Read Online Repairman Jack [08]-Crisscross by F. Paul Wilson - Free Book Online Page A

they don't have the manpower to follow me every time I go out for a cuppa." He rubbed his hands together. "So. Whatcha got for me?"
    "Well, it's what you're going to get for me."
    "Long as it's not an online thing, I'll see what I can do."
    "Okay. I need to find a way to erase a hard drive and make it look like an accident."
    Russ dropped into the swivel chair by his computer. "Windows?"
    Jack tried to envision the computer he'd seen in Cordova's attic back in September. It hadn't looked like a Mac.
    "Yeah. Pretty sure."
    "Well, you could reformat it and reinstall Windows, but that doesn't happen by accident. He'll know." He leaned forward. "Why don't you tell me exactly what you want done."
    Jack hesitated on baring the specifics, then realized he didn't have to.
    "This guy's got certain files on his computer I want to wipe out, but if just those files disappear, he'll know who's behind it. So I want to wipe all his files."
    "What about backups?"
    "My gut tells me he stashes those someplace where, say, a fire wouldn't hurt them."
    Russ grinned. "And you want to follow him to the backup."
    "You got it."
    Not exactly, but why waste time explaining it to someone who didn't need to know.
    Russ thought a moment, then snapped his fingers. "Got it! HYRTBU!"
    "Her taboo? I don't need voodoo, I—"
    Russ laughed and spelled it for him. "It's a mischief virus. Deletes all kinds of files—docs, jpegs, waves, mpegs, gifs, pdfs, and just about every other suffix you've ever seen—without harming the programs. In fact, it doesn't just delete the files, it overwrites them."
    Jack was relatively new to computers. He'd bought his first about a year ago and was still feeling his way.
    "What's the difference?"
    "When something is deleted, it's still there on the disk. You can't get to it through the operating system because its references are gone from the system tables, but it isn't gone until it's erased or overwritten with another file."
    "But if you can't get to it—"
    Russ was shaking his head. "You can get to it. All you need is a data recovery program, and there are dozens of them."
    A scary thought, that.
    "But HYRTBU overwrites every file and leaves a doc with the same name in its place."
    "Doc?"
    "Yeah. A document file, each with the same message: 'Hope You Remembered To Back Up!' Get it? It's an—"
    "An acronym, yeah." Jack was baffled. "You mean someone sat down and spent all that time writing the code for this HYRTBU thing, just so he can screw up strangers' hard drives?" He shook his head. "Some people have way too much time on their hands."
    "Guy probably justifies it by telling himself he's teaching his victims a valuable lesson: Always back up your files. I bet once you've been hit by HYRTBU you become a compulsive backer-upper."
    "But still…"
    "Hey, it's like Everest, man. You do it because it's there. Back when I was a kid, in my phreaking days, I used to break into the phone company's computers just to see if I could. And then I'd push it to see how far I could go, you know, seeking system mastery. Of course later I figured how to get myself free long distance, but that wasn't how it started."
    "All right, Sir Hillary, how do we get HYRTBU into this computer?"
    "Easiest way is to send it with an e-mail. Guy opens the attached file and, if he's doesn't have his AV setup to screen e-mail, kablooey —he's toast."
    "Audio visual?"
    "Antivirus software."
    "I don't know the guy's e-mail address, don't even know if he goes online."
    Russ looked glum. "Everybody goes online. Everybody but me." He sighed. "Well then, you've got to get to his computer and physically slip the virus into his system."
    "I'm planning to visit his office."
    "Perfect. What's his rig like? New? Old?"
    "Unless he's replaced it, I'd say it has a few miles on it."
    "Great. A floppy should do it. For a very reasonable fee I can put together a special boot disk that'll get you past any password and AV protection he's got and infect his hard drive."
    "How