and, hey presto, fifty quid.
He clearly wasn’t bothered about stranger danger, letting slip his real name – Dan – and the fact that he was only sixteen.
He came online one evening in a bit of a state. His mate had been knocked off his bike by a white van, and Dan had just been to see him in hospital. It sounded quite bad. The driver didn’t stop, which made the whole thing much worse. My destiny changed because of a random suggestion I made to help him get even.
hack the council security cameras – get the reg of the van – I typed
might just do that – he replied.
We carried on playing EVE and I didn’t think any more about it. I was constantly dropping things into conversation, in the hope they’d lead somewhere, and being disappointed.
Two days later, Dan came to find me.
got the camera but not the crash
shame – me.
good idea tho – got a present for you to say thanks
Dan sent me the incredibly useful series of indecipherable commands that, like magic, turned into pounds of mobile credit. I was very grateful, and immediately started to sell it online at half-price, which turned into a nice little income stream via a PayPal account. One particularly busy day, I made two thousand quid thanks to word of mouth. Insane. I was so going to be the richest kid at university.
I decided Dan was a definite possibility – if that made sense. He knew his stuff, wasn’t bothered about breaking the law and, bottom line, I had a good feeling about him. Of all my hacker friends, he was the one I had most fun with.
was it a long job? – I asked.
took 2 episodes QI – Dan measured life in episodes, not time. Quirky.
My instinct about him made me take the next step. He wanted to find the guilty driver who’d ploughed into his friend. I wanted to get inside the military. I saw an opportunity and went for it.
maybe try the spy satellite network – I typed.
All I thought about was whether my casual remark had spurred Dan into action. Every time we met online I was tempted to ask if he’d had a go, but made myself stick to the usual chat. He’d got my gender wrong, which I quite liked, because boys talk to boys in a different way. Equal.
A few times we both stayed off school and spent all day gaming. It was a calculated risk – bad for my quest to appear like a law-abiding member of the Upper Sixth, good for building up the trust between us. I got to know all about his mum, his kid sister – who I wished was my kid sister – his mates, where he went in Bristol and much more.
Although I was closest to Dan, I touched base with Annacando, Expendable and Omen 11 pretty much every day. They were mischief-makers, up for bringing down sites, hacking competitions, getting free stuff – but none of them were political. I worked hard to make sure I used the right language. They had to believe that I was like them.
My other regular contact was an American I found on a home video group. When the time came, he wasgoing to make me a video to convince the UAV pilot that the drone had crashed, not been kidnapped. I’d told him I was doing film studies.
Guaranteed, they’d all have wet their pants if they’d had even an inkling of what I was really about.
The breakthrough came on a Friday. Dan and I were playing GTA V when he typed, with no warning, no ‘guess what?’:
infiltrated the US Military network
what? – I replied, hands trembling.
got in through a remote base station near Camp Bastion – found the satellite system
He was so casual. I was ecstatic, but just wrote:
great job
I asked a few questions. Three-quarters of his answers were incomprehensible, but that didn’t matter. What I did understand was that he’d mapped the controls onto his iPhone to manipulate the live satellite feed.
Amazing – I typed.
I could see, at long last, that the theory could work. If you could hack the US Military satellite network, surely you could hack a drone – they weren’t much more than cameras
He clearly wasn’t bothered about stranger danger, letting slip his real name – Dan – and the fact that he was only sixteen.
He came online one evening in a bit of a state. His mate had been knocked off his bike by a white van, and Dan had just been to see him in hospital. It sounded quite bad. The driver didn’t stop, which made the whole thing much worse. My destiny changed because of a random suggestion I made to help him get even.
hack the council security cameras – get the reg of the van – I typed
might just do that – he replied.
We carried on playing EVE and I didn’t think any more about it. I was constantly dropping things into conversation, in the hope they’d lead somewhere, and being disappointed.
Two days later, Dan came to find me.
got the camera but not the crash
shame – me.
good idea tho – got a present for you to say thanks
Dan sent me the incredibly useful series of indecipherable commands that, like magic, turned into pounds of mobile credit. I was very grateful, and immediately started to sell it online at half-price, which turned into a nice little income stream via a PayPal account. One particularly busy day, I made two thousand quid thanks to word of mouth. Insane. I was so going to be the richest kid at university.
I decided Dan was a definite possibility – if that made sense. He knew his stuff, wasn’t bothered about breaking the law and, bottom line, I had a good feeling about him. Of all my hacker friends, he was the one I had most fun with.
was it a long job? – I asked.
took 2 episodes QI – Dan measured life in episodes, not time. Quirky.
My instinct about him made me take the next step. He wanted to find the guilty driver who’d ploughed into his friend. I wanted to get inside the military. I saw an opportunity and went for it.
maybe try the spy satellite network – I typed.
All I thought about was whether my casual remark had spurred Dan into action. Every time we met online I was tempted to ask if he’d had a go, but made myself stick to the usual chat. He’d got my gender wrong, which I quite liked, because boys talk to boys in a different way. Equal.
A few times we both stayed off school and spent all day gaming. It was a calculated risk – bad for my quest to appear like a law-abiding member of the Upper Sixth, good for building up the trust between us. I got to know all about his mum, his kid sister – who I wished was my kid sister – his mates, where he went in Bristol and much more.
Although I was closest to Dan, I touched base with Annacando, Expendable and Omen 11 pretty much every day. They were mischief-makers, up for bringing down sites, hacking competitions, getting free stuff – but none of them were political. I worked hard to make sure I used the right language. They had to believe that I was like them.
My other regular contact was an American I found on a home video group. When the time came, he wasgoing to make me a video to convince the UAV pilot that the drone had crashed, not been kidnapped. I’d told him I was doing film studies.
Guaranteed, they’d all have wet their pants if they’d had even an inkling of what I was really about.
The breakthrough came on a Friday. Dan and I were playing GTA V when he typed, with no warning, no ‘guess what?’:
infiltrated the US Military network
what? – I replied, hands trembling.
got in through a remote base station near Camp Bastion – found the satellite system
He was so casual. I was ecstatic, but just wrote:
great job
I asked a few questions. Three-quarters of his answers were incomprehensible, but that didn’t matter. What I did understand was that he’d mapped the controls onto his iPhone to manipulate the live satellite feed.
Amazing – I typed.
I could see, at long last, that the theory could work. If you could hack the US Military satellite network, surely you could hack a drone – they weren’t much more than cameras
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