Invading a computer

Very possible. Questions:

Can we sit outside the house?
Or Are we far away?
Is the computer in the house a laptop?
Do you want their access to go undetected?
Do you want the information deleted/destroyed after they access it?
Or, Do you want them to leave "a message"?

I'm assuming the technical aspects are minor, that the story plot is about something else.

So may I tentatively suggest:

- Grandpa gives granddaughter a CD of a popular game that needs a powerful PC, so suggests to his granddaughter to sneak onto her dad's PC to play.

- Girl plays on dad's PC, then swaps game CD with granddad for another game CD.

- etc.

Would that work?

OK, if it's a laptop, it will most likely connect wirelessly. if it's an open connection (which a HUGE number of them are these days.) You can sit outside in the car, with a laptop, and search through his machine

Or, if granddaughter checked her email on his machine, and opened an email from grandpa, a picture or a small game could include a program to search the machine and send stuff back to where ever you wanted it to.

Likewise, as brer suggested, a CD could perform the same function.

Either one could include a piece to erase themselves afterward, to hide their tracks.

I sorta still remember the movie "Sneakers." The major characters were supposedly computer and technology geeks, but their technology was garbage. Laughable garbage. But the movie was quite popular, if I remember correctly, and even though I knew their technology was garbage, I still liked the movie.

So, I sorta think: The less technology specified, the better.

Let the reader fill in the holes with his imagination. Because if the writer gets to be too specific, he might get it wrong, or the reader might think the writer got it wrong. Neither is good. imo.

But if ya wanna use some bleeding edge, well . . . ask away.
The discussion might get interesting.

I love an afternoon's war driving as much as the next person, but I have to agree with Brer.

Too bad about granddaughter not helping though. Be cool if Antagonist got an email with a foto of her. Open the foto, and it activates the spy.

If she was, say 12+, she, or one of her friends from school might well have "the chops" to accomplish the task.

Yeah, like, you probably don't want to go into how the Dad uses an encryption chip and encodes all his data with it, and that Dad's password account is the only one with administrative privileges, and that maybe Dad is so paranoid that he's got a stripped down Operating System of some small company on his box, and the box is sealed, etc. . . . Or do you?

I think that you're making it more complicated than it needs to be...

If the grand-daughter can help, but can't be seen to, why not just send her an e-mail with a virus that will copy and send them to Grandfather? All she has to do is open the file, it does what it has to, and then deletes itself.

Personally, I'd just have her open Quicken, open the file, and then save it onto a flash drive. If it was the most recent file, then there would be no problem. Even if it wasn't, odds are good the user wouldn't use the most recent files...

RG

jclarkdawe said:

I have a protagonist that needs to invade the antagonist's computer. On that computer, in Quicken, is the antagonist's financial records. Protagonist cannot enter the antagonist's home. Protagonist does have the ability to get help from people who know what they're doing. Protagonist does have a granddaughter who can enter antagonist's house and use computer (antagonist is her dad and protagonist's ex-son-in-law). However, granddaughter cannot knowingly help protagonist.

I'm thinking of accessing computer via the internet. Possible?

Click to expand...

Yes, it happens all the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_computer
One need only send an email with an .exe attachment and convince the receiver to 'click on' it. If the mail program is Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express (or an equally badly configured email program set to automatically runs attachments when you read an email(!!!)), it isn't even neccesary to get the recipient to click on anything, just open the email. And likewise with websurfing, no doubt there are Java and script programs that will save a file somewhere so that it will get executed the next time the machine boots. I know with Windows 2000/XP/Vista it's more complicated than that, but there are still lots of ways to fool the OS into running a program the user didn't manually install.

What I bolded is the critical part. I know this can be rather easily done technically (writing the program would not be easy, but others have already done it), there are huge numbers of zombie computers out there (you could be reading this on one!), and the people who control the computer have full control over it and can read any file on it (totally unknown to the person who owns and uses it - the 'control' programs run in the background, are well-written so the users don't notice any slowdown, and they only send spam in short spurts so the ISP doesn't notice a large amount of outgoing data).

But I don't know quite where or how to get such programs, and I'd rather not go poking around the cyberneighborhoods where they might be found. Getting access to such a thing might cost hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands (remember this is highly illegal, the people who know how to do this make a living at it, so they've got a lot to lose - they'll go to great lengths to protect their identity), and there's never any assurance that "the people who know what they're doing" aren't the police or FBI, and likewise if they're real they don't know if you aren't the police or FBI, though they may well check up on your credit history, who you work for, etc., but even then they know all that can be faked by a really good police agency.

So it seems to me the complications in getting this done are much more social than technical.

I saw "Sneakers" as well, but the discussion also reminds me of the start of Terminator II, where the kid has this thing to get money out of ATM's. He gets a stolen ATM card, connects his gizmo to it, and it has an LED numeric display that goes through all 10,000 possible PIN numbers (0000 to 9999) in about five seconds. When it hits the right PIN the ATM spits out the requested amount of cash. Well, as you might expect, things don't quite work that way. The ATM sends the entered PIN (after encrypting it, supposedly) to a main computer. If it matches the saved PIN for the account it takes the funds out of the account and tells the ATM to dispens it. If not, it tells the ATM it's the wrong number. This back-and-forth takes at least a second, and after maybe five bad attempts at the PIN, the computer locks the account so it won't let you get money out even if you DO know the right PIN number.

ETA: a couple more "fun" URL's of fact, not fiction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_virus
http://www.physorg.com/news114790175.html

What Ben Bradley says is true.

True story - my sister's computer was a zombie. One day, looking through the hard drive contents (their computer had been running sluggishly for quite a while, but not enough for them to do anything about it prior to this - like most people, they're busy), they discovered a hidden folder with all sorts of data on it. Turns out that someone, somewhere, for an unspecified period of time, had been using their computer to store stuff on.

People do this, too, to send out spam email and also to initiate DOS (Denial Of Service) attacks on servers. And yes, at any given point in time, there are, at minimum, hundreds of thousands of computers around the world being used for these purposes and more.

If you want to learn more, Google Blue Frog, the anti-spam solution that went under because of massive DOS attacks from spammers - all because Blue Frog was actually making a difference and had the potential to put the spammers out of business.

Jim -
Quicken files have a certain extension ... your snoop program only has to search for those files and email them to the grandpa.