Hacked (3 page)

As I walked El to school she filled me in on Ty’s condition, based on Googling ‘head injury’.

‘Memory problems, headaches, and sometimes vision is affected – that’s seeing. If he gets epilepsy they operate. I watched one on YouTube.’

‘Bye, El. Have a good day.’

It occurred to me that putting some brotherly controls on her login might be an idea.

‘Do you have a note, Dan?’ asked Mr Richards as I strolled in, a couple of minutes late. I’d totally forgotten that I’d bunked school so didn’t have an excuse ready.

‘No. Forgot, sorry.’

‘But you’re better today?’

‘Yes. Twenty-four-hour thing,’ I said, head deep in my locker.

‘Don’t worry this time,’ he said.

He obviously thought I’d stayed off because of Ty, who was the subject of
all
the talk. I didn’t join in. Half the people that were going on didn’t even like him. In popularity terms Ty was about as in demand as I was
since Pay As You Go folded.

‘You all right?’ said Soraya. It was the first time she’d spoken to me since the ‘you’re dumped’ text
(this isnt working for me … im breaking up with u sorry)
.

‘I suppose so,’ I said. I wanted to ask her if she was still seeing the boy-band clone but …

‘I’m sure he’ll get better.’ She flashed me a celebrity smile complete with glossy lips, before catching up with the other girls. I walked from English to chemistry on my own. Without Ty, who I have most of my classes with, there wasn’t anyone obvious to talk to. The nice kids – the ones that wouldn’t dream of buying stolen credit – tended to keep away from me. The cool ones, ditto, but for different reasons.

I spent the lesson immersed in a textbook, where my cleverly concealed laptop taught me everything there is to know about satellites, most of it wrong. Here’s a selection:

By the time I got home I knew enough to get started. It was crazy to even consider it, but in your room, on your own, playing with IP connections, it doesn’t feel like you’re doing anything wrong. In fact, you could call hacking a public service. Admittedly, black hats are either out to cause chaos or filch thousands, but there are white hats working hard to make things better simply because they can. And if it weren’t for people like me (in the middle – more of a grey hat) governments and big business (like mobile phone operators) wouldn’t know how fragile their systems are. And the man in the street wouldn’t know that the Americans and the British are listening in to his private conversations.

Spooooky!

Anyway, what were the chances of me cracking it?

‘Dinner’s on the table,’ shouted Mum. Her third attempt to get us downstairs.

El came to the door of my room and hovered, one foot in front, invading my air space.

‘Watch it!’ I said.

She wiggled her foot.

‘Out!’

Not letting my sister in my room might seem mean, but …

Before I learnt to logout whenever I was more than an arm’s length away from my devices, she regularly wrote things on my Facebook page that little girls think are funny like:

Dan Langley loves the Ninky Nonk

Dan Langley farted

She also regularly raided my stash of Lindor chocolate truffles and left only wrappers. A double crime because she denied it every time until I presented her with evidence from my phone, cable-tied in position to capture anyone approaching my desk.

As if I needed any more ammunition, this time she
reached for a discarded sock and blew her nose on it.

‘That’s disgusting.’

‘It’s washing,’ she said.

‘Washing powder isn’t as powerful as your snot, El.’

In one seamless move I leapt out of my computer chair, dived like the England goalie (whoever he is) across my rug and landed at her feet. She squealed, and stepped back over the threshold.

I think she likes being banned. It gives her kudos. She tells everyone and then grins like she’s won a rosette for best pony.

I followed her downstairs.

‘It’s stir fry,’ said Mum.

During dinner Dad had a rant about the proposed changes to the benefit system. ‘Every time some Eton toff says “hard-working families”, the people that rely on the state to see them through get another kick in the teeth.’

Mum shared her latest birthing drama from the hospital. ‘Honestly, if I get another shoulder dystocia this week I’m going to have a breakdown.’ Dystocia means stuck – it’s an emergency but usually turns out all right. Mum’s the most experienced midwife there so she gets the tricky cases. If ever she has a baby that
doesn
’t make it,
she
doesn’t make it to the tea table.

The next topic was El’s homework – draw a balanced meal. I helped out by building a food tower – an apple on top of a fruit scone on top of malt loaf on top of an orange juice carton. Ta-da!

‘No one likes a smart arse, Dan,’ said Dad.

He was too late, El was sold on the idea.

What we didn’t discuss was
the visit
. I was playing the verbal version of if-I-can’t-see-you-you’re-
not-there
. Unfortunately Dad wasn’t. He was just waiting for the right moment.
Never
.

‘We’ll have pudding when we get back,’ he said to Mum.

‘Come on, Dan,’ he said to me. ‘Let’s go and see if we can wake up that friend of yours.’

I followed him out to the car. He hit the key fob and as the doors unlocked the mirrors folded out. Smooth!

It took twenty minutes to get to Frenchay Hospital. Not long enough to prepare yourself. We parked and paid two pounds fifty. Rip off!

‘You all right?’ said Dad.

‘Fine,’ I said.

Anything but.

Forty minutes later we were back in the car and I had post-traumatic stress disorder.

We’d got there to find Ty’s dad in the corridor, looking grey – and I don’t mean the hair. He shook our hands and went for a cup of tea in the canteen.

We rang the bell and a nurse came to let us in.

Dad sat by Ty. I sat at the end, near his feet, already freaked out. I concentrated on breathing, and not blubbing. I don’t know what I looked like but my face felt as though it belonged to a Ken doll (but
less expressive). The ward was like
Casualty
– wires, bleeping, red lights, white sheets, grey metal bed, grey floor, uncomfortable chair. It wasn’t like the maternity hospital, which has rooms decorated like bedrooms. But that’s for the beginning of life, not the end.

Trash that thought.

Dad took Ty’s hand.

‘Rotten bit of luck, Ty. But I know you’re going to be fine. That head of yours needs some time out to get better but a day or two and you’ll be up and about. If anyone can brush off a spat with a white van, it’s you. I remember when …’

Every so often he turned to me and smiled. Waited to see if I was going to speak …

When I didn’t, he patted my knee with his free hand and on he went, steady pace, telling a few stories about us as kids …

‘Buzz Lightyear and Woody! You two insisted, even though it was Halloween … had a full-on scrap in the playground with a pumpkin.’

Ty didn’t flinch, twitch, open an eye. When the blind panic subsided, leaving only normal panic, I studied him. He was breathing with a respirator and had a heart monitor and a tube for his pee and a drip in his arm. There was a gash above his eye but no other signs of violence. I couldn’t believe he could hear Dad wittering on, he was too … flat-looking. The idea that he might be already dead, his soul gone, his dreams of doing surgery on other people’s heads over, made me gag a bit on
my own spit. I saw the sheep’s eye, wondered what they do with human eyes in a post-mortem, pushed the thoughts away. Dad droned on.

‘Don’t get too comfortable in that bed, Ty. Your mum relies on you to keep those brothers of yours in line …’

A rush of air and fast footsteps announced the arrival of a nurse.

‘Time for his obs,’ she said, like they were dog treats.

I moved out of her way, grateful for an excuse to get up, and, because I didn’t want to look at Ty any more, I kept on walking. Through the double doors, along the corridor, back towards the main entrance. If Dad called after me, I didn’t hear him.

Finally outside, I leant against the wall, next to the bandaged and slippered patients who were enjoying an after-dinner fag. I waited, trying not to breathe in their cancerous smoke.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Dad as he came out. ‘It’s not easy seeing a friend in that state. You came, that’s what matters.’

Dad was right. It wasn’t easy. And neither was getting access to a satellite, but it was worth a try. What if Ty ended up needing twenty-four-hour care? That would cost money. The van driver needed to pay for what he’d done. That’s why I settled in for an all-nighter with Red Bull and Dairy Milk. That, and the fact that I didn’t trust myself to sleep. Who knew what nightmares having a brain-dead friend would bring?

One thing that was clear from my research was that there are zillions of satellites dotted all over the sky, controlled from loads of different locations. Somewhere, something would have been overlooked. It was a question of patience. And patience I have a lot of. All I needed was a chink in the system that would let me in. If the banks and the oil companies couldn’t protect themselves from exploiters, maybe the military weren’t immune either …

Later on in my story, when my world went pear-shaped, people were astonished that I was just a kid. But the elite are all young. The internet is like playgroup, full of toys. We’ve grown up with it. Look around. Jonathan James, aka cOmrade, hacked the NASA computer system when he was sixteen. The Netsky and Sasser worms that infected millions of computers were written and released by a teenager. The people in authority are old and ignorant – they see code as something that has to be stuck together like Lego. They don’t see what we see – that code is like clay that can be moulded, shaped, manipulated. They have no idea what time and determination can achieve. Or how to stop us.

I’d never gone out much, but with Ty in hospital, Soraya off with her new beau and Joe climbing the walls (ha!), there was even less reason to leave my room. Hacking a spy satellite was a challenge I wasn’t prepared to fail. I was already mentally committed when it occurred to me that satellites look down, not along. No chance of reading a registration plate from above. So unless the white van that hit Ty had a massive logo on top, the task was pointless. But the task itself had become the point.

It was a laborious process – too long to measure in comedy shows. And I was getting nowhere fast. You need to understand that real-time hacking is nothing like what you see at the cinema. In a film, if a computer nerd has to crack a code to open a door or a safe, he uses a laptop to cycle through all the possible combinations and find the right one before the FBI arrives/the hero explodes/the human race ends. This is not possible. A computer takes between four days and nineteen years to crack a 128-bit encrypted code. A computer in the hands of a very clever hacker still takes between four days and nineteen years.

No surprise, then, that hackers don’t bother with code breaking – they find another way in. It’s like a burglar prising open a window, rather than attempting to get through the mortice lock and security chain on the front door. However, what
really
speeds up the process is to find a way round the security
and
a clue. We’re talking social engineering – jargon for using the fallibility of the target being hacked. Someone once tried to do it to my gran. Luckily she has me as a grandson.

‘Do you know, Dan, I had a phone call from the bank this afternoon?’

‘Did you, Gran?’

‘I did – some little beggar had taken money from my account, no less!’

‘Are you sure?’ At this point I wasn’t really listening, just responding to keep Gran happy. I thought she’d bought something and forgotten about it.

‘It was sorted out ever so quickly.’

‘Good,’ I said.

‘All I had to do was confirm my details and that little number on the back of the card and he said he could sort it out and I’d get all the money back.’ She smiled, pleased with the result. ‘He was called Andrew.’

My head caught up with what she was saying. I got Dad, he rang the bank, and Gran got the money back even though it was her fault. Dad made her promise to never give any personal info to anyone she didn’t know.

‘But he was from the bank,’ she said.

See? Duped by a combination of coding
and
social engineering.

(Btw, my gran’s not stupid – loads of people fall for those scams.)

Anyway, if I was going to successfully hack a spy satellite
I
needed a clue. One tiny bit of help to lower the odds. And I got it, thanks to Dad.

A week and a half after Angel first suggested I infiltrate the security of the great US of A – which equates to maybe … eighty hours of computer time – the parents arrived at the door of my room (with El listening in from hers). It seemed I’d been on their radar for a few days – evidently only so much geek behaviour could pass as normal …

‘We need to talk, Dan,’ said Dad.

For a crazy moment I thought they were about to say they were getting a divorce. That was the tone.

‘OK,’ I said.

‘It’s not healthy to spend so much time on your own, darling,’ said Mum.

‘You need to get out,’ said Dad.

Relieved that I wouldn’t be the child with two bedrooms and no clean pants in either, I nodded, ready for the usual five minutes of advice before reverting to situation normal.

‘You’re only sixteen and we think you need some rules.’

‘Like?’

‘I want you downstairs in the evening after your homework and no computing late at night,’ said Dad.

‘OK,’ I said. And then, because I seemed a bit too willing, ‘But I don’t see why. I’m fine.’

‘You’re very pale,’ said Mum. ‘And I think too much looking at a screen is bad for your eyes. They’re slightly bloodshot.’

*wink*

Dad’s bright idea was that I come down at nine o’clock every night and watch telly with him. Why swapping one screen with another would help, who knew? I agreed anyway. Previous experience told me no one would enforce it.

They were leaving, satisfied with our little chat, when Mum said, ‘We’ve had a letter about the geography trip. Mr Richards says you need to go.’

‘I’m not bothered,’ I said. ‘I can get the data off someone else, and it’s quite expensive.’

‘You’re going,’ said Dad.

Great! A bus journey to West Wales, all afternoon taking measurements of a river, sharing a room and a loo with people I hardly know from the other class, a whole day of experiments about speed of flow and direction and dead ducks and cold feet and misery, a second night away with unfunny teachers and fake teambuilding, a debrief and, eventually, home. Just what I needed.

They disappeared, but at nine o’clock El came to say
goodnight and reminded me I was expected downstairs – smug look on her face. I told her where to go but Dad started yelling at me so I gave in and trudged downstairs. Other kids row with their parents but I choose the path of least resistance and mostly things blow over. A few nights of compliance and Dad would go quiet again – I’d stake my Pay As You Go fund on it.

I didn’t exactly have high hopes of my hour bonding with Dad in front of a whodunnit, but for once he let me choose so we watched a documentary about Afghanistan. It was interesting – although remind me never to respond to those ads that make the army sound like Go Ape. More importantly, it gave me a clue about where I might find a window I could prise open. Thank you, Channel 4.

Around four o’clock the next morning I had a breakthrough. I didn’t need to infiltrate the Pentagon, or any other major headquarters, because a remote base station in the field near Camp Bastion let me inside the US Military network. It’s complicated, but all you need to know is that I searched for big chunks of data moving between Washington IP addresses and an area of Afghanistan occupied by the Americans, identified the military set of numbers and then sent random emails until I got an out-of-office reply confirming it was a military location. Knowing the location was the ‘clue’.

I got inside and started sniffing IP traffic. The NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) operates all the satellites so I scanned live video streams in and
out of the Pentagon, looking for those initials. How authorities dare protest about their systems being hacked, I don’t know, because that was all it took. I identified a server, found my way in, picked a random location and was rewarded by the feed from a satellite live on my screen. All I could see were fields, with the time, date, co-ordinates and other stuff that I didn’t understand superimposed – but that wasn’t the point. I cracked it –
that
was the point.