19:02 Start slowly. A large suction of data will set off the alarm bells.
I tried not to get annoyed at my partner’s insistence on telling me how to conduct an exploit.
19:03 This ain’t my first rodeo.
I was excited. I always felt that way during an attack. The hashing had been almost too easy. We slipped in like a knife through warm butter, slicing through their security.
20:15 For a tech company, their security is abysmal.
20:16 Douglas is notoriously arrogant. He probably thinks it’s the best security out there.
20:17 He should fire his whole department and hire us.
I laughed to myself. Toxicwrath clearly wasn’t into jokes. He never responded.
20:22 Are you ready? I hope distractions don’t get in the way.
I gritted my teeth. I didn’t want to think about Mason. If I did, I’d feel like crap all over again.
My heart hurt at pushing him away, but it was necessary.
I didn’t have a choice.
Not when my very existence was threatened.
20:24 Distractions have been eliminated.
This was our weird method of chitchat. Talking in code and short, concise text.
Sometimes I wished I had someone to talk to about normal things like guy problems.
But what would I say?
So, I just broke up with this great guy because he’s the FBI agent assigned to track down my online alter ego and I was worried that I was getting too close. I worried I’d slip up and he’d figure me out.
There was nothing about that situation that was normal.
20:25 Good.
There was no more discussion about distractions. We were completely focused on the task at hand.
My fingers flew over the keyboard. I entered the input string into the entry point.
The SQL injection would give me complete access to their data. I’d be able to siphon off everything I needed quickly. I was appalled at the lack of encoding and validation on the Virtuant network. It made me wonder if such an ignorant tech company had anything worth stealing. Who, in this day and age, left themselves open to such vulnerabilities?
But Toxicwrath was adamant that this program was important. That it belonged tohim.
And this corrupt CEO needed to go down. He had destroyed lives. He had ruined careers. That couldn’t go unpunished.
I watched my computer with satisfaction as the data came in. Only minutes. That’s all it would take. And then we’d flood the system with malware, shutting it down completely. Sure, they’d get it back up and running, but it would take some time.
Toxicwrath had gone quiet as he tended to the hash attack and procured the passwords.
Why in that instant did I think of Mason?
I wished I were a better person. I wished I were the sort of woman who could accept what he offered without strings. Without baggage. Without the weight of a secret, overwhelming life.
He deserved better.
