Free Hacked by Tracy Alexander Page B

world?
    And:
    the environment is always the answer to the animal studies question
    They were designed to demonstrate that I was working, whilst not being so goody-goody that theylooked fake. All part of the plan to turn Hacker Boy into Keener.
    That’s the thing with my ‘condition’, if I have one. I decide things and then persevere until they happen. Time isn’t a significant factor, neither are obstacles. It’s key for a hacker, because coding is full of blind alleys and dead ends. I’m obsessive, I suppose, but without the anxiety and handwashing. I recommend it.
    My last little ritual before I started French revision
– un moment, s’il vous plait
– was to pop onto a forum to check Angel hadn’t reappeared.
    My mind was so focused on looking for him that it took a few seconds to catch up with the chat that was going on. And a few seconds more to take it in. Too panicked to read the thread properly I joined in, asking for more information.
    what drone are you talking about?    – I typed.
    an unmanned US drone on ops in Germany has disappeared been off the radar for 12 hours
    a l33t did it
    how?    – I typed.
    they thought it crashed in woods but they didnt find the hardware so now they think it was stolen and the live feed hacked
    Despite the paralysis in my brain I could see how a drone, flying on automatic, could be hijacked by a hacker who could send back whatever footage he chose – like a crash.
    critical stuff – hacking a feed into the US military and walking off with a drone
    is it loaded?   – I typed.
    armed and ready
    its carrying Hellfire missiles
    how do you know?    – I typed.
    I was willing it to just be talk – script kiddies full of hot air.
    everyone knows
    only a matter of time and it’ll be on CNN
    I stayed logged on but lay down on my bed, eyes closed, and tried to sort through the jumble of thoughts, all scary as hell, that were filling up my head. It took time, minutes, to get the told-you-so voices out of my head – Joe’s ‘You’ve been played’, and Ty whispering, ‘Ever heard of Gary McKinnon?’ As well as the images of Afghan kids being bombed while playing in the street, me being dragged off in handcuffs and Ruby looking at me with utter loathing. Eventually I slowed down my breathing, and got things in order:
    – Angel had challenged me to hack a drone
    – I’d hacked a surveillance drone
    – I’d sent Angel my lines of code so he could, in theory, control a drone (the ‘in theory’ was only in there to make me feel better)
    – I didn’t know whether the code could also access a combat drone
    – Angel disappeared as soon as he got the code
    – so did IRC channel #angeldust
    – a combat drone had disappeared from an American base in Germany
    – was it Angel?
    – who the hell
was
Angel?
    For all I knew he was a forty-year-old psychopath, or a religious fundamentalist, or a schizophrenic hearing voices telling him to bomb Simon Cowell. I was fuming at the idea he’d been stringing me along, working me like a puppet. I’m not good at dealing with anger. I needed to do something.
    Right.
    I went back to my computer and started information-gathering. I followed any current threads that mentioned drones, half of which were about drone strikes, for and against, a quarter were about toy drones, research drones, drone capability, and the rest were about the missing one. I left messages for Angel anywhere I ever remembered meeting him. Mum called me for lunch. Lunch! There was no way I could swallow bread when I might be responsible for … a drone strike … and carnage.
    There was no way round it – why steal a Predator unless you plan to use it?
    ‘Dan! Come on, I’ve made sausage sandwiches for my hardworking boy.’
    I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face, took some deep breaths, stared at myself in the mirror and tried to make a normal face, worried that the feeling inside me would show on the outside. Fear.Dread. Disgust. Terror.