ENTRY 07

Chapter 07: The Girl in the Spider's Web

[THE SEVENTH DAY]

~Morrigan POV

The screen of her computer displayed a ten-minute countdown. While waiting, she took another sip of the hot espresso from a tall paper cup and clicked the music player on the monitor. Though she was not dramatic on her missions, she felt like setting up a marching tune background suitable for the upcoming event. A declaration of war against the "Queen of Tech''.

Last week, an anonymous client asked her to hack the cybersecurity company named CASTLE. Although she presented an outrageous price for her service, the unidentified client agreed and offered her a week to prepare for the attack at the business.

Since it was a high-staking request, she examined the unknown patron by tracing the call. And to her surprise, not only did the client use a secure line, it bounced back to different locations in the world, making it untraceable.

"The client is a hacker," she mumbled and grinned.

Usually, hackers do their work alone or with a friend but hiring another hacker meant two things, either the job was not their expertise or they required a decoy while they hack other programs more substantial than the target.

Either way, she needed to guarantee that the latter won't manipulate her. A chance like this would never come again. It would be an achievement to become the first hacker to break the defense of the CASTLE owned by CEO Bridgette Henry.

"You'll sit on the throne of ashes, after this," she said out loud, alone in the basement of her house.

As she glanced at the remaining minutes on her timer, she recalled the arduous details of planning her attack. The first step was gathering information about the target, which was hard as the CASTLE filters every email going in and out of its system. Any type of phishing won't do anything as every employee was as knowledgeable as a hacker in the cybersecurity company.

Rather than planning a direct attack, she did "spear-phishing". A type of trick to get specific individuals to click a malicious link that could connect her to their computer server. Once she's in, it would be easy to get all the information she needs. And spear-phishing social app employees was like shooting fish on a barrel. It was easy.

The hardest part was maintaining a link, as servers would have security sweeps every week to clear out phishing links on computers. As a backup, she would use clone emails to continue her connection without the employees discovering they were being monitored.

After three days of planning for the attack, she presented the program to the anonymous client by having a mock hack. A simple attack to slow down a food delivery app. Though the security was not high like the "CASTLE", her goal was the same. To slow down their servers unnoticed until it forced them to shut down.

Within an hour, the food delivery announced a technical problem. Accepting requests was too slow, and they reset the servers but they couldn't.

They were all under her control. And while they tried to fix the problem, she was copying the details of credit cards used in the food delivery app.

After obtaining the information she needed, she deleted all the evidence of her intrusion and reset the servers herself. It ran back up as nothing happened.

Impressed by her work, the unknown patron paid a third of the agreed amount and guaranteed to deliver the rest after the attack.

"One minute and counting…"

The natural language user interface computer program she named "Matilda" alerted her about the countdown. It was one of the sophisticated software she made to assist her. From searching to securing information, Matilda takes care of it for her.

"Matilda, do you think they would tell the media about the DDoS attack at the CASTLE?"

"The chances of a DDoS attack being announced in the media is only thirty percent, Sir Knight."

"Well, this one will be a headliner," she sneered.

"I'm sure it will, Sir Knight."

Moving her head around to stretch her neck, she prepared her hands on top of the mechanical keyboard with excitement.

"Five seconds counting down."

"In 5…"

"4…"

"3…"

"2…"

"1…'

"0…"

The clacking sound of her fingers smashing the keys rapidly to type the commands molded to marching melody playing on her computer. Before pressing enter, she took a deep breath and stared proudly at the screen, admiring the perfect script she made to tear down the CASTLE of the Queen.

"I will strip you off with your title just like you did to me," she mumbled, the words filled with the pain shown on her face.

 With a heavy press on the "ENTER" key, the program executed its commands. The "Zombie Bots" she programmed to engage to different websites that the cybersecurity protects quickly requested connection but before it continues, the bots will fail and retry again.

It was a clever start. No one noticed the bots she programmed. Staring at the two displays on the wall, she watches the statistics of the bot actions climb up and the rate of connections of the websites decline.

 "A good employee would notice this within minutes," she scoffed.

Then a prompt appeared on her screen showing the cybersecurity CASTLE logo and the Zombie Bots stats slowed.

"The CASTLE filters the connections of the bots, Sir Knight."

"I can see it on the screen. Seems like the Queen has keen eyes and quickly noticed me," she grinned.

"The stats of the bot are declining, Sir Knight."

"Don't worry. Their stats are slower than mine," she assured while staring at the logo of the cybersecurity company, "Eyes on me, babe. Don't you dare look away?"

When the statistics of the bots and the security equalized, she typed again to bring more bots and connect to the targeted websites. Quickly, her numbers rose again and the security filters decreased.

"Now, they will know it's an attack," she announced as she increased the bots connecting to the websites.

A message on the screen appeared, warning her of an intrusion on her computer.

"Someone is breaking into your location, Sir Knight."

"They want to trace me down?" she scoffed. "Amateurs."

Typing different IP addresses on her computer rerouted the trace to other locations around the world. From China, Japan, the US, Korea, Singapore, Canada, and Mexico.

Eyeing at the stats brought a smile to her face. The cybersecurity couldn't keep up with her attack. The more it filtered her "Zombie Bots", the more it lost its defense. When her stats reached 75%, she knew a few minutes more and she could shut down the company servers.

"Sir Knight, another program is hacking into Royal Bank."

"It's our client," she answered.

Clicking the alt+tab to change windows and watch the hacker pass by the cybersecurity to launch itself on the bank's server. 

"So you want money, huh?!" she sneered.

After the hacker scanned the data of the server, it deleted bank records and accounts.

"What the—" she yelped.

It was unexpected but horrible to see, as the hacker deleted thousands of bank records from the server.

"SHIT!"

The keyboard clicked wildly as her fingers type as fast as she could. The client was not stealing money, it's deleting it. An act of cyberterrorism in which they destroy significant data rather than sell it for profit. 

Now, she's not destroying the walls of the CASTLE, she's defending it as its warrior. Face to face, fighting a malicious hacker.