Accepting Hacking Commissions
[Account creation complete. Nationality set to Russia, membership rank set to Sea-Serpent, and a dummy account has been opened.]
The reason I deliberately set my membership rank to Sea-Serpent—skipping the higher tiers of Tiamat and Moby Dick—was simple.
From the Moby Dick tier onward, the number of members dropped sharply, which meant the risk of being noticed climbed in every direction.
Besides, my only goal was to take hacking commissions and walk away with something useful in return. There was no real need to claim a lofty rank.
“All right. Time to open for business.”
With that, I stepped into the board and checked the notices.
They laid out the site’s rules and usage guidelines in careful detail, along with a warning that breaking them could bring penalties.
—I can see where the buy window is, but where do you sell?
[There is a Hacking Commissions category. Redirecting to that page now.]
The moment I entered the Hacking Commissions category, a swarm of posts flooded the screen—everything from hacking agencies offering their services to people peddling malware.
They ranged from cheap, trivial jobs all the way up to requests to steal corporate secrets from major conglomerates. A real mixed bag…
Honestly, though, it was disappointing as hell.
Maybe my standards had risen after working for the National Intelligence Service, but looking at those prices, I couldn’t help thinking it would be smarter to just learn hacking yourself than pay someone else to do it.
Jobs I could finish alone in an hour—even without Laplace—were floating around with price tags in the millions of won. The sight alone was enough to give me a stomachache.
[What would you like to do first?]
—If you want to sell something, don’t you have to open a shop first?
I said that and started drafting a sales post.
A few minutes later I checked the finished product and nodded to myself.
“Not bad.”
Accepting Hacking Commissions
Individuals, corporations, and government agencies all welcome.
Negotiable. Payment in kind accepted.
Minimum commission: $1,000.
* Full refund if the job fails.
* Author reserves the right to refuse certain requests.
* Author reserves the right to refuse if personal-data exposure is a concern.
Short, clean, and effective.
The topic and every key phrase sat right where they needed to be, woven cleanly into the post.
“Still feels a little lacking, though…”
It needed more pull—more of that attention-grabbing edge.
If I uploaded it like this, it would just get buried under the rest of the noise.
I had zero reputation and zero visibility in this scene. Posting something this plain would only earn me a reputation for arrogance and nothing else.
So I thought it over. The easiest way for a hacker to jack up their price was to crack a place famous for its ironclad security and prove their skill in public.
Usually that meant high-value facilities with top-tier defenses.
But I wasn’t about to rob a bank just for a résumé piece. A lighter touch would do.
—Laplace. Let’s pull one little prank.
Yekaterina, master of Leviathan—the dark web that rivaled Behemoth for the title of largest in the world—opened her eyes inside a bathtub stained deep red.
Riiing—
“Haa… what a pain…”
The phone on the shelf beside the tub was ringing. She snatched it up with open irritation.
“I’m already short on blood these days. If you’re waking me in the middle of the day, you’d better have a damn good reason.”
“Y-yes! There’s a problem with Leviathan! I thought you needed to know…!”
“What kind of problem? Government hackers hitting the site isn’t exactly new. We’ve got manuals for that. If it’s that bad, just take the site down for a bit.”
Even so, her subordinate couldn’t hide his panic.
“It’s not that kind of problem! The site itself is fine, but every single ad being displayed is…!”
That was enough for Yekaterina to grasp how serious things had become.
She rose from the tub at once, dried herself with a towel, and strode out to switch on her computer.
“Explain it properly. I need to know the cause before I can do anything about it.”
“All the ads on the site appear to be linking to a single post. Our hackers are checking whether it’s a simple bug or an actual breach, but something’s interfering—they can’t pin down the cause.”
The situation was grave.
The hackers and firewalls hired for site security were worth tens of billions of won, and they had been cracked this cleanly?
While shaking off every tracker the hired specialists threw at them?
Only someone with the power to control an entire city among criminals could manage that… no, even if such a person stepped in personally, this shouldn’t have been possible.
“And the rest? What else is there?”
“The rest… ma’am?”
Yekaterina urged him to spit it out, but the answer was already fixed.
“They did nothing else.”
“What?”
“Exactly that. Aside from redirecting every ad on the site to their own post, they didn’t touch a single other thing.”
“Wh-why? Someone with that kind of skill could have messed with other functions without breaking a sweat.”
Was there a purpose behind it?
Something they wanted the world to know badly enough to hack the largest black market on the internet?
If that guess was right, whatever they wanted would be written in detail on the post the ads were pointing to.
“What’s in the post the ads are linking to? Did they demand money? Or tell us to hand over the rare goods listed on the black market?”
Her subordinate answered in a careful voice, as if he himself wasn’t sure he had heard correctly.
“No, ma’am. It’s… well, this might sound absurd, but it looks like an ordinary hacking-commission post. More precisely, a sales post for hacking services…”
“Hacking commissions? There are still people using those?”
Honestly, hacking commissions had never been a high-margin business compared to other trades.
There was no face-to-face dealing, no reliable way to prove skill, so scammers thrived. People would take a deposit after promising to crack a site, then vanish—or simply fail. And on the darknet, there was little recourse.
Those who had been burned by fraudsters stopped using Leviathan’s hacking-commission board altogether. The trend only piled up until it reached the present.
These days the only people still using the category were clueless rookies or scammers looking for fresh marks.
It had gotten so bad that talk of scrapping the entire Hacking Commissions category had even come up in Leviathan’s admin meetings.
And now a post that could actually draw eyes had appeared. Curiosity was inevitable.
“Send me the link. I’ll check it myself.”
“If you’re not careful, a virus hidden inside could infect your machine.”
“Shut up and send it. I’ll handle the check myself.”
“…Understood. Sending it by mail right away.”
Moments later the address arrived. She followed it and found a post so ordinary it was almost boring sitting on her screen.
On any other day no one would have given it a second glance. Today was different.
Accepting Hacking Commissions
Views: 30,823 | Upvotes: 281 | Downvotes: 4,293 | Comments: 489
The comments had long since turned into a complete mess.
Some people were cursing the poster; others were saluting the sheer guts it took to crack Leviathan itself.
On any normal day Yekaterina would have joined the pile-on and started preparing to hunt the bastard down.
But right then, one message caught her eye and refused to let go.
To the Administrator of Leviathan.
Please understand that this message is currently visible only to you.
First, I apologize for hacking the site.
I wanted to try taking a hacking commission, but with zero reputation I couldn’t get anywhere no matter what I did.
So I pulled a small prank.
I will restore everything to normal within six hours of posting this.
Aside from hijacking the ad boards, I have done nothing else, so there is no need to worry.
You may ask about the damages. I will make up for them with the commission fees I earn through hard work.
“Bold little thing…?”
Hacking the site on a whim and then leaving a message like this went past bold and straight into reckless.
Did they not realize Leviathan’s hired mercenaries could come after them for revenge?
But the postscript that followed, as if answering that very thought, left Yekaterina speechless.
* Deleting the post or reverse-tracing the IP will be meaningless. Once enough people have seen it, I will delete the post myself.
* I am accepting hacking commissions from anyone. As I said earlier, if you offer a reasonable price, I will even crack the Ministry of Defense for you.
“Hey.”
“…Yes, ma’am?”
“Can we delete the post right now?”
“Th-that is… please wait a moment! Our people are working hard on it… it should be resolved soon!”
It was obvious things were not going well.
People she had hired for tens of billions of won, reduced to this. A sigh escaped her at the sheer lack of usable talent.
“Forget it. Just leave them alone and let them do whatever they want.”
“Ma’am? Why… may I ask why…?”
“Do you get to question my orders? And can you even stop that person?”
“….”
“Never mind that. Get some money ready. About… five thousand should do?”
“Five thousand… ma’am?”
“Yes. You’re not going to make me say it twice, are you? I plan to use it as a commission fee.”
Her subordinate clearly thought she meant to hire a skilled hacker to catch the culprit. He was completely wrong.
She intended to hire the unknown hacker instead.
Skill seems solid, and they appear to have principles of their own… The merger deadline is right around the corner, isn’t it? Handled properly, this one could be quite useful.
And as a weapon, no less—against rivals in the same line of work.