2 Chapter 2: Uncover
When I finally reached my apartment, Balthazar was on the verge of eating himself, I quickly poured some food into his bowl and opened my computer. I had no time to waste, I had to find out everything I could about Naomi, but first, I needed a full name. I launched Metasploit and executed a few exploits to gain access to the school servers. I had a backdoor installed there for some time now, so it really was not that hard. I opened the student database a ran a name search for a Naomi. Dawson college had about 12 000 students, but only 21 named Naomi, piece of cake. There she was, pink hair and all.
Name: Wild, Naomi
Age: 19 (1999-02-14)
Program: Architecture and Exterior Design, with mathematics
Semester: Third semester
R Score: 21.7
Ouch, no wonder she was so stressed about her grades. I spent another fifteen minutes or so doing some privilege escalation until I managed to have access to her score on the last math exam, I was curious.
Mid-semester Practice Exam:
Grade: 23%
Class average: 82%
Exam weight: 15%
Well, this was going to be far from easy, the mid-semester exams were in two weeks and she really was bad in maths. Why the hell did I accept to help her? Anyway, I had to find out more about her. Now that I had a full name, I could find her on social networks. The fun had finally started and even Balthy (Balthazar's nickname) knew it. He stopped eating like a pig and got comfortable on my laps. Time to begin, tell me who you are Naomi Wild.
I spent the next few hours hacking her facebook account with my very own rainbow table and a huge amount of proxies to avoid getting blocked by FB. While the brute-force program was running in the background, I set up a Maltego profile with a bunch of custom script to optimize the data mining and analysis.
Alert: hack successful, congratulations Merlin23!
Self-motivation is very important, don't judge. The point is, I had her password. Not just that, she was using the same credentials for everything:
Email: flyingunicorns94@hotmail.com
Username: lil-princess94
Password: HelloKitty94
Pathetic, she just took the fun out of hacking her. Still, my part was done, I was going to let the software run for the night and collect data. First, it was going to look through every text messages and emails she ever sent or received that still existed. Then, it was going to analyze everything she liked, posted or commented. After that, my personal profile of Naomi Wild was going to be complete and the program would switch to monitor mode in case anything of interest happened in her life, which was unlikely. This process would usually take weeks, but since I had a 10 000$ worth computer I assembled myself, it should be done by tomorrow morning. I looked at the clock: 21:47. Shit, I was late. I quickly opened a secure connection with a bridge relay on Torchat and logged into The Root personal chatting room. Everyone else was already there, they were waiting for me.
Merlin23: Sorry I'm late, something came up.
Son_of_Cthulhu: Elaborate.
//Mr.H//: Are you compromised?
Merlin23: No, I'm not compromised H, and as I said S.o.C. something came up.
Son_of_Cthulhu: Elaborate.
Merlin23: Something. Came. Up.
GuyF4k3: Well let's leave it at that, for now, S.o.C., we all have our own lives to take care of after all. Now Merlin did you finish your task?
Merlin23: I have backdoors in every TV at the target location. I also finished the message this afternoon, I just need the payload and the go-ahead.
GuyF4k3: Signus will send you the payload. I'm calling for a vote in order to give the go-ahead for operation Uncover. I vote yes.
Merlin23: I vote yes.
Son_of_Cthulhu: I vote yes.
SignusÆternus: I vote yes.
//Mr.H//: I vote yes
RainbowPal0066: I vote yes.
Root_Omega: The vote is unanimous, I do not veto. Merlin23, you have to go-ahead from The Root to proceed with operation Uncover. I'm now ending this session, the next weekly session is scheduled for 2018-07-03 at 21:30 UTC-05:00. A special session will be held 48 hours after operation Uncover execution.
System: User Son_of_Cthulhu and 3 others users disconnected from the room.
System: User SignusÆternus transferred file: operation_uncover_payload.tar, to user Merlin23.
System: User Merlin23 accepted file transfer.
System: User Merlin23 disconnected.
At last, this was done. It was always stressful to chat with the other member of The Root. After all, I am the second newest member (after RainbowPal0066). But it does not matter, they gave me the go-ahead for my own operation. Even Son_of_Cthulhu, I was sure he would vote no. Well, he did not and now it was my time to shine. After three months of hard work, I was finally going to have the honours of executing my first major hack as a member of The Root. Not only that, but it was going to be the operation that would, for the first time, reveal our existence to the world. Things were getting real, a lot was going to happen in the next few years and I was going to be a part of it.
I looked at the time, 22:54. The Root was about to address a message to the world. A simple message with no clear intentions on what our goal really was, but it was going to be conveyed in a really powerful way that would send another message: we are dangerous. I quickly unpacked the payload and glanced at the code. It was flawless, Signus really was one of the best hackers out there. He even ranked number eight on the Interpol most wanted black hat list. And I, Damian Blue, an eighteen years old kid from Canada, was working with him. I added the payload to my script and I looked at the time again.
22:58
I opened a command line on my computer.
22:59
I wrote in the command: sudo ./uncover.sh
23:00
I pressed "Enter".
I turned on the news. As a bunch of commands were being executed automatically on the screen.
23:12
Special reports: a hacker group called The Root hacked every TV in Time Square.
There was a lady with a red coat talking to the camera:
-As you can see behind me, every TV in time square is displaying what seems to be a hateful message against society. The authorities are not answering our calls, which lead us to believe that they are overwhelmed by the situation. This is the first time the world ever hears about a hacker group named The Root and our IT specialist says this might just be the biggest public hack in history.
She kept on talking about theories and stuff for a while, but all I could think of was about what she just said. The biggest public hack in history. I did that. Then, all the TV turned off. The lady looked surprised for a while and then started talking again:
-It seems that the entire block electricity was cut off. An anonymous source from time square maintenance just told us that this was due to the fact that the TVs had been hacked in a way that they could not be turned off other than by cutting off the power. We believe that the power will come back as soon as they manually unplug every big screen in Time Square.
My burner phone rang. Only one person knew that number, Root_Omega. I picked up and stayed silent.
-Congratulations.
End of the phone call. The voice was clearly modified by a software, but it was not a text to speech program. The leader of The Root contacted me personally to congratulate me. I had finally earned my place as a core member of the organization. I smiled, put on my earphone and laid down on my la-Z-boy. Today had been a good day.
