Week in the life: Doug and Jubilee

[x-jubilee.livejournal.com]

Jubilee talks to Doug about computer security, and ways around it.



Jubilee hooked the visitor chair with her foot and pulled it closer to Doug's desk, her hand reaching for the rubix cube he had sitting off to one corner.

She hadn't bothered to announce her presence, figuring he'd acknowledge her when he was ready to. Instead, she simply busied herself with attempting to beat her record at solving the cube.

Doug tapped at the keys to start the search string he wanted to run, then turned to where Jubilee sat. He could have made her wait, but that would have been unnecessarily mean of him. "Heya, Jubes," he greeted her. "What can I do for you?"

"Need you to show me the quickest way to infiltrate a secure computer, or computers." Jubilee informed him simply, placing the rubix cube back down on his desk, two sides already solved. "I figured it would be useful to know if you ever get yourself killed. Well, that and useful in the field for me personally but also the other."

Doug snorted. "Well, that's cheerful," he noted wryly. "And somewhat on the nose, but I get what you mean." The possibility of dying was something all of X-Force dealt with, even if it wasn't something they always came right out and talked about.

He leaned back in his office chair and looked at the ceiling in thought for a few moments, then tapped a finger to his lips. "You know there's no 'magic' set of keystrokes that you can use to get into someone's computer, right?" he asked her.

"All that time around you and Kitty as I grew up, what do you think?" Jubilee asked, watching the search he'd initiated. "I know it takes more then a few key strokes usually, but don't you have any programs that'll make it that simple?"

"The thing is that it's -not- that simple," Doug told her patiently. "Every computer system is unique, to some extent, based on what hardware and software it's using, the personality of the sysadmin, and a hundred other different things. So what works for getting in a back door at, say, NASA, might not work if you want to get information out of CNN." He drummed his fingers on his desk. "Sometimes I'll be able to give you some code to brute-force a system, but that doesn't always work." He pondered, then brightened. "There is one thing that could be useful to you, though..."

"Oh?" Jubilee asked, her fingers tapping lightly against her thigh.

The computer beside Doug beeped imperiously, and then started humming quietly to itself as several boxes opened up on the screen to his left.

Doug glanced at the monitor, then tapped a few keys before returning to the conversation. "You do have one advantage that I don't have." He glanced down at Jubilee's chest and smirked wryly. "Well, two, if you want to be technical. Have you ever heard the term 'social engineering'?"

Jubilee looked down at her chest for a second before raising an eyebrow at Doug. "Man, you have got to start watching better porn if you think these do anything. It's not like I'm smuggling melons here. But no, I've got no idea what social engineering is, but would like to subscribe to your newsletter."

On the one hand, Doug couldn't believe that he was having this conversation with Jubilee, and idly wondered if it might come back to bite him in the butt with Marie-Ange, but on the other it was kind of amusing.

"I think you sell yourself short," he said in reply, ticking points off on his fingers. "One, white guys have a serious thing for Asian girls, especially among the nerd set, which are generally the sort of people you'll come up against. Two, you've got that slim athletic gymnast thing going for you. And three, if you really need help, there are these fascinating things called 'push-up bras'."

He folded his hands and leaned forward on his desk. "Social engineering is the art of manipulating people into divulging confidential information of one kind or another," he said in a 'professor addressing his class' sort of voice. "Basically, the idea is to play on peoples' natures in order to get their passwords or other access to things."

Jubilee smirked at him for a moment before responding. "Huh, and to think I'd never find a use for my abilities other then to get a place to sleep, and a nice drink. But, I'm figuring a place to crash for the night is a little different then getting someone to ante up their privacy. What sort of techniques do you suggest I use?"

Doug rolled his eyes a bit at Jubilee playing slightly vapid. He could tell she was playing with him a bit from cues in her body language, though training with Remy and his Guild contacts had clearly taught her how to conceal her reactions a bit more than when they'd been students together at the mansion.

"Well, the technique I usually use is to pretend to be someone from the helpdesk. That can really work for anyone. You call up and tell someone that in order to fix a problem you need to log in as them, and you ask for their username and password. In a large enough organization, there's no way that someone could know everyone in tech support, and that's what you play off of."

Jubilee dropped the act, her expression changing from air-headed to intent in the flash of a second. "What about smaller organisations? Better to go for the IT guy, or the boss? Both would have high end access, or should. I'd think the IT guy, but would I be wrong?"

"It depends, really," Doug answered, glad that she'd dropped the vapid flirting thing a bit. "The IT guy will generally have more access, but he may be more wise to tricks like that. The boss often will be clueless. Best bet is to try and do some research, see which is the better target." He smirked. "I don't think I need to tell you how to seduce someone, do I?"

"I think I got that one covered pretty well." Jubilee noted with a return grin. "So, it all comes back to legwork and knowin' your sources. Can't say I'm surprised."

"So there you are," Doug noted. "Here endeth the lesson," he declaimed with a wave of his hand. "Anything else I can help you with?"

"Well, if you happened to be able to get me the number of Val Kilmer, I wouldn't say no." Jubilee replied, leaning back in her chair. "Otherwise, up for a game of Counterstrike?"

"You're on," Doug retorted. "Don't think I haven't learned your camping spots, you little sniping so-and-so."

"I like to think of it as judicious use of my stealth skills, target boy." Jubilee replied with a smirk. "Now, hand me one of those laptops, and we'll see just who is ruler of all they survey."