A grey sky and a cold wind were the instant reminders for Simon Snow that summer was over. The day was going to be one that would have been better to have skipped, but he wasn’t to know that as he dressed confidently in khaki trousers, blue collared shirt, brown leather jacket and Chelsea boots and headed to his car.
The drive from Reading to Slough was hardly glamorous, but he didn’t let that dissuade him from driving with a swashbuckling style, with accompanying metal music at high volume. Heavy right foot, brake, turn in, check the mirror, look for the next overtaking target and repeat. Once he reached the M4, it was a cruise to the news and time he used to start thinking about his day ahead.
He was the security head at a software enterprise which was firing on all six, much like his BMW, inline and smooth. After three great years of thirty per cent earnings growth his share of the business was worth considerably more than when he had started five years ago and he was feeling very bullish about the present and the future.
What Simon didn’t know was that waiting for him that day were two individuals determined to steal from him and the business, two slick, professional cypher punks who had decided to get rich and get out.
Simon parked his car in the lot and walked with a determined stride to the glass reception door of the two story industrial park building. There were a few other cars in the lot, but he didn’t pay them attention as he was thinking through how he was going to negotiate with one of his staff who still wasn’t pulling their weight despite a recent negative performance review. He imagined the conversation as he was walking;
“It’s not okay, Stephanie, to say you are going to do the job and then not even bother to start it, I mean it’s actually offensive to me and embarrassing to us when we have to report to the Board. You do get that, right?”
He thought this was probably the right tone, the shit sandwich approach just hadn’t worked so now he needed to lay it straight on her. Gloves off.
He pushed the door open and walked straight past the, as yet unmanned, light pine reception desk and started climbing the stairs to his office.
“Excuse me” came the attractive voice of a well educated woman from behind him, at the entrance to the building entering from the door he had just come through.
He stopped, turned and looked down from the few stairs that he had already climbed,
“Can I help you?” he said, in a neutral tone, hiding his annoyance at having to stop his momentum up the stairs.
“I am looking for Simon Snow,” she said, with a nice, open smile.
“That’s me, how can I help?’ Simon was intrigued now. It was not every day, scratch that, he had never been accosted early on a weekday morning by a good looking woman who was looking for him.
“Oh great, I am Rosie and I was sent by Tom Guttenhal to come and say hello, he said I should ‘take you for a coffee early in the day, before you got stuck in to bossing people around’, were his exact words”.
Simon chuckled a little in response. Tom was one of his university mates, and they had always surprised each other over the years with pranks and jokes. Simon guessed this was one of those, but didn’t show any hint of this, just grunted a suppressed;
“Interesting Rosie, follow me’.
She was quick to comply, climbing the steps with alacrity and a light step in her dark ASICS trainers. He turned to continue climbing and shortly they were both in the white plasterboard corridor outside his office. He opened the locked door, led the way in and offered Rosie a chair opposite his very ordinary, functional pine desk. The desk had two bracketed monitors on it, a box of tissues, a mouse, a wireless keyboard and a small glass bowl containing some paper clips, earbuds and Post-It notes.
She looked at him and smiled delicately, whilst he logged on, purely from habit, and said
“Would you like a cup of coffee, or tea?”
“Coffee with milk, no sugar please, would be great, thank you,’ She responded, widening her smile, showing perfect teeth.
Simon stood up
“Wait here," he said, as he walked back around the desk and out of the room.
As soon as he was gone and she could hear the footsteps, the woman swiftly went round the desk, produced a USB stick and plugged it into the computer under the desk. Immediately she went to work and within forty five seconds had installed a keystroke logger. A window popped up prompting the installation of the malware that would grant remote access. She clicked it, actively listening for Simon’s return. Only if he ran certain security protocols would it be detected and she hoped by then it would be too late.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Simon pushed the door handle down and opened the door with his left hand and used his foot to help as he carried the two mugs of coffee in his right hand. Rosie was exactly where he had left her and was waiting expectantly, innocently.
He nodded
‘Here you are, one hand-made coffee’
‘Thank you, very kind, I hope I am not disturbing you’, she replied
‘Not at all, I don’t get that many early morning visitors’, he lied, knowing full well he hadn’t had any and certainly not any impromptu, attractive female ones.
‘So how do you know Tom?’ he asked to open the conversation up
‘We worked together briefly and he was always friendly to me’, she said
“I’ll bet he was” Simon thought but said,
“Was he your boss?”
‘No, different team, but I wouldn’t have minded if he was, he always seemed on the ball’, she said and took a sip of her coffee.
‘He said that you might be looking for new people here and that was part of the reason I wanted to meet you’ she continued.
‘I knew there was a motive’ thought Simon.
‘You know, unfortunately we are not hiring right now, but do you have a resume or CV you could send me to look at?’
‘Sure’ she said, ‘what’s your email address’ she asked as she took her phone out of her small Gucci handbag.
He told her his email, she thanked him and stood up:
‘Thank you so much Simon, it was a pleasure to meet you’ and she turned to the door.
‘No problem, do send me the CV,’ replied Simon and she left to make her way back down the stairs and out of the building.
Simon opened his phone and messaged Tom
‘Nice one mate. Is she any good? 🧐.’ The message was delivered, but not read, so Simon started going through his emails and checking the document he had been working on all week. Oblivious.
The woman opened the passenger door of the dark grey Tesla and climbed in, looked at the driver and smiled
“We are in business”
The driver pressed the accelerator and the car moved silently forward, out of the parking lot headed towards the M4 junction and took the heading east to London. They pulled into the Heston Services and chose a spot to park away from the pumps and cameras.
‘Listen Carla," the man started, ‘we need to get this opened right now, just in case our little fish gets off the hook.’ She nodded and opened a laptop that was in a soft bag in the footwell of her side of the cabin.
‘Let’s do it,’ was her enthusiastic reply. After all, there was money to be made. She logged in via her phone’s hotspot signal and logged onto Simon Snow’s desktop. She was an unknown snooper at this point, monitoring and recording his keystrokes and watching his progress on the technical document he was working on.
‘We’re in’ she said, with the man looking over at the screen too, periodically looking up and around him outside at the bleak service station area.
‘Okay, shut it down, we will do the work tonight when he’s tucked up in bed with his teddy’ the man laughed, both of them were in good spirits.
The following morning was quite different, one of the great joys for Simon was the variability in the English weather, the lack of predictability was a feature for him, not a failure. It was drizzling, with little wind, and the roads to the office were wet, slick and slippery. So he took his time and listened to part of a Podcast from the Joe Rogan Experience on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The interviewee was famous in the fighting world, modest, realistic and clearly as tough as old boots. Simon was impressed and Joe seemed knowledgeable about fighting too, the whole journey was over too quickly for Simon. Soon it would be totally forgotten.
He logged on and opened his emails. There was one that grabbed his eye immediately in the list of fifteen or so that arrived overnight and that were not automatically in the spam bin. The subject line was simple enough
Simon, you have been hacked, SSportofkings3$%6722 is your password
His heart thundered and he felt immediate panic. That was his password for the encrypted documents and they were sensitive. His company had won a contract from one of the largest publicly listed US uranium mining companies for their global operations and it was their documents he had been working on.
He opened the email and he felt dread.
You now have a choice.
Comply with our requests and no one will know about this, or acknowledge that you have allowed yourself to be hacked through sloppy security protocols (yes, you will never work in IT security again) and lose your job and your future. You have 10 minutes from the time of the email read receipt to make your decision.
Your decision is final and it is binding forever.
If you choose to comply, but later go to any authorities, your computer will be contaminated with explicit child porn, and a traceable history of your child porn preferences will be released to the Police, your family and the general public.
We are watching you and we will know if you try anything.
Hit reply and confirm you will comply NOW.
And if you choose to report this we will drain your accounts, and the company accounts.
Simon was in deep shock, but he forced himself to act. He pulled the ethernet cable from his machine and got up with his phone in his hand. He stopped. Sat down, then got up again and walked to the door.