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It didn't take long for the darknet to buzz with news that the goons had grabbed 3V3.
Someone posted surveillance footage of the abduction and backtracked it to the nail salon, the hair stylist and other errands. The real surprise was that she was being so open, since she was usually so cautious and discreet, and there was a bit of surprise that she appeared in the Catskills, but then someone posited that it would be the last place anyone expected to look.
The Catskills... Aaron Cohen thought. Who was monitoring the grid in the godforsaken Catskills? He knew SIMon would easily expand to cover the entire surveillance grid, and no doubt, the goons had managed to implement full extensibility. He was a little surprised that another hacker had gotten the footage, presumably through SIMon. Well, he reflected, the Surveillance Intelligence MONitor I designed for the powers that be is not my baby anymore. It's out there working for others, my adversaries for sure, but others too. I can't believe it pegged 3V3.
He tapped into the SIMon stat system and ran the logs. Holy crap. 98% make? That's incredible. 'I can't reliably get a 96% make on myself two days in a row', he thought.
Then he stopped thinking about the obvious flaw in the recog engine that could generate such a strong false positive and rewatched the footage, the raw data being much higher resolution than what was posted on the darknet. Others may have cracked into SIMon, but he could still play it like a virtuoso.
The footage was incredible. This girl was a dead ringer for 3V3. No wonder SIMon 'made' her. And no wonder the goon squad snatched her as soon as she was made.
That poor girl. She has no idea what deep dung she's fallen into.
Aaron didn't have to look too hard to find the ransom notes. The encryption was laughably poor. Presumably they wanted everyone to crack it, so the whole community knew the goons were holding R00tkid's girlfriend and were going to smoke him out ...or any other unwitting scriptkiddie who took the bait.
Then he wondered, did they deliberately use bad encryption or were they just more incompetent than even he thought. No matter. The effect was the same. The battle lines were drawn and armies and alliances were coalescing. The Helen of Troy scenario was running and there was no stopping it.
To be continued...
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"Helen of Troy scenario "
I'm not sure what that is, but it doesn't sound good ...
I apologize for the following wall of text...
In Greek Mythology, Helen of Troy (A.K.A. Helen of Sparta) was the daughter of Zeus and Leda - she was believed to be the most beautiful woman in the world. Her abduction by the King of Troy (Helen was from Sparta) brought about the Trojan War. This was a long war that that culminated into the sacking of Troy by means of using the Trojan Horse. You can read more about it here. The author is likening the abduction of Helen from Sparta to our protagonist, Yves, who was abducted solely because she is believed to be the love interest of Rootkid. The perceived love interest is what makes this analogy work, and in the case of our protagonist, it is a mistaken identity; which is what makes this so very amusing. This is causing people to ally with one of two main factions, who presumably, are going to go to engage in a war of some kind in order to rescue her from her captors - much like Sparta and their allies (Helen's suitors, mostly - there were a lot of them) who banded together to take on Troy and their allies. The analogy works because of the abduction due to the love interest (even though it is mistaken), and the foreshadowing war to come through the escalation of various factions as alliances are formed (Much like how all the suitors' houses banded together with Sparta to rescue Helen). The hilarious thing here is that Yves is most certianly not 3V3, and in spite of her protests, everyone believes her to be 3V3 anyway.
I can't help but appreciate the author's use of this reference as it is very appropos in both situational aspects as well as modern day terminology. If you don't get it, read this to understand that the Trojan Horse used in mythology is also the name used for a form of computer malware. If a bunch of hackers from one faction go to war with another, the virtual battlefield would be rife with computer worms, various forms of computer virii, and of course, trojan horses. Kat Walker is showing us just how clever she really is! This is an exemplary use of a reference, and also a great example of wonderful and skillful writing.
I apologize for the long wall of text, Sorry! O.o
Cheers!
Valiselle ^.^
A Trojan Horse?
Well that's an interesting development.
Maggie
It's a good thing I didn't read this
chapter first before commenting to the first post. I sorta hit the hammer with the nail! :)
Hugs
Grover