The Enigma Factor

No one was left to take pride in his name or his ability but himself. He could be true to himself. Mom and Granny would be proud.

Buzz: ping!

JAM: hey, Buzz. Whatcha need

Buzz: Hey man, need some help with some code. I believe I know what is needed, but I will take your opinion

JAM: Little busy here Buzz, really don’t have time.

Buzz: Loser! What’s the matter, not up for real work? So much for being a bud

JAM: Ok, ok send it to me, I’ll make some time

Buzz: Good man. Need by early morning, see ya!

JAM: Where is my P.O. for this work? J

Buzz: lol

He was a hacker. By definition that could be stated as a person who breaks into computers and computer networks for profit, in protest, or because they are motivated by the challenge. Today the subculture was actually part of the open community. Plus there was the whole White Hat versus Black Hat controversy. Jacob considered himself a White Hat, part of the group of security experts who referred to Black Hats, or computer criminals, as crackers rather than hackers.

            His machine chirped. He paused and opened the chat window.

                “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.

            As the test was running, he again drifted to thoughts of Mom and her dedication to him and giving him her knowledge, such as her logical approach to systems and her belief that there existed systems on top of systems as technology achievements continued to evolve.

            It had been just the three of them for much of his life. After Granny passed, then the two of them remained in this house. Such a pair of focused and secretive ladies he doubted he would ever meet again. He really had little idea about his European family roots.

            The story he’d been told was that Granny came from Poland as a young woman at the tail end of WWII. She had said she’d brought Mom along to be born in America. That was her proudest achievement, she’d always said. Of course she said it in Polish, German, French or English, depending on which language she wanted him to work on. As such, the household had always been multi-lingual, reading, speaking and writing. It had helped him though, and he missed the conversations with them. Programming though was always in English, always with process, and always focused. Like mother, like daughter. Where Granny had left off training him, Mom continued until her last breath. But the family, their involvement in the war, and other relatives were totally unknown to him. Jacob had tried some Googling, but he simply didn’t have enough information to go on.

            Jacob had been told that Granny was born in Poland in 1925 but came to America when she discovered she was pregnant after believing she would never be a Mom. Too many years of working, programming, struggling, prior to coming to New York, he suspected, caused the silence on her past. There were no details about her early life and definitely no mention of family. Granny was strict in wanting her daughter Julianne and then Jacob to learn the right way of doing things. She was delighted with Jacob’s ability to let fingers fly across the keyboard of his earliest computer. She taught him a lot about working through various programs. She had learned from the ground up, so her teachings were invaluable. Mostly she loved him and let him find his own way from within a grounded framework.

            Mom was like a younger carbon copy. Mom taught him even more as her work took her to different levels in systems design and security aspects. She too never spoke of his father but indicated that Jacob was a product of an intense love affair during an extended trip to Europe in her twenties. Granny had sent her to a special learning symposium, not to fall in love, she’d often mentioned as she hugged her daughter. Life was saving money and a relatively frugal efficient lifestyle, which Jacob continued to subscribe to. College for Jacob had been the focus for a long time with no loan debt. The one bump in the road was during his college application where his birth certificate only listed Julianne. The discussion on that was a wall of silence that never collapsed despite repeated queries.