CONTAMINANT
Ever since Opp left his house nearly afternoon of that Thursday, which he can rightfully call as "The Revelation Day" for learning a lot about Scylla and Charybdis and the very man who created them, Jeff has been thinking about a plan on how to leech from Charybdis all its money – a pot that the Sunken Treasure Of The HMS Victory can only dream of coming close to. However, it is now Friday, and he is still blank on what to do.
"I know I have to use a malware: that is already academic. But what kind?" asked Jeff, sitting on the sofa with his breakfast done, with the empty plate that formerly held his dish of Chicken Hainanese Rice lay atop his lap. Straight ahead from where he is, his TV is showing a film where Chris Evans – playing the role of Captain Steve Rogers – has just come out of a capsule, already muscular and without a trace of being scrawny like before. "A trojan won't do the job: the goal is not to infect a mainframe but to scan a network and rake those virtual briefcases full of money."
"Do you need something, Herr Jeff?" asked Jannine while the other is fixated on the screen.
"Spywares are out too. Ransomwares? Definitely not." Jeff, dropping his options one after another, did not hear Jannine's question.
"Excuse me, Herr Jeff?"
"Errr...What?" Jeff looks around and finds the source of the question standing on his left. "Sorry, Jannine. Were you saying something?"
"I asked if you need anything because I'll be folding the dry clothes now."
"Nothing; go on ahead; thank you."
"Not a scratch doctor – not a scratch." A cold voice with a German accent said: it is from Red Skull – the main villain in the film being played by Hugo Weaving – who has just handed a key to Doctor Arnim Zola – a renegade scientist played by English actor Toby Jones.
"It definitely has to be a Worm. Plant it in the network, let it divide multiple times with each having a specific purpose," said Jeff. His eyes are on the TV screen, yet his mind is on somewhere else.
"But it needs a center – a mother that will check all the activities of its children Worms. Mom will also be the target destination of those briefcases once they have been sniffed and gathered. Yeah, that's right," muttered Jeff, gaining momentum in his thinking. "Mommy will then wire the money to something from where I can get it physically – cash colder than bingsu."
As he gathers up details, he sees Red Skull on the screen, giving a speech to his troops about his intended plan to wipe out New York city from the face of the Earth. "Tomorrow, HYDRA will stand master of the world..."
"One worm to disrupt the system clock."
"Borne to victory on the wings of the Valkyrie!"
"With the clock stalled, it will stop the ramdomization of the account numbers and bank codes, which will keep them in the network," said Jeff, nodding.
"Our enemies' weapons will be powerless against us!"
"Track the briefcases using the unique Y identifier from the digital footprint. Yeah, at least those that are roaming in the network."
"If they shoot down one plane, hundreds more will rain fire upon them!"
"Scylla can be kept running: she just pushes money through Charybdis, right? Charybdis, meanwhile, will be paralyzed by this time."
"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place."
"Once she can't move, she will have no choice but to stop putting money into the banks – a fail-safe action. As part of it too, she won't be able to pull back into the network those briefcases inside the bank. From here, I'll have to instruct her to take all the briefcases that are in the network and grip them tight. There is nothing that can be done for the briefcases inside the bank: I have to assume that with the system clock jammed, they will stay inside the bank since their account numbers and bank codes won't change."
"Hail Hydra!" Red Skull picks up a glass of wine and gives a toast to his troops, who shout back to him the same salutation.
"HAIL HYDRA!" exclaimed Jeff, standing up and imitating Red Skull's army – words, hand gesture, and all. Then, a sound of a breaking twig reverberates from the depths of his mind, which only he can hear. He suddenly puts his arms down halfway; having thought of something that may work. "Hydra? EUREKA!" said Jeff, doing a single clap as he did.
As the armored and clad-in-black minions of the Red Skull continues to shout Hail Hydra, Jeff lets his string of thoughts spread throughout his head like a flood. "That's it! A Hydra – multiple worms connected to a single body."
Nodding, he carefully considers what he has just discovered. "Once there, the Hydra will disperse its separate worms with the core monitoring what each one is doing. Yes...this might...woowow...hmmm...although..." His mind comes to a screeching halt like a sedan on a freeway.
Seating back down to the sofa, Jeff turns down the volume of his TV to ponder further. "I've never developed a Hydra before. I just worked with single Worms, Trojans, Viruses, and Spywares back in Le Cargaison for security and penetration testing," he said, looking back the film again where Cap has just kissed Peggy Carter. "But...I don't think that will be hard. It will, however, involve more codes to build the center and what it should do," he continued, taking a cushion and hugging it.
As he sees Red Skull piloting a craft bigger – he thinks – than a modern stealth bomber of the United States, Jeff is still in conflict with what he wants to do versus what he needs to do. "Wait...wait...wait. There is one more thing to consider – testing it. This can't be tested and debugged at the same time as a normal program," he said, doing an Indian Sit as he hugs his pillow harder and curls his lips. "Each time the Hydra runs, it will mess up the network since it will execute commands until an error is encountered. Correcting what it did will only take time even with a reversion script. I'll have to rely on instincts here: create the Hydra, compile everything, and pray that no errors are raised after."
As he watches the remainder of the movie, from the one-on-one fist fight between Captain Rogers and Red Skull until the post-credit scene, he is carefully mapping out what he must do from beginning to end.
"I had developed a Worm way back when I was still in the CEH program. It was for my comprehensive project before I can officially pass and be certified," said Jeff as he makes his way to his room, reminiscing those days when he was still working to be a Certified Ethical Hacker.
Inside, he opens his cabinet and kneels to reach a box at the bottom level. "I designed this worm to detect e-mails in the network that contain suspicious file attachments. It locks the questionable files, rendering it inaccessible, then sends back a notice to the sender that the attachment has been locked. The sender must then confirm within twelve hours that the file is safe to be opened before it can be unlocked. Otherwise, the e-mail address will be marked as blacklisted and future e-mails from it will directly go to the Spam folder of the receiver," he said, removing the top cover of the box after.
As he checks each items he picks out of it, Jeff puts them on the floor one-by-one, confirming that they are not what he needs. After getting hold of a case whose design is something that one must have put a day's effort – maybe two – to make, he stops his browsing and goes straight to his desk.
"Saturn. My Saturn Worm," he said, opening the case and pulling out a gold-colored disk from it. He named his work after his favorite planet in the Solar System, which is famous for its intricate ring system made up of asteroids, comets, and even shattered moon that have been crushed and held together by the planet's powerful gravitational field. "This has been in the box for so long now. It definitely deserves a day out – and for a good reason."
"This is a direct copy from the one I presented and submitted to the panel for my CEH certification. I trust that this has all the files needed for Saturn to work." He powers on his laptop and waits for his desktop to load on the screen. After it does, he presses a button on the side of the machine. As a result, a placeholder for a disk slides out.
"Hmmmmm. This is complete: fifteen files, one batch file for execution, and a warning file at the top that has a notice and a couple of personal instructions," he said, confirming that his creation is intact. "Let's copy everything." He backs one level up to the root – and lone – folder in the disk and presses CTRL-A then CTRL-C on the keyboard. Afterwards, he presses WINDOW-D to go directly to the desktop, then presses CTRL-V.
"This Hydra will need a new name: Saturn no longer applies to it anymore," he said as the green gauge in the screen slowly fills from left to right, indicating the completion of the copying of the files. When it is half-full, a timid smile traces on Jeff's face. "Rabbit. I sometimes call GP a rabbit: he is always as energetic and lively as one, jumping from one activity to another without any sign of getting weary."
After all of Saturn's files have been duplicated, Jeff highlights its folder icon in the desktop and presses F2. With the name box becoming editable, Jeff positions both hands on his keyboard. "Saturn," he said, typing the word in unison. "Rabbit." He puts the new term immediately after the previous one without a separator, resulting in the box to be filled out with SaturnRabbit. "Jeff Satur and Gameplay Rabbit together again," he continued, pressing the Enter key, ecstatic at the idea that he just named his Hydra after him and his ex-boyfriend.
"But before we work on SaturnRabbit, let's test first if I still have my deadly edge as before," he said, ready to see if he still has the skills that garnered him a post-nominal title of "CEH". Although admittingly, he knows that he is a little rusty because of lack of practice and – most of all – application.
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Author's Note
Who would have thought that Jeff will be able to figure out the Hydra malware from watching Captain America: The First Avenger and hearing Red Skull's speech. HAHAHAHA!! Clever boy!
However, all this is just a plan. How will he plant the Hydra? Where? When will it run? What will it do after implementation? Interesting questions, right? Better watch out for the answers. ;)
Another interesting thing - what is this "deadly edge" that Jeff said he has before but he seemed to have lost now?
Stay tuned for release of the next chapter - Strange Things - soon.
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