"What the hell? Who wrote this backend?" James asked astonished. James could not believe that a multi-billionaire company would hire such a novice web programmer to write this kind of backend. It was so bland, so readable, and to make the matters worse, this person did not even encrypt login credentials at all.
Maybe the fault wasn't the web programmer. The fault was the owner of the WebFace corporation for hiring such a person to write such a stupid backend. This thing could be done by millions of capable freelancers on the internet for god's sake.
Before James began fixing the backend, he opened his terminal and ran a few commands on the site. He wanted to determine how many people are active on the server. There were more than fifteen computers that were logon on the website, three were verified, and the remaining twelve were unverified, which meant that they were coming from questionable sources.
James could not help but feel for the company. WebFace company were on the verge of collapsing, and they did not know what and why it was happening. 'That ends now!' James thought and began furiously typing a series of commands on his terminal. He hated hackers to the core, more specifically the black-hat hackers.
As he was still typing these commands, the number of people active on the website servers began to drop one by one. From fifteen, they dropped to twelve, and nine, and finally three. When James finally pressed enter, two message dialogues popped on his screen, indicating that the process was successful. "Let me see how you are going to log on again, d**kheads," James thought glaring at his screen with passion in his eyes.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
In an air-conditioned room, there were eight men and four women in the room. Two were drinking coffee, and another young man was eating ramen. Suddenly the young man dropped the ramen stick spoon and pushed his gaming chair to his computer. He squinted at the screen and adjusted his glasses.
"Uh…sir, there's a problem. The server is no longer pinging anymore. It seems we have logged out" the young man reported apprehensively. A tall Indian man with beards and red eyes came forward to look at the young man's screen and widened his eyes.
"Then login immediately. We are losing money here!" the man spoke loudly. The young man then typed in the username and password on the server's admin page, but the server reported login failed.
"Sir, it didn't work," the young man said with worry. The bearded man stood straight and panned his eyes on the room. "Everyone, get to work. It appears that the servers' login info has changed. This could mean that it is being fixed. Do your work and get us in immediately!"
The rest of the crews scrambled to their computers and started the attacks. They tried brute-forcing the website multiple times, but it failed one after the other. "Any news guys? Please tell me something!" the bearded man said apprehensively.
The crews wore a serious and worried look as they attempted various methods to gain access to at least one of the servers. "Tell me something somebody!" the bearded man hollered angrily.
"Uh, sir, it seems that we are compromised. We cannot gain access to the servers anymore", one of the female hackers said. The man headed to the young man's table and shoved him away. "Getaway, let me see this", he then stared at the screen and plugged in his flash drive. Then he executed a JavaScript file on the flash drive, which popped a new terminal window, with texts scrolling vertically.
A minute later, the script stopped, and below the terminal window, a message displayed that the server injection was successful. "That gotta do it "he mumbled in satisfaction.
He stood up from his seat and spoke at the top of his voice. "Listen up people, we have one server that is still vulnerable. The username is 'Potato' and the password is 'Acer'. I know the credentials look funny but that's all we have to work with. Use this credential to access all other servers. We cannot waste any more time."
"Yes sir" all of them chorused as they began to use the login information given to access one of the active servers, and it went successfully. They began to heave a sigh of relief, and they proceeded to access the rest of the servers.
Suddenly all the computers in the room displayed a single message: "gotcha", before abruptly turning off. "What happened?" the bearded man asked apprehensively. "Uh sir, I think we were being played sir," a man in his thirties said.
"What do you mean by 'we were playing Michael?" the bearded man asked incredulously. "I meant that the server addresses you sent to us was a trap set by an anonymous person to turn off our computers."
"Well, turn it back on Michael" the bearded man ordered. "That's the thing, sir. It can't be turned on, my computer is destroyed", Michael said as he constantly pressed the power button.
"Mine too was damaged," a woman said, followed by the rest, who reported that their computers were not working anymore.
"No! No!! No!!!" the bearded man screamed as he smashed the printer next to him. "Who could have done this?" the man continued to scream in disbelief. When things were getting better for him, one idiot just went and disrupted his plan. The man felt like strangling the person that caused this if he saw the person.
After the bearded man sat down and pondered for five minutes, he immediately sat up and glared at the young man. "You, use your PC and track the person that did this" the man pointed at him.
"Sir, I haven't modified my PC to hide my location, and even if I did, there is no way you can track the person that did this. The person was obviously from the company, and so unless you want to know the name of the person that did this, you need to physically go to the company."
The bearded man grunted and roughly grabbed the collars of the young man and said with gritted teeth "I don't care if your pc is modified or not. Just do your job and track the server's creation logs would you! I want this done before I come back", the man then left his collar and left the building, leaving the rest of the crews in a confused state.