Exploited

Page 4

Dark circles underneath his eyes indicated he had gotten very little sleep the night before. Poor Carl had just gotten divorced. I also knew that the ex-wife had taken him for everything. The house. The car. Even the dog. He had been exchanging heated emails with his ex-wife for months. They fluctuated between nasty and pleading.
I felt sorry for the guy. Even if we had never said more than hello to each other.
I turned on my computer and scanned the room. Everyone was in their own little world. It was easy to disappear in a place like this.
These people around me never thought to ask about what I had watched on TV last night or whether I had seen the new action flick that had just been released in theaters. I didn’t gossip about my boss’s pectoral implants or Sylvia in marketing’s affair with Gabe Johnston, the head of sales.
They didn’t talk to me. I didn’t talk to them.
But I knew their secrets.
I kept them to myself.
It felt good to hold on to these tiny pieces that no one wanted anyone else to know. Even if I never did anything with them, I still knew.
And they had no idea.
Yeah, that sounded like a power trip. Maybe it was. But honestly, I didn’t care.
“There you are. You should have been here at nine. What took you so long?” The voice was low and raspy and a little on the excited side. I didn’t have to look up to recognize who it was. I knew only one person who sounded as if they’d smoked three packs of Winstons for the last twenty years when actually they were barely out of college.
His pushiness should have bugged me, but it didn’t. He wasn’t being rude. Or territorial. Kyle was someone who liked routine, who needed it to function, so I didn’t get pissed at his demand for answers that he should have known I’d never give.
“I didn’t know you were keeping track of my schedule, Kyle,” I remarked drily, opening my work email.
New messages popped up. One at the top caught my attention. “Audit” was in the subject line. It was marked urgent and appeared to be from the big boss man. Though the address was wrong. Warning bells started to go off.
My suspicions were piqued. But so was my curiosity.
I opened it….
Suddenly my screen froze. I clicked my mouse a few times but nothing happened.
I chuckled humorlessly at the amateur malware.
“Wait for it,” Kyle exclaimed with barely concealed glee.
I let out a long-suffering sigh. “I should have known this low-tech shit was you,” I muttered, annoyed with myself for falling for the phishing game Kyle had so childishly set up.
Kyle pulled an empty desk chair up beside me and leaned forward. “Don’t be such a killjoy. Just watch.”
“Kyle, I’ve got a lot to do—”
“Three more seconds. One. Two. Three.”
Suddenly my screen filled with over a hundred emoji poos. They popped up in droves, their smiling brown faces laughing at me.
“Seriously?” I shook my head. “Am I the only lucky one this morning, or did you share this with everyone?” I narrowed my eyes at the scrawny kid beside me.
As if on cue, at least a dozen voices could be heard around the room.
“What the hell?” I heard someone exclaim.
“Why is there poo on my computer?” I heard Carl demand from his cubicle beside me.
Kyle practically squealed in excitement. I glanced at Carl’s computer and saw that his screen too was taken over by cute-faced excrement.
“They’re all like that! Or at least anyone stupid enough to open that email. Social engineering, baby!” Kyle laughed and then covered his mouth with his hand. I rolled my eyes and, with a few clicks of my mouse, disabled his low-level hack.
I leaned over Carl’s desk, hesitating before taking his mouse. “May I?”
Carl startled at my having addressed him directly. He blinked rapidly, staring at my hand, poised to take his mouse.
“Uh. Yeah. Um, s-sure,” he stuttered.
With a few clicks, I cleared his computer, the emojis vanishing as if they were never there. “How did you do that?” he asked.
“You’re welcome,” I said, not bothering to answer him.
“Uh, thanks, uh…” He pushed his glasses up his nose and flushed in embarrassment. I knew he was struggling to remember my name.
I didn’t help him out, our brief interaction now officially over. I rolled back over to my own desk and opened my email again.
“Aw, Han, you’re no fun,” Kyle complained as I scrolled through my legitimate messages.
I flicked Kyle’s arm and pursed my lips. “Really? You couldn’t think of anything better to do with your time than shit-blasting everyone when they opened an email?”
“Come on, it was pretty funny.” He smirked, though his enthusiasm was dampened by my lack of praise.
“Yeah, if you’re five.” Kyle’s face dropped and I started to feel bad. Reprimanding him was like kicking a puppy: no fun unless you were an outright sadist.
“But I guess it was sort of funny,” I conceded, and I couldn’t help but smile. Kyle’s hacker tricks, while obnoxious in a teenage-boy-hanging-out-in-his-mom’s-basement kind of way, still amused me. Mostly because he thought he was so badass about it. I wasn’t sure what was particularly edgy about having googly-eyed graphics bounce around a screen.
“You’d better watch yourself, though. You could get fired for this shit,” I reminded him and paused. Kyle’s lips started to twitch. I struggled to keep a straight face. Then we both burst out laughing at my unintended pun.
People looked at us, clearly wondering what we found so funny, so I quickly suppressed my amusement and swatted his arm again.
“Seriously, though, Kyle. Watch yourself. It would be easy to trace that email to you.”
Kyle’s smirk faded a bit before he rolled his eyes with forced nonchalance.
“I used a VPN and an onion router to set up an anonymous email account. I doubt anyone could trace it to me. Even you.” Kyle grinned, obviously feeling a bit more confident.
I snorted, not wanting to burst his bubble. I knew how to find what I needed. Even on the supposedly anonymous Tor network. But Kyle didn’t need to know how deep I could dig.
“Besides,” Kyle went on, “it’s not like Chuck could log in to his email without someone helping him. There’s no way he’ll figure out it’s me.”