I'm So Hacked

PART 1

There is no such thing as odd and even. The entire world comprises of binary. Zero and one. If you use one somewhere then you can’t undo it, unless everything shuts down. The only way to initiate everything again is by using zero.

— @v!

InT3rVi3w

White. White-painted walls. Closed curtains. A tiny ray of light entering the room; a ray of hope. A perfect blend of everything that is right and wrong in this world. A plain white room with black suits in it.

Sounds formal. So boring, isn’t it?

It’s a hot day outside but it doesn’t feel like summer in here. It isn’t, of course. It’s the 5th of November and the sun is shining like it’s summer. Remember, remember the 5th of November. It’s a slogan every hacker has embraced and embalmed themselves with. Not just hackers, even the revolutionaries, considering the significance of this day, are organizing protests and marches out there. And me? I am sitting in an air-conditioned room in my tiny cubicle which feels like my own personal prison.

Why can’t work be fun? Why are offices so boring? Why are the rooms not shaped in different styles like horizontal, circular or perhaps in the shape of an ice cream cone?

Ice cream. To think if we were inside a giant ice cream, what fun it would be. I chuckle at the very thought of it. We amount to nothing but the small chocolate crusts inside a big vanilla ice cream scoop.

And when the world eats us up, we make noise—a crunchy noise, the kind of tiny, acoustic noise that no one gives a damn about. We melt and we perish, and the world remains a sweet sugar-coated ice cream.

So why should we hire you? I was brought out of my thoughts that day by an ageing bald man. White man. That was the first time I thought of an ice cream inside the same air-conditioned conference room in which I sit right now. For a normal person, he would possibly look like an American, just like the other two who were sitting next to him. But I was not normal. I may even be abnormal. My observation skills had made me confident that he was an Indian after all, suffering from the Vitiligo disease. His accent was foreign, but the way he pronounced why as "whaai" was assuring me that my assumption was correct.

Hello. He had snapped his fingers to call my attention to his question.

Well, sir. Of course. Sorry. Um, I had said, getting back to reality. Clearing my throat, I had continued, I can come up with a lot of same old clichéd dialogues about why you should hire me. I won’t tell you about my technical skills since you have already seen them. This is something that I would like to prove with my actions. But what I can offer you are three things—loyalty, honesty and commitment. I remember him looking at me with strangeness evident on his face, his wrinkled skin looked even more shrivelled, especially his forehead.

Dogs, they are a human’s best friend. We trust them, not because they are animals, but because of one trait which they possess called loyalty. If I go back home, having committed blunders or having committed wonders, loyalty would remain the same, with this company. It’s India’s largest Security Company. And I would definitely like to be as loyal as I can, I had added a lot of hand gesturing to my rant, because I knew that the other two Americans would love it. That’s how you hack people; you exploit their vulnerabilities, their insecurities. Although I am pretty sure what I had said didn’t make any sense at all; sometimes you get away with being senseless, as long as you craft your senselessness using body movement. Facial expressions and hand gestures are so underrated.

Second is honesty, sir, I am a big follower of Lord Krishna. I believe in karma. I had then proceeded to recite an old verse, a shloka from the Gita,

Karmany evadhikaras te

ma phalesu kadachana

ma karma-phala-hetur bhur

ma te sango’stv akarmani

They had been transgressed and transfixed as I went on confidently, explaining the meaning behind the shloka, You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never become attached to not doing your duty. I didn’t know how I pulled that off at the time, but they had looked interested. What the hell had I been doing? While hacking people, that’s the question you tend to ask yourself but then you go ahead with it, anyway.

Finally, I am committed to the cause. Like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar puts it, ‘Commitment is about stretching your own capabilities, commitment can take you across all obstacles.’ I remember the old man smiling along with the Americans.

Sir, if you hire me, you will be obtaining a person who is committed to the cause of taking this company forward.

It was as simple as that, hacking the big old man with a chevron moustache.

A quick Google search had displayed numerous results on him. His Facebook profile was full of quotes by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and dharmik recitals. His love for dogs was blatantly evident. A big follower of Lord Krishna. All I needed to do was connect the dots and feed him all the philosophical bullshit with a special mention to his idols. His face had been brimming with approval at that moment, and two days later, I had an offer letter.

That was my first hack in the company.

And now, my name plate reads Security Analyst at India’s number one Anti-Virus Company—QuickBit.

Everything I do during the day is the exact opposite of everything I do during the night.

Now, you must be wondering if I am one of those famous vigilante hackers, of the Robin Hood variety. The thought makes me scoff.

Truth is, there are no Robin Hoods in this country or hell, even the world. Robin Hood was a made-up concept based on hear-say statements from ancient folklore. This concept is glorified by people. Truthfully, the world has always been a selfish place. Adam fucked Eve because he was horny. Nehru and Jinnah created the partition and formed two new countries because they both wanted to rule. Sachin scored centuries to improve his own record. There, I said it. And I may get a lot of backlash for saying all that out loud, but it’s the truth and some part of us even admits it. The only problem is that we don’t want to show the world this side of us because it is unacceptable by societal standards. Fear, it gets better of our rage every time. Everything has happened and will continue to happen because of men’s selfish behaviour, and there is nothing left in this world apart from selfishness.

I’m brought out of my thoughts by a sudden pang. Thirst. I need to drink water. It’s a must, or else I suffocate, I precipitate, I die.

I walk, I walk a lonely way from my desk towards the water filter, and the walk seems to last an eternity; people are watching me, those from the adjacent cubicles staring at me. I am avoiding eye contact with them, I am trying to be as normal as possible, but in the effort to blend in, I stand out even more.

Things weren’t always like this; things weren’t always so rosy-tinted and eyes weren’t always this bloodshot red. I will tell you about it, someday, sometime, some moment. But right now, I need to walk, I’m thirsty. And the water filter seems miles away.

When I reach the filter, there are people already around it; they feel obnoxious to me, like they all want to kill me because I have hacked each and every one of them, in some way or the other, not that they know of. I am in control or at least I thought I was, until it all changed for me, in my personal life. But in the virtual reality, in the world connected by machines and computers and technology, I am in complete control. Or well, I would like to believe I am.

I don’t have any friends; I don’t really need any. I work alone. I work for the cause and the letter in my mailbox had changed it all. I will tell you about it, someday, sometime, some moment.

But today, we have an important task on our hands, and for the cause of the company I have to work. Today, we are tracking a hacker who tried to infiltrate our driver (not the vehicle); this driver is a piece of code which drives the core of any anti-virus system. Everything we type, is not always machine readable. When the machines don’t understand our unique language, the driver becomes responsible for it. Think of it as a middle man, a translator perhaps; taking instructions from us via the keyboard and making the hardware, our machines, understand it.

The hacker has directly tweeted the CEO of our company, and a client from America is threatening to call off the deal. What a noob, amateur, child. Threatening a company’s CEO and extracting money from them; is that all that’s left of the world these days? Extortion. Hackers call it bug bounty.

Usually all the managers are very relaxed in this company, having a blast at the lunch table, making fun of people around a desk and flirting with the girls. But today everyone is running around as if their asses are on fire. Today, they have a mail from Steve, from USA. No, it’s not Steve Jobs. This Steve is just a marketing guy, but he creates havoc when something cracks up; when softwares fail and when he loses clients, he loses his temper and the company loses dollars.

As I drink my water, I see Vikrant Tewari. A software development head. I never really understood how these guys reached the top management level in the company. He is a leech and a weirdo; always with a lust-filled look in his eyes, staring at and flirting with all the girls in office. He is strict in meetings but acts like an idiot outside the conference room so that he can be viewed as cool and approachable by the other employees, but in the process, simply ends up looking like a fool. His knowledge about programming is next to nothing; he just got lucky to be amongst the first few employees who stayed on as the company grew. Owners are generous people that way, humble and down to earth, rewarding the loyalty of their employees.

He walks towards my team lead, his eyes scanning the girls sitting at their cubicles. He reminds me of a snake. His face is cut like that, with protruding eyeballs that nearly pop out.

I am a Security Analyst, my job is only concerned with security, yet these people come to me for every small problem or road block. Sometimes I help them, sometimes I don’t. I can be quite moody that way.

My lead and the manager are on call with Steve from USA, when I see Vikrant Tewari approaching their meeting room. Five minutes later, after I’m back to my cubicle, all three of them are walking towards me. I am burning holes in my screen, hoping they won’t stop at my desk. I keep my head down and steal a look by rolling my eye balls up a little; they are still walking towards me, the noise of their footsteps irritates me. Click click click, formal shoes. The frequency of the noise rises with each passing second and stops just as I raise my head. They are here.

Tracing his French beard, my lead asks me, Uh, are you free for a moment?

Yes, but I don’t want to help you, I wish I could say, yet the politeness in me takes over. It’s always an even toss between my rude side and my polite side.

Sure. I rise from my chair.

There is a network slow down issue, he coughs a little. And we know it’s internal because there are no outside attacks. This is restricted to a single machine, He explains further, as if it’s a big thing.

Then he hands me the laptop and sits down, right next to my chair. What started as a polite conversation, has now become an order. I stare at him, then at the laptop and back again at him.

There, I am. Like a crunchy chocolate crisp, just waiting to make noise. Crunchy noise. I hate being in this state—the one where they all watch me. I can’t work like this. I want to feel like I am at the surface of it all, watching things unfold. I prefer to be the observant one, and not the other way around. I am the soft milky mixture, while others for me— they are the crunchy chocolate crisps. I have no choice but to sit down.

After checking the files on his laptop and dissecting those using Windows internal tools, I locate the issue. One file is being loaded multiple times. Our great Software Developer, Vikrant Tewari and his great software development team have not added the checks, to limit the file loading. Well, a machine can only sustain a limited number of instances of any file; if there are more files, it is bound to hang. Just like a peon or a government servant whose productivity is reduced to null when they are handed over the same case file over and over again. Machines can only do what humans want them to do, but it’s also important to let machines know what humans don’t want them to do.

As always they come up with excuses and lamentation, as well as place the blame on the Quality Assurance team. But the problem usually lies with the development team. It’s not always about you didn’t find it; testers and Quality Assurance teams are meant to help developers and make the product better. It’s not a game of hide-and-seek or a treasure hunt. Blame game is becoming such a common thing in the corporate world. Everybody wants to blame somebody. No one wants to be held accountable for their own mistakes.

They thank me and walk away, while I busy myself, trying to uncover who destroyed our driver. Vikrant Tewari refuses to admit his fault. Instead, he asks his right-hand man, Raju Nayyar to type out a lengthy mail, keeping all the senior board members in cc. It isn’t shocking to see Raju Nayyar using sentences like, I am surprised this issue was found so late in the testing cycle, some action must be taken. Rolling my eyes, I ignore the email. Corporate politics and blame games are the least of my concerns. My aims, goals and targets reside somewhere else. My interests are bigger than these measly people.

So the day goes on as per normal, everyone is busy punching the keys on their keyboard, Googling stuff they need to find and stuff they don’t need to find. All of it, until Niharika walks in.

She is the Beauty Queen of this floor, of this office really. She has the liberty to come and go any time she pleases. Everybody is consciously aware of her beauty. Right now, nobody is worried about phone calls from their wife, or the call from Steve. Suddenly for them, the world is a merry-go-round. They are busy running laps around the mulberry bush, also known as Niharika. Her smile is easily worth a million dollars. She flashes all her teeth which makes it harder to grasp if she’s smiling for real or it’s just a friendly gesture. Vikrant Tewari comes to her desk with his laptop and speaks for a few minutes.

As soon as he is gone, Sunil Wagh, her senior who sits on the opposite cubicle, gets up from his desk and stares down at her. He is a round guy, literally round. His face is round, so are his belly and legs. He looks like one of those snow man figures, except that his nose isn’t carrot shaped; rather it’s round too.

Sometimes I hate her for this, for wearing low-neck dresses. For giving a chance to these horny men to ogle at her breasts and to peep at her cleavage every time she bends. But that’s what they do, that’s what the IT life has become these days. There are fewer codes being written and more love stories or affairs being carried out.

After everyone is done pleasing their eyes with the sight of Niharika, they walk back to their desks, realizing that they have work to finish.

Niharika raises her head and gazes at me, for precisely two seconds. Those deep eyes of hers, they will be the death of me one day.

I look down again, putting headphones in my ears and shut the world out. I listen to my favourite track, Thunderstruck by AC/DC.

The original riff by Angus is heavenly, the slow rise of a guitar followed by a thumping noise that seems like a stroke of lightning. Even the vocal chords are celestial, as if from another world. So, on the hot, sunny day of November 5th, while the whole city protests on the streets, I am enjoying the thunderstorm in my mind.

P$3uD0 N@+!0nal!$ts

I read the letter; once, twice, thrice. I could not sleep that night, or the nights that have followed since.

I haven’t touched it after the first day, but I remember the content, the smell, the paper and everything else about that letter.

Don’t try to find me. When time is right, I will find you. That’s what’s written on the envelope, and there is also a small Indian flag stuck on the side