Black Box

His speakers shrieked.

A half-finished cigarette flew into an ashtray. Two pairs of grubby hands slapped a keyboard. The clacking sounded like machine gun fire.  He had a breach. One of his two dedicated monitors had a graphic representation: a tunnel of white eating through dozens of firewalls.

Rising, he kicked his office door shut. Bolted it. He hated distractions.

A dozen antiviral programs popped up: most were custom-written to automatically pop up and begin containment protocols without prompting. Military-strength encryption software buzzed inside his battered hard drive, the code deducing dozens of algorithms in seconds. This creep was bypassing all of the ninety six firewalls surrounding the box.

And he was doing it effortlessly.

He was impressed. Not since his hacking days had he been witness to such genius. Then again, the system's security had been designed by hired so called 'government security experts.' White collar shmucks with degrees. Most couldn't tell a CPU from a URL.

Three dozen algorithms were ready. Rapid fire typing transferred the algorithm strings into the password reset menu. He was creating new passwords faster than this guy could effectively break them. Not a problem.

Eight seconds later, the attack died immediately. He didn't drop the scanners.  Nor did he grab another smoke. The left hand monitor remained on, running scanners and performing post-attack sweeps. Nothing.

The guy was a ghost. He left no IP address, no clues, no signature.

A chair creaked as the scruffy man sat back, thinking. Red LED lights caught his eye.

Buried under the vast cat's cradle of cabling spread across the office floor, one of his modems beeped. It had overloaded.

How?

Adrenaline seeped through his system. He opened his Ethernet logs, and scrolled down through all six hundred twenty two enteries.

According to the mainframe, there had been two users.

The room span. This guy had just tried to crack the server through him. Hacking by proxy.

Opening the first log entry, he read the IP address. Memorized it.
Two hours later, he was still at it.




He slammed the desk and settled into his leather chair. Only three firewalls had been left!

<Efforts made to crack through the government's top-secret Black Box server have met with no success. Why would they openly announce that such a server was online, and then prohibit access? vo1tair3>

The site, smashthebox.net, had been his brainchild for the past nine weeks. Cultivating a vast network of users had only been too easy. Keeping them busy was even easier.

He was no phoney. The Black Box server needed to be opened. It's contents needed to be publicly available. Free information forever was the community's motto.

Smashthebox.net was a tool to fulfil that motto. Email registration was required for all accounts.

He was the only site administrator. IP addresses were child's play to backtrack.




Lighting up a second smoke, he grinned.

Found you.

Smashthebox.net wasn't a new site to him. It had been under government-sanctioned surveillance. Ever since the Black Box program had been leaked, thousands of hackers had emailed threats of electronic assault.

He'd been the guy to watch it. Logging in, he gave his email, and established a new name. Something enticing.

This guy was vo1tair3. Why not keep with the theme?

<Ever heard the expression 'what you don't know won't hurt you? Mac4ieve11i>

<Yes. It's absurd. Vo1tair3>

Was it him? He'd created an account in the past four minutes.

<Is it now? Look, one former hacker to another, I'm telling you to back off. This is your first, last, and only warning. Mac4ieve11i>


It was him.




Smoke curled around his fingers.

<Is it? The information regarding the project was leaked. LEAKED. Unlawfully. Your IP is mine, buddy. Mac4ieve11i>

He activated the IP scrambler he'd bought for six grand.

The cigarette dropped from his fingers.

<Nice. Really nice. Also really, really illegal. You're determined to make yourself a martyr, aren't you? Mac4ieve11i>

<This heavy-handed public censoring will not go unpunished. I refuse to allow it. Vo1tair3>

A yellowed finger punched in a query. Spam bombarded the site; condom ads, vacation packages, knock off car sales. It nearly crashed the site.

<Your filters are good. Unfortunately, I've got an entire governmental server on hand. It's only a matter of time. Mac4ieve11i>

No new attacks were forming. He sat back, and re-lit his dropped smoke.


Sweat soaked his unbuttoned shirt. Only minutes remained.  Time for the trump card, he thought.

What the HELL?  A dozen antivirus programs had been monitoring the Box.

They were all frozen. Over six hundred users were attempting illegal access.  The server simply couldn't handle it.

<We are at a stalemate. I've jammed your software, and the Box along with it. Vo1tair3>

<So we are. I'm impressed. Reboot. Now. Mac4ieve11i>

<Are you at least going to hear me out? I do have reasons for all of this, else I wouldn't be trying to crack a top-secret military mainframe. Vo1tair3>

<Fine. Mac4ieve11i>

<Like my namesake of the Enlightenment, I've been campaigning against this blatant withdrawal of information since the announcement of the Box. Its existence has thrown the public into an uproar. Why would files from three decades previous be still ferreted away from the public eye? What does the government have to hide? Vo1tair3>

He chuckled around his smoke.

<It's quite simple, really. I've already explained it to you once: the government does not feel the people would be able to deal with the information under the current state of administration. Mac4ieve11i>

<Government is responsible to its people. Even Machiavelli knew that. Vo1tair3>

He fired back:

<If we're going to get philosophical (which you seem to be), it's been proven time and time again that a government sometimes has to make harsh decisions. Sometimes a Prince cannot always be fair. Mac4ieve11i>

Gritting his teeth against the rebuke, he grabbed his coffee mug, responded:

<Fear is a tool the Prince recommended to control populations. The Box seems to be doing a very good job at that. If a government is willing to withhold something as free and universal as information, what else will they control? It's causing panic. It's causing confusion. As a former hacker, you should be appalled. Open the Box. Vo1tair3>

There was a long pause. He clenched the mug with white-knuckled fingers.

<Fine. However, I will leave the words of another philosopher. One Voltaire himself admired. 'There is nothing to be feared but fear itself.' Francis Bacon. Mac4ieve11i>

He rebooted his computer, grabbed one more smoke from his pack.

Dropping the cup, he unlocked the Box.  His screen flashed black, then transfigured into a plain white screen. He switched tabs back to the website, asked:

<What is this? A menu? Vo1tair3>

<No. It's a tracking cookie. Mac4ieve11i>

Sirens howled outside his door.  Pistols loomed in his back windows.  A shotgun racked.

"Shit."