Eunice loosened the chin strap on her full-face helmet and adjusted her rucksack. Straddling her softly purring Harley-Davidson Softail Deluxe, she studied the grounds beyond the gates of the Richard Lyle Mills estate. She had already scouted the estate’s perimeter searching for entry soft points, but her instincts kept directing her back to the front entrance. The drive beyond the cast iron gates snaked its way through an assemblage of naked maple, oak, chestnut trees and a series of cameras that lined its route. An intercom system was located at street level. Conscious of the time idling, she tightened the strap to her helmet and glanced around. A neighbour’s suspicion and a call to their community security network was the last thing she wanted to happen. With as little fanfare as possible, she eased away from the curbside opposite the estate.
A few minutes later, she arrived at a location chosen earlier that day, about one kilometre away. It provided a citadel-like view of the approaches to and away from the neighborhood. After she removed her helmet and sequestered her bike from view, she positioned herself at the highest point that still afforded her cover. Daylight was growing thin. Unshouldering her knapsack, she withdrew her laptop and sat against an old tree stump. She plugged in the memory stick and after a few flickers on the device, her fingers began to dance across the keyboard like an unbridled storm.
Reassured from the earlier observations that the security system that guarded the Mills Estate was familiar, she assessed it would be a piece of cake to crack. Only finishing touches remained to injecting the rootkit into his computer system, a process she had starter earlier. She called this the finesse stage. Designed to camouflage any unauthorized activity taking place, it granted her administrative control to use his computer system without restrictions and without anyone’s knowledge. If unable to penetrate his home office tonight, for whatever reason, it provided her an undetected backdoor for future visits. By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, she had completed the coding to access his operating system files. Satisfyingly, she sighed. Now nestled deep within his system, she could cover her tracks by altering the system’s logs while hiding any evidence of processes running in the background.
Two hours later she climbed over the wall near the front entrance and made her way to his house.