Zander #2
“I built the system to alert me even at a first breach attempt and it’s the only reason we know this is happening at all instead of it being something covert or insidious that we find out about later.
I had the best white hat hackers work to find weaknesses and shore up our systems for just this type of attack, so it’s holding right now.
Our tech department is working on finding breach points and rebuff attacks, but we’ve never encountered something of this magnitude.
It’s hard to tell if it will continue until they find some weak spot we are unaware of, or if they will change their tactics to target something else.
Right now, it’s just a full-frontal attack on every access point, and if it continues, there is bound to be some sort of faltering. ”
If this weren’t such a serious situation, I would make a joke about his phrasing. “It’s the same group from last year. Their retribution was stalled, but they’re back on their mission, and they’re getting more creative.” There’s no question to my statement, and Payton nods in agreement.
My intuition tells me this is just the beginning.
We’re quiet for several long minutes as Payton keeps his eyes trained on the screen and I survey the room.
The feel of stress and panic in the air is palpable, thick enough to push through and slow down time so each minute feels like an eternity.
I walk around the room feeling uneasy. Any skills I have are useless in this context, and my understanding of cyber attacks is so limited I feel like a child.
I don't like feeling purposeless. I prowl back to Payton’s side, angrier and more restless than I ever remember.
“I fucking hate this. What does this mean, and why now?”
“War has arrived at our doorstep. Now we figure out how we respond.” Payton maintains a low volume, but his words burn with an uncharacteristic anger that is better suited to Hayes or myself.
“We respond with brutal force. We end this as soon as we can,” Hayes says, coming to stand on the other side of Payton.
Think of the devil and he appears. He must have broken every traffic law to have arrived not long after I did, despite Payton having called him first. His Buckhead mansion is far enough from downtown to have made the trek harrowing for anyone else on the road with him.
“Cyber attacks take a little more finesse than force,” Payton says.
He drops his arms from their crossed position and stalks toward the screen on the wall he’s been staring at.
“There. That’s the hacker’s signature,” he says, pointing at a block of code as it travels up the screen.
He turns back to the table and addresses the IT personnel.
“Route that through our database and find who is behind this attack. It’s likely more than just one person, or they’re running some sophisticated programs that are unheard of to get this quantity of attempts.
Find them.” The people he is commanding nod and their fingers fly over their own keyboards.
It really fucking scares me sometimes how much Payton knows. He likes to pretend he’s just this creative communications expert—which he is—when in reality he’s an evil genius with an eidetic memory and the ability to pick up any skill he tries.
He was taking electronics apart before he was seven, scaring the shit out of our mom, and even electrocuting me once when I was six.
I learned to stay the fuck away from his projects really quickly after that.
He knew three programming languages by twelve.
He crashed our home security system at thirteen just fucking around and rewiring it to play music when set off.
He became more nefarious at fifteen when he discovered hacking and started targeting anyone who pissed him off and creatively embarrassed them.
At seventeen, he hacked Dad’s online money market accounts and managed to siphon off thousands of dollars into offshore accounts before Dad even knew something was missing, just to prove that he could.
He finally put his skills to use for good rather than evil and was top of his class at MIT.
He built most of the infrastructure our organization is built on and quietly heads up the entire technology sector, as well as our operations, now.
We don’t even have an official CTO because Payton is happy to tuck that under his portion of the business as the COO.
It’s unusual, but that’s what he likes, and he’s not getting any pushback from Hayes or me on that topic.
“I really wish this were anything but a cyber attack,” Hayes snarls.
“It’s much easier to take out a person or entity when they have a physical presence and I can hunt them down like the rats they are.
” His deep green eyes are narrowed and carry a gleam of malice that would frighten me if this were the first time I’d caught the look on him.
But for once, I’m in complete agreement with him.
I turn to Hayes and level him with my own malicious stare.
“I think they learned last year that taking out our physical infrastructure was too high stakes and left them vulnerable to discovery. This is something more insidious and lends itself to an enemy that decided we should really be the targets, not mine workers. You need to call Rex.”