Creative Writing: School Security Breach

“Time,” Marc yelled. William stared at the second hand on his watch in disbelief. “Four seconds,” William said. Marc pressed the button. The belt whined as the target retracted. The center of the NRA police silhouette was shredded. Twenty-six rounds vaporized an X over the center mass of the target. “Un-fucking believable,” William said. “Yeah, it’s pretty damned good if I do say so myself,” Marc said. “I just wish I had the motherfuckers who hacked our network in my sights instead of this stupid piece of paper.” Marc’s bonus was also prorated because of the security breach. He and William were the two lead faculty members responsible for school security. They shared responsibility for the hack. “I know. Bastards. Don’t worry, we’ll

Blake,” Brooke said, removing two white ear buds from each ear. Brooke was the strongest programmer and all-around tech whiz in the school. She was a genius behind the keyboard. As a senior, she was on the cusp of graduating. She didn’t know it yet, but at graduation The Movement was going to award her a full scholarship to pay for her tuition at MIT. The Movement needed strong programmers and hackers, and Brooke was a perfect recruit. She was brilliant, and completely devoted to the cause. “Well,” Brooke said. “I’ve discovered a few things. I still haven’t been able to pinpoint the initial attack, but I’m hot on their trail, and let me tell you - they’re good. They went the extra mile to cover their tracks. I only found one IP address that I was able to trace to a network in Langley, Virginia.” “NSA?” William asked.
“You might think so, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. It makes sense that a Langley IP address would pop up if it was the NSA, but those guys would never be that sloppy. I suspect it was placed there as a decoy by the real hackers. The hackers probably hope that we’ll stop our countermeasures there; you know, chalk it up to the work of the NSA or CIA, and give up. Everyone in the hacker community knows that unless you’ve got the Red Army behind you, you don’t go after those outfits. I’m not buying it; I don’t think this was government or military,” Brooke

They used a tricky little Trojan horse hidden inside the SAT student files. I copied some of the code; I might use it myself someday – it’s an elegant piece of programming. I wrote a script with some countermeasures, so the good news is there’s no way they’re hacking in again without getting caught red-handed. Second, we had two follow-up hacks; I stopped both of them butt cold. The first was a half-assed probe of our system by some college kids. I traced ‘em back the source; you'll love this - Young Democrat Club at a liberal arts college in Maine called Bates. They won’t be trying that again anytime soon; I fried their network with my