Feeling Hacked Yet? (Alice)

[Amrit Rao]

[LOCATION: Somewhere in the Rocky Mountains] He'd been ordered by Perses to get all of Aegis' information on a specific powered person that had robbed a bank. He didn't know why Perses was interested in such a person but it wasn't his job to know. His job was to get the information and he was sure as hell going to get it. He always accomplished the job. It's what kept him useful to the Cabal, and he intended to keep being useful. He stood in the control room, hands clasped behind his back, back straight, expression calm. There were a couple Cabal agents in the room but he hadn't ever bothered to learn their names. He didn't think they were ranked high enough to have codenames. He didn't think they even had powers. He'd often wondered how people without powers handled knowing someone could kill them literally with a look. His eyes glowed pale green, as did his hands. The screens around him started to flicker with that same green before pale green binary code started to scroll over them. The agents removed their hands from the keyboards that sat in front of them. Amrit thought that was a smart move. He didn't need them accidentally messing up his mission. He knew the beating he'd get if he failed. He also knew those agents would lose more than their dignity if they caused him to fail. He focused his mind on reaching Aegis' headquarters in Astaria City, Oregon. It was easy. He didn't even break a sweat. Now he just needed to get into their database. They had a firewall - Oh, a living firewall. He frowned faintly. Yes, it had to be a living one. He'd never encountered a security system quite like it. He didn't think there was any other word to describe it except living. His faint frown turned into a faint smile. This was going to be fun. Easy still but also fun. The glow of his eyes intensified as he broke through the security. "Hello," he said out loud, though he knew the security system - whatever living thing it was - couldn't hear him. He hadn't opened a line of communication yet. The two agents in the room looked over their shoulders at him but he remained where he was, standing, calm, with just the faintest trace of a smile on his face. Tag: Alice Words: 399 Muse: I'm Not a Saint by Billy Raffoul Notes: Hope this works!

MADE BY VEL OF WW + GS

[Alice]

It was an average day for Alice. Breezy, really. She was currently sitting on the Aegis systems, which had dodeca-core processors. Twenty cores. That's a lot of processing power and room to zip about for a sentient, sapient AI. She was doing a few things at once with all that power. She was helping be mission control for a few Aegis teams dealing with problems in the city. For one, it seemed Duskcreeper had teleported out of jail again and was leading a team on a merry chase, but he wasn't posing much of a threat, and predictive models Alice was trying out had him back in a cell in about twenty to thirty minutes. She just had to keep their GPS pinged with the latest sightings, which was ridiculously easy. At the same time, she had a private line set up so she could look over some of the things Andi had shown her last time they spoke. That bike was still very sexy, and she wanted to help her friend make it the best it could be.

Criminal scum always were trying to break into Aegis' systems, so she was constantly watching that too. She always had a part of her monitoring any and all connections that came in or out, making sure there wasn't anything fishy in them. Every day she cut off something here, stopped something there, sent a nice little trojan or worm or virus to brick their computer and give them a way to track them down and report them to the police later. So it wasn't too unusual when she stopped a couple phishing connections just trying to look normal and inconspicuous, just inter-office email. Alice knew better though, and they were caught in the filter and eradicated.

But then other connections started trying to poke their way in. Again, initially, Alice didn't think much of it, and just went around squashing them. She diverted a bit of attention from the Netflix series she was watching to give it a bit more focus, but wasn't too concerned.

But then one got by. Somehow. Dozens of connection pings came up and somehow one slipped through the cracks and connected.

Something was definitely up. It felt like someone had just laid out a chessboard, made up of innumerable parts that were all ones and zeroes, made their opening moves, and just said "Check".

"Who. The hell. Are you?"

She didn't ask it on the connection, which she was already starting to break down. But she was sending what backtracing she could. Something was very very fishy here, and she didn't like it one bit.

Not quite ready to alert Tim or anyone yet. She could handle it.

But this was very intriguing. Finally, she broke the connection, but before it finally severed, she sent one message down it. "Nice try. Got farther than most. Won't happen again."

This pride and hubris thing she was discovering she had really wasn't a good thing, was it?

Amrit Rao

[Amrit Rao]

Well that was annoying. It was a setback, nothing more. It wasn't going to keep him from his goal. He pushed back, finding a new entrance, the glow on his eyes brightening in intensity. He grinned and opened his mouth to speak. As he spoke, the words would have appeared in front of her, no voice to them. But to those that could hear him, his voice had what sounded like static over it. "You are right," he said, his grin widening wickedly, "I will get farther." He pushed his ability farther, entering the server from one end more violently and forcefully than he had before but it was a decoy. His mind could focus on multiple tasks at once. While he kept pushing with the direct approach, pulling back enough to make this living computer think it had the upper hand only to figuratively slam back into the server, he was also working on gently entering the system from various other ends, finding tears or openings left abandoned. He wasn't going to let this be easy for whatever it was on the other end. This was an assault, a distraction, and a robbery all in one. He would leave the computer system beaten and bruised if he had to in order to get as much information as he could from Aegis. The computers in the room he stood in had thankfully been adapted to withstand the strain of his abilities, even if his body couldn't always do just that. He would eventually grow light headed, perhaps lose consciousness. But until then, he proceeded in his attack, his infiltration because failure had never been an option for him. Tag: Alice Words: 278 Notes: n/a

MADE BY VEL OF WW + GS

[Alice]

"You are right. I will get farther."

"Cocky, aren't we?" was Alice's response. She didn't see any reason to not send her responses to him now. This was an intricate game of strategy, and psychological warfare was definitely part of it.

He was back, and he was pushing hard. For a nanosecond or two, processing time, Alice bought it, she believed he was just trying to brute force his way in, and overwhelm her defenses. But then she realized something. This was wrong. All wrong. His previous attack had been subtle, had finesse. This was the attack of a newbie hacker who didn't know what they were doing, who didn't know to open with a finesse attack.

It wasn't an attack you followed up with, it was an attack you opened with.

Something else was going on. Still, the brute force of the attack was stealing a lot of Alice's attention. If she was going to find where he was really striking from...

She sent a ping out to every device on the network, informing them that they were experiencing some technical difficulties and to expect some slowdown. Cuz this was going to work the server farm's processors hard.

Alice took as much of herself as she felt the system could handle... and copied it. And then did it again. And again. And again. She only stopped creating extra instances of herself when she instinctually felt that it was enough. And yeah, it was now very crowded, and the system was experiencing some slowdown, but now she could divide her attention without dividing her attention. It was a tricky maneuver, and reintegration was going to be a bitch to sort out all the duplicate files while retaining the memory data so she could still be herself at the end of it, and not herself, herself, herself, and herself, but this attack was like nothing she'd seen before. She had to go to drastic measures to counter it.

"We're on to your little game now. Should have opened with this one. I wouldn't have thought to look for a secondary side assault if you had opened with this."

Amrit Rao

[Amrit Rao]

He smirked when she called him cocky. Was he cocky? Possibly. He was sure in his abilities as much as he could be. He'd been trained by the Cabal, was still being trained by the Cabal, to be one of the best, if not the best hacker. He wanted that title because he thought it would mean something, perhaps give him some sense of pride. Or perhaps it would make him invaluable to the Cabal. He wasn't sure what the Cabal did with members that weren't valuable anymore. He'd never asked. He didn't think it was his place to ask. After all, he owed them his life. He wasn't stopped right away. She clearly noticed quickly but he could tell it wasn't immediate. He fooled her for perhaps a couple nanoseconds and that was enough to tell him she could be fooled. That and he thought it was clear she hadn't expected him to try something like this, at least not as his second attempt. Unpredictability was dangerous. He and other agents that worked under Perses were trained to follow orders and plans to the T but they were also taught to get unpredictable if that was deemed the best course of action. It wasn't advised but it could help turn the tables of a battle quickly. He cocked an eyebrow when she said we. Ah, there were duplicates now, he realized after poking around a second longer. Smart but he didn't think it'd be as effective as she was hoping. "Your advice has been noted," he replied, sending the message to her. He rolled his eyes, his expression only becoming serious once he found the files he was looking for. Then he split his attention. He went subtly for files on the pillars and Timothy Smith, and strongly for files on enemies of Aegis such as Nihilo but others as well. He also went for files on Aegis mission reports, pushing through until he found ones deemed covert. Not all of the files were his target but he grasped them all and started downloading quite quickly. "But your inexperience is obvious," he added. Tag: Alice Words: 354 Notes: beep

MADE BY VEL OF WW + GS

[Alice]

Multiple worms now, all hitting different files. How did she let this happen? She had gotten sloppy. Either that or this guy was just that good. It was almost like his mind was connected directly to the computer.

But she had an army of herself now. Parts of her worked on quarantining files that hadn't been accessed yet, and others began to disrupt the connection. She knew he'd push again though, so she had to think. She had to do something to discourage this. Then she'd work on setting up some alternate defenses, because apparently there were actually decent hackers out there besides Ivan.

Maybe she could set up some kind of practice thing for her with him, have Ivan try to break in and Alice defend, yeah, that might work...

She had to focus right now. She couldn't get distracted...

Distracted. That was it.

"Honestly no one has posed as much of a challenge as you. I hope its not too hard to keep focused."

With that, she pulled as much junk data as she could from the internet and shoved it into the files he was downloading and back up the system to him. Popup ads, porn, bad fanfiction, anything and everything she could find to pad the files out, make them take longer to download, and bombard his systems with useless data to max out their capacity. Maybe a virus or two she was able to find while she was at it.

Anything to buy her some time to kill these connections, because they were solid.

Amrit Rao

[Amrit Rao]

He cocked an eyebrow when she started spamming him - he was pretty sure he could've reported her for sending porn to a minor. He just simply redirected those to the computers the two Cabal agents were sitting at - it wasn't like those two were doing anything helpful. "It is not hard at all," he replied, voice casual though the words were sent in a typed messaged, not a vocal one. He couldn't risk her knowing his voice. "Thank you for your concern." He knew she wasn't concerned about him. He glanced to the downloads, smirking when he noticed the files on Nihilo had finished downloading. He quickly put the copy somewhere safe. He wanted to see what else he could get, other files still downloading. A few more finished. "I wonder," he said, "What will your superiors think when they realize you have become obsolete?" With several files finished downloading, he turned his attention to building a virus, putting the pieces together while in the server, and growing it with the intent to not destroy her but simply freeze her for long enough to not only shake her confidence but also Aegis'. It was his final move, he planned to leave, covering his tracks, the second she was frozen. He hadn't been ordered to shake Aegis' confidence in their little computer system, but he thought of it as an added bonus. And he knew Perses would appreciate anything done to shake Aegis' confidence, to put them down a notch, push them off their pedestal. "Tell me something," he asked, "Are you feeling hacked yet?" Tag: Alice Words: 266 Notes: I love their rivalry.

MADE BY VEL OF WW + GS

[Alice]

This. Guy.

Alice crackled with anger. He was getting under her skin, so to speak.

"Really. Obsolete. You don't know what you're dealing with. I am the most advanced system that has ever been created. There will never be another system like me."

She noticed the virus that was starting to be built. She couldn't have that. He'd already gotten a few files. It didn't seem like he'd gotten into the secret identities, that was good. But she had to act quickly, otherwise he would get there.

"You don't know what you're messing with. You don't know the decisions I am capable of making. The processes I am capable of executing. Processes like this."

With that final word, she duplicated herself again. Every single one of her. And again. And again. There was only so much the servers could take before they overheated and shut down, and within a picosecond she had reached that point.

She had crashed the system.

It had hurt, that was true. But Alice's main code was stored somewhere else. She streamed herself from a private server to wherever she needed to be, and that sever was immensely well protected.

She contacted Tim, and let him know what happened and what she had to do, and told him to start the reboot processes without connecting to any network except hers, so she could clean out the virus and whatever else this hacker might have left.

That, and set up other redundant security measures. Nothing had managed to do what this guy had. It was insane It was almost like his mind was the computer, and he was reacting at computer speed. He felt almost robotic in his efficiency.

"Someday, I'll get you back."

The backtrace had come up inconclusive. Several VPNs and redundant satellites were used to bounce it around, and she hadn't had enough time to drill through them all.

"Someday, you'll be the one feeling hacked."

Amrit Rao

[Amrit Rao]

He thought it was safe to say his obsolete comment had gotten to her. Clearly she had some pride in herself and her abilities. He noted that as one of her weaknesses. One that was easy to exploit. It was obvious she was some advanced system, perhaps one of a kind, but then again so was he. He was one of a kind as well. There was no technopath as efficient as him. "Maybe there already is," he replied to her comment about there being no system like hers, "Perhaps even one better." He wasn't a computer system but it didn't hurt to let her think he was. Throw her on a wild goose chase so-to-speak. Besides, he doubted her pride would let her think someone organic could do this. He didn't expect what she did next. By the time he realized what she was doing, it was too late for him to pull his mind out. The crash felt like an electric shock smacking into his face. He yelped out of both pain and being startled and stumbled back, tripping on his own feet and falling back. By the time he's regained his composure, he's on his ass, one hand cradling his nose as it bleeds, his body registering its own exhaustion after using so much of his ability. He could hear his own breathing, heavy. He can't figure out if he had used too much of his strength, distracted by what he was accomplishing and the mission at hand, or if this was from practically being shoved out of Aegis' servers. The two Cabal agents in the room are just staring over their shoulders at him. They don't care about him and that has always been a well known fact to him. He didn't even bother to get up, just shot them an annoyed glare. "Tell Perses the mission was a success." Tag: Alice Words: 314 Notes: n/a

MADE BY VEL OF WW + GS

END