Sixty-nine (116 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Hirilnara (View user info) at 2006-09-24 04:29:39 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
02:11, 19-05-2104
Agent: CL03ENI-69
Mission: JetinCorp Bio arms Project 4Tac5
Report: Target infiltrated.
Information isolated and obtained.
Possible breach of security mandate Alpha.
We're fucked.
---
I briefly consider submitting that to head office and leaving them to work this shit out, but I haven't a hope in hell of getting away with it. No sense of humour upstairs. It's not like the "good old days" where you could flirt with the secretary, back-talk the boss, blow the shit out of stuff, get the girl and STILL get a pat on the back for doing the job. No, spies are meant to follow protocol.
Strange that, even in this day and age, most people get the image of Bond in their head as soon as they hear the word spy. Even though they know technology exists that could wipe the floor with 007, they romanticise the whole culture of espionage.
It's not even as if it was accurate when it was made! But still, the dream of fast cars, skin of the teeth escapes and sophisticated bars lives on beyond film to the microchip.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Yeah, we have numerical assignments - the monikers they give us are too clunky not to abbreviate - but they never sound as suave as "007". The closest most of the guys in my department would have got to a gun is the old arcade machines in the Museum of Childhood, and as for flashy cars - what's the point? They get you noticed, and that's the last thing we need.
Spies these days don't have the kind of lives you make films out of. No exotic far flung places to jet off to, no secret lairs hidden away in volcanoes; honestly! Who in their right mind would do that? What were the writers on when they made that stuff up? I mean, how's an active agent meant to find the time to stop in the middle of a mission for a vodka martini? And where the hell are all the pretty girls who are meant to be falling over themselves to get me into bed?
No, it's normally just you, a computer in a dingy office somewhere down town, and a hook up to the net.
In the Silicon age, you'd expect computers to be pretty much running the show, doing anything we could do better, quicker, and cheaper. But you trace any bit of coding far enough up its family tree, and you'll find some overpaid nerd scrawling away, giving rise to my favourite outcome; human error. There's always a loophole buried away somewhere if you look deep enough. And a computer doesn't get this, it has no ability to hack another machine; there's the inherent flaw in their logic that will not accept the possibility of weakness - a kind of professional courtesy to the other computer I guess.
It takes a devious, enquiring mind to get inside a computer - traits that have been stamped out of the majority of decent society. There's always the occasional undesirable element though who have a knack for... talents that aren't outwardly encouraged. That's how I started out; a two cent street hustler with a cheap PC stashed away. I'd dropped out of college, bored of the mindless routine of systemised education, and the quick thrill of doing something illegal quickly became an addiction. I was doing pretty well for myself too; a few accounts picked here, a free ride scammed there... but I got cocky, got caught. I suppose it was fortunate the agency took an interest in me. They gave me a choice; join them as a spy in their Electronic Network Infiltration department, or face probable behaviour modification therapy at the hands of the law.
It didn't seem like much of a contest.
I'd love to say I came into this eyes wide open, wise to what I was letting myself in for. Truth is though, I was another kid brought up believing in the golden dream of Bond. Training was a hell of a wake up call! Instead of glam and gadgets, I got the security mandates. For the first year there were no assignments, you learnt your lessons and lived the mandates. Alpha - There must never be any proof that the agency exists. Beta - The agency comes first. No exceptions. Gamma - All information gathered is classified unless otherwise authorised. Omega - All potential threats must be neutralised by any means possible.
A cheery set of rules to live your life by, but they've served me well enough these last five years. I still get the same buzz when I make it past a systems security, without the threat of the law looming over me. Life's been pretty sweet with the agency. It's only now that there might be a problem...
It looked like a standard mission - JetinCorp have been all over the media after their controversial planning permission application for a new research lab had been approved. Someone upstairs was obviously curious, because it's been the focus of quite a few agents the past few weeks (it's the loophole in mandate Gamma - so long as you don't say what you've found, you can sort of talk about what you're looking for). It was finally passed to our department today, and I'd been given a part of the system to work on.
It was easy enough - multiple level firewalls, a few embedded detection patches; nothing I haven't got through countless times before. I thought I was in - cracked the password, logged in as a senior administrator - when the screen changed:
"Hallo George. How are you today?"
There was a text box to type a reply, and nothing else... that was new. I must have spent a good couple of minutes just staring at the screen, trying to work out what to do. Eventually, out of curiosity, I typed "Fine thanks."
"That's good to hear. Have a nice day!"
And that was it; the main area opened up, with access to all of the plans and projects. I put it down to a quirky personalised feature, and started digging out the files I'd been assigned to find.
It wasn't until afterwards, when I'd logged out, read the files and was running the usual security checks that I noticed a small packet of data attached to all of the JetinCorp files. Just a few bytes that didn't seem to serve a purpose. Not an issue... until I did a little digging and realised that this little packet of data was a highly encrypted piece of code. It didn't help as I worked my way through it and found out how sophisticated it was; someone had gone to a lot of trouble to set this up.
It seems to be part of some distribution programme, from what I can tell, anyway - none of the files I've opened will close, and more keep popping up. There's meant to be an isolation procedure, but I think they've breached that too - nothing on that terminal is co-operating anymore. It even opened up a link back to the agency, but I think I managed to yank the wires before it got into the main server; god, I hope I did!
I've got a horrible suspicion it's some sort of tracker; some smug bastard's pride and joy, reporting back to him at JetinCorp as he sits their smirking, rubbing his sweaty little hands together in glee.
And the worst thing? I invited the bloody thing in - "Hallo George". Shit, I know it's never that easy - why didn't I try and decrypt it before typing merrily away? Bloody human error!
I'm going to have to send my report via my palmtop; if it is already inside the network, they might have to execute a total shut down. There's going to be a lot of irritated suits if that happens.
On the other hand, this thing is definitely a threat, and I guess that puts me under mandate Omega.
Agent Sixty-nine, Licence to kill... it has a certain ring to it, don't you think?
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Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-06-05 12:44:00 EDT (#)
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