The Death of the Hackers by GalaxyNinja

	It had started out like dial-up back in the 1980's, as the most devious changes do. In the 
backstreets of the alleys where justice had all but been forgotten; corruption was ever present. 
Too bad it didn't stay there.

	The Patriot Act had been abused for years, and then the new president had signed the anti-
hacker act. It was only for foreigners, he said. Those hacking from other countries, like what 
happened in Sony with Playstation so such a tragedy wouldn't happen again. Or so he said. 
As the weeks and months went by, the bill was changed with a word inserted here, and another 
word recoded there. 
	The armed forces that had sworn to uphold the constitution and protect our country had become 
a force of evil, with those who refused to attack their brother hackers being labeled as deserters 
and wiped clean. The stench of death and decay lingered like a bad coding job; the bodies were 
left lying in the streets to rot and swell, and fewer and fewer chose to venture outside of the 
scant comfort of their houses.
	At first, the military was allowed to move in like an anti-virus and "protect" whole towns because 
of the bomb threats. Boston, Massachusetts was the first one to gratefully welcome the 
protection from a few vagrant teenagers. Like an old war movie from the WWII era, tanks lined 
the streets daring anyone to oppose them. 
Then, in mid-April of 2015 when the riots began and were not quelled, the Boston Mayor had 
issued another state of emergency. The army of anti-virus' marched in, quickly bringing order 
again where the cops had been struggling. 
	A few weeks after that, the hacks had begun. First it was just the main Boston newspapers. 
Then it was the main News on Boston TV. The Guy Fawkes Mask was displayed everywhere 
with the words "Expect Us." All eyes were turned to Boston and accusations and hatred towards 
hackers, Anon in particular, spread via Twitter and Facebook, from phone to phone.
"It's our freedom of speech that is being attacked!" the people cried. 
Blame was as convenient as a WPS button, and they never considered how quickly and 
methodically everything had been "hacked."
	They never noticed that the voices behind the mask that normally cried for "Freedom!" had no 
message they spread other than "Expect Us."
They refused to listen to those who protested that this was an inside job; all the sheep wanted 
was swift action to "protect their rights." "Keep our televisions, our internet, our phones safe 
from hackers!" they bleated. 
Much like the crowds almost 2,000 years ago that cried for Jesus' crucifixion, the people from 
the 21st century cried for the hacker's punishment. 
Anyone with a Guy Fawkes Mask was arrested and thrown into Windows 3.1; their houses were 
searched, all electronics seized and their families torn apart.
Hackers were arrested for no reason, other then the fact they were on the wrong website at the 
wrong time. 
	Last year, Defcon was a massive hacking convention filled with fun and pranks and laughter.
This year it was a much smaller community. But they still came. The government had made its 
point and had control of the people so left Defcon alone. Most of the hackers that were well 
known had been arrested and reformatted into bones, and in honor of the memories of The 
Dark Tangent, Nikita and others, they met to drink and smoke and to try to forget the horrors 
they had seen. It seemed more like a funeral reception than a hacking convention. Or at least 
that is what it looked like to the n00bs on the outside.
	
	Exabyte shook the rain off his trenchcoat, pushed his fedora up on his head, and  
surveyed the Vegas motel. Although originally Defcon was to be held in both the Paris Hotel and 
Bally's Hotel, it was now being held in just the Bally's Hotel.
Finding what he was looking for, Exabyte strolled over to the young man looking at a poster on 
the wall. They both looked at the poster in silence for a moment, and then Exabyte reached into 
his trenchcoat pocket, turned to the young man and said, "The trouble with e-cigs is that they 
are not much of an ice breaker." He took a drag, exhaled the vapor and continued, "Now back in 
the old days, I could ask if you had a light, or if you wanted a cig. Now? Unless you have one 
too, it is solidary, and not social."   
The young man looked startled and said, "I don't smoke." 
Exabyte raised an eyebrow, took another drag and said, "what's your handle boy?" 
"Handle's J4CKx. And I'm no boy." he said.
	"Nice to meet you, Jackie-boy. I'm Exabyte; friends call me Byte. You have a field of specialty?"
Like an overclocked computer with no cooling system, J4CKx said: "It's J4CKx! I'm an Elite. 
Jack of All Trades in the computer world. Give me any computer or any challenge, and I will 
solve it." And he glared at Byte.   
Unimpressed, Byte asked: "And what'ca think of this poster?" 
Still looking at Byte like he was malware, J4CKx replied, "Do you think it's wise to discuss the 
poster in the open? Eyes and ears are still everywhere."
In one deft move, Byte tore the poster from the wall and crumpled it up!
J4CKx threw a punch at him, but Byte ducked and his fist hit the wall instead.
Byte grinned, the e-cig still in his mouth, and held out his hand for a shake. "Nice meeting you 
J4CKx. Maybe we will see each other another time. And remember… It's not always what you 
see, but what you don't see that matters."
Byte touched the tip of his hat in a gesture of goodbye, and putting the e-cig back in his 
trenchcoat, strode away whistling the 1812 Overture, like he didn't have a care in the world.
J4CKx nursed his hand and went over to the tables to play some Blacjack to shut down for a 
bit.
	
	Later, back in his room, J4CKx discovered a business card in his pocket. 
It was blank on one side. On the other side, there were what appeared to be random numbers. 
Intrigued, J4CKx grabbed a bottle of scotch and a glass with ice, sat down at the desk he had 
his computer getup on, and propped his feet up on the desk. Taking a sip of the scotch, he 
studied the card. As he looked at the card, he noticed that there were three different types of 
numbers; single digits, double digits and triple digits. Idly stirring the scotch on rocks, J4CKx 
muttered to no one in particular, "there is something off about this card…" Holding it at arms 
length, he studied it from a few different angles. "I got it!" he yelled slamming his glass down 
on the desk. Grabbing a notebook and pen from the desk drawer, he wrote down the number 
23. 
	Then holding the card at an angle, he proceeded to write down the numbers 19, 19, 01, 02, 16, 
25, 12, 07, and 12  that had followed the pattern of the number 23.
 A quick glance at the numbers on the pad had him realizing that it was as easy as cracking 
WEP. It was a simple alpha-numeric substitution cipher where A=1 and B=2 and so on and so forth.  
"SSABPYLGL," he muttered. "Bass pglly, balls gapy… Ballys! Ballys GPS!"
Quickly going through a GPS map he had downloaded before the crisis had begun, he searched 
for the latitude and longitude of the Hotel. The text outputted on the terminal "latitude: 36.1138, 
longitude: -115.1708".
	J4CKx glanced at the clock. The military style clock glared back at him with 2300 hrs. "An hour 
until midnight," he mused. "But this is no time for sleep. There is a challenge to solve!" Putting 
on a pot of java, he stifled a yawn, emptied the glass with the now watered down scotch into the 
sink, put the bottle on top of the mini fridge and went to take a piss.
With the aroma of morning at Starbucks filling the apartment, J4CKx sat down again at his desk 
and stared at numbers on the terminal. After a few calculations, he figured that the most logical 
solution would be the IP address http://36.11.38.115 on port 1708.
When he typed the address into the Nona browser, he found a picture of a skull surrounded by 
the words "The computer is only as strong as the user." 
	J4CKx downed his first cup of coffee as he downloaded the jpeg file called Top-Hat-Sec for 
further study. Once it was downloaded, he navigated via the terminal to the directory the file was in and 
entered: "steghide info Top-Hat-Sec.jpeg"
It outputted the format and size of the jpeg and then asked if he wanted to try to get more 
information about the embedded date. J4CKx hit the y for yes, and it asked him for a 
passphrase. Knowing this was the default question for steghide, J4CKx hit the enter button 
without entering anything. 
The terminal displayed: Embedded file "enigma.7z":  size: 15.0 Byte…
J4CKx stopped reading and entered "extract -sf  Top-Hat-Sec.jpeg" 
	When he tried to open enigma.7z, it asked for a password. J4CKx softly chuckled, "this is 
getting good."
 "Enigma…  There has to be a connection between this and the card Byte gave me," he thought. 
He picked up the business card and studied it again. There were 23 number 23's. "What the hell 
is up with this number!" J4CKx exclaimed.
"Wait… I bet that's it…" He grabbed another cup of coffee, and started to create a script to 
run all possible variations of the written number Twenty-Three.
When he was done scripting, he glanced at the clock and discovered it was 0230 hrs. 
	J4CKx decided to let the script run against the password and get some shut eye.
Something told him it would be a busy day tomorrow. Some would argue that tomorrow was 
already here, it being 2:30 in the morning, but J4CKx knew better. It was a well known saying 
around certain circles that "tomorrow is when you wake up."

	When he arrived at his hotel room on the 23rdfloor, the first thing Byte did was pull out 
his phone and check the room for bugs. 
His hotel room was nothing fancy… old outdated drapes, a bed that had clearly seen its best 
days, and a stale smoke smell that seemed to permeate every corner. A single laptop lay on his 
bed, and he opened it up and proceeded to power it up.
Bringing up his terminal, he entered a quick command to retrieve the auto keyboard dumps he 
had set up on his own laptop. Sure enough, someone had been in his room earlier messing with 
his laptop. It appeared that they had installed a keylogger on top of His keylogger.
Byte smiled wryly. "The fools! They're as vulnerable as an XP computer." Typing in a few 
commands, he started his custom script that mimicked a person on the computer. That would 
keep the nosy people out of his hair for a bit. "You may have taken away our guns, but we still 
have our keyboards!"
	Going over to where the coffee pot would be plugged in, if the hotel had actually supplied it, he 
stuck his thumb on the bottom outlet. 
With an almost silent "whoosh," a door opened in the wall behind his bed. Byte climbed onto his 
bed and stepping through the doorway, pushed the button on the other side to seamlessly close 
the opening.   
Byte breathed a visible sigh of contentment and relieve. Here was his home!!! The hum of 
electronics, the whirr of fans, the sounds of fingers rapidly typing on keyboards, the sight of cpu 
after cpu and terminal after terminal lining the walls.  
He lifted his hat in a gesture of hello to the vigilantes hard at work and strode over to the door 
that led into his office. 
Once in, he powered up his computer, verified nothing had been tampered with (one could 
never be too careful; power corrupts faster than download speeds of 120mb/sec), and bringing 
up N0N-chat, dialed up his boss, V.
	While he waited for V to answer, Byte laughed bitterly. "Funny how They arrest people for 
visiting the wrong website, but they can't figure out our video chat," he thought. 
But this was no Sky-pee Chat. N0N-chat was cleverly disguised to piggyback along with other communications. 
Specifically government conversations. 
To someone who didn't know Exactly what to look for, it just seemed like random 
static.  And even if they Did discover the freeloader, they would still have to break the 5 layer 
encryption that was put in place by V. 
	"V, I may have found the greenhorn we have been looking for." He's a card shark and he was 
studying the poster pretty intently. I slipped him our business card, so it will be interesting to see 
if he makes it here." 
The distorted voice behind the Guy Fawkes mask said "I assume you have done the usual 
checks on him?"
Byte raised an eyebrow. "You know it boss. He uses the Red-Team-Labs Edition of Linux, 
specializes in cryptography, sql injection, cross-site scripting, you name it, he has dabbled in it. I 
think we have a real winner here. Only thing is that he seems a bit… uptight. But I think between 
the two of us we can break him out of his shell shock." 
V laughed low and throaty, "hahahaha. I see you still have your sense of humor Byte!"
"Well V, in a world where the virus is the anti-virus, we need all the humor we can get. Do you 
have another assignment for me at this time?" 
"Yes, but someone seems to have noticed our conversation. I'll get in contact with you the usual 
way." And with that, V closed out the video chat.
Byte glanced at the clock and yawned. "2300 hrs, time to go for a shutdown. Good luck J4CKx" 

	At 0600 hrs. J4CKx woke up. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he stumbled to the 
coffee pot and poured himself a cup of cold bitter brew. Taking a sip, he spit it back into the cup 
and proceeded to make a fresh batch. 
Glancing longingly at the bottle of scotch, J4CKx sat down at the desk that hosted his computer. 
Turning off the screensaver and logging back into his session, he was greeted with a blinking 
curser stating: "Password Found: Tw3n7y-Thr3e"
The 7zip contained a text file with a new IP address and port number. Navigating to the 
address: 37.21.26.19:7755 he found an ascii image displayed that was a copy of the poster 
Byte had torn down. It sported a black and white US style Keyboard, and over the keyboard 
were two miniature Guy Fawkes Masks on the left hand side. They were arranged so only the 
letter V was visible between the two masks. The numbers 1470 stared through the cut out 
eyeholes.
"1470… too obvious," said J4CKx out loud to no-one in particular. "What was it that Byte 
said…? It's not what you see, but what you don't see. What am I not seeing? What is the text 
behind the picture?"
"23, 56 and 89. Hmm…" He lifted his fedora off his head and wiped the sweat that was starting 
to bead on his forehead. 
	"Byte better not be messing with my air conditioning," J4CKx muttered.
"I wonder…" Pulling up Bally's page, he checked to see how many floors it had. 
The only number that would fit with the level of floor was 23. "Of course it's 23," J4CKx 
remarked glaring at his computer. "And according to this article, it was damaged by fire when it 
was the MGM Grand back in 1980." 
Deciding that it was too hot to stay in his room any longer, J4CKx grabbed his laptop and 
trenchcoat and headed out to investigate floor 23. 

	J4CKx knocked on the door with the number 89, but no-one answered. So he tried the door. 
Sure enough, it was an open port.
Stepping inside quickly, he closed the door behind him. The room smelled like stale smoke and 
booze. 
Byte stepped from the corner he was hanging out in, "welcome Jackie-boy, I knew you could 
figure it out. You have any cryptos for me?"
"Yeah, what's with the number 23?" J4CKx asked
"Congress." Byte replied. "We've traced the source of the downfall of America to the 23 House 
committees in the Red-Fed." The sub-committees are just pawns. They have been told exactly 
what bills to pass and what to stop. From there, bending the will of the people is easy. It's like 
the Vendetta movie, but here in the USA. They blame all hackers; white, grey and  black, when 
it is really them who are the virus' and worms." 
	"Here you need to smoke these." he said and handed J4CKx a pack of e-cigs.
"I'm not so sure about that" J4CKx replied. "The only thing smoking should be the Red-Fed's 
cpu's after I'm done with them."
"Kid, zip it and just take a puff."
J4CKx took a drag and yanked the e-cig out of his mouth. "WHAT THE HELL????" "This thing 
shocked me. And more than once." 
"It ain't gonna hurt you kid," Byte said. 
"That's how V sends us orders. There is a computer chip near the battery. It's modified to send 
Morse Code through the e-cig when you activate it. Pretty sweet eh?"  
J4CKx nodded and said, "Continue."
"V and I and our posse have been getting deeper and deeper into this whole situation and we 
now have solid proof as to who called the shots. We are getting close to being ready to 
broadcast this to every television in the nation. But we need your skills. Are you in?"
 "Oh I'm in." J4CKx said. 
	Over the course of the next several days they hacked into all of the different networks 
that supplied entertainment and planted the worm that would cause the shows to display a special message at 6pm each time zone. 
They also hacked into Zmazon and using the government account to pay, they shipped a Guy Fawkes 
mask to every American person in the Zmazon database. Then they went back downstairs to 
play some more cards and enjoy the show.
	At exactly 6pm in each time zone, a classy lady with long blond hair and bright red lips appeared on the television. 
She was the kind of lady that would fry your electronics just by looking at her. "Hello Darlings!" she 
said. "My name is Kitty, and I am here to tell you that you have been lied to and your families 
have been torn apart because of these lies." Images flashed across every TV screen in 
America. They showed the lies that had been told and how the hackers that had been 
slaughtered had been innocent. Well innocent of what they were accused of at least! The show 
concluded with the location of the guilty parties homes, an urge to wear the masks that many would be receiving 
and Kitty blowing a kiss towards the audience.

	"Byte, J4CKx, I would like to meet with you," V said. "You men did good. The fight is not over as 
you know. This is just the first step in our fight back to freedom; going from Windows to Linux."
 "I have not personally met V, it will be as exciting as my first SQL breach to finally meet with 
him." Byte told J4CKx
Arriving at the designated meeting place, they saw V. He was wearing a long black trenchcoat 
that covered him from his neck down to his boots with a black fedora pulled low over his eyes, 
that shaded his face in obscurity.
He stood up from his chair and said "Well done my friend, I knew I could count on you.
Shall we celebrate?" He asked. "Sure, why not down a few rounds?" both Byte and J4CKx 
replied. Though in reality, all either of them wanted was a hot shower and a long recharging 
sleep.
	As V stepped up to join them, the weariness that both men had felt disappeared. The features 
on V's face were visible… and it was a distinctly female face. "Things have just gotten a lot 
more interesting" Byte said, punching J4CKx in the shoulder. "You can say that again!" J4CKx 
whispered back. And off they strolled to the sound of Jazz music with their fedoras and 
trenchcoats disappearing into the night until Justice and Freedom needed to be fought for again.