Immaculate Spirit 86 :

Getting his laptop back from his room he sat down in his chair, his mothers looking from behind his shoulder with attention. As the hacker was already in his computer he created a separate phantom space on his own hard drive to work without being noticed. After that he launched one of his watch programs to see what the hacker wanted to take from him.

Looking at the increasing number of windows that their son opened in front of their eyes his moms were awed to see him work. His fingers were swift on the keyboard and program after program got launched.

"Can you stop the hacker?" Mary asked with concern.

"Yes I can, I will not tho." He answered, his eyes focused on the screen.

"Why?" Karine asked, surprised.

"I want to know what the hacker is looking for. Relax, all of the important and compromising stuff is not on any of my computers."

"Is this the only reason sweetie?"

"No there is more, if I start to fight back it could send some alert. The best course of action at the moment is to observe and find out who wants my data. The hacker is good, he breezed through my firewall as if it was not even there. Even if it's a basic one it's still impressive." He said a little impressed.

"Why are you doing nothing? In every movie I watch, the hacker always typed without interruption on his keyboard in front of a line of code." Mary asked curiously.

"Mom, it's because it's a movie not a real representation of hacking. Real hacking is done by built programs and counter hacking is done in the same way. The only time hackers are coding is to build a program to force their way into another program. If in the middle of an attack you are typing like in the movie it means you are trying to code a program to counter attack. Doing this on the moment is suicidal, it is a hundred times more efficient to just shut off the internet or your computer." Nathaniel laughed, shaking his head at the stupidity of it all.

It was presented that way in movies and series to appear more spectacular for the viewers, not to be a real representation. Even if he could understand where they were coming from, it was still dumb for him.

"Oh." Mary said, blushing a little.

"Ah, I know what the hacker is looking for. He's looking for my album." Nathaniel said looking at what the hacker was downloading.

"Sweetie, you need to stop it. It could be bad if your album is leaked on the internet. Our revenue from the sale would be hurt by this." Mary stressed.

"Hum, I have a better idea mom." Nathaniel said, adding a dormant program inside the file that was being download.

In truth, he was not overly concerned for his album, he was more curious about the hacker. A plan was starting to take form in his head and he flashed a crafty smile. Once the download had been completed the hacker started to erase every trace of his passing. It was done smoothly and with great efficiency making his eyebrow rise. If he had not a program monitoring incursion he would have no idea that he had been hacked.

"Well, this is over. I think I can now consider myself as a real singer. Someone just hacked me to steal my album." He said humorously.

"This is not funny Nathaniel! It could have a wide range of consequences for our company." Mary answered sternly. The last time that it did happen the company action had dropped a couple of points and their prestige took a serious hit. If that happened with the grandson of the CEO it could be catastrophic in terms of reputation.

"I don't think the hacker wants to diffuse it on the internet. He could have hacked my mail or my twitter to fish important information but he chose not to. He was only interested with my songs. This is not the usual MO of someone with bad intentions." Nathaniel said.

"So what? What are you going to do now to ensure the album stays only in his hands?" Mary asked.

"I embedded a dormant software within the file. When he listens to the song it will activate and I will have the address of the one who hacked me. After that I'm going to pay him a visit."

"Nathaniel this is a serious matter, I can't let something like this slide." Mary said, sternly.

"Can you give me two days to take care of it? Please mom." Nathaniel asked with puppy eyes.

"Okay but not more! You have 48 hours, after that I'm going to launch a lawsuit." Mary answered begrudgingly. She could not resist her son when he was looking at her that way.

"It's because of the memories of Marc that you became so good with the computer?" Karine asked.

"Yes and no. I was always good with computers but since we did not have one in our home I played a lot with the old ones in school. When Marc got his CIA training at the farm, he did computer training but he was never good with it. He was an old fashioned man with no interest in technology. To give you an example he exited the farm with a B+ evaluation and that's why he was labeled as an assassin and not a agent. But when I inherited Marcs souvenir I learned everything that he learned in the past, even what he did not understand himself like hacking skills." Nathaniel explained.

"Oh, I understand." Karine said. It did make sense.

A beeping noise suddenly interrupted their conversation coming from Nathaniel laptop.

"Seattle. The hacker is in Seattle." Nathaniel said with a wolfish smile.

Chapter end