Gates' Gate
"But I know that nondisclosure agreements exist to protect Microsoft's patents and proprietary technology, not to shield criminal directives or orders to destroy evidence. That is not a legitimate contract for safeguarding trade secrets. It is a tool of oppression designed to silence my conscience, nothing more than coercion to participate in crime."
"What did you just say? Witness! Can you take responsibility for those statements? Your words seriously damage the reputations of Chairman Gates and President Steve, both highly respected figures in society. You must be held legally accountable."
The Microsoft lawyer raised his voice. But James's gaze never wavered.
"When I first joined Microsoft, I was genuinely thrilled. I even felt proud that the world's greatest software company had recognized my talent. When I was promoted to Alpha Lab team leader, the Microsoft logo became a symbol of my self-worth. That pride didn't last long, however. I soon learned that Microsoft's dominant position had been built on the abuse of monopoly power to crush competitors. And I was forced to participate in those acts. I had to make Windows run unstably on DR-DOS. I had to ensure ID Office was unstable on DOS 4.0."
James's confession of conscience brought a hush over the gallery. Many in attendance worked in the IT industry and sympathized deeply with his words. The Microsoft lawyer, however, was not among them. His expression seemed to say: So what? What does that prove?
"Naturally, I also hold resentment toward Chairman Gates and President Steve for firing me without acknowledging any of my hard work."
The lawyer secretly wanted to applaud James for letting emotion creep into his testimony. Emotional statements carried no weight in court. He was certain this hearing would end in their victory.
"There is certainly emotion in my voice. But evidence carries none."
"Your Honor, I submit this evidence."
As James referenced the evidence, Ellen from ID Technology raised her hand to formally request its admission. From inside James's jacket emerged a single 3.5-inch floppy disk.
The Microsoft lawyers saw the diskette and immediately assumed it contained a document file. They clenched their fists again. Digital documents could be edited by anyone, so they were rarely accepted as courtroom evidence. They were confident their influence could easily sway a district court judge to reject it.
"This contains a special audio file along with the program required to play it. It can be reproduced on any computer equipped with a PCM sound card and speakers."
James, however, was already one step ahead. ID Technology had prepared an Egg PC. The all-in-one unit could be carried by its handle and featured high-performance audio, allowing immediate verification. For the sake of fairness, though, the court prepared its own computer.
After a brief delay, the court's clerk personally operated the prepared machine. James verbally guided him through the process of decompressing the password-protected archive.
"Preparation is complete."
"Play it."
The presiding judge's indifferent command was tantamount to signing Microsoft's death warrant.
James: Chairman, DR-DOS's market share is negligible. Do we really need to go this far?
Gates: Listen, James. Weeds must be pulled the moment they appear. Look away for even a second and they'll turn our beautiful garden into a wasteland.
James: B-but making Windows unstable on DR-DOS sounds illegal, doesn't it?
Gates: Illegal? Who decides that? It's only a problem if it gets discovered. With your skills, you can implement it discreetly. And even if it does come out, don't worry. We'll assemble an army of the finest lawyers and win in court. That's all there is to it.
The conversation was less than a minute long, yet Chairman Gates's voice ordering DR-DOS's exclusion from fair competition rang vividly through the courtroom. And that was not the only audio file.
Gates: Is the ID Office analysis finished?
James: Not yet, sir.
Gates: What? Still? How long are you going to waste time on analysis? Can't you see ID Office is selling like crazy? If we lose the office suite market, will you take responsibility?
James: N-no, sir. However, I have confirmed that ID Office uses its own memory management system.
Gates: Its own memory management? Hmm, I thought as much. Can you write code to detect it immediately?
James: Yes, I can, but... You're not thinking of doing that again?
Gates: Exactly. Weed removal! You remember well. This is far more dangerous than DR-DOS. It won't just ruin one garden; it could bring down our entire fortress. So I'm counting on you again. And analyze ID Office thoroughly. Even though it's the enemy, there's plenty of technology worth studying.
The Microsoft legal team could offer no rebuttal. The audio quality was simply too good. Chairman Gates's voice was crystal clear, like a CD recording, and his conversation partner was unmistakably James. For it to qualify as an illegal recording, a third party would have had to secretly tape the conversation. Since one of the participants had recorded it himself, that argument didn't apply.
This was the counterpunch James had prepared for a long time after being stepped on like a worm. Every time he received an illegal order, the anxiety nearly drove him mad, so he had begun recording as a final insurance policy.
However, when entering and leaving Alpha Lab, not even a diskette or tape could be taken out freely. General phone lines were routed through exchanges. Since they were engaged in illegal activity, security was extremely tight. Ironically, this very fact gave James his opportunity.
Whenever Chairman Gates came to his desk to issue various orders, James would route the microphone connected to his computer and save the output as wave files. Dozens of such recordings had accumulated. Then came the firing.
Once fired, he wouldn't have much time left in Alpha Lab. Only as long as it took to clear his desk. In that brief window, he had to smuggle out the most important recordings. The problem was that Alpha Lab's security rules prohibited taking anything out of the office. Not a single diskette, not even a ballpoint pen.
That was when he thought of FTP. And ID Office's AES-256 encryption algorithm.
The only external connection from Alpha Lab was through FTP. Naturally, even that was monitored by Microsoft's security team. To avoid detection, James encrypted several audio files with AES-256, disguised them as ordinary binary files, and transmitted them. It was an excruciatingly tense moment. Fortunately, the AES-256 encrypted files appeared as normal binary data, allowing them to slip past the security team's vigilant eyes.
Even so, the anxiety never fully disappeared. He had nightmares of Microsoft's security team breaking into his house to delete the files. The day after one such nightmare, James created multiple copies and uploaded them to public FTP sites and university archives, protected by the innocuous password "personal backup."
Thanks to such meticulous preparation, these recordings became the decisive blow in this trial.
With that, the December 6 hearing came to an end. James's single heavy punch had defeated an army of lawyers whose combined fees ran into millions of dollars. The aftermath was explosive.
"Members of the press can also download and listen to the files from the internet," James announced.
He had distributed the files across multiple locations just in case. They remained available on public FTP servers, PC communication user archives, and even university networks. Anyone could download them.
"The extraction password is 'Justice!' Please be sure to type the capital letter and exclamation mark correctly."
After the hearing, in the press conference room set up in front of the courtroom, Ellen delivered the final confirmation. The audio files of Gates and James immediately shot to the top of download charts that very day.
The media rushed to report on what they dubbed "Gates Gate." Some outlets pressured prosecutors, arguing the matter should not end with a civil suit but proceed to criminal trial.
The strongest reaction came from the online community. The Security Challenge BBS, populated largely by people favorable to ID Technology, was flooded with posts about Gates Gate. Three thousand new threads appeared daily, and popular posts routinely surpassed ten thousand views. The same phenomenon occurred across other PC communication services and university networks.
This was the first time Microsoft's sinister schemes had been leaked so directly, and the response was white-hot. The online fervor spilled into the real world.
The clearest indicator was Microsoft's sales figures. Revenue, which had been in steady decline since ID Technology's emergence, plummeted off a cliff. 1989 was certain to be recorded as the company's worst year ever.
While Microsoft sank, one company rose. Naturally, that company was Yoo Jae-won's ID Technology. The only new release was the first patch for last month's Android Alpha, yet across the board their products were climbing, driving revenue higher.
The standout performer was ID Office. James Augustine's masterful use of its AES-256 encryption system had once again boosted its reputation. ID Office already enjoyed strong name recognition from the ID Office Security Challenge and its official adoption by the United States federal government. Now, word that it had neutralized even Microsoft's notorious security team caused a buying frenzy.
From Keyboard Warrior to Wolfenstein, the massive success of high-performance games accelerated 486 adoption far beyond previous rates. Not only Intel but compatible CPU makers like AMD and Cyrix moved quickly, letting users enjoy high-performance processors at affordable prices.
Android Alpha, which drew out the full potential of 486 systems, rapidly gained market share alongside the spread of powerful computers. Although the distribution ban had not yet been lifted, users found ways. Small communities quietly shared copies, and illegal duplication rings operated like fish in water, further boosting Android Alpha's adoption.
Major system builders like Dell and Compaq had already signed contracts to ship models with Android Alpha pre-installed the moment the sales injunction was lifted. Egg PC reservations had sold out completely; until Sambo Computer finished expanding its production facilities, they literally could not sell more units even if they wanted to.
Even Keyboard Warrior, whose popularity had visibly cooled, began selling again. People bought it to show support for ID Technology in its fight against the evil empire of Microsoft.
Everyone was eager to see what kind of profits the year-end financials would reveal.
Amid all this excitement, one festival had yet to conclude: the ID Office Security Challenge. Even as December moved into its middle weeks, no one had discovered a vulnerability in AES-256.
Despite nearly ten million total downloads of the IDW file Yoo Jae-won had released for the challenge, its fortress remained unbreached. Security experts from the United States, Canada, Europe, the Eastern Bloc, and even Asia had gathered in countless communities, pooling their collective intelligence, yet the encryption held firm.
It was not that no solution had been proposed. One team correctly concluded that AES-256 relied heavily on specific command sequences and that a specialized acceleration chip could crack it. The answer was right, but even a 486 or the upcoming Pentium would be insufficient. It would require a supercomputer with thousands of parallel computation-dedicated GPUs at minimum.
The most certain solution was a quantum computer, of course, but that belonged to the distant future. And once quantum computers arrived, quantum cryptography would render the issue moot anyway.
In this festival atmosphere surrounding ID Technology, one final flourish remained: the last day of the year, when the Security Challenge would officially be declared over.
Given how massively the event had grown, the closing ceremony would be equally spectacular. Since it coincided with the Happy New Year celebrations, the scale rivaled the New Year's festivals of major cities.
With the dawn of the 1990s, ID Technology's name would be permanently etched into the minds of people around the world.