Take My Breath Away

"I can make this thing hack-proof. I wrote a batch file that runs all these little programs. They do things like erasing your web history, identifying keyloggers, disabling 'Run as Administrator' vulnerabilities, removing malware and adware that your antivirus missed, and give you real-time protection. Rootkits, viruses, worms, spyware, adware, trojans—all of that will be a thing of the past. It even detects weird network activity and throws the hacker into a virtual sandbox. He may think he's doing something, but it's all fake. I also got ahold of something called HIPS which does a lot of the heavy lifting."

"It can catch hacker attacks?" asked Evelyn.

"Of course. As well as everything else I mentioned. The main problem for a lot of these more traditional antivirus programs is that the virus is constantly changing. But heuristic analysis as well as the virtual sandbox and network monitoring takes care of all that. HIPS is a lifesaver."

"Where did you get that?"

"I... it doesn't matter. Grab a shower first. I'll help you install it." He saw the leery look on her face. "You don't want me to see what's on your computer? You hiding something?" He was teasing her on purpose.

Evelyn shook her head. After a while, she went to fetch the laptop. "Be careful. I got a virus pretty quick. There's a lot of important stuff on there."

Sheffield nodded and took out an item from his pocket. It looked like a USB flash drive, but that wasn't quite what it was. It had a small box at the end of it. He plugged it into one of the USB slots, and it lit up.

Despite her confusion, Evelyn left for the bathroom.

The moment he opened Evelyn's laptop, he felt something was wrong. He tried to call her over, but to his surprise, she was already in the bathroom. He used some of his tools to go snooping and found someone had already hacked in.

The hacker was good. He left few traces. Evelyn wouldn't have even known the guy was there.

But Sheffield knew what was going on as he ran his batch file. Someone had made an incoming connection, and that wasn't in her trusted connections list.

He opened his portable drive and brought out an app to do Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), and in particular, Encrypted Traffic Intelligence. That would do the busy work, and separate connections into different categories—he could even find someone using a VPN. He also threw up a stealth app to mask his own activity, in case the hacker decided to come after him directly.

When Evelyn emerged from the bathroom, he asked, "Who used your computer today?"

Evelyn walked over and answered, "No one. I've been keeping it at home all the time. What's wrong?" His words made her nervous, because that computer was too important to be compromised.

"Your computer was hacked before I installed that security suite. Someone has hacked into your encrypted data."

Evelyn looked at him and asked, "How do you know someone saw it?"

He was worried that if he used too much jargon she might not understand. Then he explained it briefly. "I simply looked at the most recent files and who accessed them. It wasn't you."

"No way! No one ever touched my computer! Except you... "

"Yes," Sheffield said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "When they broke in, they must cloned an authorized account so the computer thought it was you. The data was decrypted, and they had a look at the files."

Unable to stay calm anymore, she told him, "I'm going to bid using those files in a few days. If the files are stolen and released in advance, it'll hurt ZL Group a lot." The loss of money didn't matter. The thing was, hundreds of employees had been working overtime for hundreds of nights for this bid!

He paused, pondered for a while, and said, "What's done is done. Let's try and fix it."

"How?" Evelyn couldn't keep her composure anymore.

After a while, he said decisively, "I'm installing everything on your computer now. Meanwhile, you can release the bid earlier than them or work up a new one. That way your efforts won't be in vain and you can release the bid on time."

He started to install the software he brought.

Evelyn felt frustrated. "Easier said than done. The bid can't be released in advance. And we can't bang out another in one or two nights. Even if we release it now, our business partner won't be able to finish the designs in such a short time. So that plan is a no-go."

"What's the bid for? "

Evelyn wasn't planning to tell him, but since he asked, after taking a look at him, she finally chose to tell him the truth. "An online game. Our company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the weapon designs. Character clothing and tools were designed by our employees."

"Weapon designs? What did you spend more on? Clothing or weapon designs?"

"Weapon designs!" This was a serious matter. 'Maybe I should get ahold of Dad, ' she thought.

However, Sheffield put his hand on her phone to stop her. "Contact the designer first. Convince him to announce he has a deal with ZL Group. Do it now! We have to take every precaution!"

Annoyed, Evelyn said, "Yeah, but it's not that easy. The designer is pretty mysterious, keeping everything hush-hush. Although the designer holds the copyright, I'm not sure if we can get in touch with him."

"What's his name?" he asked after a moment's contemplation.

"I don't know!" It was true. Someone else was in charge of the contracts. She decided to ask Carlos about it first.

But as soon as she turned on her screen, he put a hand over it. Heedless of her impatience, Sheffield said firmly, "Contact the designer now."

"Could you please stop thinking about the weapon designs? I need to call Dad now. Being a doctor is what you should focus on. Business is not as simple as you think, okay?"

Unexpectedly, Sheffield insisted, "Make some calls. Figure it out! Your business depends on it!"

Evelyn felt he was driving her crazy. "I'm worried and in a bad mood. Let's not fight, please. Maybe you should go."

Sheffield was silent for a while. Then he suggested, "The other way is to find the hacker and make him admit he was hired to hack into your systems to steal information."

"And how am I supposed to do that? Ask nicely? I don't think the guy who did it is going to come forward that easily. I've heard that the best hacker in the world is Star Anise. I don't know any hackers now, not to mention that guy." She didn't know much about IT. Right now, she was anxious, and the only thing she could think to do was ask Carlos for help.

Sheffield offered, "Let me help you..."

"Thanks, but no thanks. It's hard to get in touch with Star Anise. Even if we find him, there won't be enough time to track down the guy who hacked me. And who says he'll do it? He'll probably want more money. Just stop for bit, okay? I need to think."

Taking a deep look at the woman who was completely impatient, he asked, "Don't you trust me?"

Evelyn smiled wryly. "I want to, but how? You are good with a scalpel, car racing, and playing the piano. But what does all that have to do with this?"

Sheffield didn't want to argue anymore. "Everything's installed. I'll take off, then. Good night." As soon as he finished his words, he put down her computer and left with his coat.

Evelyn was surprised.

Evelyn was surprised.

When everything was quiet in the apartment, Evelyn gradually calmed down. She regretted getting angry with him again.

She looked at the screen of her computer and called Carlos. "Dad, my computer was hacked."