The Empire Strikes Back
The store was anything but boring, thanks to the swarm of customers flooding in like a tidal wave of storm clouds. The office had a large window that offered a perfect, unobstructed view of the store floor. From the store side, however, the office remained invisible. The glass was designed to reflect light like a mirror when viewed from outside, allowing visibility only from within.
At the checkout counter, ID Office packages flew off the shelves without pause. The storage space beneath the counter had long since been emptied of its stock. Employees were sweating profusely as they rushed to restock the display shelves with fresh boxes. Even the strongest among them could only carry about a dozen at a time, so they had no choice but to make repeated trips. The sight was oddly satisfying.
In front of the demo computers, an endless line of people stretched out. Customers tinkered with the software, gasping in admiration and peppering the nearby staff with questions about its features. The laser printers hummed nonstop, spitting out page after page. They were working so diligently that Jae-won made a mental note to give them a special bonus once today’s event wrapped up.
It was a heartwarming scene. Yet one discordant element kept catching his eye: the computers themselves.
The flagship store was sleek and sophisticated, both inside and out. The ceiling lights weren’t the usual harsh fluorescents left exposed; instead, they were covered with white glass panels that made the entire ceiling glow softly. Warm white lighting had been added to create a bright yet refined atmosphere. The interior design had been executed at breakneck speed, but the tasteful combination of glass and natural wood gave the space an unmistakably luxurious feel.
The computers, however, were the sore thumb.
Standard desktop towers sat beneath monitors, with keyboards and mice placed in front. The clunky, distinctly 1980s design of the machines clashed horribly with the store’s modern elegance. It would have been perfect if they had a sleek, all-in-one computer that matched the flagship aesthetic, but that kind of integrated design still didn’t exist yet.
What if I just made one?
Even while compiling code, Yoo Jae-won’s mind wandered off on wild tangents.
“Boss, I’m back,” Remington announced as he returned from the restaurant. “The customers said they completely understand the situation. They asked me to tell you they enjoyed a wonderful lunch.”
“That’s a relief,” Jae-won replied.
If they explained that they needed time to cooperate with an FBI investigation, most people would nod in understanding. While that was happening, the compilation finally finished.
“Preparations are complete. Let’s begin.”
He inserted the floppy disk Anna Morales had given him into the drive. Opening File Explorer, he navigated to the floppy disk. Inside the 1.44-megabyte diskette was a single file that took up nearly one full megabyte.
It was a file generated by Keyboard Warrior whenever someone wrote even a single diary entry. The size was enormous. DES encryption didn’t inflate file sizes in that way, which meant the suspect had written an absurdly long diary. That alone was suspicious. Even if it covered several months, the volume was equivalent to four full novels. No ordinary person would do that.
Jae-won himself kept a daily journal, but even on eventful days he only wrote a few concise lines. He preferred to record only the essentials.
He copied the diary file into the Keyboard Warrior directory and launched it. A cheerful title screen appeared, completely at odds with the tense atmosphere. Jae-won hammered the ESC key repeatedly to skip the opening sequence and reached the main menu, then selected the diary function.
Normally, the program would ask if the user wanted to create a new diary if none existed. Instead, a password prompt appeared immediately.
Jae-won typed a random word and pressed Enter. A “Wrong Password” message flashed and vanished, followed by a new line stating that only four attempts remained.
He entered four more random words. A warning appeared: access would be blocked and the program would terminate automatically. But because he had modified the source code to disable the shutdown function, the program remained open. The password prompt continued.
ACCESS BLOCKED AFTER 5 FAILED ATTEMPTS
PROGRAM TERMINATION SEQUENCE INITIATED
“Is there an easy way to crack DES encryption?” Anna asked, unable to contain her curiosity any longer. She had never even tried a brute-force attack before because the program shut down after five failed attempts. Her face brightened with sudden hope.
Of course there was a way. The DES algorithm itself had no structural weaknesses, but its 56-bit key length created a hard limit. No matter how complex the password, there were only so many possibilities. A well-optimized parallel brute-force attack could crack it in roughly two days.
“No, there isn’t,” Jae-won answered. “But there is another path.”
Parallel processing was still an extremely advanced technique given the current level of computer technology. There was no need to demonstrate it here. Besides, time was running short. A different method would be better.
“You’re quite lucky, Agent.”
Keyboard Warrior had a hidden feature not mentioned in the manual. Jae-won had anticipated that some users might lose their diary passwords and storm the office demanding recovery. So he had built in a master key function.
When the pre-set master key was entered, it would reveal the user’s chosen password. The principle was simple: after encrypting the diary with the user’s password, the program appended an additional encrypted copy of that same password using the built-in master key at the end of the file. Entering the master key would decrypt and display the original password, allowing the diary to be restored.
One could call it a backdoor, but Jae-won had never intended it for malicious use. Its only purpose was password recovery. Since the software wasn’t connected to the internet, remote access to users’ diaries was impossible anyway. More importantly, this kind of backdoor was far too crude. Anyone performing reverse engineering would immediately notice the separately stored user password. A skilled professional would even locate the embedded master key.
A true backdoor would have been designed by deliberately leaving a weakness in the encryption algorithm itself. In practice, Jae-won had already used the master key to help a few users who had come to the office in despair after losing their passwords. To prevent the master key from leaking, he only performed recoveries for those who made the trip to the Silicon Valley office. The function also only activated after five consecutive failed password attempts, when the file had locked itself.
For comparison, the AES-encrypted version of ID Office had no such backdoor. It could generate a hint file based on user-selected options, but nothing was hidden without the user’s knowledge.
“Then I’ll restore it.”
Jae-won’s fingers flew across the keyboard like lightning, inputting a 16-character master key composed of uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. The sequence was both long and executed at blinding speed. Even Anna, with her trained eye, couldn’t memorize it.
As soon as the master key was entered, the hard drive whirred. The password was restored. This time Jae-won covered the monitor completely so only he could see it, then immediately closed the window.
“What was that?” Anna’s voice sharpened noticeably. The reaction confirmed she hadn’t seen the suspect’s password. Since a warrant hadn’t arrived yet, protecting the suspect’s privacy was still necessary.
Whoever the suspect was, they had created a surprisingly strong password: St!Mans0n. Ten characters including the period. In this era, most passwords were simple words or dates. Even the users who had visited the office after forgetting their passwords had used basic dictionary words. Yet this murder suspect had combined uppercase, lowercase, special characters, and numbers.
It was readable and easy to remember, yet difficult to guess. But was there a Catholic saint named Manson?
“Manson…” Jae-won muttered.
There was no saint by that name. But there was one very famous piece of human garbage.
“The suspect is a follower of Charles Manson. How did you know? Ah, the password you found must be related to Charles Manson.”
Anna was sharp. She had deduced everything from a single word. Though of course, that word itself wasn’t the actual password.
Jae-won moved to the final step of the restoration. Returning to the desktop, he used the file manager to delete Keyboard Warrior’s configuration file and relaunched the program. After five consecutive failed attempts, the file locked itself; the fastest way to unlock it was to wipe the config file. When he activated the diary function again, a fresh password prompt appeared. He entered the extracted password. This time, no error message appeared. A calendar interface loaded instead. Moving the cursor to a previous date and pressing Enter would display that day’s entry. Selecting today’s date would open a blank notepad for new writing.
“Is it unlocked? Then please open the entry for December 31st of last year,” Anna requested immediately.
But Jae-won’s finger pressed the ESC key instead of Enter. He had exited the diary function entirely.
“This is as far as I can help you. I’ve found the password. Once the warrant arrives with my name on it, I’ll let you view everything.”
Yoo Jae-won was not someone who could be pushed around so easily. Anna’s expression changed dramatically. A flush rose on her previously cold face. She looked like she was about to explode with anger. Even though the air conditioner was running at full blast on this summer day, her fury was palpable.
“You’re going to be this uncooperative?”
“Uncooperative? I just worked hard to recover the password right in front of you. You saw it yourself.”
“You could have shown it to me right here.”
“And if the warrant never arrives, ID Technology would have committed an illegal act.”
“What? Are you saying you don’t trust the FBI?”
Remington, who had been listening, nodded vigorously. He even gave a blatant thumbs-up, whether Anna saw it or not.
“Well, I suppose I’ll have to discuss that with our lawyers.”
At the word “lawyers,” Anna flinched. America was the kingdom of attorneys. The reason Skinner and Anna had been able to speak so freely with Jae-won was precisely because no lawyer had been present.
“Yes, General Counsel Ellen should be arriving shortly,” Jae-won added.
Remington responded instantly to Jae-won’s cue. At the news that a lawyer was on the way, Anna took a step back.
“May I use the phone?” she asked, apparently changing her mind.
Jae-won gestured generously toward the phone on the desk with an expression that said she was welcome to use it as much as she liked.
“Security,” he muttered to himself as he watched Anna pick up the receiver.
This incident had given him an idea for an event that would dramatically boost the visibility of both ID Office and ID Technology. An ID Office hacking competition. If he offered a massive cash prize for cracking password-protected ID Office files, self-proclaimed hackers would swarm like bees to honey. A prize of one million dollars would be like pouring gasoline on a raging fire.
The event would only be possible if he had absolute confidence that it could never be breached. After all, it was a demonstration of unbreakability. If it were cracked, the humiliation would be catastrophic.
But after seeing the FBI’s situation today, he felt confident enough to proceed. The grand opening had been a resounding success, and with the media’s attention already focused here, now was the perfect time to announce a hacking contest.
Besides, hackers with deep technical knowledge often turned out to be creative developers. If he managed to recruit even one talented individual, it would be well worth the investment.
Yoo Jae-won made up his mind.
Let’s do it.
He would host a truly grand festival for hackers! A gathering where hackers from across America, and eventually the entire world, would converge!