Crazy Seduction(erotica)

It took all day for his access request to finally come back with an affirmative and he had to speak with three senior executives to explain his findings. They found public record of Minister Imamura’s business dealings with the New York investment house. That was above board. It was the combination of this relationship plus the undisclosed use of an unknown encryption technology between his daughter’s project on the Japanese school server and the US company’s network that made them take an interest.

He fed his prepared data file into the decryption engine and headed home once more.

The next day he rushed in hoping to see the report but saw a note requesting his presence in a conference room. Grinning, he quickly sent a few of the files he’d pulled from VRL’s server to his supervisor then rushed upstairs and knocked on the door of the conference room before entering.

His boss was inside as well as his boss’ boss and two other people, a man and a woman who he didn’t recognize.

“Good morning, Director Yosman. Supervisor McCalin,” he said, greeting them in ranking order. He glanced to the two strangers.

McCalin had a weary look on his face. “Kent, let me introduce you to agents Gerrod Kaiba and Fran Sparling. They will be heading up the investigation of the use of this currently unbreakable cipher.”

“Unbreakable?” Kent asked in surprise and his face lit up. “The Engine failed?”

“Yes, it failed. Try not to get too excited about it,” the supervisor said.

“Sorry sir,” Ken muttered, glancing at the smile on the director’s face.

“May we assume the firewall at VRL Investments is using the same encryption?” McCalin asked.Content © NôvelDrama.Org 2024.

Kent smirked at his boss. “You may not. Their firewall was a joke. I was able to slip inside and just before the meeting I sent you a few sample files found inside.”

With an annoyed frown, McCalin linked his laptop to the projector then pulled up one of the email messages. He opened one of the spreadsheets, and his face showed shock and embarrassment. “What the hell is this? Didn’t you check any of these?”

The screen was showing the file contained odd text:

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua…”

Below this was a photo of two women of extra-large proportions squeezed into latex outfits. They were engaging in some very risqué behavior.

The supervisor opened two more and found the same kind of content in each. The images just became more graphic. He was red-faced, and his eyes nervously flicked to his boss before they locked on Kent in rage. “This is decoy data!”

Kent was shaking his head in shock and embarrassment. “There was no sign of the site being counterfeit. Every test I ran against it confirmed I was inside.”

“Inside a honeypot,” McCalin growled and Kent’s ears burned with humiliation.

The supervisor turned his head to his boss. “I think we can safely say VRL is using a very advanced firewall if one of our best can’t recognize he’s been tricked.”

Kent appreciated the off-hand compliment, but he was too angry. He wanted to take those bastards at VRL down!

“What about the Japanese side of this. We know the school project has a firewall which is claimed to be impenetrable. Is it?”

“I- I haven’t tried to break past the firewall there yet,” Kent replied.

McCalin tapped a few keys on his laptop, and Kent’s desktop appeared. “Ok, you can demonstrate to us now how to get inside.” He slid the laptop over to Kent.

Glancing at the others, he set up the connections and brought them through the school’s firewall to the computer lab. “This is the port where the project is running. I collected packets the port was sending and receiving, but I did not attempt to enter. I will do so now.”

Following what he did for VRL he used a previously provided packet’s header ID to get past the firewall. Sure enough, there was a directory with folders and files. “We’re inside, but I think we’re in the decoy site. The file names are the same.”

“So we don’t know what’s really behind these firewalls nor do we know what data is transferring between them,” the Director said.

“No sir,” McCalin admitted.

The senior official sat back and pondered that for a bit. He didn’t like not knowing. He looked to the young man glowering at the screen. It was clear from his expression that he also didn’t like not knowing. “Can you get past this firewall?”

“No firewall is unbreakable! For every lock, there is a key!” Kent said with a tight voice.

The Director nodded. “Concentrate on the one at VRL. Let’s not set off an international incident if we can avoid it. Try not to show your hand but get inside. Find out how it ticks. I’ll give you until next Tuesday. That’s when I want to send our agents here to speak to the principals at VRL. Get them something more than the link with the Japanese school project.”

Kent nodded and felt a cold sweat break out on his forehead. It was Friday. Including the weekend, he had only three days to crack this bitch. He wasn’t going to be getting much sleep in those days.

He just had to find that fucking key.

Henry walked in the front door of VRL and smiled at the receptionist who was beaming a bright and cheerful smile at him. As he made to walk by, she crooked her finger at him to invite him closer. He changed his path to approach her desk.

“Good morning, Kiera!” he said.

“Late morning, Mr. Gable?”

“Yes, I, uh… slept through my alarm.” He saw the clock was indicating 9:45 AM but he’d hadn’t been sleeping well due to the suicide he’d witnessed last week. He’d stayed in and rested all weekend trying to catch up on the sleep he was losing. He hadn’t been able to get it out of his dreams. He hadn’t spoken to anyone either as he hoped he could just put the whole thing behind him. That wasn’t going so well. He pushed it out of his mind once more. “Please call me Henry.”

Her smile widened as she looked up into his eyes. “Henry, Mr. Duncan asked me to direct you to his office when you arrived.” The tip of her pink tongue danced lightly across her upper lip.

“Ah! Ok, thanks. Have a good day!” he said as he turned to head off to the security offices. He felt her eyes on his ass as he walked away and his face burned a little. He didn’t have these issues when he was skinny little Stanley.

He passed through the gauntlet to get into the inner sanctum of the Security Department, greeting the uniformly large men inside with a nod and a smile then walked over to the private office of their chief. The door was open, so he knocked on the door jamb.

“Good morning, Mr. Duncan.” He still felt awkward using the man’s given name.

The chief looked up, and he wasn’t smiling.

“Not a good morning?” Henry asked cautiously.

“I don’t know if having the damned NSA poking around your network classifies as a good start to the day,” the huge redhead growled.

“The NSA? They can’t get in but having their attention at all is probably not a good thing,” Henry sighed.

“Thanks for the enlightenment. Join me on a visit to the CEO’s office.”

Henry heard the tone and knew it wasn’t a request.

They made their way back out to the lobby and took the elevator up to the top floor. Henry glanced in the door on his way past his office, and Marisa looked at him in surprise.

They got to the CEO’s office and her personal assistant Felix gestured to them to go right in.

Camila smiled at them, but her smile dimmed when she saw the grim expression on the security chief’s face and the concerned look on Henry’s.

“What’s happened!” she asked cautiously, looking to Henry first, hoping for a less grim outcome.

The security chief would not be denied. “The bloody NSA is trying to snoop our network. I got a notice from Stan- Henry’s firewall that the spooks were spending too much time poking about. They pounded on it all weekend. They know it’s got smarts they can’t get past so it’s got their attention.”

“So? Without a warrant, they aren’t allowed to see past the firewall.” Camila said.

“Commercial firewall apps have backdoor access written into them. That’s why I wrote my own,” Henry said.

“You should have created one that looks like a boring commercial product which lets them in to see fake data,” the security chief grumbled.

Henry smiled. “I didn’t have mine emulate any commercial products as I didn’t want to piss off those developers and get sued for copyright infringement. Anyone who gets past the initial gate but doesn’t have a valid key is taken to a dummy environment with fake data files. Spreadsheets filled with Lorum Ipsum text and image files pulled from their own local Internet cache folders.”

“I’m still not hearing anything we need to be concerned about,” Camila said looking at Roy.

“I’d like to know why they decided to look at us at all and why they are so persistent in their attempts to get in,” the security chief said darkly.

“Do you want me to hack their network to find out?” Henry asked.

“WHAT?!? NO- Don’t be daft! I don’t want you to be poking your nose about in the Federal Government’s network!” the big man barked in alarm then saw the suppressed smile on Henry’s face. He looked to Camila and saw she was smiling too. His expression turned sour. “Oh, let’s all have a big laugh at the only one with any sense when it comes to matters of security.”

“I’m sorry, Roy but you walked right into that one,” Camila said with a smile. She raised her hand to forestall his next protest. She looked to Henry. “Without breaking any laws, see what you can learn about our new best friend.” Henry nodded to her and dropped his smile when the security man fixed an eye on him.