part 3: https://bitbin.it/me0bLtGv part 4: https://bitbin.it/ydXOytVd I realised that I haven’t yet written down why I started this. It must seem so random, to just declare that I’m going to go and ‘win the internet’ by finding this fabled fifth layer. It’s not random, not at all. This may get emotional, so apologies in advance. Last month, my uncle died. He was the greatest uncle anyone could ever have; he was funny, gracious, generous, and he knew a whole load about computers, and technology in general. I remember some hilarious family reunions, especially the one where he cracked the Wi-Fi password and put up an internet page so that anyone who tried to connect to the internet got redirected to it. What did it say? Oh yes, “You’ve been hacked. Go and hide while you still can, pathetic mortals.” It terrified so many of the guests, and we had a good laugh before telling them what was going on. I chuckle just remembering it. How old was I then? I can only have been around eight; it was seven or eight years ago. I’m going to have to wipe my eyes so the page doesn’t get wet. My uncle worked for Windows. They’re one of the biggest computer companies on the planet, along with Apple. He was a technician, quite high up they said at the funeral. He wasn’t fabulously rich, but he had money. He was only thirty four. They say it was an accident, something to do with electrical cables that got out of control, but I’m not so sure. During the years before, my uncle had shown me various things, things you could do on a computer. Simple things, they were, but to most people they seemed like magic, or made me look like a computer whizz. My uncle would also hack websites. Now, he was actually hired by Windows to do this, to test their website vulnerabilities so they could improve them before the exploits were found by other, more malicious hackers. A white hat, he was called. A benevolent hacker, contrasting with the black hats, those who would hack a website for fun, or worse, to steal identities or money. When he was testing vulnerabilities, he always used the handle DeepBlue. Blue was his favourite colour, he always said, and it was also a tribute to a chess-playing computer built by IBM. On its first time, it lost, but it was redesigned and improved, and it beat one of the world’s best chess players. It was originally named Deep Thought. My uncle enjoyed reading Douglas Adams as well. Many times when he came round to our house, he’d take out his laptop and show me. Shiny blue, I remember that laptop so well. He knew I was interested – in fact, it was probably because of him that I got interested in computers and the internet in the first place. Watching him as he went about online, attacking the various Windows-related websites was exhilarating and I loved every moment of it. When I was watching, he wouldn’t just use basic lines of code, or whatever he was doing. He had flair, he had style. He wanted to show off, to make me go wide eyed – and who could blame him for that? If he did manage to hack into a Windows site, rather than simply leaving a message telling them and sending them an email along with the exploit, with me watching he would upload a whole, painstakingly written, elaborate deface page. He didn’t do it for fame; he no longer looked for praise from fellow black hats. Those days were behind him by this time. Oh, he was probably still in contact with them, but he didn’t hack for simple pleasure or just because he could any more. He did it for me. Spending hours at the computer, writing lines upon lines of code… he did it to impress me, to make me laugh. Remember, I was only eight then, simple tricks delighted me, and this made me even happier. I shared the thrill that he felt when he got into a site, I felt the satisfaction as we looked at the new website page he uploaded in place of the site’s homepage. He left his laptop to me, you know. This is being typed on his shiny deep blue computer, and although I’m enjoying reliving the memories so very much, it’s bittersweet. Now I am faced with having to come to terms that I’ll never see him again. I’ll never sit by his side and watch as he tests a website, never see him beaming brightly when he’d done his job well. That’s why I started this up. This project is… a coping mechanism, if you like, a way for me to remember my uncle. If he looked down now, I’m sure he’d be so proud of me. Uncle, if anyone beat the internet, it was you. There was one thing my uncle left me, apart from this laptop. It was a sealed envelope, simply marked ‘Ryan’. Inside, I found a slip of paper. It had one line on it: C:\Users\user\Documents\List1 It was a file path. I typed it in to his computer – my computer, now – and a file opened. It was a Word Document. Before I could do anything, a box popped up. It said ‘Password required’. I knew my uncle had left this for me, but I had no idea why. I’d had no chance to read the file before the password lock popped up. I racked my brain to think of possible passwords. ‘Uncle’. It was all I could think of, so I entered it. ‘Incorrect password. Attempt 1/5.’ This was not good. Attempt one of five? Despite what happens in the movies, it’s unlikely a password can be guessed so easily. At least I had five guesses, not three. ‘List1’. It wasn’t a good idea, but I had nothing else. ‘Incorrect password. Attempt 2/5.’ More writing scrolled down. ‘Password hint: Byron.’ This meant absolutely nothing to me. I tried Byron as a password, but all I got was: ‘Incorrect password. Attempt 3/5.’ By now I was starting to get desperate. I tried the most basic password I could think of in the hope it was right. ‘password’. ‘Incorrect password. Attempt 4/5.’ Another hint came up. ‘Password hint: Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow- Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now.’ With a sudden thought I copied and pasted this into a search engine. Looking through the results, I smiled and typed the password into the box. ‘Password accepted’. The lines had come from a poem by the poet George Gordon Byron. Its name? The Dark Blue Sea. The password? DeepBlue. The file opened and I quickly scanned it. What was this? The first line gave it away. ‘Associates – name and contact details.’ It was dated years ago. I had found a list of my uncle’s old hacker friends. No. He had given me a list of his old hacker friends. At the time, I wondered just why he’d done it. When I started this investigation, I realised why. There’s just one question in my mind: What was he researching, and was it connected to his death? part 3: https://bitbin.it/me0bLtGv part 4: https://bitbin.it/ydXOytVd