Take My Breath Away

"I can make this thing hack-proof. I wrote a batch file that runs all these little programs. They do things like erasing your web history, identifying keyloggers, disabling 'Run as Administrator' vulnerabilities, removing malware and adware that your antivirus missed, and give you real-time protection. Rootkits, viruses, worms, spyware, adware, trojans—all of that will be a thing of the past. It even detects weird network activity and throws the hacker into a virtual sandbox. He may think he's doing something, but it's all fake. I also got ahold of something called HIPS which does a lot of the heavy lifting."

"It can catch hacker attacks?" asked Evelyn.

"Of course. As well as everything else I mentioned. The main problem for a lot of these more traditional antivirus programs is that the virus is constantly changing. But heuristic analysis as well as the virtual sandbox and network monitoring takes care of all that. HIPS is a lifesaver."

"Where did you get that?"

"I... it doesn't matter. Grab a shower first. I'll help you install it." He saw the leery look on her face. "You don't want me to see what's on your computer? You hiding something?" He was teasing her on purpose.

Evelyn shook her head. After a while, she went to fetch the laptop. "Be careful. I got a virus pretty quick. There's a lot of important stuff on there."

Sheffield nodded and took out an item from his pocket. It looked like a USB flash drive, but that wasn't quite what it was. It had a small box at the end of it. He plugged it into one of the USB slots, and it lit up.

Despite her confusion, Evelyn left for the bathroom.

The moment he opened Evelyn's laptop, he felt something was wrong. He tried to call her over, but to his surprise, she was already in the bathroom. He used some of his tools to go snooping and found someone had already hacked in.

The hacker was good. He left few traces. Evelyn wouldn't have even known the guy was there.

But Sheffield knew what was going on as he ran his batch file. Someone had made an incoming connection, and that wasn't in her trusted connections list.

He opened his portable drive and brought out an app to do Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), and in particular, Encrypted Traffic Intelligence. That

effield was silent for a while. Then he suggested, "The other way is to find the hacker and make him admit he was hired to hack into your systems to steal information."

"And how am I supposed to do that? Ask nicely? I don't think the guy who did it is going to come forward that easily. I've heard that the best hacker in the world is Star Anise. I don't know any hackers now, not to mention that guy." She didn't know much about IT. Right now, she was anxious, and the only thing she could think to do was ask Carlos for help.

Sheffield offered, "Let me help you..."

"Thanks, but no thanks. It's hard to get in touch with Star Anise. Even if we find him, there won't be enough time to track down the guy who hacked me. And who says he'll do it? He'll probably want more money. Just stop for bit, okay? I need to think."

Taking a deep look at the woman who was completely impatient, he asked, "Don't you trust me?"

Evelyn smiled wryly. "I want to, but how? You are good with a scalpel, car racing, and playing the piano. But what does all that have to do with this?"

Sheffield didn't want to argue anymore. "Everything's installed. I'll take off, then. Good night." As soon as he finished his words, he put down her computer and left with his coat.

Evelyn was surprised.

When everything was quiet in the apartment, Evelyn gradually calmed down. She regretted getting angry with him again.

She looked at the screen of her computer and called Carlos. "Dad, my computer was hacked."