Spyware

Magic nodded silently.

Alicia shook her head. “Wow. Crime of the century and no price to pay!”

Magic spoke again. This time she opened her eyes. “Dr. Vance, I feel compelled to ask a serious question at this point.”

“Yes, Magic?”

“Have you ever written a virus, sir?”

Ray hesitated for a moment. He felt his face redden, just a shade as a wave of heat rose up his neck. “Well, I just said that I used to teach this class with a virus-writing contest of sorts, so of course I-”

“I’m sorry sir, let me rephrase the question,” interrupted Magic. “Have you ever written and released a virus of your own design?”

Again Ray hesitated. She stared at him, and somehow the fact that he rarely saw her eyes made them seem accusatory. He recalled the incident all too vividly, since he had actually been caught for creating a virus only twelve years earlier. As a graduate student, he reflected, he had been burdened with too much brainpower and not enough sense. His work had done no damage, but had spread itself virulently around the net and caused quite a stir.

He pondered a confession to the class, but felt that he had to hide the truth. As a role-model, the last thing he needed was that kind of reputation. Accordingly, he dissembled.

“I’ve actually created, handled, and released a number of viruses in controlled situations,” he said in his best matter-of-fact voice. Of course, he thought to himself, there had been that one incident where control of the experiment had been completely lost.

Magic pursed her lips. She closed her eyes again and looked vaguely amused. He could tell, without a doubt, that she knew the truth. Her intelligence intrigued him-and if the truth were to be known, her legs weren’t bad, either.

There was a moment of awkward silence as Ray tried to think of what to say next. Then Alicia spoke up. Ray felt an immediate wave of relief. “What was the worst virus ever recorded?” she asked.

“That would probably be the internet virus of 1992. It halted the majority of the internet for some time and cost in the neighborhood of 100 million dollars. The author of that particular gem was a graduate student at Cornell University and received only nominal punishment for it.”

“But wasn’t that virus really more properly termed a software worm, Dr. Vance?” asked Magic.

Ray breathed more easily. “Ah yes, which leads us to-”

At that point in the lecture the door flew open and things changed for everyone. Brenda rushed in. Her sides were heaving. Her cheeks were red and they glistened a bit. Ray blinked in shock and lost his grip on his laser pointer. He’d never seen Brenda run or cry. Never. His first thought was: who died? Fortunately, it never occurred to him that it could be bad news about his family. His mind was still a bit too hazy. He just waited for her to catch her breath and looked on with curiosity, as did his students.

“Could you come with me, Ray? We have of an emergency with the system.”

Ray opened his mouth automatically to protest that he was in the middle of class and it would have to wait, but the uncharacteristic tears, which Brenda was already wiping away, convinced him.

“Class is dismissed, everyone. I’ll see you next Tuesday, when we will continue our discussion. Don’t forget the quiz and read chapter eight.”

Out in the hall he followed Brenda with his long quick strides. She was almost trotting. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s a virus, Ray,” she whispered.

Ray threw up his arms. “So? We get them all the time.”

She shook her head rapidly. “No, this is different, Ray. I can’t stop it. I can’t even shut down, because I might lose all the files. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“But it’s loose Ray, it’s on the net. I’ve shut down the internet link, but I think it’s hitting other servers even now.”

“How? Any important hub has a firewall these days.”

“I don’t know,” said Brenda, gulping air as she hurried down the hall. “It’s some new kind of spoofing, maybe. All the servers seem to believe the data packets are from valid sources and they’re accepting the file transmissions like kids eating cookies. It’s spreading like wildfire, Ray.”

“We’ll stop it,” Ray repeated, but suddenly he wasn’t feeling so self-assured. If it was loose on the net, and it could go through defensive software firewalls, that was different. “Okay, so we caught a real killer virus from the internet. It’s happened before, and its cost millions of dollars to people all over the globe, but why the tears?”

She tossed him a glare for mentioning her tears. That reassured him. She looked like the old, self-confident, bossy Brenda that he knew so well. “You haven’t heard the worst part.”

“What?”

“I think it’s from here,” she hissed at him.