Skill Set Read Online Free PDF Page A

she replied, pushing a few strands of her hair behind her ear. “It wasn’ t, ” she insisted. “But the hacker must have got to it before it was encoded or after it was decoded by the system.”
    “And there haven’t been any other security alerts since this one?”
    “ No, I ’m thinking maybe it’s just a prank. Some kid showing off. . .”
    “So, although it seems to have come from the Oval Office, it could have come from a computer outside the system?”
    She hesitated. “The truth is I don’t know enough about it. But I can call my IT security guy in here.”
    “Please,” Rose nodded affirmatively. He knew very little beyond the basics himself. He admitted to himself he was confused at having been put on the job in the first place. He knew from previous missions the team had a computer expert in its midst: Orion. Isaac, on the other hand had talents in other areas, apart from a great ability to mix things up and create explosive situations, he was an excellent judge of character. Having earned a minor in anthropology while at MIT, he picked up a few things that have enabled him to see through a lot of the bullshit people throw around.
    He watched the defense secretary lean back and pick up her phone. She dialed three numbers and within a split second had a response. “ Hello, Daniel. . . It ’s Emma,. . . can you come into my office?”
    Rose remembered well the day Emma Soto was appointed to the Cabinet. It was almost exactly two years ago and it happened amidst a furor. Many political commentators claimed she lacked the experience and knowledge for the job. Others said outright she was the result of positive sexism; the president having been under fire for a lack of women in his administration. From what he ’d seen of her work over the last two years, he didn’t believe she’d been hired without any merit. However, there were areas in which a lack of experience had caused her problems in diplomatic relations.
    “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”
    “ No, I ’m fine, thank you.” Isaac moved restlessly as they waited. In less than two minutes a tap sounded at the door.
    “ Come in, ” Ms. Soto announced.
    Isaac watched the door open as a tall, wiry man in glasses stepped across the threshold. He was wearing a sky blue dress shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Around his neck hung his identification badge, attached to a red cord. The top button of the shirt was loose, disclosing his thick, dark chest hair. “You wanted to see me?”
    “Yes, Daniel, and thank you for coming so quickly. This is Isaac Rose. . . he’d like to ask your professional opinion about our security leak.”
    “ Oh, sure, ” he nodded eagerly. “Happy to help,” he added, pushing up the bridge of his glasses with his index finger.
    “I was just wondering whether it’s possible for the hack to have come from outside the building and for it to still look like it came from inside. . .what do you think?” Isaac waited expectantly.
    “Uh, well, theoretically, yes,” the pale-skinned man replied. “But in this case, it definitely didn’ t. ”
    “How can you be so sure?”
    “ It ’s a theory I looked into myself,” Daniel explained, a smug grin on his face.. “It all boils down to how you track the hack back,” he added, chuckling at the rhyme. “The way we did it, we know we’re getting an accurate reading about exactly where the security breach occurred.”
    Isaac tried to wrap his head around the implications of the man ’ s comment. “Someone in the Oval Office just sat down at one of the computers here and casually hacked into the secure system?” he asked, incredulous.
    “There are hundreds of employees here and hundreds of computers, so it wouldn’t be too difficult to go unnoticed,” Soto chipped in.
    employeesIsaac nodded. There was sound reason to that, he knew. However, another employees floated around in his mind. One that wouldn’t quite go away. He didn’t mention it,