CHAPTER THREE
“Slowly. One more time for the less tech savvy in the room,” frowned Luke rubbing his forehead.
“Most hackers come in through a ‘backdoor’. An imaginary door that’s easier to get through than just trying to guess your password.
These guys were sophisticated. They got in, got all the kids passwords, and all your banking information.
We’ve frozen everything and we do mean everything.
All of our banking, credit cards, debit cards, everything.
“Jean and the finance team are working on assigning new account numbers and passwords. Money was transferred into dummy accounts, then we opened new accounts for everyone and immediately moved it back. All passwords will be seventeen characters, numbers, and letters. No fucking around,” said Hiro.
“What actually happened?” asked Joseph.
“When the kids were playing, which kids do on these games, ads started to pop up randomly. They immediately hit their pop-up blocker, as well as initiated the extra security on their phones. Good move on their part, by the way.
“When the hackers realized that they weren’t going to be easy pickings, they placed a virus in the ‘x’ box that closes the ad. When the kids hit it to close it, it initiated a scan of their phones.”
“Son of a bitch,” muttered Abe.
“It doesn’t appear that they got any addresses, contacts, that sort of thing. Because the game was web generated and we block anything coming in from the web without authority, they had to go around it to get to the credit card that is used for phone purchases and billing.”
“This is sophisticated,” frowned Cam.
“Very. We’ve blocked everything from them but you can tell they were pissed.
They were attacking those phones with everything they had at their disposal.
The game also is one of the most violent games I’ve ever seen.
Our phones have strict limitations on what the kids can see and it did its job. But again, those hackers were pissed.”
AJ walked toward the projector and laptop at the front of the room and pulled up the game site.
“Don’t worry. This is blocking everything on their end, other than what I want to show you. You can see that it does the usual. It asks for a name you want to use in the game, a password, etcetera. Then, after you’ve done that, it asks for the credit card information.
“Most kids, and I’m sorry to say, most adults are going to give clues in their online name and password, that will help the hackers get into the credit card or banking information.”
“Why?” asked Hex.
“Because we look for the easy way out. Always,” said AJ. “We tend to use the same passwords for lots of things and it’s the most dangerous thing we can do.”
“You’re paying them again?” asked Luke.
“Relax,” said Hiro. “This is an account set up by Jean with exactly the amount needed to pay for the game. Then he’s going to close it.” He hesitated and then smiled. “Now.”
“Okay, so what is so dangerous about this game?” asked Luke. A splat of blood appeared on the screen, so life-like that several men jumped. “Fuck!”
“Sorry,” said AJ. “I should have warned you. The graphics on this are so realistic I actually wondered if they’d filmed this live. It’s not. It’s just very good. That’s the first thing a kid sees. Blood on the screen. Then it’s lost limbs, shots to the head, decapitations, even rape.”
“Our kids watched this?” asked Abe in shock.
“No. And yes. It looks like they only went about forty-two seconds before they left the game and backed out. Good for them. But they were in long enough,” said AJ.
“Damn,” muttered Nathan.
“Again, we want to emphasize that they didn’t see our files, our names, our business information, addresses, nothing but they were damn sure trying. Which only tells me that’s what they’re doing to other kids and their families. Hell, I say kids but there are probably adults playing this as well.”
“Okay,” nodded Luke. “So, our kids are safe. Our information is safe. But everyone else on the planet is vulnerable.”
“Yes,” nodded AJ. “And from what we can see, they’re getting in and out quickly because they’re profiling these kids.
Some inner-city hard-working kid with an allowance debit card with a few hundred on it, isn’t who they want.
They’re looking for kids with big credit cards from mom and dad, or phones that accept charges billed to their phone billing addresses.
And. They’re finding out what mom and dad do for a living. ”
“Wait. They’re looking for something in particular?” asked Joseph.
Hiro tapped a few keys and more than three dozen names, emails, and account information appeared.
“Those are government emails. That’s DOD and DOJ,” gasped Conor.
“They’re targeting the government.”