139 Trojan Horse

Xiao Ai and Ace continued to type on their computers without stopping, they had no idea what was going on at the military base. Even if they did, they probably wouldn't be bothered by it at all.

Ace asked Xiao Ai, "Are you done putting it together?"

"Mm~ I finished creating the perfect trojan horse." Xiao Ai bounced around proudly as she ran through her approach. She had purposely created a non-obvious exploit within her own virus to allow the analysts on the other side to use. She purposely left a trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow which would simultaneously help them get rid of the virus but also unintentionally leave a new, untraceable virus on the computers themselves. The goal was to trick the enemy into believing that they had succeeded while planting an even nastier virus onto the computers.

Ace nodded in appreciation, "I also finished my side. There are two components that I worked on. The first is inserting a virtually undetectable keylogger. It uses a zero-day exploitation to record the keystrokes and then send them back the second before the computers are turned off." [1]

"Eh~ how did you find a zero-day vulnerability?" Xiao Ai asked curiously. Zero-day vulnerabilities required the knowledge of the specific software or hardware in the system to exploit. However, neither Xiao Ai nor Ace knew which site they were hacking nor their specific technology, so this typically wouldn't be an approach they could take.

Ace laughed obnoxiously, "Hehehehe bow down to me, I am an invincible hacker!"

"Muu, stupid doggy. Xiao Ai is the Queen of the Virtual World," pouted Xiao Ai.

Ace quickly reigned himself in and nodded along, "Uh huh, uh huh. Xiao Ai is the Queen, my Master is also a Queen. I'm just a competent servant."

Hearing this, Xiao Ai was satisfied and allowed Ace to explain his technique.

"I couldn't find the exact make and model, but I was able to cross reference the data from other sources like the top government contractors and backtracked from there. Presumably, any tool they use is fairly normalized and would require winning a large contract from the government. Using that information, I was able to narrow my search down to three or four options. From there, I simply wrote code for all the possibilities."

"Eheh~ nice! Are we ready to bomb them now?"

"Yep! As soon as we integrate our code together, then we can ship it!"

After a few more keystrokes, they were finally ready. The tiny file they were about to pass across all the cameras in hundreds of cities was soon to be deployed. It was the moment of truth.

"Are you ready?" Ace asked in a trembling voice. This was always the most nerve wrecking step. One could create what they believe to be the perfect set of code and ship it out but it's never known what will actually happen until it's deployed. There are so many untested edge cases that they may or may not have accounted for, especially because the outcome is reliant on human behavior.

"Yeah!" Xiao Ai happily bounced around, not in the least anxious about the outcome. They had even created a large red button that said 'Deploy' on the screen for dramatic effect.

Xiao Ai quickly bumped her bun body against the button and the trojan horse was quickly deployed across the country to every infected city.

Ace slumped back, "Phew, now we wait."

They both sat there and waited to see what would happen.

***

The work environment in the dark military underground room was becoming grimmer as they continued to work tirelessly to no avail.

Then suddenly out of nowhere, someone stood up quickly, knocking the chair over. The sound quickly drew attention towards him but he didn't notice at all. The man continued to stare at the screen intently, trying to confirm whether this was a dream or reality.

The leader of the team went over to scold him. "What are you…" Before he could finish his sentence, he looked over the man's shoulder at the computer screen and trailed off.

Then he shouted, "A BREAKTHROUGH."

Now everyone's attention was pointed towards this man. They all crowded around the computer to see what had happened. However, there was no way 50 people could all see what was happening on this tiny screen. Many of them urged him, "Quickly, project it onto the screen."

The man who discovered the vulnerability finally snapped out of his daze and said, "Oh… this is reality…. Thank God…."

Then he projected his screen onto the larger screen in the room and everyone looked at it intently. They all took some time to digest the information before breaking down and crying, "We finally have a breakthrough!"

The leader was the first to snap out of his reverie and began passing orders to the others. "Focus everyone! We must use this exploit before they discover it."

"Team one, use this to restore our systems."

"Roger!"

"Team two, unravel the code."

"Yes sir!"

"Team three, focus on strengthening and protecting our systems."

"Understood!"

Everyone in the room began typing with a hint of fervor, as the stereotypical hackers, they were accustomed to being stuck in a tiny dark room while facing a computer all day and night. But even for them, this experience was too much. They were eager to get out of here and finally see some sunlight.

Someone in the room called out, "There's a password on this, we need to bypass it in order to get to the origin."

Others quickly responded with different ideas, "Use brute force." "Dictionary attack!"

The person who called out shortly after spoke again in an odd tone, "Nevermind… I just casually tried a password and it worked. Their password was Password123."

"..." Nobody knew what to say. As experienced hackers, they had seen many leaders and executives make the mistake of leaving a weak password like this for their systems, but never had they thought that a world class hacker like the one they were fighting would make a mistake like that.

Typically, this would've been a moment of doubt for everyone and they should have backtracked on their work to determine whether this was a trap. However, they were all so desperate to leave this hellhole that they neglected this possibility and continued to push through the task of restoring the systems.

Soon, they had successfully cracked the virus and restored all the systems. Everyone in the room cheered loudly in excitement. They could finally leave!

Little did they know, across the continent, there were two others who were also cheering in excitement as well. Celebrating the fact that they plot had succeeded.

***

[1] Keylogger is a very popular and dangerous malicious code. It uses malware to record keystrokes and captures all of the user's actions on the keyboard. Then all that information gets sent back to the hacker. Zero-day exploitations are vulnerabilities in the software and hardware that people have no ability to detect until they get exploited.