Fiction: Sleeper

by Peter Wrenshall

I am not a hacker, but I thought you might be interested in hearing about the first time I got paid - kind of - for cracking the password on a Microsoft Windows box.

I was 15 at the time, and I was on "probation" after being accused of hacking my school's computer.  Our IT teacher, Roper, had noticed that someone had changed the computer's Internet proxy server address, and because I was the last person to use that machine, I was his prime suspect.  He had no evidence that it was me, but that didn't stop him from hauling me to the headmaster's office, where they both grilled me.

"You might as well tell us," threatened Headmaster Fenning, leaning back in his leather chair, "rather than tell the police.  Did you hack into that machine?"

"No, sir," I said, innocently.  "It wasn't me."  Well, I hadn't hacked into it, as such.  I had used a program to guess the password, which is different.

"Because if I find out that any pupil in this school has been engaging in hacking," Fenning continued, "I will suspend him and revoke all computer privileges..."

"Yes, sir"

"...and, depending on the circumstances, I may call in the police.  They take computer crime very seriously these days."

I saw Roper do something he rarely did: he smiled.  It wasn't the proxy hack that bugged him; it was the idea that, in order to change the proxy, I first would have had to obtain the administrator's password.  And that meant that not only could I change the proxy to surf unrestricted, but I also could do anything else I wanted: change the school's dreary logo, install games, or infect the whole network of computers with viruses.

But Roper's victory was short-lived.  Fenning continued.  "This time, I am going to have to give you the benefit of the doubt..."

He didn't even finish his sentence before Roper almost exploded.  "Benefit of the doubt!" he raged.  I saw his face turn red as his blood pressure climbed.  I was surprised myself.  I'd already been in Fenning's office that year for playing pitch-and-toss and, on that occasion, I'd been tried and sentenced in about 30 seconds, with no questions asked.  I wondered why this time was different.  "We ought to be making an example of him," continued Roper.  If he had his way, I think he really would have called the cops, which would have been doubly bad news for me.  At the time, I had just started running my own computer repair business; and I figured that I even if I charged £50 per job plus parts, I'd still undercut the local shops and get tons of work.  With plenty of money to be made, the last thing I needed was a reputation as a cracker.  People just don't trust them with their personal computers.

"Might I remind you," said Fenning, looking a bit irritated at the interruption, "that you have no direct evidence that he was involved?"  It was my turn to smile, but I restrained it.  Although we all knew that I had done it, we all also knew that Roper had no proof.  Or perhaps it was more than that.  I got the idea that there was some bad blood between Fenning and Roper, some sort of school politics.  But if Fenning was using me as political leverage, that was fine by me.

"He was the last person to use that machine.  He knows computers," whined Roper.  As if that were evidence.

"Perhaps there is another solution," suggested Fenning patiently.  "How would you feel about offloading a few of your duties to some of the more advanced students?  It may be that the challenge of looking after the computers creates within them a sense of responsibility."

Roper frowned.  His confusion was evident.  Was Fenning really suggesting that students get more access to the network, instead of less?

"As with the Prefect system..." began Fenning, but Roper butted in.  "Isn't that a bit like putting the fox in charge of the hen house?"

He had interrupted once too often, and Fenning had lost his patience.  He played his ace.  "It is clear to me that the problems you are experiencing are because the brighter pupils are not inspired by your syllabus.  Perhaps your approach to teaching computing needs to be more challenging..."

Roper blinked.  He looked a bit shocked.  He tried to defend himself, claiming that his department lacked funding; but I didn't buy that, and neither did Fenning.  The argument was over.

"And as far as I can see," concluded Fenning, "you have no actual evidence of his involvement in any computer hacking activities.  I now consider the matter closed."

He stopped leaning on his chair, and sat up straight.  The battle was over.  It wasn't hard to guess who would win, anyway.  Unlike Roper, who wouldn't have looked out of place behind a library desk, Fenning always dressed like he was CEO of High School, Inc.  In a battle of wits between him and Roper, I'd have stuck my money on him, based on the suit and tie alone.

Roper's shoulders drooped visibly.  Fenning gave me a couple more lines about how I was on probation and how I should stay out of trouble, and then ejected me from his office.  Later that day, I saw Roper in the corridor and got a nasty stare, but I survived.

Now, this is the bit that's hard to believe.  Actually, I'm not totally sure it really happened.  It was about three weeks later, a Friday, and I had almost totally forgotten the incident.  I was walking home from school and had just come out of a shop.  When I was about to cross the road, a woman walked right in front of me.

"Hello," she said with a thick accent.  In that rough part of town, people got used to being stopped by street vendors trying to sell them knocked-off Rolex watches, fake prescription medications, or other sorts of black-market goods.  I had developed a technique for avoiding them.  I said hello to the woman, without really making eye contact, and then dodged around her.  But this time the traffic lights were against me, and I had nowhere to go.  I stood at the curb, waiting.

"You want earn hundred pounds, no?" asked the women.  The sides of her mouth curled up like someone who was out of practice smiling.  As I say, in that rough part of town, people got used to the street hawkers embracing capitalism a bit too enthusiastically; but as far as I could tell | was being offered a job, and that was a new one on me.

"Sorry," I said, politely, because her business associates were sure to be nearby, "you have me mixed up with someone else."  I knew about the Polish, Armenian, and Croatian communities, about how they had come to work in the city.  I also had heard a few rumors about how they settled some of their disputes.  I didn't want to get in the middle of one.

As this was happening, I noticed the doors of an ancient brown Ford open, and two men got out.  The previous month a guy had pulled up in a van and offered to sell me a "real-deal" Armani suit (me, in a suit; sure), and I had gotten rid of him by telling him that I couldn't talk to him because my "friends" (the local rugby team, maybe) were waiting for me.  I tried the same line on the woman, and went to walk back the way I had come, but she just moved into my way again.  She gave me a blank stare and held her frosty smile, as we waited for the men to arrive.

The biggest of the men fired off a string of foreign words at the woman, who surprised me by firing right back with just as much force.  Then the other man joined in briefly.  I caught the words "da" and "nyet," and I knew that they were Russians, though as far as I knew there weren't any Russians in that part of town.  I took a look at them.

Despite the hot weather, the bigger of the two was wearing a black leather jacket, which bulged under his arms and hips, the holster areas.  The smaller guy was wearing jeans and a jacket that would have been fashionable about the time Dr. Strangelove was pulling in the crowds.  The woman looked like one of those Russian tennis players, but without the brand names.

"They want you fix computer.  They pay hundred pounds," she tried again.

"Undrid quids.  Yis?" said the guy in the jacket.  He rubbed his forefingers and thumb together in the international gesture of money grubbing.  I must have been staring, because the woman said, "Is ten minutes job."

"Shop - fix computer - down road," I said, helpfully leaving out the words that might get lost in translation.  I couldn't believe that I was advertising my business competition, but this job sounded like one to pass on.  The guy in the sunglasses took out bunch of banknotes, and showed them to me.

"Shop closed," said the woman.  "You please help.  Ten minutes."

Yeah, I thought.  But what kind of job?  My imagination broke loose thinking about some crime lord whose laptop had a broken hard disk, some underworld guy who treated his computer like he treated the hired help, and had lost his database of clientéle and, with it his livelihood.  A Russian bear with a sore head.

What also got my imagination revving was the question of how these Russians had gotten this idea about my computer repair skills.  It was the early days for my business, and I hadn't done any advertising.  i was counting on word of mouth to get started.

I tried to put them off.  "What broke on computer?" I asked, and got a blank stare.  There was a bit of a lull in the conversation, during which time a guy I recognized and his girlfriend walked past, determinedly minding their own business and not looking at us.

"Is easy money for clever guy," said tennis girl, prompting again me with her moribund smile.  She was athletic and definitely easy on the eyes, and under different circumstances, I'd have fixed her computer for free or traded her for a couple of tennis lessons.

Because she apparently wouldn't take "no" for an answer, I decided that the easiest way to get rid of her friends would be to take a quick look at their broken computer, say "Niet, is kaput.  You take to shop," and then see if she wanted to grab a burger in the interest of international relations.

"Ten minutes?" I asked her.

"Yes.  Ten minutes."

"Okay."

I got into the car with Comrade Jacket and Comrade Sunglasses, and as the door slammed shut I watched the woman walk away.  I was going to open my mouth to ask what happened to the girl, but nobody was looking at me, and we were already moving.

I sat quietly and watched the buildings go past.  For some reason, the tune to the TV detective comedy Get Smart was playing in my head, and wouldn't stop.  The only words the men said were in Russian, and the only Russian I knew came from reading Ivan Denisovich.  The words gulag, zeks, and Siberia did seem all too appropriate to the situation.

I kept wondering how they had gotten the idea that I went around fixing computers.  I mean, I wasn't that nerdish-looking.  Had somebody said something to them to put them onto me?  I didn't know any Russians; they, however, obviously knew me.  I had read that the KGB, or the K-G-used-to-B, still had an active network of sleeper agents around the world.  The newspaper headlines I had been imagining changed from "Teen boy involved into criminal underworld" to "Teen boy involved in espionage."

It was over 20 minutes later when the driver finally parked the car.  At my current rate of £100 per 10 minutes, I had already earned £200, but at the time I was more concerned with what we were doing at the docks.

We got out of the car and Jacket led the way up a gangplank onto a ship that was about the same size as a big trawler but didn't have any fishing nets.  My grandfather had worked on ships, and as a kid I had always liked the idea of going to sea, but this was not what I had in mind.

We went inside, down a metal ladder, and along a corridor.  The whole ship looked like looked like it had spent some time collecting dirt on the bottom of the ocean, only to be re-floated, dried off a bit, and put it back into service, a floating testament to Soviet efficiency.

We went into a room, and found a guy who sat at a desk.  He turned around to look at us.  He pointed at the computer and said something in Russian.  From the way he said it, and from the look on the other guys' faces, there was no doubt that this was the boss man.

Jacket pointed at me, replied respectfully, and then they all stood around looking at me.  After a minute Jacket gestured, and I followed his finger to a grayish metal box that was sitting on the desk behind me.  It was coated with the same grime that clung to the rest of the ship, and the text on the screen was barely visible.

Jacket pointed at the screen again, but I didn't get it.  What did they want me to fix?  The computer was working fine, and it wasn't making any strange noises.  I could see the logon box.  I went over to it, followed by the Russians, and the last of my optimism vanished when I saw that the text on the screen was in Russian.  So was the keyboard.

I shrugged.  "It's in Russian."  Jacket nodded, and waited.  I spoke slowly.

"Me change computer to English, after you log on."

Jacket nodded.  I tried one last time.

"You log on."

Jacket nodded again.  I waited for someone to say or do something sensible.  After all, if I couldn't log on, I couldn't even begin to find out what was wrong.  We stood looking at each other.  Another three men came into the room and joined the audience.  There was a steady engine noise, but nobody was saying anything.  It felt like one of those standoffs you used to read about, with the Russians posturing and the West posturing, and only the newspapers winning.

But as I looked around the room, I noticed that Sunglasses was sweating.  He was looking like he was about to be sent to Siberia for a year.  And then it hit me.  How slow I had been!  They couldn't log on because they were locked out!  That was what needed fixing.  Sunglasses had forgotten the password.  It was as simple as that.  They weren't going to make me break into the Pentagon, eat fish eggs, or denounce capitalism; they had simply forgotten their password.  I guess it happens to the best of us.  It happened to my English teacher, Mrs. Moran, about twice each week.

As I said, I am not a hacker.  Apart from that one machine at school, my hacking experience was limited to multiple viewings of the film WarGames.  Although I'd had thoughts about Ally Sheedy, jogging over to my house to start World War III, that was about as far as I had progressed.  But I was confident that this job would be straightforward.  I carried on me a bootable memory stick with the required software.  All I had to do was to boot off it and run the SAM cracker.  I plugged my memory stick into the Russian's computer.

Just then, something jabbed my conscience.  What if this computer didn't belong to the Russians?  What if they had stolen it?  What if they had lifted this PC from some local government office?  For all I knew, these people still thought the Cold War was on.  This potentially could go way beyond annoying Roper.

I stood there with my audience watching me, wondering what to do.  I could think of a dozen agencies and organizations that would be very concerned about a kid helping Russians break into a computer.  There were fanatics out there who would use phrases such as "colluding with the enemy."  I might even end up in Guantánamo Bay, and orange jumpsuits and serial numbers were just not my style.

On the other hand, at the time I had been learning to program computers, and as a side effect I'd gotten into the bad habit of thinking for myself.  I just couldn't see what helping someone else ever had to do with politics.

In the end, the look on Sunglasses's face did it.  I could see that this wasn't even the K-G-wanna-B.  This was a bunch of sailors.

"You forgot password?" I said.  Jacket nodded again, but I knew he hadn't understood me.  I booted from my memory stick, and when the penguin had gone away, I ran the password cracker.  That was it.  I was a bit surprised to find that the Cyrillic keyboard had familiar numbers, one to nine, so I used those.  I typed the password, and showed Sunglasses and Jacket: 123456.  They nodded, and I pressed Return and said "Okay."  Everybody understands okay.

I rebooted to Windows, and logged on.  I stood aside to let Sunglasses at the machine, and he opened a spreadsheet and then pointed at it.  The Russians peered at the screen, and their relief was palpable.  Jacket gave the good news to the boss, who, in his turn, gave Sunglasses a furious blast of Russian, which didn't need translating: lose the password again, and you'll be swimming home.  The boss disappeared, and Sunglasses smiled.  Jacket laughed and slapped him on his back, and then they both turned to me.

What next?, I wondered.  Drop the witness overboard?  Arrange an accident at sea?  I heard a clink, and then watched as glasses were passed around.

"Cheers," said Sunglasses in his English.  Jacket handed me a grubby glass almost full of clear liquid.

"That's okay," I said, but it wasn't one of those offers I could decline.  They all stood waiting for me to drink.  I shrugged, and lifted my glass.

"Perestroika," I said, which got a round of laughs.  The glasses went up, and then banged down on the desk.  I poured my drink down my neck, and then lit up and started coughing, which brought on another round of laughs.

One problem with vodka is that they make it clear; as a result, Russian sailors mistake it for water.  We downed another quick drink, and then Sunglasses said a few words in his fractured English, the upshot of which was that they were offering to take me home in the Fordmobile.

The rest of the night was a bit of a blur.  We stopped at what looked like a café, but which served about a hundred types of vodka.  We ate something a bit like beef soup, only it was called borscht.  And there was something else that looked like cabbage and black bread, which I normally wouldn't have touched in a million years, but it tasted very good.

After that we went to some club or pub, which was dark and smoky, and which heaved with the Friday night crowd, all speaking Russian.  I began to wonder how I had never noticed them before.

When we came out, it was dark.  I got into the back of the Ford, and as I watched the streetlights float past, I promised myself that I'd get out more and take regular breaks, instead of sitting in front of a computer all the time.  They dropped me off in front of my house, I got back-slapped one last time, and they said something like "You come visit Moscow."  I said I would, and then they left.

For most of the next day I went around in bit of a daze, and I couldn't shrug off the feeling that I'd somehow spent the previous night in an alternative dimension.  The pounding headache from the vodka didn't help.

I never did get that hundred quid.  I checked my pockets and found what appeared to be a genuine Cuban cigar, which I suppose was what I had been paid for my first professional hack, along with the bonus of a few blurred memories of humming along to a tune that could have been the Russian national anthem, for all I knew.

I thought about going back down to docks to see if the ship still there, but in the end I didn't.  After a failed attempt to get borscht on the school menu, I forgot all about that strange Friday night.  I reapplied myself to my computer repair business, and that kept me out of trouble.

But sometimes during quiet afternoons in the computer room, with Roper droning on about spreadsheets and with the net-nanny protecting me from my bad Internet habits, my mind would wander, and I would find myself thinking about my Russian friends.  I would idly wonder who put them onto me.  And then I would think about Fenning.  Apart from Roper, he was the only other person who knew about my cracking the school's admin password.  It was a funny thought, this stuffy headmaster working for the Russians...

I passed him in the corridor one day, and he said something about how nice it was to see that my grades had improved, now that I was finally settling down to some work.

"Da," I replied.  He didn't blink; he just kept walking.  Would anybody believe my story about a Russian spy, a sleeper agent, cunningly disguised as a schoolteacher in a small school?  For awhile I thought about ringing MI5, to talk to them about Fenning.

But in the end, I gave him the benefit of the doubt.