Thank you, DeutschePanzerIV, for favoriting my story! I'm dedicating this chapter to you.

Also, hilariously enough, the title of this chapter is precisely one character too long. It is meant to be: Chapter 2: Hacker? But I Barely Know Her!


Monday, June 7th, 1999

Leo didn't like lotteries. He believed in earning his money for himself. That was why he never gambled, and that was also why he sat in front of his school computer, not a dollar to his name, and working furiously away, typing his regrets away, wishing he'd at least paid a little attention to the lotto.

On a different note, in one month, a Palm Pilot III would be used to transfer $3 million USD from Nokia Ventures to Confinity, the predecessor of . Peter Thiel, Confinity's CEO, owned this Palm Pilot. If Leo could get his hands on it…

Then nothing would happen. The payment process has little to do with the Palm Pilot itself. The actual money being transferred is handled at the server-level. No idiot would let $3 million USD out of the gate from a Palm Pilot without at least a little forewarning. That means that the transfer was premeditated and planned out. I've got to find a way to get to those servers, while still being across the Atlantic, sitting here in France.

It was an arduous task, that was for certain. Even if Leo could narrow down a method to hack into Confinity's servers, he'd still have to find a way to transfer the money out of the bank accounts without a trace. Or at the very least, in a way that made getting the money back so difficult that no one would bother trying.

Such methods did not exist for normal people like him.

Leo cupped his forehead in his hands as he stressed over this problem. He'd need a lot of things to go right in order for this dumb plan to pan out.

But if he could do it…

He could change the past.

Protect Charlotte.

Stop her uncle.

Everything.

So there Leo was, typing away at a computer that used to run Windows 98, now hosting one of his favorite flavors of Linux: Debian.

Until a hand clasped onto his shoulder.

"Leo, get back to the typing program! I don't want to see you messing around with these computers again, or I'm not letting you back in here next Monday," his teacher's voice reprimanded.

She was Mrs. Durand, though Leo barely remembered her name.

Regardless, Leo still had a month left before the transfer. He couldn't waste it all away sitting around in a classroom at school. This was his compromise. So he had to think fast.

"Mrs. Durand, I am doing the typing exercise," he replied. "Look, I can type really quickly."

He then typed at 100 WPM. His normal records of 150s to 170s were too far away, between becoming his child self and not having the opportunity to type all too often for the past two years.

"Well, whatever you're doing, it doesn't look like the typing assignment. Get back to work," she scolded before leaving.

How did that even work? I've got to get better at lying.


"Hey, Leo, want to play some football with us?" a kid on Leo's right asked him.

Another jumped to his left. "Yeah, we just got a new ball, and you were talking about how bad the old one was last Friday, so you should be pumped!"

Leo tried to fake a grin of excitement. Playing football in the courtyard during recess was always a fun activity for him, but he hadn't actually played the game since secondary school. It was about then that he really got into computers.

He did not remember anything about an old ball. He wasn't even sure what these kids' names were.

"Yeah, uh, for sure," he nervously spoke.

~Thirty Minutes Later~

Man, I was really worried that I'd out myself to the other boys, but I don't think they caught on. And that was probably the most fun I've had in a while!

Leo fist pumped in his now sweaty tee. The two boys from before approached him again.

"Hey, guys, that was–" Leo was cut-off.

"Wow, man, you sucked that game," the first one, whose name he had learned was Robert, told him with disappointment in his voice.

"Yeah, it's like you've lost all your skill overnight," Jacob followed up, rubbing a hand through his blond hair. "Felt like I was watching a noobie play."

And, immediately, all of Leo's confidence evaporated. He must've gotten a little rusty.

"R-right, sorry, guys. Guess I was just off my A-game today. A-anyways, uh, wanna talk about something else?" he sweatdropped. "Like, uh, Pokémon!"

"Pokémon?" Jacob asked. "What's that?"

Pokémon Red and Blue were released in February, 1996 for Japan. It was three years later when the games came to France, slated for three months after the time Leo had landed in: September. Not June.

Shoot!

"Haha, you're pretty weird today, Leo. You do you, mate, but I want a good game tomorrow, you hear?" Robert chuckled. "See ya later, bro."

Jacob trotted behind him, leaving Leo to his thoughts.

I can't be what they want me to be – who they want me to be, rather. So what should I do?

Leo thought for a good moment before coming to a conclusion: He didn't care.

I can't please everyone. I have a job that I've set out to do, where people who don't even know who I am are relying on me. I can't afford to waste time on some randos, especially if it jeopardizes my 'mission'.

Leo knew he was being cold. Leo knew he'd come to regret what he was doing. But, in his mind, he believed that not doing it would be something he'd regret even more.

Charlotte was out there… somewhere… and she was waiting for him. Even if she wouldn't remember him. At least she'd be safe.


Tuesday, June 8th, 1999

Tuesday was not computer lab day. Leo did not care.

During lunch he worked. During recess he worked. He didn't work during class, but he would've if he could've.

The teachers, of course, would not have been okay with Leo's constant access to the school computers. That's why he didn't ask them.

Leo decided on bringing a screwdriver to school to unscrew the knob to the computer lab. He then completely destroyed the locking mechanism by fiddling with it. He didn't intend to do so, but because it did the job, he decided to leave it like that when he screwed the knob back on.

Suddenly, he had himself a permanently unlocked door that no one would notice until computer lab day next Monday. That meant he'd have to work fast.

First, he had done some inspection into 's service with an account he'd created using his mom's banking details. She did not know, of course.

Curiously enough, he didn't find anything right away. No unnecessary data when making some test transfers. Nothing coming in that wasn't required.

So perhaps, he instead had to find an endpoint in the private API that was unintentionally exposed.

Leo spent his whole lunch break on this. He didn't find anything of note.

When Leo returned home, he found himself aggravated, but more at himself than anything else.

I shouldn't be so impatient. These things take time. The best hackers can take years before they find anything useful in a system. You aren't alone. You're just on the first step. You've got to keep going.

But Leo didn't have years.

Leo opted to continue his work with the new iMac. It wasn't really his mom's, but his dad's. Though his father lived in America at the time. His father being American was the whole reason why Leo understood enough English to use the thing in the first place.

After a little finagling, he had his setup at school practically ready for home. His fingers creaked as he cracked them, a strange feeling of energy channeling through his body. It was time to test his skills.


Monday, June 14th, 1999

Summer break was inches away from his face. Leo couldn't wait.

But more importantly, a huge breakthrough was now in his clutches.

When editing his account details, he noticed that the API endpoint called to grab his account information and edit it directly executed his token in SQL.

With no escaping. His token wasn't escaped.

Direct user input into an SQL server was, quite possibly, the simplest fool's move when it came to security design. But Leo didn't blame them. The vulnerability, as a thought experiment, was only first discovered in 1998. Security updates hadn't taken the world by storm just yet.

But what was Leo going to do with this information? He could easily see all user information and edit it at will, but he was still short of making requests to the bank to withdraw some money. No, he still needed to be clever about this.

Nokia Venture's transfer of $3 million USD would come from a account and be sent to a account. With his current abilities, Leo could edit their account information, but he couldn't directly change any payment details or edit his account balance.

Instead, he'd have to get clever, and it'd be rather tight. Especially if he wanted to go by undetected.

With a plan cooking in his head, Leo got to work. But he remembered something more: Money isn't hard to track, and that was out of his expertise. There was something that he'd have to do if he wanted to use the dough he was working on earning.

And someone to call.


Thank you all so much for reading! I think that this whole favorite goals "guilt" thing is working to give me motivation haha. Or maybe it's just my own personal interest in finding ways to hack into stuff that's exciting me. The vulnerabilities for may or may not exist; I don't know, I wasn't alive in 1999. I do know that just about everything said here, though, could have been real. SQL injection attacks are the most common type of security vulnerability and give the hacker full control over a database. Well, pretty much full control.

When doing research for this chapter, I found out that an eBay security vulnerability existed from 1999 to 2006 (the time period that my character has access to) that involved cross-site scripting (meaning that you could just steal anyone's banking information by putting up an item listing and having them view it while logged in).

Anyways, enough boring tech stuff. Thank you all, again, and have an amazing week!

Favorites Goal for next chapter: 3.

Chapter 3: The Heist. And Friends.