The Poll Bearer Part 8 see more novels at www.writemeamystery.com Sorry about yesterday but internet was off

CHAPTER 5

            It was the morning of the 21^st day meaning nine had elapsed. Everyone was rested and ready to begin the assault on the search engine. Instead of working independently as before, they decided to participate as a team running each step by the group before committing the answer to the machine; in that way their collective intelligence would be pitted against the best the search engine company had to offer.

The progress went slowly as each person lent his or her expertise to every barrier that computer science could throw against them, but by late evening they were through. The data poured out and most of it had already been aggregated by the company while false trails that led to China went in. That was part of the problem in that these links to Beijing had to appear to be formidable, almost unbreakable; but there had to be a built in crack that only a super expert could find. That way, the search engine company would pride itself in knowing that it had repelled a hacking attempt without realizing that it really had been compromised.

The celebration at cracking such a giant obstacle was short lived since there was a great deal more to do and a ticking clock eating up the time to do it. While data was constantly coming in, it was useless unless it could be properly aggregated; and the students were designing programs to do just that.

On the 25^th day, Ron approached Daniel.

“We’re almost done,” he said; “but there’s one last source to go. We’ve intentionally saved it for now because it might be impossible to crack. We’re not sure what it contains, but it could be the final piece in the puzzle.”

“Let’s go outside and take a walk,” Daniel said to the surprise of the young man.

As they exited the building to the street, Daniel looked toward an intersection where the traffic was greatest. Leading Ron to the sidewalk next to the crossing light, he stopped figuring with all the noise from the cars, anyone would have difficulty in focusing a listening device on them. He could always look out to see if someone was standing too close and eavesdropping. Satisfied that they were okay, Daniel continued the conversation with a now confused Ron.

“What is it?” he asked having been teased by the prospect that there was some treasure cache of information out there that hadn’t been tapped yet.

“The CIA is rumored to have top secret files on every American,” Ron said. “They’re more detailed than those of the F.B.I. They’ve supposedly managed to analyze every phone call, e-mail, text message made with their ultra secret technology. Although it’s forbidden by law to do its covert activities on American soil, nobody ever said they couldn’t gather intelligence. Nobody’s ever cracked their system this deeply to find out if the rumor is true, that’s the first part; but the really bad news is that Mathias Stryker is supposed to be the man working in the CIA whose sole responsibility is to protect their files.”

“So?” Daniel asked not understanding why this Marcus guy was any problem.

“Marcus Stryker is a super genius,” Ron replied with a tone of admiration in his voice. “He’s the guy we all worship in the computer community. Nobody has ever even come close to hacking one of his projects because he has installed so many traps that it’s virtually impossible not to get caught up in at least one of them. Ordinary commands typed onto a key board are suddenly retranslated setting off numerous alerts and closing down operations while trapping the intruder’s computer in such a way that even turning it off doesn’t help. In short, if we go in, we could get caught. There’s no way to send false trails like we did to China. There are at least ten top notch hackers doing federal prison time right now who tried to get inside a Stryker system, and those were when he was working in corporate America not for the government. And the rumor about these files existing might not even be true. I talked to the other members of the team, and they’re against trying it because of the uncertainty and the risk. You have to remember, these people love to take chances…but only if the odds are tilted in their favor; here they aren’t.”

“So, you’re saying we skip it?” Daniel asked not knowing precisely what Ron was hinting at.

“No,” Ron answered. “I said the team was against it, but I’m not. I’d be willing to take a chance alone. I studied Stryker for a long time from two ways. First, I looked at some of the strategies he has employed with a computer and they’re above brilliant. His books and writings show that clearly, and they’re only the tip of the ice berg. It’s what he doesn’t tell you in these journals, that’s the scary part. For all intents and purposes, he’s unhackable, period.”

“Then what are we discussing?” Daniel asked sensing that Ron was talking at cross purposes. Stryker was unbeatable or he wasn’t, and all Ron was saying was he felt his idol couldn’t be touched.

“That’s Stryker the computer genius,” Ron continued. “Now you have to factor in Stryker the man. There are subconscious traits that everybody has; they can’t explain them and might not even know they have certain ones but they’re there. The more intense the job or problem, the more these hidden tendencies come out because they’ve proven reliable in the past. As much as you try to be creative, you never completely go off the deep end for fear you’ll self-destruct; so there are always patterns in your work. The trick is to figure out these patterns, no matter how subtle they may be, and use them to your advantage. That’s why you need to study the man.”

Ron paused to look at Daniel who appeared on the verge of understanding what he was saying.

“Let me simplify this for you a little,” Ron said. “Let’s say you are designing a true or false test with ten questions. The first thing you would never do is make all of the answers conform to the pattern suggested in the title. So number one wouldn’t be true, two false, three true, four false, and so on to number ten. That would be too easy. So as a test taker, I can initially assume that pattern won’t occur. That gives me a slight advantage in that I can immediately eliminate one pattern. The same would hold true if I discovered a trick question; that would almost always indicate to me that there was at least one other in the list. By understanding what you are trying to do and then getting into your mind as to how and why you are doing it, I can increase my chances of scoring well on the test.”

Daniel was beginning to see what Ron was saying, but he still found it hard to comprehend where such a young man got that deep of an understanding of the human mind.

“Take it a step further,” Ron added. “Let’s say I’m Stryker and it’s my job to protect the most important government files in existence. So, for discussion purposes, I decide to make eight levels of protection. Well, obviously the first is going to be impenetrable in my mind. I don’t want even the best hacker to think he has a chance, so I put my top efforts and use all my skills to stop anyone right there. When I get to level two, I figure everybody’s been stopped by level one because I’ve convinced myself I’m that good. So, in level two I put in all the clean up protection because I know there’s maybe only one or two individuals in the world that might find a tiny crack in level one, so I’ve laid my traps to eliminate them in level two. Level three is just more of the same. Now I get to levels four through eight. Based upon my own ability level, I know no one can get this far, so now I start to play around, to experiment, to think outside the box because I know I’m safe. These are the areas where I’m just having fun with my skills so I can tell my employers they have eight levels of security when, in reality, they only have two, maybe three at the most. The trick to beating Stryker is not to be intimidated. Crack the first level and you’re almost there; tackle the second with caution and you could get through. The rest of the levels are just there for effect. In short, the higher up you go in the chain, the easier it gets which is just the opposite of what the average hacker expects; that’s why so many get caught at the first level because they think it’s the easiest.”