trying to figure out how to keep the kid in the clear.  I don’t want the FBI to waste a good hacker.  Apparently, according to Steve, he went through their security like butter.  I’m going to make him a heck of an offer tomorrow.” “Good to know.  He’s a good kid.”