The Intern

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was sitting in my cubicle at CyberSecure Inc., sipping my third cup of coffee, when the boss stormed in. “We’ve been hacked!” he exclaimed. I almost spit out my coffee. Me, the lead cybersecurity analyst, getting hacked? That was as likely as a screen door on a submarine.

I jumped into action, fingers flying over the keyboard like a pianist during a concerto. The hacker had left a trail, a digital footprint so obvious it was like they wanted to be found. I followed the breadcrumbs through layers of code and firewalls, my heart racing with each click.

Hours passed, and I was getting nowhere. The hacker was good, leaving false flags and red herrings at every turn. I was about to call it quits when I noticed something odd—a file named “ReadMeIfYouCan.txt.” Curiosity piqued, I opened it.

“Gotcha!” the file read. It was a taunt, a challenge. I couldn’t help but grin. Game on.

I dove deeper, my brain working overtime. The hacker’s style seemed familiar, almost like… No, it couldn’t be. I shook the thought away and focused on the task at hand.

Night fell, and the office grew quiet. It was just me and the glow of my monitors. Then, a breakthrough. I found a pattern, a signature move that I’d seen before. It was my own move. The realization hit me like a ton of bricks. The hacker was using techniques I had developed, ones I had taught in a cybersecurity workshop months ago.

The plot thickened. I traced the IP address, expecting it to lead halfway across the world. Instead, it pointed to an address a block away from the office. That’s when it dawned on me. The hacker was one of my students.

I decided to set a trap. I sent out a fake company-wide email about a “mandatory cybersecurity refresher course” the next day. If my hunch was right, the hacker would show up, unable to resist the challenge.

The next morning, the office buzzed with confused employees. I scanned the crowd, looking for the culprit. Then, in walked Alex, a quiet intern who always asked too many questions. Our eyes met, and I knew. I approached him, ready to confront my nemesis.

“Alex, we need to talk,” I said sternly.

He looked at me, a smirk spreading across his face. “I was wondering how long it would take you to figure it out,” he said, pulling out a USB drive. “I wanted to prove a point.”

My mind raced. Was this some sort of twisted job application? Before I could respond, he continued, “I didn’t actually hack anything. I just wanted to show you that your security system has flaws. And I have some ideas on how to fix them.”

I was speechless. Not only had Alex faked a cyberattack, but he had also done it to land a job. And the craziest part? His ideas were good. Really good.

So, that’s the story of how our biggest security breach turned out to be a job interview. And how Alex, the intern, became Alex, the head of our cybersecurity R&D department. Talk about a plot twist.