Firewall Read Online Free PDF Page B

outright instead of “we’ll see what our next project is and give you a call tomorrow,” like he’d heard before. Justin was used to being in demand.
    How fast had word spread. And, worse yet, what exactly was being spread? Had the incident with Sybil Industries leaked out? All it took was one pair of loose lips and companies wouldn’t dare trust him with their sensitive security information. And nothing had even been proven—in court or otherwise.
    It was all a bit much. Justin wanted to curl up in bed and bury himself in Doctor Who books. It felt so much easier to lose himself in fantasy worlds rather than face reality, but it had to be done. Justin was too prideful to let this take him down.
    Not for something he hadn’t even done in the first place.
    Justin needed to prove that he still had what it took, and earn a chance to salvage his reputation. He loved what he did too much to give it all up now. That was where his idea of creating his own firm had come from. He could put together a team of pentesters and hackers to rent out to companies for projects big and small.
    He didn’t know how he was going to do that yet, but he was working on it. It would be a hell of a lot easier if he knew what people were saying about him, though.
    As he wracked his brain at home, he browsed his usual tech forums. He didn’t really converse much with others, even there, but the forums were handy for learning new tricks. They were also good for following up on bugs and half-finished testing methods that others were too lazy to finish and use.
    Then, he froze as he read a thread title that made his stomach twist.
    “Sybil Industries breached, pentester fired!”
    He clicked on the thread and grimaced. The first poster was talking about the security breach, and it only got nastier from there. Apparently he didn’t have friends on this forum either. A lot of the comments were attacking him personally rather than his work.
    Serves him right. If it’s who I think it is... he looks down on everyone else.
    Yep. It was him. LOL. He’s really hard to get along with.
    Anyone remember when he put people out of jobs??? Who’s laughing now.
    They only went on from there. Justin hardly knew what to do, his jaw tightening as he read the posts.
    He had to defend himself. If people were going to be talking about him like that, it’d look even worse if he didn’t respond, right? Putting a lid on his growing anger, Justin typed out a detailed defense of himself. He told them that he knew he wasn’t the best at socializing, like a lot of geeks and nerds, but he knew his job and he’d always done it. He had no idea who had caused the breach, but it definitely wasn’t him. Some asshole had pinned something on him, and he knew it.
    Just before he posted it, he hesitated, his cursor hanging over the “post” button.
    “Maybe I’ll send it to Calder first,” Justin muttered. He went to his email account and composed a new message for Calder. He copied and pasted what he had written into it and explained the situation.
    Calder was good at defusing situations. That was what he did for a living. The last thing Justin wanted to do was make things worse.
    After he sent off his email, Justin paced around his house, muttering to himself. He was so worked up that even the thought of tinkering with gadgets or playing games didn’t soothe him.
    A few minutes later, Calder sent back an email with an attachment. It was a revised version of what Justin had sent him, and a quick note.
    This will probably work a lot better for you. :)
    As Justin glanced over the post, he had to admit that it sounded a lot calmer than what he had originally sent. He didn’t know how Calder did it but he had such a good way with words.
    Justin grabbed that revised version and posted it to the forum, then let out a breath. There. The post was out there for these people to see—these... not friends, but also not strangers, most of them known to him after years in hacker