Varvara was a cyber-security expert who graduated from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, one of the top ten best universities in Ukraine. She studied cyber-security partly due to her love of computers.
But the other half of the reason she chose this career was due to an unpleasant memory she had during her childhood. Back in the early days of the internet, many people, her parents included, bought a computer and made it part of their life.
This was because her mom works at a newspaper company as a junior journalist, so she was tasked to find new stories. The internet made it easy for her, so it became part of her work tool.
One thing she didn't know was that when there was beauty to one thing, there will always be the ugly side to the same thing. Her mom, being so close-minded, didn't know that the internet, even in its early days, was streaming with spammers.
By the time she realized it, it was too late. She received a mail one day, and her mom, thinking it was a customer that sent it, casually opened it. It was then that her mom knew something was amiss when her screen suddenly filled up with ILOVEYOU messages.
For a moment, she thought it was hilarious that someone made a gif to prank her, little did she know her computer was slowly being destroyed. She ended up losing so many very important journalist documents and confidential information.
As a result, she was fired from her work. Because her mom was the primary source of income, things became very hard for Varvara and her family financially.
At that time, Varvara could not do anything about it, but the hatred in her heart over the person that sent that devil mail pushed her to pursue the career of a cyber-security expert.
She initially wanted to use her skills to help people from falling into the same trap that her mom did, but she painfully realize that humanity was cruel. This time, she swore to never use her skills to help people anymore, so she ultimately became a black hat hacker.
She was so good in her field that the people she worked with called her "мозок тисячі чіп", meaning "the brain of a thousand chip".
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Varvara was about to leave to treat herself to a meal from the fast-food restaurant. She took her coat and kissed her mom, who was in a wheelchair, suffering from a stroke. "I'm coming mom", she said softly in Ukrainian. Her mom could only nod gently.
She headed to the restaurant and ordered food and takeaway, and soon the waiter placed her beautiful Chicken Kyiv meal, which was her usual. Right after she ate finish, the waiter approached her with a small POS machine, and Varvara took out her card and paid for the food.
She grabbed the takeaway plate and left the restaurant with a smile. The card she gave the waiter was a redundant card she tampered with, personally tweaked to fool the POS machine from the restaurant, and so far, it was working.
By the time she arrived home, her phone started ringing. It was a WhatsApp call from Canada. She rolled her eyes and picked up the call. "What is it" she spoke in English with a heavy accent.
"Alright, you call me, and say you want me to help you retrieve something without even saying hello? Is that how you guys do in your country", Varvara said angrily.
"No I…. look, I'm sorry, but please I need your help with something", the person on the other end said with exasperation. "What do you want me to do, if you want to increase your salary on your employer's computer again, I am not doing that again. You need to….". Varvara was interrupted by the caller.
"That's not it. Just listen to me! Sigh… sorry. Please…. I need to acquire something from a computer. It is in form of a document. Can you help me with that?"
Varvara unpacked the leftover as she continued speaking with the caller. "Alright, I will do that, how much are we talking about here?"
"Any amount you want, as far as I am capable of paying…"
$700, no negotiation".
"What? Come on, isn't that a little too much? I… I can't pay you that".
"$700 or I'll disconnect this call".
"Okay, okay, I'll pay $500".
"$700"
"$650"
"No negotiations"
"Fine, $700. You have no idea how I can get this money".
"I don't care"
A minute later, Varvara ended the call and clenched her knuckles. It was work time. She unpacked the food properly and gently wrapped the spoon on her mother's finger, before heading to the basement.
By the time she turned on her computer, her burner phone beeped, indicating a new SMS. She read the message and smiled smugly. "This old man is so fast," she said in her dialect.
Then, she began work. She began pinging all the available computers targeted at a radius in a street in Boston. The result returned with two hundred thousand computers online.
Frowning, she further reduced the radius, and the results became lower. Then she narrowed her search down to the ones using MacBook, and the result was a couple of thousands. Then she searched for the name of the user Mark had previously told her among the seas of the computers.
Voila, there she was. Without smiling, she began running attacks on the IP address she was currently connected to and waited for the result to display.
By the time she came back to her computer after taking a coffee break, she realized it failed. "So she is using a physical firewall huh, that's cute."
She ignored the failure message and run a different attack. This time, she would make a duplicate of the website she was on and run a backend that would fully connect her to the target's computer without breaking.
It worked! She rubbed her palms in anticipation and began typing away a series of attacks and waited. A progress bar appeared, indicating the connection process.
While she was feeling satisfied with herself, she noticed that there was an unknown connection to the target's computer.