Free The Messiah Code by Michael Cordy Page B

their
    most sensitive and best-protected database--IGOR.
    She ignored the world wide web, because none of the GENIUS systems were visible there. Instead she tapped out the number of Big Mother, intending to hack into the live connection used by all the Genescopes to feed data into the mother brain, and then into IGOR. Almost instantly the front-end screen appeared demanding a password. She punched in yesterday's--she had purposely not looked at today's.
    " Access denied " flashed up on screen.
    Good. The password had been changed. The data was secure from her.
    Or should be.
    She'd have to find another way in. She pressed the keys on the board in front of her, trying to get around the front-end title screen, which gave no information about what IGOR contained. She would still not be in the system once she'd done this, because she had designed IGOR to have two levels of security--one to prevent prowlers from browsing the front-end menu and one to stop them from accessing the data--but at least it would be a start. She tried the easy tricks first, the ones known to all high school cyberpunks. First, she tried to find it by interrogating the program behind it.
    No joy. All the simple breaches were closed.
    Good. So far.
    She moved on to the next approach: using the base computer language to reprogram the password commands. This was more difficult and took years of experience. If you put in the wrong program code you could damage all your other software.
    She did it without thinking. It took her a little over four seconds to try this technique. But then Razor Buzz was a supremo, a cyberlord.
    Nothing. No breach. Her team had covered this angle.
    Excellent.
    Now to the final approach. This entailed writing her own program to tell the program that ran the password system what to do. Like creating higher orders for the system to obey. This took Razor a little longer. This was clever.
    Then her eyes saw the message flashing on the bottom right of the screen.
    " Program already resident...Program already resident...Pro gram already resident ..."
    This had never happened before. "Shit," she said aloud, both impressed and nervous.
    The screen changed and she realized she was entering the first stage of IGOR--only one final password defense away from the data.
    But she hadn't finished her own higher language program. She must have got in on the coattails of someone else.
    Someone else must have opened the door using the same program she was writing and inadvertently let her in. Ignoring the perspiration on her brow, she rode the intruder's slipstream, checking how far he'd penetrated. Whoever it was, he had infiltrated the first-stage defenses and appeared to be browsing the front-end menus--just window shopping, seeing what IGOR contained.
    Her hand hovered over the hot key that would catapult both the intruder and herself out of the database.
    But she didn't press it yet. She would press it only if the intruder looked as if he was doing the impossible--breaking through the impregnable second stage of defenses and accessing any of the highly confidential data stored there. Before that happened she wanted to find out who the intruder was. The automatic Predator tracer would start immediately if the intruder managed to get beyond the second stage--assuming he could. But she wanted the trace to start now.
    She addressed the receiver on her computer. "I need you to start a trace. Activate Predator."
    A small help icon opened on the top right of the screen containing her computer-generated head, still wearing the cop helmet.
    The head asked, " Stealth mode or alarm mode ?"
    "Stealth. Don't want to frighten our visitor off yet."
    Another small icon opened up on the top left of her screen. Above it was a clock ticking down from sixty seconds, the time it took to effect a complete trace. At the
    bottom of the icon was a row of nine flashing numbers. The numbers were changing at a frantic speed, searching for the right combination. Suddenly the