I was a decent hacker. I wasn't the best of the best, but I was really up there ya'know? What made me better than most though, wasn't so much that I wrote better codes, but that I knew how normal people think. The problem with the best of the best is that beyond their point of hiding a virus and getting out, they don't know much else because they've dedicated all their time to that skill. They don't understand how a normal person would see a virus, or react to it. They've gotten so used to their point of view that they can't take another's.
That's how I always got back out. If I saw someone had found my bug and tried to get rid of it – or traced it back, I'd have pre-laid rabbit trails for them. Keystrokes – if you think you see a virus what's the first thing you do? Google it, right? Or panic and run your store-bought anti-malware? Shut off the computer? Force quit the program? Try to find where it's coming from? That's exactly what I want you to do.
I'd block those programs. Or better yet, make you think they're running. Even better – when you run those programs, you infect yourself even more. Sometimes they're dormant viruses – "daemons" that sit in the background until you complete an action, like open word or something. The minute you do that? Boom, activated. And it does what I tell it to, and you don't even know it.
But it's not like I stare at a computer 24/7. These programs run themselves; I just put them in place. Most of the fun comes from creating the viruses, trying to configure backdoors, coming up with new ways to get around your store-bought anti-virus thingies. Those are annoying, but there's almost always a way around them if you really want to get in. They're good for blocking your less-than-average hacker who hasn't updated his stuff in a while; and programs change daily. Updates to your systems and protection have to be monitored or we become outdated very quickly.
But I'm not interested in the files of questionable pictures you've got hidden away, or that email you sent last week. Like I said, I'm not in front of a screen all the time – and unless you've got your credit card information in that email, chances are I'll never even look at it. If I am using your computer though, it's most likely just being used as a portal. We call your type of computer a zombie – it's infected, it's dormant, and it's used to infect other computers. It's why you're supposed to logoff Facebook all the time, and change your passwords once every month. That type of stuff is good for slowing down lazy hackers.
I'm not a lazy hacker. I am a tad overzealous though, and I bit off more than I could chew a few years ago. All my programs and viruses were up-to-date, my zombie computers sitting idly by, trapdoors in place, Trojans ready to go. I had distractions for my distractions – I was so damn sure no one was ever gonna see me. I was gonna go do the biggest hack of all time – I'd be a hacking god. I had thought about doing a slightly smaller hack before my big one, but I didn't want to show my hand before the time. I don't know what possessed me to hack SHIELD, of all places. Maybe one of my daemons got loose. Ha, get it?
Anyways, I did it. I sent an email to the one of the SHIELD PR people – Mark, from Amanda, who had contaminated her work computer when she drag and dropped an infected excel chart from her flashdrive, which had been stuck into her equally infected PC. Mark opened it, of course, he was infatuated with Amanda. That wasn't luck - she was one of the few people whose email I monitored. Mark infected his work computer with the email, which buried a cute little daemon in his D drive. Any CDs he stuck in there were screwed; and he did stick a lot of CDs into his work computer. They, in turn, were stuck into other work computers, which was only half the plan. It was good to have all these zombie computers – they were my distractions. They would lure and confuse whatever anti-malware stuff SHIELD had concocted (probably not store-bought) and keep it at bay and away from the main bug. Or even better, they would infect the anti-virus. You can do that. I'd check your systems if I were you. Make sure there aren't any exceptions under the programs that it checks... unless they've hidden those from your view.
Not many of the computers stayed infected though – it turned out that SHIELDS stuff was actually really good. But my bugs adapted, and some hit home and buried themselves in programs that were overlooked by the firewalls and whatnot. One made it into the anti-virus, and the anti-virus promptly shut itself down – making the system vulnerable for exactly .0003 seconds (the time it took itself to execute a previous version of itself). The backup never made it – because that's where my "normal people skills" came in. Wouldn't it make sense, if you found out that you were infected, to revert back to a previous state where you weren't? Wouldn't that mean that the first place you should infect isn't the program itself, but it's backup?
It was sketchy, trapdoors are tricky to install and sometimes the first type of bug to be detected; but they're invaluable. They do exactly what you think they do, they install a backdoor, a sort of hole in your system that allows other bugs – from you or another hacker – inside. And for the six hours that it took the tech group to realize that they were compromised, my virus ran amok. Like a, quiet amok though - they weren't supposed to know I was there.
And then the shit hit the fan. They were good. They traced everything, all the way back, through every digital footprint that my stupid virus left. Instead of destroying the virus and bugs like most programs do, they followed its trail through all the files and programs it walked through, back out the trapdoor, the two hundred and fifty seven people with the zombie computers, Mark's computer, and Amanda's computer. They detained her and demanded to know why she had planted a bug in the system. She had no idea. Why would she, she was just a helpless PR lady.
They confiscated her stuff. SHIELD can do that apparently. They got on her computer and went through everything. Emails, internet history, questionable photos, flashdrives, and charts - they found my chart that I had attached to my fake resume. It had bug footprints all over it; my bug's footprints.
They traced the IP address – basically it's your computers unique name. Of course I didn't use my own, but I did install my own programs onto it – how else was I supposed to get the bug through? That computer was tracked and taken into custody – even though I had smashed the hard drive and tossed it when I realized what they were doing. Without that, their trail stopped cold. But they had a huge piece of evidence; they had captured my daemons and trapdoors and didn't destroy them – they picked them apart. Kind of like analyzing who painted a picture by watching the brushstrokes and looking at similar works of art by the same artist. It's one of the few reasons that I'm glad I didn't hack someone else before moving on to SHIELD – they would've recognized my work.
Unfortunately when it came to SHIELD though, my "normal people" skills failed. These were not normal people – they didn't give up because they couldn't find the source. They just tried even harder. That… might have something to do with the type of information that I stole though. And what I did with it.
I had dumped it. When I realized how ridiculously insane these people were I just dropped everything right into the internet. I scattered it over thousands of websites – as a background, a redirect site, a file that randomly just downloaded when you clicked on some obscure domain. It made rabbit trails and wild goose-chases for them to go after, instead of going after me. I was so lucky when a few "clever" people pulled together all the information they found and pooled it in different places. SHIELD would come in and shut down those websites with the info, but they kept popping up until the perpetrators were brought in. They were tried – but they weren't the hacker. The trials took up most of SHIELDS attention for a good four years, and I even saw Fury himself one night on the TV, clearly trying to contain himself as he talked about how he would capture whoever was responsible for the security breach.
I knew it would never end – we were all so equally matched. But all I had to do was watch my step; and as long as they didn't do something completely insane and I didn't fuck up, we'd remain an equal distance away from each other. And we did – for seven long years they never got any closer to the hacker, and I was able to lead a semi-normal low-profile hacking life.
But it turned out the "I" in SHIELD did stand for insane, and the "D" for desperate. Because that was the only reason for Fury to currently be glaring out at me from the TV, standing alongside the same god who nearly killed us all not that long ago.