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(aka Bike) Part 1447 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad
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“Good afternoon, Lady Cameron, I trust you are well despite your recent experiences?”
“I’ll live, which is more than one or two other people will.”
“They chose to join the wrong side and to play with guns–it is a dangerous practice.” I hoped he wasn’t going to throw platitudes at me all afternoon, if he was, I’d probably confess to anything from Jack the Ripper to the Kennedy Assassinations just to avoid it.
“How can I help you, Chief Inspector?” Politeness meant I kept it civil even though part of me wanted to ask him to leave and never darken my doorstep again.
“We are still looking for the memory device, which is missing.”
“Yes, I was told that yesterday.”
“Old news,” he sighed, “I am so sorry, but it is important we find it.”
“In case it fell into the wrong hands you mean?”
“Quite so, in fact in the wrong hands, it could be catastrophic.”
“Like terrorists?”
“Exactly so–with so many people in London next year, the casualties could be great.”
“In which case, I hope you find it.”
“Yes, I do too. Do you mind if we ask you some more questions, and your husband also?”
“I’ve got better things to do, but I suppose you’re only doing your job.”
“You are too kind.”
“Tea?”
“That would be much appreciated.”
I sat him in the sitting room and went to make the tea. I called down the garden to Simon that the Inspector would want to see him and he went down to the sitting room to see him, get it over with, I suppose.
I made the tea and took it through, they paused while I gave them each a mug and a plate of biscuits, then I went back to the kitchen to get mine. The girls seemed very quiet, so I looked in the dining room and Trish and Livvie were both looking at something on her laptop. They were watching something very impressive because they oohed and ahed every so often.
I walked across to see what it was–it was impressive, a three dimensional plan of a building, which Trish was moving round to see different aspects and elevations. “Thinking of becoming an architect are you, Trish?”
“Hi, Mummy, ’s good innit?”
“Yes, where did you get it?”
“It was on the top of your bag.”
“What was?”
“The memory stick.”
“What memory stick?”
“This one,” she pointed to said device plugged into a USB port on the side of her machine.
My stomach flipped over, “What else does it have on it?”
She showed me masses of data, about different buildings including the velodrome and schedules, code words and so on. I told her to disconnect it and to erase any which she had on the computer from the flash drive.
She protested but I told her it was important that she should do as I said because the police were in the house and looking for this very thing. She cooperated after that and finally detached the device and handed it to me.
“Come with me, young lady.” I marched her to the sitting room and knocked and entered. I held up the device and said, “I think this is what you’re seeking.” His jaw dropped, “I found her examining it on her laptop–Trish, please explain to the Inspector how you came to find it and loaded it on to your computer.”
“I’m not going to jail, am I?” she said holding tightly on to my hand.
“No, young lady, not if you tell me the truth.”
“It was tucked just inside Mummy’s bag, which she left by the door of her study. I hadn’t seen her use that sort before–it was sixteen gigabytes–an’ I just wanted to see what was on it–honest–I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”
“Has anyone else seen it?” he asked.
“Only Mummy and Livvie.”
“This is password protected–how did you get into it?” He looked at me as if I was guilty not only of stealing it but in trying to palm my guilt off on to my daughter. He didn’t know Trish.
She explained it was very easy to break the code–she has a program for it which she downloaded over the net–now my jaw dropped. She had to modify it a bit, but she got into it and was watching it when I happened on the two of them.
“You mean to tell me, you decoded the password?”
“Yes and set a better one,” Trish beamed at him.
“Is this possible?” he looked at me in bewilderment.
“She has an IQ of one hundred and sixty.”
“But she is so young.”
“Tell me about it,” I offered back to him.
“I’m seven,” Trish snapped at him, "I’m not just a dumb kid, you know.” I nodded in agreement.
“What is the new password?” asked the Inspector.
“The first ten Fibonacci numbers–only in reversed order.”
“What are these Fibonacci numbers?”
“They were invented in India, so you should know, Mr Inspector.”
“Lots of things were invented in India, including curried elephant, but I know nothing about it.”
“Curried elephant–yuck–you’d need a big pot for that, wouldn’t you, Mummy?”
“Don’t worry, darling, I won’t be adding it to the menu any time soon.”
“Good, I’m rather glad–yuck–sounds horrid.”
“The Fib–whatever numbers–you were telling me.”
“Oh those, everyone knows about a Fibonacci sequence, don’t they, Mummy?”
Simon snorted.
“Tell the nice policeman, Daddy.”
Simon looked at me, sighed and began to explain how the sequence formed, each number being the sum of the previous two and so on.”
I gave Trish a piece of paper and she began to write a sequence down–quicker than I would. She explained as she went along and then showed how she’d created her codeword writing it down for the copper. He shook his head, “And she is seven?” I nodded and rolled my eyes in a tell me about it expression. “She is precociously precocious.”
“Something like that.”
“How did you get the memory device, Lady Cameron?”
“I don’t know, in fact, until a few minutes ago I assumed it was lost or in somebody else’s hands, I was quite shocked when I saw the girls playing with the program, which I’ve made her remove from our computer.”
“I am afraid I will have to seize the computer.”
“No,” said Trish.
“I am sorry, young lady, but I have to.”
“No, you can’t.”
“But I can and will.”
“No–if you do–I won’t tell you the other part of the code.”
“What code?” Inspector Singh demanded.
“To open the memory drive.”
“There is more code?”
“Yeah, anyone could work out the Fibonacci sequence–even Mummy.”
“Thank you, darling, last week you told me all I could open was a tin of soup.”
“You annoyed me then.”
“So sorry, I’m sure.”
“What is this other code?”
“If you take my laptop, I won’t tell you.” Trish was bargaining with the police, not that there was anything to stop him taking her computer once she’d spilled the beans.
“If you tell me, and show me your computer has no parts of these plans on it, then I won’t take it, but I might have one of my men come and see it to make sure it’s okay.”
“He’d better not take it either.”
“I promise he won’t.”
She took him to her computer and he poked and prodded but it was obvious he didn’t know very much about them. He made a call on his mobile and we sat and waited while some technician arrived.
“What is the rest of the code word?”
“I thought your clever dick man was going to find it?”
“Trish, please you are wasting police time and he can arrest you for that,” I said curtly to her.
“It’s easy, take a progressive letter from each of the planets in the solar system, including the sun and moon.”
“That won’t work, sweetheart, the moon and Mars only have four letters.”
“You count them back and fore, M-A-R-S-S-R-A-M,” she spelt out how it would work, and she was seven–bloody hell–did I feel inadequate? The Inspector wrote it all down under her direction. He looked stunned when he’d finished.
As we finished another cup of tea, the technician arrived, accepted a cuppa, set up his computer and checked the flash drive–he was glad he was given the password sequence. “Jesus–who dreamt that up?”
“I did, easy innit?” smiled Trish.
“You’re ’avin’ me on?”
“We are not, Mr Cadbury, she appears to have a very mature brain inside that petite body,” confirmed the Inspector.
Next, Cadbury examined Trish’s computer which had its own password, she challenged him to find it. He conceded defeat, saying he’d never have got past the one on the flash drive if she hadn’t told him. She beamed and said, “It’s easy, it’s–trishs-computer.”
“I put that on,” I gasped.
“See, told you it was easy,” she said matter of fact.
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Comments
Trish
I want to strangle her and I'm not there. I bet the coppers will need therapy after this visit
Karen
Easy passwords
I like it!
Martina
Awesome. Don't try mind
Awesome. Don't try mind games with Trish.
I Think Trish Will Be Working
Overgrown doorstop meets superbrain
My computers are so frustrating sometimes, they'd make good doorstops. Trish only has an IQ of 160? Sometimes she acts as though it's 360. Makes me feel like an ignoramus.
I love the way you are able to flit from high drama to comedy from one day to the next. As always, 'Bike' is a compelling read.
S.
Nah. Trish's laptop ... and her brain
would run rings around the IBM 360 which was the first computer I ever did anything on 40 years ago.
It had an 8 bit processor, 8-256 kB RAM, and no more than 8MB of very slow storage ram, without a hard drive or tape drive to store anything in excess of that.
Holly
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
Holly
That takes me back !
My first one was a Radioshack one that came in kit form and had to be assembled and soldered together! It used a sound casette tape recorder for memory, and you had to make up all your own programmes, in basic. It was a lot of fun and I even did some useful work on it, but I wrote this what today we would call a screensaver programme on it with 140 lines of programming on it, and a few years later showed it to my 15 year old German stepson, who looked at it, found it interesting, asked about the programme for it, which I proudly showed him - it painted one by one 25 random sized and shaped and positioned quadrangles on the screen, then wiped clean and began again. "Hm," he mumbled thoughtfully, "neat, but why so many lines of programme?" then proceeded to write a similar one but in just 5 lines !
So I gave it to him. I have not written any programme since. But it at least taught me how computers worked and how to make them do things.
Briar
Briar
IQ 360
Now that would be something really awesome. Especially if the person was well balanced and not of the savant variety. Very high IQ people are sometimes self destructive in the way they deal with others and in the end achieve less than what they would have with a lower IQ.
So, I've been thinking about the next evolutionary step for humans. I wonder how that would manifest?
Gwendolyn
Gwen, See Story "Evolution" for Answer to That!
The answer to your question would be given in another story on BCTS - called "Evolution" !
Briar
Briar
“She is precociously precocious.â€
Ain't that the damned truth,that little girl is truly a little scamp.
On the matter of passwords
As a developer (who dealt with more then enough data encryption ) I must say it was one lousy password and encryption if it was cracked that easy . Not to underestimate trish intelligence but a good password on a 256 bit RSA encrypt will take years to break on a supercomputer ( they only thing that can theoretically decrypt them with ease is quantum computers, and they are not at that level of development yet.
If you really want to protect your stuff use a 12 char ( min) password that contains both letters( Capital and small case) , numbers and other chars(~!@#$^ etc) over a good 128/256 bit encryption (RSA, GPG etc.).
Anyway a great chapter :).
Lily ( who really need to stop rambling on on stuff like this).
12 is a bit short at least for me
Personally I find anything less than 22 characters inadequate and yes wholehearted agreement with the use of non-alpha characters. Also, above all, do NOT use any words that are in the dictionary. Apparently having passwords that have dictionary words that are even part of the password is a no-no. It leaves the password more vulnerable to stuff like dictionary attacks by people who are trying to crack your password.
There are plenty of websites out there that offer you the opportunity to test out the strength of a password. I would of course only test using a pattern similar to what your final password will be and not the actual password you use :).
Kim
If You Want a Really Secure Password
Steve Gibson Research has a free random password generator here: https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm along with other useful password and security information, and free security utilities.
It's a bit over the top for a lot of things, but I have used it to create the WPA2 security key for my home WiFi.
Problem with random passwords
... is that then the user may not be able to memorize it or remember it over the long haul without writing it down. I figured out a good mnemonic trick to generate my passwords now that is both secure (verified indirectly using some password checker) and practical to remember. Best of all all components of it are unlikely to be part of a dictionary attack.
Kim
Actually
22 might be an overkill . Most encoding protocol use block ciphers and thus the length of the password doesn't matter if its more then 6-8 , anyway I recommend 12 cause people can still memorize it.
Lily.
Dictionary attacks
I would have thought dictionary attacks would only work if your password is largely composed of a dictionary word or common combination of dictionary words. Using non-alphanumeric characters does increase security, but many sites still don't accept them (and some don't like passwords longer than 12 characters or fewer).
Ideally you should use a different password on every site you visit, but most humans would have trouble remembering oodles of mnemonics, substitutions etc. Besides which, a determined attacker would check for common substitutions (0 = 0, 1 = l, 3 = e, 4 = h etc.)
http://xkcd.org/936/
Of course, attackers will now be adding "correcthorsebatterystaple" to their dictionaries :)
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
The kid's obviously bright ...
A Nice ride around Manchester to finish off the Sparkle weekend.
but she's only following conventional memnomonic techniques. The trick is to employ a memnomonic specific to one's own personal life or memorable life experiences.
As she said, 'it's easy Mummy'.
Still lovin' it Angie.
Love and hugs.
OXOXOX
Bev.
I like Trish more and more all the time but
she needs to develop some common sense along with the brilliance.
sadly
Sadly common sense isn't very common :P sorry just couldn't resist. but there are a lot of verry smart people that have little or none. (honstly think that there brains don't work that way grew up with 2) Engineers Especially :P sowwry couldn't resist that one either (mom had a phd and had common sense dad had phd also and very litle common sense)
I play online games *rolls eyes* yes I am one of those people :P
Fav puplished authors atm are Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson series),Carrie Vaughn (Kitty series), Kim Harrision.
God I luv Trish
For a genius, she's still only seven, but she needs two nannies and mummy just to keep track of her and keep her on the right track. Breaking codes and downloading that stuff at 7 is scary. And why did she tamper with a device she knew was not hers? She needs to be in college level on line learning with a tutor sitting right there to keep track. And she needs to be working with the cops already to get their heads in the sunlight where they belong. She thinks it up, then an adult shows her how to get it done the proper way. She might be running 5 or 6 in a couple of years, if they don't watch out. She might be the PM when she reaches legal age.
classic episode
This was a classic episode of bike Ang. Some great one liners in this episode.
Now if Cathy can get Trish to help find the ‘someone’, obviously a descendent of Professor Moriarty, who is the mastermind behind the whole theft.
The games afoot
Love to all
Anne G.
Just love those
last few lines, All that talk about passwords and then we find out the password to Trish's computer .... Lovely writing Ang ...As always.
Kirri
Easy As Falling Off A Bike pt 1447
Is Trish TOO smart?
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Having a genius in the house
can be both good and bad.