Stealing the Network by Timothy Mullen

Author:Timothy Mullen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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PART III How to Own an Identity

THE SPREADSHEET

Robert stared at the spreadsheet. On the way home, he had admitted to himself that he had been hoping there would be something else waiting in the PO Box for him. Something from his father. Looking at the column of dollar amounts, he wondered why his Dad would send money, and nothing else. Dad had to have known that he couldn’t keep it, or that he would have gotten into serious trouble if he tried.

He opened a new worksheet, cut-and-pasted

all the illicit deposits into one column, and

totaled it.

Wow. $344,800. Over a third of a million.

More than Robert owed on his house. He

knew Dad had some money from his dot-

com days, but not nearly enough to just

throw around a third of a million like that.

More evidence that Dad really was guilty.

Robert erased the total line, and started play-

ing around with sorting options. Select col-

umn A, Data-Sort, column A, ascending… 45

deposits, from $6,500 to $8,800.There seemed

to be no particular pattern to the numbers.

There were three deposits of $6,500, a bunch

for $7,200. $6,600 was missing entirely.

Robert toyed with the idea of doing a graph

of dollar amounts versus time, or maybe a

frequency analysis of the dollar amounts.

His thoughts drifted back to a lesson many

years ago.

Illicit Deposit Totals in Excel

CODEWHEELS

“Bobby! Jenny! Come down stairs, I want to show you kids something. All right, settle down.

Your mom thought it would be a good idea if I taught you kids some of what I do at work while you’re on summer vacation and I’m on leave.”

Bobby and Jenny sat across the kitchen table from their Dad, in the avocado-painted nook.

Mom paused her puttering and smiled at them before returning to her kitchen work. Dad handed each of the kids a piece of paper with a bunch of mixed up capital letters printed at the top, and a pencil. Bobby was 8, and his sister was 10.

“So kids, what do you think it says?” Each piece of paper had the same phrase at the top: CNN IQQF EJKNFTGP IQ VQ JGCXGP

Bobby looked at Dad with a confused expression on his face. He wondered why there were so many letter Qs. Jenny piped up. “I know! It’s a secret code, you have to fi gure out what letter Sins of the Father CHAPTER 22

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equals what other letter. Some of the other girls showed me how so we could write letters the boys can’t read.”

Dad smiled. “Good job, Jenny. But what does it say?”

Jenny furrowed her brow. “I don’t know. You have to have the code that tells you what letter to change it to.”

“Good,” Dad said, “Mom, hand me a coffee cup, and a bowl there, will you? And some scissors.” Mom brought the two white ceramic objects over to the table. She set them down, turned to a nearby junk drawer, and produced a pair of metal scissors.

Dad took a piece of paper and a pencil, and placed the cup open end down on the paper, and traced the pencil around the edge of the cup.

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