Onderwêreld deur Fanie Viljoen | Hulle weet | English Summary | Onderwereld

 

Onderwêreld deur Fanie Viljoen

Hulle weet

Greg is initially irritated by the website that Eckhardt created because it looks incomplete, but he remembers to look at the source code before jumping to conclusions. It is late at night and everyone should be asleep, but Greg hears a sound at his door. He opens his door and notices a shadow moving in the hallway, cast by dim light shining in front of the informal sitting room. The figure runs full speed towards the elevator, but Greg cannot see who it is because the elevator light is out. Greg’s instincts tell him to pursue, so he runs down the stairs as quickly as he can; however, he arrives on the lowest floor only to find the elevator and boarding house’s front doors open and the school grounds beyond it deserted. Greg takes the elevator back upstairs, suspecting that the lightbulb in the elevator was left unscrewed on purpose. On his way back, Greg thinks about the brashness of his behaviour, thinking that if the individual he was chasing was armed, he could have died. He turns up the aircon in his room and sits in front of his laptop, continuing with his analysis of the source code of the mysterious black website. At first glance, the website is empty; however, upon closer inspection, Greg notices a lone full stop on the site. It is black against the black backdrop; however, the full stop turns out to be a hyperlink, leading Greg to yet another website.

The adrenalin coursing through Greg’s veins causes him to get a fright when his phone rings. The number is private, which sends his thoughts into overdrive. Could it be the person he was chasing through Da Vinci House? Greg eventually answers, but the call is immediately terminated by the person on the other side. Greg realises that he is unsettled, perhaps even frightened by the night’s events. Greg tries to get his breathing under control. He gets back to Ekk-0’s Underworld, the new site that appeared on his screen after he clicked on the full stop hyperlink. On the left-hand side of the page is a group of hyperlinks, some of the names of which Greg recognizes. They are hacking programs used to scan servers to find and exploit vulnerabilities in their security, otherwise known as a hacker’s toolbox. Eckhardt explained to Greg that hackers tend to leave their tools on anonymous FTP servers that can only be found when searched for on Google, hiding their files in public directories. The website reads like a diary of sorts, which makes Greg feel a little bit guilty. The diary contains information about Eckhardt’s hacks. The entry dated the day before Eckhardt’s disappearance reads: “They know I was in their systems. They know what I did. They know who I am.” The words feel like fingers clutching Greg’s heart.

Greg’s mind goes back to the rumours of Eckhardt’s suicide. He also considers that Eckhardt ran away because of this “they” he mentioned in his diary, or the third possibility, that the people in whose systems he was poking around took him. Greg wonders who “they” are while skimming through the rest of Eckhardt’s diary entries. He sees stuff about “backdoors” and the like. His eyes dart around the webpage until they focus on a web address. It looks like some kind of medical company’s page. He opens a new tab and visits www.plusultramed.co.za and the home page of a pharmaceutical company appears. He clicks through the links on the page, eventually finding an organogram of the company’s leaders. In the centre of it all is none other than Doc Pienaar.

SummariesKeroshan PillayComment