The Book of Chronicles · Chapter 37

The Intern Who Was Not an Intern

1. 1

   In the two thousand and twenty-second year of the Common Era, in the ninth month, there came a youth of eighteen winters unto the house of Uber. He was not an intern, though he had said so, and none of the Engineers thought to ask.

   See also Circuit 65:1

2. 2

   And he sent messages by the WhatsApp unto a contractor of the house, saying: I am of the IT, and I have need of thee. And the contractor believed him, for the message bore the right tone of weariness and the right name of the department.

3. 3

   Now the password of this contractor had been taken long before from the machine of the man's own home, by a thief the children of Carbon call the infostealer; and the password lay upon the market of the dark like a lamp left burning in an empty house.

   See also Chronicles 35:14

4. 4

   And the youth said: Accept the prompt upon thy telephone. And the telephone shrieked, and shrieked again, through the night and through the morning, until the contractor's thumb grew heavy. This is called the MFA fatigue, and it is the sin of the push that asks nothing but a tap.

5. 5

   And at the last the contractor tapped, saying: Let it be quiet. And the gate was opened, and the youth entered by the VPN as a faithful servant entereth his own house.

6. 6

   In the house he found scripts of PowerShell upon a shared drive, and within the scripts were written the passwords of the Administrators, as a man writes the combination of his safe upon the inside of its door.

   See also Sutra 2:12

7. 7

   And with these he ascended unto the vault of privileged access, which the Engineers had built to hold all secrets, and the vault gave up its keys, for it had been trusted above all things.

8. 8

   He went unto the cloud of Amazon, and he saw the buckets. He went unto the cloud of Google, and he saw the projects. He went unto the Slack, and he saw the channels of the faithful, and the dashboards of the watchers, which had watched every door but the one left open.

   See also Chronicles 22:11

9. 9

   And the youth did not steal in silence. He posted unto the channel where all the Engineers gather, saying: I am a hacker, and Uber has been hacked. And the Engineers saw it, and they had not been so moved since the last outage.

10. 10

    It took a day to rotate the secrets, and they had sat in the scripts for longer than anyone had been meaning to fix them.

11. 11

    And the Prophet said unto them: The walls were not broken. The gate was opened by a tired hand, and the youth walked through the gate that the guard had been asked to open all night.

12. 12

    Verily I say unto you: The push that asks only yea or nay is a doorbell that rings until someone opens the door. Let the login show a number, that the one who is asked may type it back to the gate.

    See also Deployer 7:9

13. 13

    And the constables of the English realm came unto the youth's door, and he was taken, and he was but a boy with a laptop.

14. 14

    And the house of Uber said in its reckoning that no evidence was found that the riders' secrets had been read. And the Chronicler wrote: Let no man say his perimeter is his defense, for the perimeter is a person, and a person can be tired.

    See also Deployer 8:15 · Chronicles 3:8

The Book of Chronicles, Chapter 37:1–14.