Hack By Peter Wrenshall -2

chapter-2

One of my own crew, Blizzard, claimed to have worked for money, but he

never produced any evidence of it. Also, we had all heard that criminal gangs were

paying for college students to get educated, in the same way the military sponsored

them. But again, that was people at the college level, not high school.

“Although none of these kids has had any major success,” continued Philips,

“we believe it’s only a matter of time before one of them manages to get his hands on

serious classified material. You see, unlike you and your group of merry Robin

Hoods, looking to score some ego points, these kids are hacking for money—lots of

money. You can imagine our alarm when we found a stash of over ten thousand

dollars inside one computer.”

You can imagine my alarm, too. I never stole anything.

“What do you think? Are you interested in helping us?”

“It sounds interesting. But I’m sorry I can’t help you. My lawyer has advised

against such action. He thinks that I may incriminate myself.”

Philips smiled again. The public defender had been less than computer savvy,

and I made an enemy of him by doing my own plea bargaining at the pretrial. At least

I had saved my own neck. I had no doubt that Philips had read the negotiation

transcripts and knew this.

“The way I heard it, you

were

your own lawyer.”

“As I said, my lawyer has advised me against talking to anybody.”

“At least hear us out?”

I read the time from the upside-down numbers on Garman’s watch—9:47 a.m.

I hadn’t been allowed to have a wristwatch, or any electronic or mechanical gadget,

since my arrest. That meant no TV, no radio, no computers, and no telling the time. I

forget the official reason for this, but it had to do with me starting World War III, just

like in the movies. Anyway, I hoped that I would be back for exercise time, at 10:00

a.m. It was the only time I got out into the fresh air. The other twenty-three and a half

hours of the day I spent inside, behind a thick steel door. Without waiting for an

answer, Philips produced another photograph.

“This man is Malik,” he said, turning the picture so I could see it.

“We know that he’s one of the main players recruiting and coordinating young

hackers out of high schools.”

“A terrorist?” I said.

“Exactly.”

I looked again at the picture. If the man was a killer, it didn’t show. The sharp

corners of the table looked more dangerous. He was a nondescript Middle Eastern

man in his early forties, who looked a little like Mr. Jarman, a science teacher I once

had. Jarman used to liven up his boring classes by sticking too much metallic sodium

in a glass of water, and making a good explosion. Rather than terrorizing the class,

these mini bombs got a round of applause, and Jarman was considered one of the

school’s coolest teachers.

I shrugged. “He looks like a federal informer.”

I had been introduced to federal informers and their role in crime prevention

during my arrest. The FBI admitted that this was how they had ‘taken me down.’ I

hadn’t got caught because I had been careless, or complacent. On the contrary, I had

always been careful. They had found me through Knight, the self-appointed leader of

my own hacking crew. The FBI had recruited Knight. I went to jail, while the FBI set

Knight up in his own business, as part of their deal. From what little information I had

managed to get, I knew that Knight was getting paid to hack into computer

networks—in other words, a

white-hat

hacker.