The Enigma Factor

“Why do I let Buzz suck me in every time?” Jacob muttered.

            Going back to the task at hand, he finished his commentary and then posted it and the corrected program to the web site. Maybe someone would notice his penchant for detail. Today, at almost thirty, he had a good job with a leading information security company, PT, Inc., as a security penetration-tester, helping companies avoid information compromise. Some would say he was too focused on work.

            Laughing to himself, he jumped over to his email account window. He found the note and attachment from Buzz. Great, Buzz wanted him to review the coding routine for interest calculations in a new program for his bank. Reading the requirements, picking through the code Buzz included, Jacob saw error after error.

            “His effort here is so junior,” Jacob muttered. “Buzz tries, but he is so out of his league. Granted we were college buddies, but this is really bad.”

            Jacob had been lucky with his scholarship to MIT, whereas Buzz had basically bought his degree.

            “Why is it he seems to simply try to copy old errors or problems and then fails to work through them to make them right?” Jacob mused. “Okay, more help just like during school. Geez, I can’t believe he used that old crap.” Opening the chat window, he pinged back.

JAM: Buzz, did you even try man

Buzz: What do you mean, that is great code, just different style from you

JAM: Did you copy and paste from somewhere else, rather than code to the requirements? There is a trap statement in here that comes from the open source I fixed two months ago for you, it is wrong here

Buzz: no man, maybe you opened the wrong file.

JAM: I will fix it, I will also add a file for routines you should look out for in other code. Could cost your bank a fortune.

Buzz: Thanks bud, drinks/food Friday!

Jacob continued for the next few hours correcting Buzz’s code and redoing portions to meet the requirements. Too bad he hadn’t landed the job Buzz had. The money was so good. Of course, Buzz also had the family influence. It hadn’t hurt that Mr. Buswald was connected in the bank and financially set. Buzz simply did not have the head for finance like his dad. He was educated, liked the idea of being a great programmer, but in all reality he was only good enough for basic programming. Actually he might be better running a team if he wasn’t such a pain to be around. He still did the high school goofy tricks and cutting comments that tended to alienate people. Ah well, Buzz did help him when his Mom was killed. Jacob owed him.

            Giving himself a pep talk, Jacob thought he had nothing to complain about. He liked pen-testing, considering it one of the best jobs he’d had so far. Jacob liked the idea of trying to get in the head of a Black Hat who beat down the paths to breach the security. He liked encryption and security aspects of computer programming that his Mom had introduced him to, as well as logical system overlaps. He firmly believed in a layered defense approach to data access and securing resources of a company.

            Jacob was so into systems and the various overlapping systems at play. If he could understand the system at play he could make it work for himself. The age of information was really heady when you got into the bits and bytes like he was. Just stopping bad guys from wreaking havoc made him feel like a cyber-cowboy.

            He checked the requirements one more time, going down the list to make certain each portion was correct to the specifications. Good, one more testing run and trace verification and it would be done. He would send it to Buzz with notes on process that would likely be ignored.