HackaFes

Sam Bellino attended the 2019 NYC HackaFes in January and was not impressed by the sheer scale of the event. According to the leaflet he received from email, the number of local attendant that year was exceeding three thousand people between the allowed age of thirteen to thirty seven. He was one of the youngest to attend the event, and he had previously followed his parents to the Maker Faire but did not like it there, so here he was.

The HackaFes provided more than one million in prize for all the winner, which was obviously one of the major attraction. Though the venue was crowded with people staring at their own rigs while drinking soda and eating pizza, Sam always felt like that would be where he belong.

He was assigned a seat in sector B, the newbie section where amateur hacker met. The request about transferring to sector A, the elite section, was denied due to his young age.There Sam met some grown up with skills worst than his while he browsed at their prototype.

People were surprised by his design and speed the minute he started working. There were older people like him and could work in high speed but still maintain the linearity and integrity, but none was that good at his age.

It was later decided he should be indeed sitting around the professional and experienced veteran hacker, did he saw much more potential of the art in hacking.

There were a group of people surrounding him while he work his way through an old encryption system and displayed his logicality and clear mentality. He instantly fell under the spotlight and attracted more attention.

By the third day he had been through all the possible thing a young hacker could try that he was given a special glimpse at the work of higher end system. Those posed no headache and he went straight away in a day. The fifth and last day of the HackaFes soon arrived and he had been the most prolific young hacker among the crowd, he was given prizes amounted to 7K, and was approached by companies wishing to seal a deal with him as a consultant.

There were others like him, growing by the numbers. But as they shined their skills to the public, they were sure to be watched, monitored and preyed by the people with ill intention.

Sam Bellino was the not first one to fall into the hand of the wrong side. Many had been through that path, told the story of been there, done that.

The day Sam disappeared was a school day, his parents were not aware of him missing until later that night when he didn’t go home, his parents contacted the police as soon as they felt something was wrong and by that, Sam was gone without a trace for a long time. The investigation on missing people were tight on resources because of budget limitation, and his parents could do nothing much on their own.

Meanwhile, Sam were dragged into a hacktivist group and was told to assist them with his skills. There were other hackers there monitoring his every move so he could not get help online. He aided them with some minor system intrusion and operated a money laundering credit scheme that backed their financial problems.

There was a one time job with all the hackers in a room finding a way to breach the national surveillance server to temporary bring the connection down in New York, that was the most intense and the best experience he had in hacking. If not for all the people in the room and the teamwork they had, he would never be able to achieve such action alone.

Day by day, he gained belonging to the group of fellow hackers, he was willing to be the puppet of the group, as long as he could continue the fun. He started to share the same ideal of the group, to end the government’s the illegal monitoring on everyone’s digital footprint, once and for all.