Hacked (4 page)

I went to school the day after my moderately impressive hack and walked home with Joe.

‘Not going to the climbing centre tonight?’

‘I’ve strained my wrist,’ he said. ‘Might take two weeks to get better.’

‘Bad luck.’

He nodded.

‘Did you go and see Ty yesterday?’ I asked.

‘Yep. Nothing changes.’

‘Do you think he’s still there?’

‘Of course, idiot.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He’s still breathing. I think that’s the usual way of telling.’

‘You know what I mean,’ I said, a bit irritated by Joe’s blind faith.

My message alert went off. A short burst of Darth Vader – sad but true. I took it out of my pocket and yelped. Seriously, I yelped.

Ty is awake and talking. He’s going to be fine. Love Mum x

‘He’s more than breathing,’ I said, showing Joe the text.

Joe flung his arms round me and I slapped mine round him, which was odd but good. It wasn’t like I’d been worrying about Ty
all
the time, but knowing I didn’t have to was a big relief.

‘Shall we go and see him?’ said Joe.

I hesitated, because I was keen to get home and have a proper play with the US reconnaissance satellites. Before breakfast I’d mapped the controls onto my phone so I could manipulate the camera, but had only managed to follow New Yorkers jogging through Central Park before Mum shooed me off to school. I didn’t even know if American satellites were trained on South West England but that was my next step, just in case the evil van did have some markings I could see.

Anyway, after some mental wrestling I made the right decision. I figured stalking the planet could wait. I texted Mum to tell her what I was doing and we caught two buses to the hospital – same route I used to take to see Grandad.

‘Do you remember anything?’ I asked him.

‘I’m called Milly. And I live on a cloud,’ he said. Dreamy voice. Googly eyes.

I started laughing but Joe looked terrified, which made Ty laugh. Good to see.

Talk about ‘off’ and ‘on’ switches! Ty had been ‘off’ for thirteen days. But he was totally back ‘on’. His blond
Tintin quiff was restored, his light blue eyes were open, they’d taken away all the beepy stuff and the cut on his head was just a red line.

‘Are you completely better?’ asked Joe, clearly freaked by Ty’s little joke.

‘If I could pee, I would be.’

‘You’re kidding?’ said Joe, looking traumatised
again
. He really needed a sense of humour overhaul.

‘I wish I was.’

Joe’s eyes flicked to halfway down the bed sheet. It was too funny for words – he clearly thought the accident had damaged Ty’s ‘equipment’.

‘Happens to women if they have an epidural when they’re giving birth,’ I said. Was there no end to my knowledge?

‘They said it’s because of the catheter,’ said Ty. ‘My brain has forgotten how to tell the muscles to let go. Or my muscles have forgotten how to respond. Either way, they won’t let me out till I pee.’

‘Come on, then,’ I said.

Joe protested, worried that Ty shouldn’t get out of bed, keen to call a nurse, but I knew what to do thanks to Mum’s dinnertime tales from the maternity ward.

I turned all six taps, hot and cold, on full and let the water run down the plughole. Ty got the idea and stood at the urinal, staring down.

‘Not even a dribble,’ he said.

At the risk of my two friends thinking I was making a gay pass, I unzipped my fly, stood at the urinal next
to him and peed. Joe stormed out of the loos, which started us laughing all over again, during which time Ty peed. For about ten minutes!

‘Sorted,’ I said to Joe as we came back out. He was leaning against the wall opposite the loos, looking cool without trying. (Think Harley from Rizzle Kicks.)

‘Thank you, Dan.’ Ty shook my hand, and announced his success to the nurse on our way back.

‘Does that mean I can go home?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘Sorry, Ty, we need the doctor to see you before you can skedaddle, and that won’t be until the morning.’

He looked really disappointed.

‘It’s only one more night,’ I said.

‘And I don’t remember the others,’ he said.

We stayed until his mum came. To pass the time I filled him in on my failed attempts to identify the van driver. He was horrified that I’d hacked the council cameras, and apoplectic (excellent word) when I mentioned spy satellites. It was predictable, given his attitude to the Pay As You Go episode in my life, but I’d hoped he’d see it as loyalty.

‘You’ve crossed the line,’ he said, which was a bit dramatic.

I tried to defend myself.

‘I tapped a few buttons on the keyboard and it led me there. It’s not like I’m planning on spying on Iran.’

‘It would have been epic if you could have got the reg,’ said Joe.

‘Epic-ally illegal,’ said Ty.

‘Can you spy on whoever you like?’ asked Joe, seeing possibilities for my hack.

I nodded.

‘Cool.’

‘Not cool, not even to catch criminals. Because
it
’
s
criminal.’ Ty was getting agitated, which probably wasn’t good for him.

‘Can’t you see where the van went?’ said Joe. ‘Maybe he hit Ty and drove home. Get him that way.’

Talk about a light bulb moment.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Ty, just as his mum walked in. She gave us both a hug and thanked us for being such good friends. (Secretly she thinks I’m a ‘bad influence’.) (But not that secretly or I wouldn’t know.)

‘We’d better go,’ I said.

‘Have you heard of Gary McKinnon?’ said Ty quietly.

Of course I had. He thought the US Government was hiding evidence of UFOs so he hacked the military computer system looking for proof and got himself arrested. So what? There are millions of hackers and Ty only knew the name of one.

The parents were out to suffocate me. Two nights running I’d watched telly with Dad, summoned at bang on nine o’clock, and gone to bed straight afterwards – boring programmes seemed to trigger hibernation. Or maybe it was because the alternative was staying up and trying to sew together the archive material to follow where the van went. I’d seen the collision, which, weirdly, wasn’t as distressing as I’d expected. One second Ty was stationary, and the next the van had nudged him and he was on the ground, and then a person came running. That was it. All over in a second, and not a drop of blood on camera. It was tracking what happened next that wasn’t going so well – too many satellites sweeping the earth.

I’d just hooked up with Angel online, when Dad appeared at the door
again
and even earlier than usual.

‘As El’s sleeping over at Gran’s, how about a grown-ups’ cinema trip?’

‘I’ve got work to do,’ I said, lying in bed with my laptop – no textbook, no exercise book, no calculator, no pen.

‘Come on, Dan. Thursday’s a great night to go out. Early start to the weekend,’ said Dad.

Nothing I said made any difference to my cheery parents so I dragged myself downstairs and we trotted off to see a film about all the rich people living in a space station and all the poor people left behind dying of disease and dirt. They’d used that plot device where a computer deciphers the combination of a locked door in no time at all. I could point out the rest of the film’s flaws, but won’t – only the popcorn and
bucket-size
Coke were any good.

On Friday I skipped school. A reward. What for?

– for Ty finally coming home on Thursday afternoon. He kept being sick whenever he ate anything so had to stay in despite the successful peeing

– for three nights of behaving like the parents’ idea of a ‘normal’ teenager

– and because I was determined to find the right historical recordings and see where the van went even though navigating the inter-satellite handover wasn’t easy. The data files were huge and I was worried they might be erased at any moment.

I was deep in code when Angel appeared, and lured me away.

We chatted while we played
GTA V
. Thanks to our aimbots, we couldn’t miss. The other players got more and more frustrated, which upped the enjoyment level.

Angel was impressed with a capital
I
at what I’d done:

great job KP

And chuffed that it was his comment that had made me have a go at the reconnaissance satellites in the first place:

id better watch what i say – jump in a lake – funny me!

And ‘amazed’ when I said I had the controls on my iPhone so I could manipulate the live feed. I don’t know why – that was the easy bit.

I told him about Ty’s recovery too:

he was lucky
   – he said.

he was unlucky actually
   – I replied.

true

And I explained the running water trick to help him pee.

LTS
   – he replied. (Laughing to self, for recluses living in igloos.)

I went out before Mum and El came home, same routine as before.

‘How was your day, Dan?’ asked Mum as I wandered back in fifteen minutes later.

‘Good. But I’ve got coursework to do.’ The magic word. And a lie.

‘That’s a bit much when they know you’re off on the geography trip on Sunday.’

I’d repressed all knowledge of the impending trip, even though I’d heard it mentioned around school. Some kids were actually excited!

‘I’ll get it done,’ I said, ‘but don’t expect to see me apart from meals. Too much to do.’

Mum nodded, pleased with my mature attitude to work.

‘I’ll do your packing,’ she said. ‘They sent the kit list with the letter.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, already picturing the tidy layers, including waterproof trousers that would never get worn. I’m a jeans and hoodie sort. Blue or black. Trainers – white. Full stop. Don’t care what other people wear. (Soraya’s boy-band boy wears
falling-down
rust chinos, T-shirts with collars and Vans. It’s like his sister’s dressed him.)

As I was going to be out of my den for two whole days on the trip
and
had schoolwork to do, the parents relaxed the routine and left me alone. Perfect. More time to play with the network of American spy satellites. Knowing I’d be offline from Sunday helped me concentrate. Plotting the van’s route by joining the feeds using GMT and GPS co-ordinates was fiddly, and took ages, but gradually I pieced it all together. When I finally saw the guilty van park, the disappointment was difficult to deal with. The driver reversed the van into a space between two other vans, in a row of fifteen identical (from above) vans, and a column of six. He got out and walked to a warehouse building near Avonmouth docks. I Googled it – a van rental place. My hopes that he’d parked on his own drive, I’d call the police anonymously from a pay phone, and he’d be arrested, were dashed.
I was gutted. He’d ended his journey in just about the most anonymous spot in the South West. I hated him even more, if that was possible.

For no reason I watched the rest of the recording, and saw men walk to and from vans, and a woman park and enter the building, and more vans and drivers come in and go out. And as watching people was weirdly compelling, I went back into the live feed and tried to track Soraya – see if she was with the ‘boy’. (To be clear, I wasn’t obsessed with
her
, but the task. I could have tracked our neighbour’s Labrador just as happily.)

My phone was a bit small for fine control so I transferred the functions to my laptop and used the keyboard. Soraya wasn’t anywhere to be seen but I had a good nose around Bishopston. Some hours went by, with a short break for chilli con carne, and another one for teeth-cleaning – dupes the parents into thinking I’m going to bed.

I was reading a thread about the developers slowing down time on
EVE
during its ‘largest ever battle’ when Angel joined in. I’d been thinking about hacking the website for the residential centre in the unpronounceable place in West Wales where we were going to stay and declaring it closed, or attacking the school email and cancelling the trip, so I shared my ideas with him. His reply came hurtling back:

morons like you are the reason society wants to control us, you should drown in a bog in Wales

It was clearly the wrong Angel. It’s funny how complete strangers can say what the hell they like online but wouldn’t do it to your face. I replied:

I have reported you to the moderator as you have explicitly threatened me with
bog-drowning

I left and went in search of the right Angel, wondering why he’d chosen one of the most common handles, excluding DarkStar and Joker.

When I found him, he had another idea that could scupper my trip.

damage the power supply
   – he typed.

easier said than done
   – I replied.

are you saying KP isnt as skilled as he thinks
he is

this King Penguin can’t be bothered – why are you Angel?

got wings
   – he typed.

can you fly?

duh

The chat had hardly got going when Angel suggested we meet at IRC channel #angeldust. I was going to query it but he’d gone. Two seconds later I’d found it. Twenty minutes later I got past the virtual locked door (via a virtual window of course) and entered his private club. It was, if I’m truthful, thrilling. I was in the equivalent of a gangsters’ den. (A virtual one.) (I repeat – online in your bedroom it’s hard to believe you’re affecting things in the real world.) They were elite
hackers, doing stuff. Premiership level. I was careful not to act like a script kiddie. Avoided using acronyms or lame ‘l33t sp3ak’. They made it clear – the ten other members of the closed group – that I was a visitor. Angel clarified the situation.

unless you pass a test

You’d think initiations would be too much of a cliché but clearly hackers share a mindset with street gangs. I had no idea what the geek equivalent of demanding you murder a rival gang member was …

like what?
   – I wrote.

we’ll have to come up with something LTS

End of subject, because they had something else to talk about. Angel’s group was building a
botnet
.

I’ve got 3832 bots and counting
   – that was Expendable.

It takes time to get enough bots to launch a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service). It’s a hacker’s brute force way of paralysing a site. Anything can be taken down, from Vodafone – no top-ups, no phone buying, to Man United – no ticket sales, no new, shiny strip for your football-crazy son’s birthday. Basically you get Mrs Naïve Computer User to open an attachment, like a YouTube video with the title ‘The Dramatic Moment When …’ but there’s a virus in the link, or you get them to visit an infected website. Either way, hey presto, their computer is part of the botnet. Repeat this twenty thousand times and you’ve got yourself a decent size botnet. When the botmaster activates the
virus, whatever site he’s targeted goes kaput! It’s the virtual equivalent of trying to get all the passengers on the
Titanic
into the lifeboats.

You need to bring 5000
  – Angel.

I have over 5000
   – Anaconda.

good job
   – Angel.

do I get my points?
   – Anaconda.

yep
   – Angel.

Anaconda disappeared at that point.

Seemed like collecting 5,000 bots might be my ‘initiation’.

who’s the target?
   – I typed.

wait and see
   – Angel liked to be in control.

It didn’t stop the others discussing who deserved a DDoS. I wasn’t that interested so while they dissed eBay, Facebook, Amazon, Ask.fm … I played a few rounds of
Counter Strike
on my computer – they’ve got an anti-cheat system that’s fun to dodge.

When Angel left the channel, I did too. I had a poke around GCHQ, ‘Government Communications Headquarters – keeping our society safe and successful in the internet age’, wondering how easy it might be to find my way inside.

I’ve got no idea when I went to bed but I remember thinking, maybe for the first time, that a group of hackers could cripple anything – the National Grid, the cooling towers in a nuclear plant, air-traffic control. I should have been terrified by the prospect, but I think, if I felt anything, it was probably excitement.