Chapter 39 -- Jill and the White Hat Hacker
I stood at the front of the room. There were six of us in the room: Harley, my new sidekick in Cyber Consulting, and an admitted 'white hat hacker'. There also was Bill Morris, the I.T. director; Hank Phillips, the CFO and the man that was Bill's boss; Nick Walgreen -- the head of system ops; Frank Specter -- Another ops guy; and me.
I spoke with the computer hooked up to the projector. The slide on the screen was a bland statement about Cyber Consulting Company (CCC) and today's date.
"Thank you for meeting today. The purpose of this meeting is more of value to you than to me. We think it's very important for Knightsbridge Manufacturing, too. I've been trying to get you take action for two years about your susceptibility to outside hacking, but to no avail.
"My colleague is Harley Palmer. Harley is eighteen and just graduated high school. He is a friend, and I guess in some ways I am his mentor. He doesn't think so, but he has a knack with computers and he's very smart. As a bit of a fun assignment for him, about six weeks ago I gave him an assignment to hack into Knightsbridge Manufacturing computer systems and website, leave a telltale sign, do no damage, and then leave. I'll let him tell you what he did."
Harley stood up. He was in jeans and a t-shirt from a rock band I'd never heard of. He wore two threadbare sneakers. This was not typical business dress at Knightsbridge Manufacturing.
"Hi guys. Nice to meet you. Let me start by showing you the result of my having gone onto your website. Getting in was a piece of cake and I'd never hacked anything before. It only took me about twenty minutes using some rudimentary techniques I learned on the Internet."
The screen changed to a browser and everyone watched as Harley typed in the website address of the company and hit the return key. There was skepticism in the room that anything important would happen. Up came Knightsbridge's home page. The main picture on the page was a photo taken by a drone that showed about two hundred smiling employees outside the main building forming the letters 'K' and 'M' for Knightsbridge Manufacturing.
"This is your home page. Do you notice anything unusual?"
The other four men leaned forward. Finally, Bill -- the I.T. director -- said, "No. Should we see something special?"
"Look at the upper-right corner of the letter 'M', particularly the serif. Let me zoom in for you." Harley started to smile. I was chuckling. We'd rehearsed this, but he was doing so well at it.
As the screen very slowly zooned into the 'M' and then into the upper-right serif, the beautiful nude body of Lisa Wallace came into sharper and sharper focus as she enlarged. It wasn't lewd. It was just a tasteful teenage nude smiling up at the camera like everyone else in the picture.
"There! How's that?"
"Shit! Really? How long has that been up there?"
I spoke, "Well, it took two weeks to schedule this meeting, so overall about three or four weeks."
Harley said, "I also gave myself an email account on your server. If you need to contact me, I'm harleypalmer@knightsbridge.com, like many of your other email accounts. Unlike most of you, I opted to receive the weekly executive briefings about the state of the company. You do need to beef up sales in the western states.
"I also browsed through all the HR records in the company. Bill, I think you're underpaid. I also found the strategic plan and all your customer contact data, and it looks like you're already falling behind the projections for sales into the major accounts, so something is wrong somewhere."
Hank Phillips, the most senior guy in the room, held his hand up. "STOP! You have my undivided attention. How do we fix this? What will it cost us?" He sounded resigned and desperate.
I stood and took the podium. Harley winked at me and sat down. He'd left the zoomed picture of naked Lisa on the screen -- the little devil. I launched into the lecture the I.T. guys had heard before about firewalls, passwords, and more. I kind of liked glancing over at Lisa's hot body now and then.
Harley stood up at one point, and in detail described how he'd found a wedge into the company's servers. From KM's point of view, it all went downhill from there. Eventually, we started using some other PowerPoint slides, ending with an Action List for KM.
Hank said, "And you're not extorting money from us?"
I frowned, "No. Why would I do that? I like all you guys, and you're good for the local economy. Just fix the things on that last slide and I think you'll have a more robust security conscious workforce, too. At this point, you don't even need us to help you. We would like to remain your outside I.T. gurus and network support staff. Please consider all this a gift to KM."
Hank just looked at the I.T. director and they nodded. He said, "Consider it done! I figure about four weeks."
I asked, "Are there any questions?" I flipped back to the picture of Lisa's hot teenage body standing at the edge of the 'M'.
Nick, the lowest ranked man in the room, raised his hand and asked, "Who's the naked chick on our website's home page? Does she date anybody?" Everyone in the room laughed, and the meeting broke up. Lisa's hot little body was still on display on the projection screen.
* * * * *
Crystal was back in the Crystal Blue Photography studio doing a traditional business sitting for a professional woman, and then editing some of the 'private porn' and 'public porn' videos we'd done, including my work with Elynn. I was helping Carol shoot the love scene with Jill Timms.
Jill was married to Adam, a flight instructor on corporate jets, and she worked at the main city library, mostly as a research librarian. She was the you went to and asked a question, such as I want to know more about dinosaurs. By the end of the hour, you'd know more about dinosaurs than you wanted to know.
Carol was with me rather than Crystal since she had known Jill and Adam for several years, especially while she was a student renting their garage apartment for two years. They never had a sexual relationship until recently, but Carol figured out about their private lives from comments and even peeking into the house when the Timms had guests.