Hack to square one

Identity Theft

Nancy Drew Girl Detective: Volume Thirty-Four

Carolyn Keene

Dare to read: Нэнси Дрю и Братья Харди

(https://vk.com/daretoreadndrus)

ПРИЯТНОГО ЧТЕНИЯ!

Copyright, 2009, by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

With George and Bess's help, I joined the online group BetterLife to unmask the identities of some nasty cyberbullies who were harassing a friend of Bess's sister online. Little did I know that my sleuthing would lead me into even more trouble!

Now the cyberbullies are after me. Someone has hacked into my BetterLife account and manipulated my avatar to do things I would never do in real life.

Now this case is personal. My friends and I need to do some major cybersleuthing to identify the bullies before it's too late!

“You can stop apologizing, Nancy. I forgive you, I promise.” Ibrahim al-Fulani smiled at me from his seat across the coffee shop table. “I knew you wouldn’t have done such a thing. Not someone as nice and kind as you.”

I smiled back weakly, clutching my cappuccino with both hands. It was late Saturday morning and Barbara’s Beans was crowded, but we’d managed to snag a private table over near the brick wall in the back. That was good. I definitely didn’t want half of River Heights to overhear our conversation.

“Thanks, Ibrahim,” I said. “Not everyone would be so understanding about this.”

That was the understatement of the year… But maybe I’d better back up and explain. For the past week or so I’d been investigating a case involving some cyberbullying that had spilled over into real life. See, that’s what I do — investigate. I’m pretty well-known around my hometown of River Heights for being ready, willing, and able to solve any puzzle or mystery, great or small.

And I thought I’d solved this one, too. I’d been called in by a popular middle schooler named Shannon Fitzgerald. She was getting teased and harassed at school after flirting with a certain boy on an online game called BetterLife. In order to get to the bottom of things, I’d signed on to BetterLife myself, creating an avatar named VirtualNancy that looked just like me, from her strawberry-blond hair to her comfortable shoes. My sleuthing had led me all over town. Well, towns, actually — both the real and virtual versions of River Heights. In the end, I’d been able to pin the origin of the bullying on Shannon’s so-called best friend, Rebecca, who was getting back at her for a previous tiff.

The end, right? Well, not exactly. After delivering both girls, plus a couple of others who’d gotten involved, to the proper authorities — aka their parents — I’d logged on to BetterLife to close out my avatar, only to find my e-mail in-box crammed with angry messages. The game has a feature in which players can post short video clips of their online activities and interactions, and it seemed a lot of people had viewed a video of VirtualNancy harassing Ibrahim’s avatar, hatefully telling him to go back to Iran and even spray painting the words GO HOME on his virtual house.

There was just one problem. I hadn’t done that. I would never have done something like that. For one thing, Ibrahim is a super-nice guy. He’s the sixteen-year-old son of a visiting Iranian professor at River Heights University. Due to a mix-up, the al-Fulanis’ university housing was delayed for a few weeks, so in the meantime the whole family was staying with the family of my boyfriend, Ned Nickerson. I’d been spending quite a bit of time with Ibrahim and his younger sister, Arij, and they were both great people — smart, friendly, and eager to fit in at the local middle and high schools. Besides that, I’m just not the harassing type (although some of the crooks and lowlifes I’ve busted in the past might beg to differ, I suppose).

So who had done it? I didn’t know, but I definitely intended to find out.

Naturally, I’d called Ibrahim immediately to explain and apologize. He’d agreed to meet me at the coffee shop right away.

“I still don’t know how this happened,” I mused, staring across the open, airy room at the bank of computer terminals along the front wall. “George says someone must have hacked into my account so he or she could control my avatar and make it do that stuff.”

I was referring to George Fayne, one of my best friends, who also happens to be a whiz with computers and anything electronic. She was supposed to meet me at the coffee shop soon, along with her cousin and my other best friend, Bess Marvin.

Checking my watch, I saw that they were due at any moment. We’d arranged to meet at noon, figuring that would give me enough time to apologize to Ibrahim in private.

“Anyway, I hope George can help me figure out exactly how someone did this,” I said. “Then it’ll be up to me to figure out exactly why.”

Ibrahim shrugged and took a sip of his mochaccino. “I have heard that some hackers do it just for the fun and challenge of it — for kicks, as you might say.”

“I suppose that’s true.” As usual, I couldn’t help being impressed with Ibrahim’s command of English slang. Then again, he and his family had lived in the United States for a while; Professor al-Fulani had taught at several other universities before being invited to come to River Heights. “But in this case, I’m not so sure that’s what’s going on. It just seems too coincidental for it to happen just as I’d solved the other mystery.”

“Yes, that makes sense.” Ibrahim gazed at me with admiration in his dark eyes. “I still find it very cool that you are an amateur detective, Nancy. I’m sure not many people your age can say the same! So do you have any suspects in mind yet?”

“Well…” I leaned on one elbow and stirred my drink, staring thoughtfully into the tiny whirlpool I created. “I suppose the obvious place to look would be the middle schoolers I busted for the Shannon business. They’re the ones with an obvious motive — revenge.”

Rebecca wasn’t the only one who’d been in trouble when I turned her in to her parents. Shannon herself hadn’t come out smelling like roses, either, since it turned out the whole thing had been prompted by some major bullying on her part. There were also a couple of other middle school girls who’d joined in on Rebecca’s plot and probably weren’t too happy with me right now.

“Still, this seems pretty extreme for those girls,” I mused aloud, thinking over the potential list of suspects. “I mean, we know Shannon is a bully and Rebecca is kind of sneaky, but even so…”

I glanced toward the computers again just in time to spot Bess and George hurrying into the coffee shop. As usual, Bess looked pretty and pulled together. She was dressed in a cute floral dress that flattered her curvy figure, and not a hair on her blond head was out of place. George, on the other hand, looked like she’d just pulled an all-nighter. Her short dark hair was standing on end, both her sneakers were untied, and her rumpled T-shirt was only half tucked into the waistband of her jeans. Then again, that was nothing unusual. George cares even less about fashion and makeup than I do, and is a lot less receptive to Bess’s constant tips on keeping ourselves presentable.

“Um, hi,” Bess greeted us cautiously as the two of them approached our table. “Is everything…?”

“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Ibrahim is being super-understanding.”

“But of course.” Ibrahim smiled. “I knew instantly that Nancy would never act in that way toward me or anyone else. And I have every confidence that she will solve this case quickly.”

There were only three chairs at our table, so George grabbed an extra one from nearby, turned it around, and straddled it, leaning on the back and staring at me. “Listen,” she said. “I’ve been messing around a little trying to figure out how someone could’ve snagged your avatar like that. And let me tell you, it’s no easy matter to hack into the BetterLife system. Whoever did it must be a real pro.”

“Yeah.” Bess chuckled. “Or at least more of a pro than George. She’s been trying for the past hour and can’t get past the first firewall.”

George scowled at her. “Give me time,” she snapped. “I’ll get in. It’s just not as easy as most sites, okay?”

I held back a smile. Judging by her reaction, George’s failure to break into the game’s system had wounded her hacker pride.

“Anyway, I’ll keep trying,” she went on. “But in the meantime, that VirtualNancy avatar is pretty much useless — everyone on BetterLife knows her, and she can’t go anywhere without getting harassed. I think we should create a new, more anonymous avatar and use it to poke around some.”

“Uh-uh.” I pushed away my half-empty coffee cup. “I’ve had just about enough of this virtual sleuthing. I’m going to start this investigation off in the real world by talking to Shannon and Rebecca.”

“But I thought you didn’t believe they were capable of such a thing,” Ibrahim said.

I shrugged. “True. But they both hid what they were up to pretty well last time. So it’s worth a shot, if only to cross them off the suspect list.”

Bess pursed her lips. “Well, before you do that, maybe you should just check in quickly on the game,” she suggested. “There’s been, um, a new development since you were on there earlier this morning.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Just come on and we’ll show you. Look, there’s a computer free now.” George hopped up and hurried over to commandeer the one empty terminal in the row by the door.

After everything that had happened in the past week, the last thing I felt like doing was spending even more time online. But I couldn’t help being curious. I followed my friends over to the computer, with Ibrahim right behind me.

Soon George had us logged on to BetterLife. As usual, up popped an online replica of the real town of River Heights. The sunny, slightly breezy day was also a replica of the real-life day outside the coffee shop windows. Probably the biggest difference between the online and real worlds was that the virtual River Street was a lot busier, with tons of avatars wandering around, interacting and having conversations, which popped up as little text boxes all over the screen.

“Okay, so what are we supposed to be looking at?” I asked, leaning over George’s shoulder for a better view.

In response, George’s fingers wielded keyboard and mouse as she guided us down the street and around a couple of corners. I recognized VirtualNancy’s neighborhood, where she had a cute little condo with a river view. There were a bunch of people milling around in front of the door, and for a second I wasn’t sure what they were doing there.

Then George zoomed in, and I gasped as I spotted my avatar’s name on a placard that one of the virtual people was holding. “Hey,” I said. “Are those people picketing me?”

“Yup,” George said grimly. “They started showing up right after you left to go meet Ibrahim.”

I had to pause for a split second to work out whether she was talking about the real or virtual me. That also gave me time to read some of the virtual picket signs. The messages included stuff like VNANCY = JRK, I H8 BIGOTS! and GAL.

“GAL?” I said when I saw the last one. “What’s that?”

“It stands for ‘get a life,’” George replied.

I grimaced. Nice. “Wow,” I said. “People are really taking this seriously.”

“Oh, Nancy!” Ibrahim cried. “I’m so sorry — I cannot help feeling responsible for all this.”

“Don’t be silly, Ibrahim. It’s not your fault.” I bit my lip as I watched a petite girl with a mohawk and a nose ring march around on the screen carrying a VN IZA IDIOT! sign.

The person at the next computer terminal had just left, and Bess sat down in the vacant seat. “But it’s not all bad, Nancy,” she said in her glass-half-full way, pointing to one side of the screen. “Some people are supporting you, see?”

Now that she pointed it out, I did. About eighty percent of the picketers appeared to be anti-VirtualNancy. But the rest were actually picketing in my favor, waving signs with slogans like VN IS NO BIGOT! and INNOCENT TIL PROVEN GUILTY!

Somehow, that seemed even weirder than the ones picketing against me. “Who are these people?” I murmured, leaning even closer. “I mean, it’s a gorgeous day outside, and they could be out there walking in the park by the river or having a picnic or —”

I cut myself off with a gasp as I got a look at the name of one of the pro-VirtualNancy people. Bess must have seen it at the same moment.

“Hey,” she said. “Check it out. It’s Guitar Lover Fifteen!”

“What’s he doing there?” I exclaimed. “Rebecca’s mother said she was going to ban her from the computer for at least a month.”

I stared at the all-too-familiar avatar of a teenage boy with a blue streak in his dark hair. Guitarlvr15 was the avatar Rebecca had used to torture Shannon online. He was the spitting image of the guy Shannon liked in real life, a sixteen-year-old named Jake.

“Well, someone poached your avatar,” George pointed out. “Maybe someone grabbed Rebecca’s, too.”

“Or perhaps Rebecca has sneaked back online somehow,” Ibrahim put in.

“But if she had, why would she be picketing for Nancy?” Bess wondered. “Wouldn’t she be a lot more likely to be giving her a hard time for busting her?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Unless she created this whole protest somehow and is just checking it out while staying under the radar.”

“Using that avatar isn’t exactly staying under the radar,” George pointed out. “Why wouldn’t she just make another one?”

“Good point.” I quickly scanned some of the other pro-VirtualNancy picketers. A couple of them seemed vaguely familiar — I suspected one might be a college student I knew from one of my charity committees, while another looked a lot like my friend Charlie Adams, who worked at a local garage.

But most were complete strangers, at least as far as I could tell. Then again, who knew? It wasn’t as if people were restricted to making their online avatars look or act like their real-life selves. In BetterLife, they could be anyone or anything they wanted to be. The attractive twentyish woman in the miniskirt and go-go boots waving her VN ROX! sign could actually be a ten-year-old boy. That petite punk rocker might be, say, Chief McGinnis of the River Heights Police. The pro-VirtualNancy avatar that looked like a Scandinavian male model and called himself MrNiceGuy might actually belong to a pudgy middle-aged accountant.

Then I spotted another pro-me avatar. This one was a college-aged guy, tall and broad-shouldered and good-looking. He was carrying an I ♥ VN sign and his name was NedNick02.

I was a little surprised. True, Ned had mentioned that he had an avatar on BetterLife. But so far he hadn’t seemed all that interested in spending much time on the site. Still, it was nice to see my boyfriend there sticking up for me, especially considering the way I’d been canceling our dates lately due to Shannon’s case.

That reminded me — Ned and I were supposed to have dinner that very night. If I wanted to question Shannon and Rebecca and still have time to find something date-appropriate to wear, I had to get moving.

“I should go,” I said, checking my watch. “I want to see if Shannon knows anything about all this.”

“Hang on,” George said. “Don’t you want to check your in-box?”

I made a face. “Why bother? I already know what most of the messages are going to say.”

But I watched as George clicked to open my BetterLife mailbox. As usual since the virtual Incident, there were tons of new e-mails. Most of them featured subject lines like OMG UR A RACIST!!I! or Y R U SUCH A H8R?!?!?!

“Come on, enough,” I said. “Just log off so we can…”

My voice trailed off as yet another message popped up at that very moment. The sender was someone called UrNewReality, and the subject line read WHAT IS REALITY?

“That’s different,” I said, relieved to see at least one message that wasn’t calling me names in the subject line. “Wonder what that’s about?”

George clicked on it, and the message text popped up on the screen in what must have been about forty-two-point type.

UNR KNOWS ALL ABOUT U. UNR DOESN’T LIKE U. HOW R U

LIKING UR NEW REALITY SO FAR? B/C IT’S ABOUT 2 GET

EVEN MORE UNREAL!

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