The CEO was named John Hedj. He was the leader of a multibillion dollar
technology firm that specialized in keeping a variety of people’s money
secure. He had a state of the art building
in New York City, enclosed in glass and full of steel and humming
computers. The facility was the most
secure building in the world.
The money of the richest clients was actually secured on a
computer in Hedj’s office on the top floor.
The money codes could be downloaded to any bank computer in the world
for instant access. This included the
riches of Hedj himself. However, two of
the programmers, brothers in fact, contrived a backdoor into the program.
A few years later, the brothers’ mother was dying of cancer
and they did not have the money to pay for the hospital bills. They went to a wireless café in NYC and
hacked back into the computer system, transfer a small amount of money into a
secure bank account. When they had their
money, they ensured that they had left no trace of their presence.
Hedj was furious when he discovered some of his money was
missing. Again and again, the hackers
returned and stole more and more of his money.
Finally, Hedj decided to hire a new programmer to create a Trojan horse
in the system that would attack any foreign entities.
A few weeks later, the brothers returned, needing yet more
money for their mother’s hospital bills.
As they had planned, one brother hacked in to secure the system and the
other held back to steal the money. As
the first brother hacked into the program, the Trojan horse struck. It locked up his computer and activated his webcam,
sending the image and information to Hedj’s security firm. He knew it was too late for him and that he
would spend his life in jail, but he was able to save his brother from the same
fate.
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Years later, the brother was finally put on trial for his
crimes. He would surely receive life in
prison for all that he had done, especially since he had stolen money from such
powerful people.
Meanwhile, his recently recovered mother grieved in
secret. She knew that her son had only
stolen the money to pay for her hospital bills, and she knew her other son
could free him with the use of his skills.
The free brother set up a system of computers that would
constantly jumble the IP addresses, throwing off any people trying to trace
him. He then hacked into the computers
of the attorneys and Hedj’s company, erasing all copies of the evidence against
his brother. In the modern world, he
knew that there were no hard copies of the data and that this would cancel the
trial and free his brother.
Hedj was furious that the hacker had escaped. He knew then that he must have had help to
hack into his company. He hired a female
hacker, the best in the world. He told
her to send out feelers for a pair of hackers who had accumulated vast sums of
money.
She talked to many people in the hacker community and at
length she found them. The hackers knew
someone was looking for them and they set up a meet with the woman. The brother who had remained free was the one
to approach her. She said that she would
help him hack into the company again if he told her how he had done it in the
first place.
He told her, but when she tried to seize him and take him to
Hedj, he got away. Any attempts to track
the brother were thwarted. When the
woman returned to Hedj and told him how the hacker had erased all traces of
himself online, the CEO was impressed.
He sent out a proclamation online, offering a pardon and a reward if he
turned himself in.
The hacker went readily, certain that there was no evidence
of his activities. Hedj was so amazed by the hacker’s abilities that he gave
him a job within his company. There is
no one more creative than a hacker, but this man had no equal in the world.
Author’s Note:
I chose The Tale of King Rhampsinitus for my story this
week. In the original story, a King built a chamber to house his treasures but
one of the builders left a removable stone in the wall. The sons of the builder later broke in, until
one brother was caught in a trap. The remaining
brother cut of his head to protect his identity and later impressed the King so
much that he was pardoned.
For my rewrite, I decided to place the story in modern
day. I took the idea of digital money
from the movie The Losers. In my
version, the brothers are hackers who steal money from a CEO whose security
program they wrote. The word Hedj is
actually the ancient Egyptian word for silver or money. I thought it was appropriate for the setup of
the story.
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