《An Exploration of Vulnerabilities》 Hints of Meltdown

Hints of Meltdown

"Finally!" Shouted a young adult while he tried to get his breathing under control. After breathing normally again, he fished with his right hand the keys from his pockets. "Shit. Where was it again?" muttered he under his breath while searching in his backpack. "Ah, there it is." while unlocking the door in front of him with a smile. "John! There you are, " Came a familiar voice from the kitchen, "I thought you will come later today?" "Mum, I was lucky to get on the first train to Cologne. I did get to eat on my way -" While taking his shoes off, his mother interrupted him, "Really? You don''t want to eat Spaghetti? Your sister did make it especially for you." "Oh, " Scratching his head, "well, in that case, I am hungry." As a response, he heard his mother laughing. "Hey, you cannot survive on fast-food." John tried to justify himself as he took the dish out of the fridge and heated it in the microwave, "Where is Maria?" "She is in school, she should come in 3 hours." answered his mother as she cleaned the table. A short repeating beep sounded out from the microwave. After eating the dish, John leaned back on his chair while contemplating, "Intel really fucked up. Although it wasn''t their fault at all. I mean who did expect that it would be possible to exploit the performance feature of their CPU''s design to read data out of other processes memory locations which should not be possible to be accessible and if that wasn''t bad enough, our security is based on this, memory isolation my ass." A sigh escaped him involuntary. "What''s with that long face, brother." Came from the voice behind him. John turned his head a little bit and saw her. "Hey, shouldn''t you be in school?" Voiced he with furrowed eyebrows at her. "Really John? Look at the clock," Answered she with an eye roll. "Wait. It''s already sixteen?" With haste, he walked to his room while cursing, "Fuck!" "How was the Spaghetti anyway? John." Called his sister after him. "Y-yeah it was the best!" Came her answer as he rushed upstairs. "Can he at least clean the dishes, but no, what could be more important than his little sister." She complained with a pout while she was cleaning up the dishes.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. "He didn''t thank me at all!" Shouted she in her room, "this jerk!" Clearly annoyed she laid on her bed and used her smartphone to surf. "Hehe," while quoting, "Hijacked Mozilla Firefox Addon stole email and steam accounts from their victims." A small movement with her finger, she clicked on the first video and fast forwarded it to a point. "Dr. Boering can you tell me what you think the criminal did?" Asked the anchorwoman in her nice blue summer dress Hmph that dress should be mine. The thought of not having such a dress irked Maria. "Well, Hannah, we, Dr. Hannes and I are not really certain if we are dealing with a hacker group or just a hacker, but what we did found are traces of parts from other malicious code that were already in the wild so to speak, one of such was the worm which used the Steam API to spread and a bug in the Steam beta to infect other computers. Personally, I think that we are dealing with a group, so I will refer the attacker as a group. What they did use or should I say exploit for their criminal activity is the Steam API, so that they can spread far in Steam after the initial infection with the Firefox Extension." "How comes the virus could avoid the anti-virus solutions?" Questioned the anchorwoman again as Dr. Boering drank a little from his glass on the table. "It''s a worm. Well, they exploited a new evasion technique called Process Doppelg?nging and interestingly enough it used the same approach in a different way like the evasion technique called Process Hollowing. It abused the Windows NTFS Transactions and an outdated implementation of Windows process loader so that our anti-virus solutions are most impotent against it at the moment." "Which Windows version is affected?" Dr. Boering coughed. "All. All versions of Microsoft Windows are affected." Hannah''s jaw dropped to the ground. "I think Microsoft will patch it shortly. So what this means is that they own your machine at this moment. What I find strange is that they used something to access the account data without a keylogger. At the moment we are cooperating with other researchers to get the full picture of this exploit." "Oh, so - " A tap and the video was closed. "Really! Lol! I really want to see their expressions when they finally get the full picture!" Laughing and rolling in her bed many times, while she tried to imagine it.
For further understanding Wikipedia article about Meltdown Meltdown Meltdown PoC Sourcecode Hackernews article about Meltdown Hackernews - Modern processors Hackernews - Chrome extension hijacked Kaspersky article about Steam Stealers Hackernews article about Process Doppelg?nging Do you want a rat?

Do you want a rat?

In a dark room only illuminated by the light of the monitor on the table with heavy noises from the cooling fan in the background as the boy moved his fingers across the keyboard in a chaotic order, his mouse moved in his right hand as if it wants to escape an imaginary cat. The typing on the keyboard increased in speed and noise, while the movement of his mouse slowed down. ?Come on. Come on! He should be dead damn it! How much fucking HP got he?!¡° Raised the boy his voice from a mutter as he took his hand from the mouse and slammed down, hard. ?Fuck! Shit! T-hat hurts!¡°Cried he out as pain eloped him in an instance. Before he could curse further he heard a heavy knock on his door. ?Gerry, are you awake already? School will begin soon!¡°Called Gerry¡®s mother out to him. Groaning at the thought of going to school, he got up from his chair and made himself ready. ?Yeah, yeah, mom, I won¡® t be late again!¡° ?I hope not, else you can forget playing with your computer!¡°Said his mother which the boy ignored as he heard her many times saying the same. Fuck School! And so with a heavy heart he went to school. Another boring day. Gerry thought while he tried to stop his yawn that wanted to escape his mouth. He looked to his right and saw that his classmate was already sleeping without a care. That guy¡­ A little glance at the teacher and he knew already if the piercing glare directed at his classmate was not a hint to his classmate misfortune, that will befall him later after the end of the class. Have fun cleaning the blackboard later. Fortunately, his savior, the bell, gave the way for his escape. As if resurrected from the dead, he took his backpack and ran with his other classmate out of the classroom. Some of his classmates heaved a sigh in relief. Math, such a pain the exams will be. While his feet dragged him to the cafeteria, he saw at the last turn the girl he liked which brought him to stop and just stare at her, her carefully maintained blond hair, her beautiful gray colored eyes, her small sweet lips which he really wanted to kiss since he had a crush on her, together she was perfect for him. So lost in thought, he did not notice the hand which grabbed him on his shoulder, to which he jumped. ¡°Sorry, Ms. Carol wanted me to clean the blackboard. What pain man!¡± Came the voice from his friend as Gerry slowly calmed himself down. ¡°Really, fuck you, Lucas, don¡¯t scare me like that!¡± ¡°Did I scare you? Man, can you jump high!¡± Lucas laughed at him as he just shook his head. After Lucas finished laughing at him, he asked Gerry, ¡°so, did you kill the bastard?¡± ¡°No, he fucked me totally. Too much damage in just three hits. Couldn¡¯t take his health less than half down, before he raped my corpse.¡± Gerry ended his answer with a sigh as frustration overcame him when he thought about the fight again. ¡°Shit, that class is OP as hell. Sorry, I couldn¡¯t help you at all, man he killed me in one blow.¡± His friend told him as he leaned on the wall, obviously annoyed as well. ¡°Well, even together we would die easily to him, fuck.¡± Gerry tried to remember the skills the enemy player used on his character.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. ¡°Hey, let¡¯s hack his account.¡± Lucas words received a blank stare from Gerry. ¡°I got a RAT from a friend who bought it from the Darknet.¡± ¡°What¡¯s a fucking rat?¡± Questioned Gerry him as he tried to understand what his friend meant. ¡°It stands for ¡®Remote Access Trojan¡¯, a tool we could use to steal his account, just imagine it! His expression when he cannot log into his account!¡± ¡°Okay. Alright, so how can we steal his account with a ¡®rat¡¯?¡± Asked Gerry not believing his friend. ¡°It¡¯s simple, we do it like the Greeks did; send him a ¡®nude photo¡¯ of some girl which will be our trojan horse. Then we can use the keylogger function of the RAT to log his keystrokes until we have his password.¡± Lucas grin widened by the end of his master plan. ¡°Shit, really? How does it work exactly?¡± Gerry could not hide his curiosity as he leaned a little bit forward in anticipation. ¡°The general gist is that you have two components, a client, and a server, you use the client as a command and control center while the server will infect his computer. After that, the server will run persistently in the background while it tries to connect to the client.¡± ¡°Shouldn¡¯t it be in reverse? I mean shouldn¡¯t our command center not be the server and our trojan the client?¡± That perplexed Gerry as he asked his friend. ¡°eh, they did use this model back then, but after the widespread use of firewalls, I think, they then used the ¡®reverse-socket connection¡¯ to bypass the software firewall.¡± ¡°Ah, yeah right, they shouldn¡¯t be able to connect because the incoming connections should be blocked by the firewall. Eh, cool, didn¡¯t know that.¡± Muttered Gerry as he thought about the way connections are established. ¡°So, should be easy then to fuck him up? ¡°Easy peasy lemon squeezy! I just need to configure my router so it can port forward my connections to the client.¡± ¡°But how can we actually contact him? I mean how do you want to send the trojan to him?¡± Gerry voiced his concern for the important step of all. ¡°That simple enough, just infect one of the girls in our class, then use her Facebook profile to bait him. The last step is just sending the trojan in form of a ¡®nude picture¡¯ of her.¡± Without blinking his friend tried to reassure him, but instead, Gerry looked at his friend as if he were crazy. ¡°Fuck, you¡¯re crazy man. That¡¯s insane!¡± At the thought of infecting the girls in his class, he shuddered in terror while sweating a little bit. ¡°Chill, dude, it¡¯s easy and no one will find out. I will even use a VPN for it, okay? I just need you to chat with one of the girls and send her a trojan.¡± ¡°B-but what¡¯s with the Anti-Virus? Let¡¯s just grind more, then we can easy hunt him down.¡± He stumbled on his first word as he tried to change his friend¡¯s mind on the matter. ¡°Haha, naive! Man, what Anti-Virus, it¡¯s FUD, fully undetectable. The RAT came with an inbuilt FUD Crypter service.¡± His friend laughed at his ¡®naive¡¯ question while Gerry furrowed his brow as he tried to understand how it could be fully undetectable. Before he could voice his other concerns, the bell rung. Both of them went to the classroom, however, at the door to the classroom his friend stopped him only to whisper him, ¡°just chat a girl up, send her my trojan you will get in Skype and then we will profit, just kidding, no then we will steal the bastard¡¯s account.¡± In his home, Gerry went directly to his computer and booted it up. Not long he logged in Skype, at first he checked his messages and there he saw that his friend Lucas did send him the trojan with a reminder which reads, ¡°don¡¯t start it, just download it and send it to some girl, then give me heads up.¡± Sighing in defeat he started the download of the file, while he logged into facebook and chatted with several girls as he planned his approach how to send the trojan, which was luckily disguised as a legitimate PDF. Perhaps a copy of homework? Yeah, that could work. Not long he found the perfect opportunity to send the trojan, but he hesitated and thought, wait let¡¯s just ask Lucas. He sent a message to Lucas, ¡°Lucas, are you really sure that it¡¯s secure?¡± His answer, ¡°yeah, absolutely, just do your job and I mine.¡± I hope this doesn¡¯t bite me in the ass, shit, who am I kidding. His last resistance broken, and with a heavy heart he sent the trojan to a girl who he knew was shy and had feelings for him. Victims

Victims

A short beep sounded out in the room before a person slowly stirred in his bed. Unhappily, he threw his cover, as he tried to get up. Man, I¡¯m tired as fuck. He yawned as he took his cozy swivel chair and checked which message had awoken him. ¡°Hey man, do you want to know what I got?¡± Read the message from ¡®WhoAmI337¡¯, the offender who disturbed his sleep. His only response at that was groaning as he tried to comprehend why his friend thought that it would possibly interest him. ¡°Are you awake?¡± A message minutes thereafter. ¡°Get up! LUCAS1¡± Another. Are you my fucking mom?! Lucas screamed in his mind as he massaged his forehead because he knew he would get a headache later. He did not want to delay anymore further, so he, with a frown, wrote a response to his friend ¡®WhoAmI337¡¯. ¡°What¡¯s so important that you must wake me up? Are you fucking with me?1¡± ¡° I bought a RAT from the Darknet! 8=)¡± Lucas really wanted to close the Skype app because of his annoying friend, instead, he typed, ¡°how much. Fuck I don¡¯t care. Did you test it?¡± ¡° Yeah Its functional1¡± Read the response. Are you that happy to tell me this?! Already he regretted his decision not to close the app. Shit, I will just sleep in class. ¡°Do you want it? ¡± As he read that message, he had the urge to really strangle ¡®WhoAmI337¡¯. Is he lying? And did he really buy it? Shit, I will just ask him if it¡¯s FUD. His decision final, ¡°is it fud?¡± ¡°Ofc ¡± He could already see his friend¡¯s smug smile behind the short message. Before he could type again, he saw the ZIP file sent by his friend. A short cursor movement, he clicked on the download button. Minutes later, he tried to unzip it, but the file asked him after a password. Are fucking with me?! Son of a bitch! In fury, he assaulted his keyboard. ¡°password1111¡± ¡°Eh. Ups. It¡¯s just your name in small letters. Rofl¡± After Lucas ¡®thanked¡¯ his friend, he unzipped the file and took a look at the files in the folder. There it is. jRAT.exe Without wasting a second thought he started the executable which showed a window where he found the functions he could take on an infected computer and the build button for the server. Wait. No alert? Alright, it seems he is right. Although he found it strange that his Anti-Virus did not alert him, he forgot soon about it and he slowly got to work on the configurations of the RAT. After the initial configurations he built his server with minimal configuration so that he could test it on his computer without damage, or so he thought. Successfully tested, he explored the options he had for building a server. Install locations. Rootkit. Nice! Persistence. A must have. FUD crypting! Wow he didn¡¯t lie. What¡¯s that? PDF exploit. Google is my friend. While he explored and tested each option, a message from Gerry popped up. ¡°He got me. -.-¡± That player got him too?! Fucking cheater! He got me in one blow!The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. ¡°Tell u in school.¡± Another popup. Hmm¡­ It should have the keylogger function. Yes, there it is. Heh. We could hack the fucker, but how should we do it? Perhaps I could use my female alt char ingame to catfish him and then? How do I send him a trojan? He wouldn¡¯t believe my char, but if I could show him a real female facebook profile¡­ Yeah, that would work! Gerry should be onboard. A short glance at the clock on his desktop showed him that he should hurry before he will be late at school. Shit, I need to hurry up! He let his computer in standby mode while he ran to school as if the devil was after him. Back at home again, Lucas took something to eat out of the fridge while he thought about which port he should choose. Ah, well, I will just go with 1337. After he finished eating he went to his room and woke his computer from the standby mode. Wait, my IP is dynamic. I need a static IP. Come Google show me the way. ¡°No-IP Domain IP¡±, as he queried the search engine, the first hit gave him an intriguing answer to his problem. He then went to the website and registered himself there with a domain name. He also downloaded the tool that should update the domain name every moment when he got a new leased IP. Everything should be configured. So now it¡¯s build time. Install location will be 1337 folder in %appdata%. Rootkit check. Persistence, too. FUD crypting. Yes. PDF exploit. That too. After successfully building the trojan he sent a message to Gerry with the trojan file. Now I wait. Meanwhile in an orderly room with cute arranged plush animals there sat a girl on her computer who was messaging her friends. ¡°I really hate math. T_T¡± Another message from Gerry. She ignored her other chats and focused only on the chat with Gerry. Her heart was beating so fast that she could hear it, while she felt that her face was heating up. Finally a long conversation! H-he should be interested in m-me, r-right? She hesitated a little bit as she made up her mind. ¡°Me, too I even don¡¯t understand the homework he gave us :¡¯(¡± I did my homework but it would be awkward if I say that I did it. Hopefully, he doesn¡¯t think that I am dumb like these bitches who are orbiting around him. Hmph! ¡°Really? Luckily, I¡¯ve done them with the help of a friend. I can give mine to you if you want. ¡± His? Yes, yes, yes. Another thing to cherish! While she was in a merry mood, a pop up with a pdf file named ¡®IhateMathHomework¡¯ was sent to her. She blushed as she accepted the download and after that clicked on the PDF file. In the background, her Avira Anti-Virus did already scan the file as she downloaded it. It did not find anything suspicious. Fuck yeah. I got a victim! Hehe. Let¡¯s see what she got? In the user interface of the RAT, there was a pop up with the message, ¡°connection established.¡± It showed the IP from Germany. Before he could test the keylogger function, he got a message from Gerry. ¡°I sent her the pdf file under the pretense of math homework. What happens if she sees that it¡¯s not it?¡± ¡°Easy. Just say you sent the false pdf. Even then it should give an error msg.¡± He answered Gerry as he opened the keylogging function and saw what the girl so typed. ¡°Did it work?¡± Yeah, yeah. Of course, it will work! Pussy! ¡°Yeah.¡± He sent a short message to him as he concentrated on his task to lure the enemy player with his female alt into the trap. Show me how desperate you are for just a ¡®girl¡¯. You will certainly masturbate on her nude photos, eh? Loser. A zombie apocalypse

A zombie apocalypse

My botnet. Hundreds of thousand bots. What a feeling. A buzz sounded out. The smartphone that vibrated on the table shook him out of his thoughts, and because of that, he flailed uncontrollably in his chair until he could calm himself down. Motherfucker! I hope it¡¯s important! Cursing while grabbing his phone, he but stopped because of his left hand that was in a bag of chips before to which he cursed once more after wiping his hand on his t-shirt. Damn! That is my favorite shirt! Unlocking his phone after many tries did not improve his mood in the slightest. So with a click of his tongue, he opened the Telegram app to see who the motherfucker was that disturbed him. Oh? Finally a mission! Reading the message from the secret chat did the trick to improve his mood. ¡°So who is on it?¡± Typed he with a wide grin as he thought about the task, however his grin transformed into a frown as he thought about a particular person. Motherfucker! Hope that bastard isn¡¯t on board. Just because I¡¯m using tools! Fuck that motherfucker! An invite was sent to him, ¡°Join discord: https://discord.gg/UT9eKNf¡±, and with a reminder, ¡°take a look at the list in ¡®stay-put¡¯. And pls for the love of God use the fcking VPN!!!¡± Why discord of all places? Shrugging he put the thought behind him and activated his bought ProtonVPN service, the police will never get me, before he joined the discord server. The channel ¡®stay-put¡¯ welcomed him in its generic way. He ignored it and begun reading the ¡®mission debriefing¡¯. Seconds after he completed reading the debriefing, a message popped up from this motherfucker. Damn that bastard is on it, too! ¡°Fuck You! Wiz0f0z! Go suck some dicks instead¡±, typed he in the channel as he remembered what the bastard did to him. Fucking smug wiz. ¡°Oh? You want to offer your girls skid? :upside_down: : wink: : yum:¡± Countered a clone of ¡®Wiz0f0z¡¯ playfully, as he unleashed another burn by rubbing more salt into ¡®K1ng43x¡¯s wound, ¡°K1ng43x in the end I will get all your girls : stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:¡± Before ¡®K1ng43x¡¯ could type his aggressive thoughts on ¡®Wiz0f0z¡¯, ¡®Edict62656e65¡¯ popped up, ¡°ALL OF YOU STOP THAT! RETARDS VOICE CHAT!!!!11¡± Eh. We have a voice chat? Taking a quick look at the voice channel ¡®op-zombie-apocalypse¡¯ he wasted no time to connect to it. ¡°Yo. King, new girls?¡± Hearing a deep voice after connecting, King made a disgusting face. ¡°Fuck of -¡±, but King was interrupted by ¡®Wiz0f0z¡¯ as he challenged King, ¡°Really? Hehe. You cannot hide your girls from me. I am The Wizard! I will get all you little zombie girls. I promise you this after the operation.¡± Fearing the worse at the ¡®challenge¡¯ threat, King tried to reason with the Wizard. ¡°Damn! Chill dude! I will give you a new girl I got yesterday! And the best is, she is 15 dude!¡± Please, don¡¯t steal my bots. ¡°Idiots! What did I send to you both earlier? Always the same with you two, what are you? Married? You know the mission guys, so prep everything. Let me know if you all are ready for the first wave in 3 hours.¡± Came the cold voice from ¡® Edict62656e65¡¯ who reminded them of the mission they have got. ¡°Sorry, Eddie. So how much is the reward?¡± King leaned himself forward in his chair as he could imagine the possible money sum he would get after the completion of the mission. ¡°How many zombies do you got, King?¡±This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. ¡°100.000 zombies.¡± Told King with great confidence as he was proud of his zombie army. ¡°Pff! Just 100.000?! What did you infect anyway? Haha! Pathetic! Just pathetic!¡± Laughing at King¡¯s ¡®confidence¡¯ was Wizard. ¡°Shut up! I bound my server with the executable of jRAT and just sold it to some Script-Kiddies at ¡®hacker forums¡¯.¡± Elaborated King his perfect plan. After all, Script-Kiddies are the best victims. They collect for me the slaves while I am sitting on my throne. Ha! Wizard laughed so hard as if he could die at any moment by lack of oxygen, while Eddie said nothing for a short moment. ¡°Get on the preparations. First wave will be lead by King. Second Wizard. Last wave the rest of our group will join us to combine our output. Understood?¡± ¡°Yes, sir! Hehe.¡± ¡°Y-yeah.¡± John knew with certainty that he forgot to thank his sister to which he felt guilty about. My sister and I were very close before, but since I moved out of the house, it wasn¡¯t the same bond anymore we both once had. Closing his eyes for a little moment to push all his distractions aside, he took a brief pause to concentrate on his breathing as he used the knowledge he gained from his Zen master to regain his inner calmness. 1. 2. 3. 4. Pause. Hold it. 5. 6. 7. Exhale. 8. Repeat 4 times. The memory of how his Zen master instructed him at meditation popped up in his mind at the breathing exercise. His inner calmness restored he took his laptop out of his backpack and turned it on. He chose to boot Windows 7 up, while he made himself comfortable on the chair. My back needs this chair. He knew that the launcher of the MMORPG was scheduled on startup, so he waited for it to finish the login process. After the login, he chose to play with his high-level PvP character to relief some stress he accumulated after finishing the thesis at the last moment. Never doing it again. After the world finished loading, he was alerted by the game of messages from his fellow PvP guild member. ¡°Yesterday I killed two noobs in their own allied village ¡± Of course, you are manic who want to kill everything that moves. The next messages read, ¡°Even as high level NPC were trying to kill me ¡± and, ¡°Hey, I found a girl in game lol. She¡¯s sweet dude but her pics wow ¡± John could only shake his head at this fool, while he whispered the guy asking him after a good PvP location where he could vent his stress on unsuspecting newbies. In the in game chat, he saw that the guy whispered something more after the location. ¡°MyBigSwordWillKill whispered you: Hey, I sent you the girl¡¯s nude pic. Take a look at Skype. Thank me later ¡± What¡¯s with this guy¡­ Even thinking him a fool, he opened Skype and saw that the guild member did send him the photo. Wait a moment. What the actual fuck? That isn¡¯t a png file or other formats. No. It¡¯s just an executable with an image ico as an icon for the file. Really? ¡°Are u shitting me???¡± ¡°She is hot yeah. I will try to get her to meet me irl ¡± Was his only answer to which he facepalmed so hard that it slapped loudly. He tried to ignore the file completely as he moved his character to the location, but he could not really shake himself out of his curiosity and ultimately closed the game. He downloaded the file in a shared folder for virtual machines. However, before he could complete the download his internet connection was interrupted. Telekom with their problems. Should have convinced mom to change the internet provider. As he waited for his router to successfully connect, he noticed how many minutes already passed; suspecting something fishy, he pondered why it needed so long, the problem is on their end. I know that such a problem is not a rarity in Telekom, but to need more than 30 minutes already is unacceptable. Because he had nothing to do, he took out his smartphone and tried to connect with the mobile data to check online. What?! Even the LTE is down? Could it be maintenance? Not possible, else they would announce it before and even then it couldn''t be that the complete LTE is down, too. Right? Am I the only one? I need to check the situation asap. ¡°Shitty Telekom!¡± On the way out of the house, he heard his sister cursing at her lost connection to the world wide web. There should be a spot where the Vodafone LTE is reachable. He hurried himself through the streets as he neared a popular caf¨¦. Arriving in a nick of time he connected his phone to the LTE and could successfully browse. So let''s see¡­ Error 503. Telekom website down too?! That¡¯s¡­ - A couple nearby shook him out of his thoughts, ¡°- huh? My handy cannot connect to the FreeWifi of Cologne? Strange, earlier I could surf.¡± Said the man to the woman, while she too tried to connect to the Wifi. What could possibly cause such disturbance? Internal problems? They aren¡¯t really incompetent to such a degree. No, it must be something external. But what? Shit, forget it, I will just go home and take nap. There is nothing to do but to wait for more information. Shrugging his shoulders he went home. After waking up from a 90 minutes sleep, he went again to the caf¨¦ to check the news on his smartphones. The first headline of a news article read: ¡°DDoS-Attack on Telekom brings German internet down¡± Well, shit. Time to wear the white hat

Time to wear the white hat

Late in the night, Gerry couldn¡¯t sleep at all, turning every few seconds back and forth to find relief in his bed, but guilt plagued him in his deepest mind. I don¡¯t care about here at all! He tried to justify his actions, but instead, his mind drifted to the girl he might possibly hurt in exchange for what exactly? Although he didn¡¯t love the girl whom he took advantage at all, he can¡¯t ignore the feeling that he somehow betrayed himself; didn¡¯t he promised her to be the best man? Even with the best effort to try sleeping, the bad thoughts didn¡¯t want to leave him, no, they assailed his mind like a horde of unruly barbarians, screaming at his hypocrisy! With no escape in sight, he turned to the only path his mind provided, to confront. Sitting on his bed with his phone on his sweaty hands, he tried to think what he should do. Should I tell the girl? No! That¡¯s just plain dumb. In the end, he decided to call his friend who brought him the trouble anyways. Come on! Take the fucking call! After countless unsuccessfully tries to call his friend, he stopped and laid himself on the back on his bed as he stared at the white ceiling. All of a sudden his phone played his ringtone, abruptly shaking him out of the stupor. He grabbed his phone and accepted the call with his trembling right hand right away. ¡°WHAT IS IT, MAN?!¡± Came the obviously irritated voice of his friend at the other end. ¡°Lucas, did you exacted our revenge?¡± Gerry thought over what to say, and he came to the conclusion that if he hurt someone then it should be worth the price paid. ¡°Eh¡­ Yeah.¡± On the definitely enthusiastic reply, he could guess that something was off about his friend. Wouldn¡¯t he normally tell everyone what he did? Lucas liked attention since I could remember. ¡°Did you or did you not?¡± Gerry couldn¡¯t shake his doubts, so he called Lucas out. Fuck. Please be worth it! ¡°WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH YOU?! Fuck! No, man! -¡± Gerry felt himself become numb while gripping his phone so hard that his sweaty hand pushed the phone out of his hand; even as the phone fell to the ground with a loud sound, his ears didn¡¯t seem to register it. He didn¡¯t know what he should do, but he knew that he promised her to be better. ¡°Lucas, just forget about it. Uninstall it from the girl. Just let us grind our shit in the game. We will beat him then,¡± Gerry took his phone from the ground and said his words resolutely with as much calm as he could muster. ¡°¡­¡± Nothing was heard from the phone for a few seconds, before Lucas answered agitated, ¡°fuck! Are you serious?! Fuck! It¡¯s too late! -¡± Interrupting Lucas with a deceptive borderline forceful tone, ¡°What do you mean it¡¯s too late?¡± He heard his friend muttering incoherent words. He waited patiently, although his is certainly wearing out. ¡°Shit, man. Fuck, how should I explain it to you? -¡± Gerry cut him off, ¡°Just tell me now: why can you not undo it?¡± ¡°Fuck, do you even know the news?¡± Asked Lucas as he dodged the question. ¡°What do you mean?¡± Confused Gerry furrowed his brows as he waited for Lucas to elaborate what he meant. ¡°Fuck, really? Some hackers took the entire internet down in Cologne!¡± ¡°Alright, okay, so no internet for how long?¡± ¡°Fuck why are you so calm, man?!¡± I¡¯m not fucking calm. I¡¯m fucking furious. ¡°Because that¡¯s not the important thing right now! Okay, just wait for the internet to be up again, then undo it.¡± ¡°Usually you would piss yourself right now¡­ -¡± At the other end, he heard a heavy sigh in defeat. ¡°Gerry, I fucked up. The friend from whom I got the RAT, just told me earlier that it has a fucking backdoor.¡± ¡°Wait you -¡± ¡°Haha. No, that¡¯s not the worse, no, the fucking bastard of a friend forgot to tell me that my infected computer was used to DDoS Telekom,¡± Lucas told him with a small sardonic chuckle, ¡°With other words, we are both fucked.¡± He just asked because he doubted it. ¡°Are you certain? How did you find it out?¡± While Gerry really wanted to punch Lucas in the face for convincing him at the endeavor, he wasn¡¯t physically there, unfortunately. ¡°Heh. The fucker who bound the backdoor with the RAT thought himself so clever that he could just hide that my fucking computer is accessing Telekom website right now with increasing threads. I just needed to open Wireshark on my other computer and let it capture the packets in promiscuous mode, filter them slowly out until I had suspicious packets who tried to do the TCP three-way-handshake to the Telekom website. Tried is the keyword because after the 2 shakes it sent packets with empty payloads to the web server to let the server try to keep the connection. And the best is: It¡¯s not one but several threads doing the same shit.¡± ¡°So?¡± I don¡¯t quite follow. ¡°Don¡¯t you understand? It¡¯s a flood of TCP connections to the server who cannot cancel them. A DDoS!¡± Clarified Lucas, then he heard a loud bang as if something was thrown, ¡°So I did the only sensible thing what you could do in such a fucking situation. Turning the router off.¡± ¡°What now?¡± ¡°Well, I¡¯m going to smoke weed and I won¡¯t go to school the next days.¡± Without warning his friend ended the call while Gerry tried to process the sentence. Didn¡¯t you say that you wanted to be clean?! ¡°FUCK!¡± And the phone kissed the wall. Waking up by the tender mercies of his mother wasn¡¯t a good idea, even if he didn¡¯t get to rest at all, after all, he should know what happens when there¡¯s even a tiny hint of being too late to school, then his mom will just wake him forcefully with cold water. Just because she couldn¡¯t get him banned from computer effectively. He just sighed as he let his feet follow the mass of school children to the school. During the time walking down the street, he let his mind drift to the thought of the girl who he betrayed. By coincidence, he noticed that he starred at a girl who was looking extremely familiar like the girl you deceived. Unbidden thoughts conquered his mind, he couldn¡¯t ignore it, so he walked slowly nearer to the girl until he could clearly see her face behind the bangs. Sorry, Sandra. Fuck. Her face didn¡¯t look very good, even though the makeup she obviously used to cover her dark circles under her eyes. Did she cry? What did Lucas to her? Shit, it¡¯s my fault. Because of my selfishness. Gerry knew that he broke the promise, he couldn¡¯t stand before his crush again, not without wiping his shame clean. So he went to the girl whom you betrayed and asked her, ¡°Hey Sandra, couldn¡¯t you sleep at all?¡± Fuck! Really? ¡®couldn¡¯t you sleep at all?¡¯ Nothing better? She looked warily at me with her weary eyes, then averted her eyes to the ground and ignored me, while she quickened her pace. He flinched at her taken action. Guilty he watched her as she fled, because what else could it be, with a blank look. What goddamn happened to her? Arriving in the classroom he tried to walk to his sit unseen, yet he was apparently noticed by a couple of classmates who one of them greeted him, ¡°Hey Gerry. How are you? And where is Lucas?¡± Too popular am I? Ha.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. ¡°Ah, hey guys, I¡¯m fine. Lucas won¡¯t come today.¡± Answered he with such an ease. It should be a skill to which I leveled it over 9000. Ha. ¡°That¡¯s good to hear.¡± Told him the guy who asked him. ¡°You mean Lucas, too, right? He¡¯s such an asshole.¡± The girl nearby made the nasty remark as she eavesdropped on the conversation. Well, I don¡¯t disagree, but he¡¯s my friend, you know? ¡°I don¡¯t know how you are friends with that creep. I saw him staring at my breast.¡± And another girl came to join them. ¡°Not only that Laura, as we both worked in a group before, did you know what he did? He just let me do all the work while he even complained that I was too slow! That asshole!¡± Lucas, you¡¯re really popular, at least from a certain point of view. ¡°Yeah, he could be an asshole, sometimes -¡± Interrupting him were the girls who made the nasty remarks, ¡°sometimes he says.¡± ¡°Well, alright, he¡¯s an asshole, but with a big heart.¡± Gerry tried to defend his friend, but the girls weren¡¯t convinced at all. ¡°Really? Gerry, you shouldn¡¯t trust that guy. He is just using you!¡± I know, but¡­ but he¡¯s not only one who¡¯s using someone. ¡°You¡¯re too nice for your own good,¡° told him, Laura. Nice? Ha. I wish. I¡¯m just a hypocrite who breaks promises left and right. ¡°Did you guys saw Sandra? She looks awful. Perhaps something happened?¡± Laura changed real subtle the topic while she fished subtly for Gerry¡¯s reaction. He unaware that she observed him, said, ¡°Yeah, I met her on the way, I tried to talk to her, but was ignored.¡± Why did I tell them that? Laura noticed how Gerry avoided eye contact while he said that, suspecting something, she confronted him, ¡°Did she asked you out? And you rejected her?¡± No, but how do I answer? Fortunately, the bell rung, signaling the beginning of the class and the end of their conversation. In Starbucks, his favorite caf¨¦, John sat on a nice comfy place next to a very pretty girl who seems to intently stare at her mobile phone with a frown. iPhone, huh. The DDoS attack? He discovered that she¡¯s reading the article about the DDoS attack which threatened to take the complete internet infrastructure of the city offline. ¡°Ah, you ISP is Telekom?¡± She blinked a few times and now noticed him. As she focused on him, she said, ¡°Oh, no, but netCologne. They are leasing from Telekom.¡± Right, how could I forget? That¡¯s just embarrassing. ¡°Sorry if I interrupted you -¡± to that she shook her head and said, ¡°Not at all.¡± ¡°- Then well, I just noticed a pretty girl with a frown. I couldn¡¯t do nothing after all my mother said that I should help a girl in need,¡± Paused he. Shit, what am I doing trying to flirt with her with such a crappy line? Fuck. He continued, ¡°What I mean is that I just want to see you smile.¡± I want to die! At first, she just stared at him for a few seconds before she bowled over as she held her stomach while laughing in her charming voice. After some time she heaved a little bit before she settled down. With a small but pretty smile, she introduced herself, ¡°What a surprise! Didn¡¯t expect someone to say such lame line to me. How about I introduce myself, I am Sarah Junker, and who are you?¡± I¡¯m not nervous. ¡°Hey, that was my best pick up line I have in my toolkit! Well, I¡¯m John Richter and did someone ever remarked to you that your smile is the prettiest in the world.¡± I hope no one complimented her smile before, although it¡¯s not really certain, she¡¯s too pretty that not many would find the confidence to approach her. He saw how her cheeks transformed from white to red. That should be a good sign. ¡°No, not really, you¡¯re the first who complimented my smile.¡± Well, it seems I won my own suckers bet. He noticed how she used her fingers to comb her very well maintained brown hair. ¡°Then I should be honored to be the first. Oh, I quite forgot that I need to continue working on my thesis.¡± Fortunately, I did already finish it. Saying that he unpacked his laptop and booted it up, afterward he made a convincing act by trying unsuccessfully to connect to the Starbucks WiFi. That should be enough. With an ashamed smile, he asked Sarah, ¡°do you know what happened to Starbucks WiFi? I cannot seem to connect to it.¡± ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s because Telekom is down. But don¡¯t worry! You can use my hotspot.¡± ¡°Really? You¡¯re not only pretty but selfless even! My little sister should learn from you.¡± He buttered her up to bed her. Haha, just kidding, no I just need you hotspot, thank you. ¡°Thank you!¡± She giggled and told him afterward, ¡°you can connect to my hotspot. It¡¯s ¡®Sarah¡¯s spot¡¯ with the password ¡®John¡¯.¡± He wasted no time to connect to it. Well, if that¡¯s not an invitation then I don¡¯t know anymore. But first, it¡¯s time to wear the white hat. Starting Skype while he checked the configurations for the virtual machine which is running Windows 7. Finished it, he directly downloaded the file into the shared folder for VirtualBox he mounted before. After the download, he started the virtual machine with the OS Windows 7 and waited. ¡°Thanks again. You did save my life, yeah.¡± To this, he got a chuckle. ¡°It¡¯s payback for the compliment. But can I ask you what you are working on? The thesis I mean.¡± She asked him full of visible curiosity. ¡°Well, the topic is ¡®Analysis of a modern Trojan¡®. If you want, I can take you step by step as I¡¯m analyzing the Trojan.¡± Offered he her to pay off his debt to her. After all thanks for the hotspot. ¡°Cool! Thanks, I was certain that I would be bored out of my skull for the next hours before I can catch my train, but you saved me.¡± Shit, you¡¯re distracting me. I thought you have other things to do. Just my luck! He coughed a little, then said, ¡°that¡¯s good, now I can truly repay for the hotspot. Who knows maybe you will learn a thing or two?¡± There she smiles again. ¡°What you will see is that I¡¯m using a virtual machine to isolate the malware from my real computer. Of course, some malware are programmed to detect such machines, however with a little bit of tweaking the configurations you can bypass the checks of the malware who won¡¯t run in the sandbox.¡± She nodded her head to that. I don¡¯t quite know if you¡¯re interested or not. ¡°Is that Ubuntu you use?¡± ¡°No, I¡¯m using ArchLinux, they¡¯ve got the cutting edge tech. Do you use Ubuntu?¡± ¡°Yes, I do have it on my home computer. I like it, it¡¯s so pretty to customize.¡± ¡°Well, anyways. So the Trojan is now on my VM and while it¡¯s defused I¡¯m starting Wireshark, a useful traffic capture tool and in the VM itself, the ProcessExplorer wouldn¡¯t be useless. The first you wanna do is to get a feeling of the malware.¡± ¡°Okay.¡± Here she nodded a little bit uncertain. How about this analogy. He elaborated, ¡°What I mean is what happens after you executed it on the virtual machine. Most of the time you will spend your time observing it like an insect. Noting it¡¯s characteristics and so on.¡± ¡°Then you check the strings in the malware, most of the time you will see them in plain text, but there some cases where the developers bothered to encrypt their malware completely. Luckily in my case, it isn¡¯t. So before we observe the Trojan in action, let¡¯s take a look at its strings.¡± In the VM he started the cmd.exe and typed the command strings with the parameters it needed to read the Trojan¡¯s strings. The output was interesting to say at least. ¡°That¡¯s really curious, don¡¯t you think? Here,¡± Pointing at a particular line, ¡°and here, too. These two strings are our hints. One: ¡®1337trolololo.servebeer.com¡® and Two: ¡®K1ngsP4r4d153.de¡®. Both are domains we can check on whois.net, for example, we can recon who registered it and when, so that¡¯s for the strings. Now Let¡¯s use Wireshark to capture the traffic of the Trojan, but let¡¯s first let the Trojan run a few minutes.¡± He executed the Trojan in the VM and started Wireshark on Arch. Then he leaned back and then said, ¡°Well, now we must filter the packets according to our needs. So now here. Do you see the packet number 71? This particular packet and it¡¯s other packet with the next sequence number, that is the TCP-three-way-handshake. Ehm, would be normally, but do you see the payload of the last packet of the three packets. It¡¯s sending a partial request to the website and¡­ What the¡­¡± Coincidence? I think not! ¡°What¡¯s up?¡± Asked she confused as he considered what it implicates. ¡°Well, now I would be damned if that isn¡¯t the cause of Telekom¡¯s problems. Zombies.¡± They are using Slowloris to keep Telekom down. That''s disconcerting. ¡°Zombies? What do you mean?¡± Looking back at her, he saw that she thought that he was kidding. No, I wish I was. ¡°Thanks for the hotspot and nice company, I guess. Unfortunately, we must part ways.¡± He bade his farewell to her as he packed his laptop. First, he walked a little bit fast, however, after going through some streets he sped up his pace to sprinting. Where was the fucking police station? Huh? The first time I want to go to a police station. It seems there is a first time for everything, truly. All your bases are belong to us

All your bases are belong to us

Early in the morning, cars were seen driven through the busy street, some plunged in small puddles, splashing rainwater against near passerby. These people in the sidewalk who were affected, cursed and complained at the drivers. In front of a red traffic light, raindrops beat against the red paint of the car, flowing quickly down the windows. ¡°Someone did apparently a rain dance.¡± The man in the other seat received an unimpressed glare from the woman on the driver seat, nevertheless, he continued as if he wasn¡¯t affected by her uncomfortable glare, ¡°Today, it¡¯s a good day.¡± His driver just sighed at his antics. ¡°In any case better than yesterday.¡± He ignored her sigh, while he took a chewing gum out of his pocket and offered, ¡°Do you want some?¡± Yeah, totally ignore my offer¡­ This woman should relax more. She reminded him whilst she concentrated on driving, ¡°Just be silent, really. Yesterday was a massive clusterfuck, Mark.¡± He took a short glance at her and saw how tired she really was. He couldn¡¯t bear the silence, so he wanted to know, ¡°So did the suspects talked?¡± ¡°Yes, a little application of good old bad cop did the trick for him. He told us everything.¡± Mark couldn¡¯t bite back his chuckle. ¡°What? Threaten him with the soap?¡± There she smiles. ¡°Hey, I just told him what everyone will tell you about jail time.¡± She tried to defend herself yet without much success if the look she received from him was an indication, so she just coughed and continued, ¡°The RAT he used on a girl and someone else, was a backdoor. We¡¯re investigating it at the moment. Fortunately, we could secure his computer.¡± ¡°He didn¡¯t even have encryption on.¡± She muttered disappointedly as she took a right turn. ¡°What¡¯s with the other suspect?¡± He instead asked her the question which plagued his mind the other day before. ¡°Well, he is a graduate student with a master degree in Computer Science. He went to the police station and showed us his analysis of the Trojan, he ¡®luckily¡¯ got. It¡¯s suspicious for me.¡± She furrowed her brows as she said her piece. ¡°How interesting¡­ Did he tell you how he got it?¡± Asking this he used his right hand to prop his chin up as he considered the information. So we have some Script Kiddy and a guy who knows his shit. What do they call it again? Ah, a white hat. How amusingly. ¡°Well, yes, he talked about how a friend of his got a nude picture of the girl, the girl whom we knew already that her computer was infected. What¡¯s with these coincidences!¡± She complained to herself, then gave some other car the stink eye, because he cut her off. ¡°Keep calm, let our white hats work. They will conclude if he lied or not. Just relax.¡± He couldn¡¯t help himself but injected a little sarcasm at the mention of white hats. Hey, the title is really hilarious. They should wear some green hats. Haha. Wait, some of them didn¡¯t even have a girlfriend or a wife. Now I¡¯m feeling guilty.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. ¡°CALM?! The politicians are breathing down our necks! They want the case investigated with every resource the country have. They want the culprits behind the bars.¡° You know, politicians have the fear that their reputations will plummet for the next elections. ¡°Mark, I know that look. They are not the only ones who are fearing for their positions at the moment. You and I, if we don¡¯t get the culprits. They will get our heads instead! -¡± Before she could continue to rant, she was cut off by an incoming call from her phone. She took a look at the display, accepted the call immediately. ¡°A message? What do they want?¡± She asked while she concentrated on driving to a place to park her car. ¡°¡¯All your bases are belong to us¡¯? Is it a quote? So and the bitcoin address?¡± Stopping the car at a place, she secured it. After some more time, she finally finished the call. ¡°We have a problem. We¡¯ve got no more than 24 hours to find them.¡± ¡°That is the biggest embarrassment our company faced in the years!¡± The CEO shouted agitated in the room. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it much. You should think how to pay me the political capital I used on the case back.¡± The other voice answered as easily as calm as he could. ¡°Don¡¯t kid me! You know what will happen if I¡¯m going down? I¡¯m doing you a favor! I used my connections to get international agencies to work on the case. You should thank me, after all, I heard that there will be elections in the months.¡± ¡°Wait. Let me answer the call first. I think they got some developments.¡± These voices were heard outside the closed door by a middle age woman working on the computer. My workload increased again! Sorry baby, it seems that I won¡¯t come home today. After typing something on the keyboard the person leaned back on his comfortable chair and grabbed the remote, button pressed, turned the TV in the room on. ¡°- the CEO promised after the devastated Hacker attack that it won¡¯t happen again. -¡± ¡°- police and the BKA cyberdefense division are investigating -¡± ¡°The cause of the sophisticated attack on Telekom was -¡± ¡°The method of the DDoS was Slowloris a -¡± With a press on the button he turned it off. Silence greeted him. After a while, he touched the monitor, started the Firefox browser and entered a particular URL. The browser finished loading the page fast enough that he drunk from a glass, while he typed with his right fingers on the keyboard. Vodka. Password: CykaBlyat69 What greeted him was a list of connected devices with their respective IP and country location. Hmm¡­ The pussy skid gifted me a new toy to play with hehe. Let¡¯s decide if it is a worthy gift, if not, well then I just will torment him a little bit. Smirking at the thought, he clicked on the victim with the title ¡®ShySlut¡¯ SS. Ha! Who says I can¡¯t name my victims. He took a look at her computer information and saw that it was a laptop. Let¡¯s activate her webcam. And what he saw brought a wide grin from him, after all, who wouldn¡¯t be happy to see a girl dressing in her underwear. He took his pants off at the show. Rally the Daemon Army

Rally the Daemon Army

Something cold splashed against Gerry¡¯s face, something wet, which slowly awoke him from his blissfully sleep to a particular sight. W-what? Where am I? Before him stood a man with neatly combed hair in a black suit who stared at him as if he was something to study. He noticed that he was sitting on a cheap wood chair, but that wasn¡¯t the only thing he noticed, he also tried to move, however, he couldn¡¯t move his hands without pain and even then his are bound by the chain behind him. What the fuck?! Who the hell is he? Kidnapping?! Gerry tried to find the answer from his mysterious kidnapper by observing the man before him who didn¡¯t move an inch as if he was a statue. Not long the silence got to him, so he tried to talk to the man. ¡°What do you want?¡± Be calm, try to gauge his reaction. His body will betray him. Letting it echo through the empty room the man seems to ignore him. Gerry¡¯s heart beat faster at that. His sweat glistered on his forehead, he could feel it. Intimidated, he tried to consider his situation yet he could only hear how his own breathing picked up the pace. Fuck! Fuck! Don¡¯t let him get to you! Stay focused! It¡¯s just a conversation. A conversation without words. He knew of such tactics to torture someone very well, after all, he did use similar tactics and would have continued using them to rule the school in fear if he hadn¡¯t met her. What are my options? Be silent? Or admit defeat? Before he could come up with a battle plan, his opponent beat him to it. The man suddenly stepped away from the door behind him and stilled just like before again. What¡¯s with this fucking guy?! Steps were heard, coming from the closed metal door, slowly but surely coming closer to it. Until he saw the door handle going down. The rusted door opened with an annoying creak. Now before him were standing two men with a muscular build. Both skinheads if the close-cropped hair and the heavy boots weren¡¯t a hint at all. Oh, shit! What did I do to the Nazis?! They both sauntered into the room, their heavy boots making squeaking noises on the dirty wooden ground. Closing in on him, it made him uncomfortable, especially one of them brought his face up close to Gerry¡¯s face. Gerry could only stare back, trying to show that he wasn¡¯t intimidated at all. Unfortunately, that didn¡¯t work, because he was spit by the fucking skinhead. Disgusting piece of shit! He revolted in disgust. ¡°Rough him a little bit up.¡± Came the monotone voice of the mysterious man who seems to be bored. And so without much to prepare for the assault of both of them, Gerry could only curse as they showed him what benefits their muscles got them. Gerry felt himself becoming weightless, he looked around him and saw far and wide nothing but white. As he tried to comprehend where he was, all of a sudden, the whiteness gave place to something far sinister. Pure dark red blood poured everywhere at once. The sticky substance swallowed his feet. What the actual fuck?! Fuck! Fuck! Why?! Flailing with his arms, he tried to escape it. Out of the sea of blood, a gestalt formed, looking slightly female, it solidified to a someone he knew, Sandra. W-what?!If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. She just stared at him. She opened her mouth and accused him, ¡°You betrayed me!¡± I¡¯m sorry! I just - ¡°Didn¡¯t you promised?¡± Came a familiar dreaded voice of his crush. I¡­ I-i - Without warning pain enveloped his head, he woke up, noticing that he was on the hard ground, he first looked up. There he saw the familiar mysterious fucker and two other, one of them was his friend Lucas. W-why is he here? Why am I here, too? What the hell?! ¡°Fucking move! Time is of the essence!¡± Receiving a strong kick from the Nazi, he quickly got up and took a look at the surrounding. An empty warehouse? Fuck, I hope they won¡¯t execute me. ¡°Well, well, well, it¡¯s time for the introductions, I guess. Don¡¯t worry you all won¡¯t be killed yet.¡± Said the fucker as he took a fucking chewing gum out of his pocket and continued, ¡°I will be your handler for the predictable future. You can all call me -¡±, he put the chewing gum into his mouth, ¡°- Benedikt. You all three are here, because of your skills -¡±, here he laughed with abandon, ¡°no, not really your skills, but you are in a fortunate position, well not so really fortunate, but you get my point. -¡±, this time he was interrupted by Lucas, ¡°Fuck you, man! -¡±, but before his friend could say more, the fucker ¡®Benedikt¡¯ took a gun out of his suit and pointed it straight to Lucas. Fuck! ¡°If you don¡¯t really want, I can certainly help you to escape from me.¡± Said ¡®Benedikt¡¯ in a merry tone while a wide grin was planted on his face, ¡°You know, here you will do what I say. Do you understand?¡± ¡°Fuck! Y-yeah man! Chill!¡± Confronted head-on with a gun pointed at him didn¡¯t give Lucas a confidence boost at all. ¡°Good, good! Now. Do you know the news? Of course not, after all, I prevented it -¡± This fucker! His fucking act, everything annoys me to no end! Shit! Keep calm! He has the advantage! ¡°- So you all are fugitives! The police are on your asses! Lucas, because he broke the law obviously. John, well, to escape you killed an officer -¡± ¡°What the fuck do you mean?! I killed?! You -¡± And the gun is pointing at him. ¡°You killed him. After all, there is proof on the crime scene. So now to Gerry, you, my friend killed someone, too.¡± Where the fuck is he going with this?! Blaming me for some murder too?! Fucker! ¡°Who the fuck?! Tell me you fucker!¡± ¡°Heh. How was her name again? Hm¡­ Ah, Sandra!¡± W-what why did they killed her?! ¡°No, no, no. Gerry, we didn¡¯t kill her. She committed suicide! What we only did was planting evidence that you bullied her. Your life is over, my friend!¡± You bastards! Fuck! Sandra, I¡¯m sorry! Mom. I¡¯m sorry. He felt the hot tears on his cheeks. Fuck, I failed her! She will never love me anymore! ¡°But no hope is lost, eh, should stick to the script. Whatever! Welcome to the Daemon Army!¡± And he received, of course, blank stares. ¡°Well, I didn¡¯t want to call it ¡®Sturmabteilung¡¯. So I reiterate: Welcome to the Demon Army, boys, -¡± Here he coughed a little bit, ¡°I mean Daemon Army of course. Shit. I read too many light novels. Should just have taken her advice. Well, what can you do.¡± Is he high?! Demon Army?! Planting the bomb

Planting the bomb

After reading the newspaper Gerry threw it to the ground with so much force he could muster with his weak body. His other ¡®teammates¡¯ were doing the same to the poor newspaper, a quick look at them and he knew they were more than pissed at our fucking benefactor he calls himself. Across from him, Benedikt made a phone call during the time he read the newspaper. Apparently, Benedikt finished the call, putting it in his pocket, he sauntered to them. His two other henchmen, he calls them, came from the door carrying computer equipment to them. ¡°Take everything to the table. Klaus, I feel like having ice cream today. This heat is killing me.¡± ¡®Klaus¡¯, the name of one of the henchman took the hint of a command and went out to buy him an ice cream. What the fuck? ¡°Oh?¡± Here Benedikt raised an eyebrow at Gerry¡¯s glare and offered, ¡°You want one too?¡± Fuck you! He didn¡¯t take the bait at the oblivious provocation. Instead, he ignored it and asked Benedikt the question which plagued his mind since his other teammates and him were kidnapped, ¡°What are we working on?¡± His other teammates focused intently their gazes on Benedikt who instead took a seat on a chair in front of the table with the computer equipment. ¡±You all belong to the Daemon Army now. I own your life literally,¡± Here Benedikt paused and gave each of them a long hard stare, he then continued, ¡°You first task will be planting false evidence trail to a politician. I call this operation Planting the bomb.¡± Smirking at them he was chewing on his gum in leisure as he made himself comfortable in his seat. ¡°You can all take a seat if you want, oh, forgot, we have only one seat and I¡¯m sitting on it. So, just sit on the ground,¡± He gestured with his right hand to the ground with a shrug of his shoulders and continued, ¡°Like pets you are. Ha. Just kidding! Anyway, you can set up the computers and the router.¡± Benedikt pointed with his left finger to the equipment on the table. Planting false evidence? What is his goal? Who did he called? John took the lead and begun to set up the router, his friend Lucas glanced at him, shrugged, then followed Jon¡¯s lead and moved to the computers. Before his asked one of them what he should do, John called him, ¡°You¡¯re name is Gerry, right? Grab the extension cable and connect it with this here,¡± John showed him the power cable of the router. ¡°Yeah, will do.¡± Fuck my life. Music echoed through the empty warehouse, he flinched at the strange ringtone. Lucas and John stopped working temporary and their disbelieving gazes were firmly planted on Benedikt. He heard Lucas mutter, ¡°The fuck?! Why did he have the opening of Attack on Titan as his ringtone?!¡± Attack on Titan? Wasn¡¯t that the anime Lucas wanted me to watch? Benedikt ignored their bewildered state. He answered the call and spoke, ¡°Benedikt here.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± He saw him pausing, apparently the voice at the other end spoke to him. ¡°Everything is ready. Alright.¡± After Benedikt said his words, the call ended. ¡°So boys! After you have everything working, you will plan the approach. Ruin Alek Kragstein. Be lucky that you have such freedom. Here,¡± He took out a blackberry and threw it at John, he continued thereafter, ¡°Use it to contact me after you are all ready. The deadline is in 2 weeks, boys! Don¡¯t be late. You¡¯re not the only ones who will get a bullet in the head. Think about your family.¡± Fucking son of a bitch! So with his piece said, Benedikt walked out of the warehouse to a black car. Gerry took a quick glance at the license plate and read, ¡°Y-122-601¡± ¡°Hey!¡± He called to them. Both of them looked to him, seeing that he had their attention, he said, ¡°Did you see the license plate of the car?¡± ¡°Yeah, ¡®Y-122-601¡¯ so what?¡± Perplexed asked him Lucas, but before he could answer it, John beat him to a punch, ¡°It¡¯s registered as a military vehicle. The ¡®Y¡¯ and the six-digits after it are denoting it.¡± ¡°What does the fucking military wants with us?¡± ¡°No idea.¡± John answered as he continued to work. ¡°I don¡¯t think it¡¯s the military. Surely, it¡¯s faked.¡± ¡°Finally!¡± Lucas said as he laid himself on the ground in exhaustion. ¡°Shit, does someone know where we can have something to drink?¡± ¡°You should have the smartphone, John. Just call him.¡± Aren¡¯t we taking it easy¡­ Shouldn¡¯t we try to escape? Right, fuck. They surely ignored the elephant in the room. Don¡¯t let your mind wander. - ¡°- Yeah, we are all starving as fuck! Get us something to eat and drink. Something with alcohol! They are 15? Don¡¯t care,¡± John spoke with Benedikt on the phone as he installed the operating systems for the computers. ¡°And for the love of god, bring us more chairs bastard!¡± Lucas shouted as he laid there on the ground without wanting to move one inch. ¡°Yeah, we need chairs. -¡± Gerry ignored the rest of the conversation and instead, he reflected on himself. Shit. Do I really want to confront it? Shit. I know it was my fault, but fuck¡­ ¡°Guys, what¡¯s the plan?¡± He didn¡¯t want to open the Pandora box in his mind, so he concentrated on the current situation, thus he addressed the elephant in the room, ¡°What I mean is should we work for him or try to escape?¡± He wasn¡¯t the only one who was nervous, John just didn¡¯t let it show, while Lucas didn¡¯t even have the energy for it. ¡°I propose we first work with him, but it¡¯s only a question of time until he will dispose of us,¡± John suggested after finishing the installations.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Lucas said nothing. Instead Gerry played the devil¡¯s advocate, ¡°Shouldn¡¯t we try to escape first? Now it¡¯s the time for it.¡± He will kill us anyway. ¡°There are guards outside of the perimeter.¡± ¡°The guys with the machine guns? Yeah, they will fucking kill us twice over.¡± Lucas commented, hearing that, Gerry considered their options. John is right. We should first play ball, then when the fucker thinks he has the advantage, we surprise him. ¡°Alright, so how do we go about planting the false evidence?¡± They heard the noises of an incoming driving car outside, it stopped, the door opened and the two familiar skinheads carried the two chairs. ¡°Yeah, fucking time!¡± And the two brought also pizza and vodka, as John saw the vodka, he sighed in relief. After they ate and drunk in wild abandon, John was working with the assistance of Lucas on a dictionary list for a brute force attack on his social media account on Facebook, while Gerry was trying to rack up his brain for a human weakness in the politician. I need more information about the politician. So Alek Kragstein, are you married? No¡­ Divorce. But what about a son? A daughter. Okay, so what can you tell me, google. He inputted some parameters into google search to get an overall feeling of the target. Family photo before divorce? Huh. Interesting. Wait. This photo! That could be our key. I need the underlying post of it. ¡°Guys!, I¡¯ve got something,¡° After he saw that he had their attention, he continued, ¡°This photo here -¡± He showed them the photo he found on google image, ¡°- could be our key. Check it with a fake profile.¡± ¡°It¡¯s public. It¡¯s him when he was a teenager playing with action figures. So what?¡± Lucas could not understand the thought process of Gerry. ¡°The action figure is the key, right? You assume that he included it into his password? What makes you think he did it?¡± John could follow him, but he didn¡¯t see the underlying puzzle he saw. ¡°Check his favorite movies and books. Also check if he has a photo wearing a t-shirt of the action figure.¡± Following Gerry¡¯s command John looked through the profile. Lucas meanwhile just took another bottle of vodka and poured it into his mouth. ¡°Found it. ¡®Tales of Holy Heroes¡¯ series? The figure is the protagonist, Orse. That¡¯s really an old book. So you think that Orse is one part of the key?¡± Gerry thought it over. His politics are leaning to the conservative side. He is a very religious man. Visiting the church every Sunday morning. He searched after the summary of the book in google. This reads like¡­ A crusader triumphs over the heretics? The fuck is that? Orse, a Norse converted to Catholics. Does that makes sense?! ¡°It makes sense -¡± A dull noise was heard nearby. He looked over and saw how his friend was totally wasted. You drank vodka, idiot! Shouldn¡¯t overdo it, Lucas. Shit. ¡°Yeah, take it definitely to the word list.¡± Trying out all combinations of possible passwords with the data we gather. This could take a while until we cracked the password if we didn¡¯t have enough data about his psyche. ¡°Wake up, Lucas!¡± Gerry tried to wake Lucas up but without much success. ¡°He drank more vodka bottles than me, respect, but ultimately he¡¯s dead for the next days.¡± While John took a break from the computer and did push-ups on the ground, his loud pants could be heard as he exerted himself over his limit. That guy can even talk while doing such training?! Shit, earlier I didn¡¯t noticed that he was built like a brick. Gerry took a look at his body and could only admit to his shame that he never trained in his life. Even just a tiny step over his comfort zone made him very reluctant. Pussy indeed. He woke up. This time his sleep wasn¡¯t plagued by dreams, nightmares. He saw that John was asleep as with Lucas who seemed to be in coma. He should be alright. He went to the computer with his chair, took a look at the screen and saw that ran already for 30 hours. When is it cracked, goddamn? Fortunately, the password was cracked in twelve more minutes. He tried to wake John up, but he didn¡¯t seem to want to wake up, so he shrugged and concentrated on the screen. John said that we shouldn¡¯t worry about the IP. Something about proxychains. Using multiple random proxies to hide behind others IP addresses. It¡¯s very late. He shouldn¡¯t be logged in. The only illuminations he had were the industrial lamps in the warehouse while outside darkness it was very dark, though there were some street lights to fight against the darkness. ¡°CrusaderOrse1069¡± What the fuck is with this password?! Facebook. Twitter. Gmail. Eh?? Even a porn site? Let¡¯s just focus on his Gmail account. A very familiar ringtone woke him from his concentration, it was the phone on the table, vibrating, disturbing John¡¯s sleep who awoke slowly. ¡°Shit! What¡¯s up?¡± John asked no one particular. ¡°Password is cracked. I¡¯m in. Take a look.¡± Gerry said shortly as he grabbed the phone. ¡°Who¡¯s it?¡± He answered the call knowing very well who it is. ¡°Your master, dumbass.¡± Fuck you too. ¡°What do you want?¡± ¡°A person will come to you and give you a USB stick.¡± ¡°What¡¯s in it?¡± ¡°What do you think? There are incriminate files. Use these as the bomb so to speak. Plant it very well.¡± ¡°What files?¡± He had a bad feeling about the so-called files. ¡°Just don¡¯t rush B.¡± Here he goes again with his fucking references. This time fucking Counterstrike. ¡°Isn¡¯t that too convenient. The cops will notice it.¡± He had his doubts at the bomb. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about that. Did you watch movies with corrupted cops?¡± Does he mean that he¡¯s with the police? ¡°No idea.¡± ¡°Heh, kek. Simple they don¡¯t question the evidence.¡± Shit. Why does he wants the politician down? Fake News Campaign

Fake News Campaign

¡°How disgusting!¡± Someone expressed their thoughts in a Twitter post. ¡°Pedophiles all just should die!111¡± A Facebook post showed this persons¡¯ rage. And many more posts were spreading through the social media. Popularity rose so much that even search engines showed it on the first page. News agencies ate it all up. Police investigations followed. Alek Kragstein was placed under suspicion. There was nothing to defuse the scandal bomb. Everything goes according to the plan. ¡°Mark, how goes the investigation?¡± Mark stopped looking at the folder and gave the person a short glance while huffing. After a few seconds, he answered, ¡°Yeah, it goes well. I¡¯m just tired.¡± Give me a break. ¡°You should take some time off after this.¡± ¡°Sarah, what¡¯s with your promotion?¡± Should thank me for this. Really. This idiot was caught by a student. Didn¡¯t even used a VPN for his zombies. ¡°You heard already of it? The rumor kitchen works hard, I see.¡± Sandra rolled her eyes at him. ¡°Yeah, you should know that already, what with Kevin and Martin. I swear they are even better than the social media out there with their gossiping like housewives.¡± He put away the folder. Got himself a coffee and sighed in relief as he drunk from his cup. Heaven. ¡°Your addiction to coffee is really messed up.¡± She remarked with hands on her hip. ¡°Do you know what else is messed up? Yesterday, I missed the episode.¡± ¡°You and your anime. Really, unbelievable!¡± She could only shake her head at him. His phone vibrated in his pockets, he ignored Sarah and took it out, unlocked it. ¡°King is so dumb. Didn¡¯t use a VPN. ¡± Wiz complained over Telegram. ¡°No worries. He¡¯s our scapegoat.¡± Eddie sent his answer, quick and short. ¡°Your wife?¡± Sarah asked with one eyebrow raised, while one of her fingers played with her hair. ¡°No, not this time. Just some old friend.¡± Gerry woke up from his quick nap, he looked around him and saw that the others were sleeping. John slept in his chair, while Lucas was sleeping on the ground.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. A sudden pain made itself noticeable. Apparently, he slept in a bad position. What a night. Now, what happened while we all dozed off? He turned the monitor on and surfed through the web. He found many news articles about Alec in combinations with scandals, scandals we helped to spread. Guiltily, he closed the tabs and rubbed his head while he groaned miserably. Fuck! Gerry didn¡¯t know what to do so he took a half-eaten pizza from somewhere and ate it without abandon. Too cold. Ignoring the cold taste, he just shrugged his shoulders and continued to eat while he contemplated the situation he was in. No escape. Nothing to do, but wait for the fucker to contact us. What is my fucking life?! ¡°Did you see her? Her father...¡± ¡°What a disgusting pedophile. He -¡± ¡°Do you think she -¡± And so on, her classmates gossiped at her without even the intention to hide it. As if she wasn¡¯t even a human, but some animal. She wiped her tears off with her sleeves. ¡°Bitch!¡± Some of the girls pushed her to the ground. Why did daddy do it? She couldn¡¯t understand the world anymore. Before this, she loved going to school with her friends, but after her father was arrested and the media pushing their agenda, her friends distanced themselves off her as if they weren¡¯t even friends to begin. Sobbing, she tried to get up but was again pushed by a girl to the ground. Laying there, she just couldn¡¯t endure it anymore, her tears streamed down her cheeks as she bawled to the laughs of her classmates. ¡°You call yourself King, Alex K?nig.¡± A stern woman in a suit stated as she took a big folder out of her bag. ¡°You know, someone like you won¡¯t get a nice time in jail.¡± She continued as she flipped through the folder, ¡°There will be some inmates with particular tastes if you know what I mean.¡± Alex flinched at the comment, he tried to seem disinterested yet the woman before him could see his obvious ploy. Instead, she sighed and leaned back in the metal chair. Closing her eyes for a moment, she used the silence to intimidate him into confessing his deeds. Alex sweated, his body was hot. He didn¡¯t know whether it¡¯s the temperature or if he was nervous. His dream was to be on the news with his criminal deeds yet he didn¡¯t if he enjoyed the attention at all. I just want to go home! Fuck, they didn¡¯t even let me get my t-shirt. ¡°F-fuck you!¡± He tried to be tough. She ignored him completely like an unruly child. Sometimes silence is the best torture. As Alek Kragstein was cuffed and dragged off by the police, some reporters tried to get few statements from him, ¡°Mr. Kragstein, your thoughts?¡± ¡°Why do you did it?¡± ¡°Are you a pedophile, Mr. Kragstein?¡± ¡°I¡¯m innocent!¡± He denied the accusations while struggling to justify his innocent. ¡°Please out of the way!¡± Called a policeman to the crowd. Before a girl in a bedroom laid several cut newspaper with headlines about a teenager who murdered a policeman while escaping. She grabbed some articles and rearranged them to have a better overall view of the events which took place at the time. ¡°Maria! You will be late, again!¡± Her mother knocked on her door several times. She ignored it, her mother continued, ¡°Sweety! Don¡¯t think about John! Just¡­ Just...¡± Here she broke into sobs as she thought about what her son did. Meanwhile, Maria used her computer to search for some more information about her brother with the help of Google Dorks. Apparently, he went underground, a fugitive from the law. Where are you? Did you really kill him? That¡¯s too convenient. As if someone wants to blame him. She gathered the newspapers and stuck them onto her wall in a particular order. I need to access the security tapes. Personal or Not? No, I will go personally. Social engineering as a girl is easier.