“That’s right.”
“How could someone have been able to read anything in my directory?” I went back to that basic question.
“You’re sure no one else might have your password?”
“No one but Margaret.”
“She’s your computer analyst?”
“That’s right.”
“She wouldn’t have given it to anyone?”
“I can’t imagine that she would,” I said.
“Okay. You could get in without the password if you have root privileges,” Lucy said. “That’s the next thing we’ll check. Change to the etc directory and vi the file called Group and look for root group – that’s r-o-o-t-g-r-p. See which users are listed after it.”
I began to type.
“What do you see?”
“I’m not there yet,” I said, unable to keep the impatience out of my voice.
She repeated her instructions slowly.
“I see three log-in names in the root group,” I said.
“Good. Write them down. Then colon, q, bang, and you’re out of Group.”
“Bang?”
I asked, mystified.
“An exclamation point. Now you’ve got to vi the password file – that’s p-a-s-s-w-d – and see if any of those log-ins with root privileges maybe don’t have a password.”
“Lucy.” I took my hands off the keyboard.
“It’s easy to tell because in the second field you’ll see the encrypted form of the user’s password, if he has a password. If there’s nothing in the second field except two colons, then he’s got no password.”
“Lucy.”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Kay. Am I going too fast again?”
“I’m not a UNDO programmer. You might as well be speaking Swahili.”
“You could learn. UNIX is really fun.”
“Thank you, but my problem is I don’t have time to learn right now. Someone broke into my directory. I keep very confidential documents and data reports in there. Not to mention, if someone is reading my private files, what else is he looking at and who is doing it and why?”
“The who part is easy unless the violator is dialing in by modem from the outside.”
“But the note was sent to someone in my office – to a device in my office.”
“That doesn’t mean that an insider didn’t get someone from the outside to break in, Aunt Kay. Maybe the person snooping doesn’t know anything about UNIX and needed help to break into your directory, so they got a programmer from the outside.”
“This is serious,” I said.
“It could be. If nothing else, it sounds to me like your system isn’t very secure.”
“When’s your term paper due?” I asked.
“After the holidays.”
“Are you finished?”
“Almost.”
“When does Christmas vacation start?”
“It starts Monday.”
“How would you like to come up here for a few days and help me out with this?” I asked.
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m very serious. But don’t expect much. I generally don’t bother with much in the way of decorations. A few poinsettias and candles in the windows. Now, I will cook.”
“No tree?”
“Is that a problem?”
“I guess not. Is it snowing?”
“As a matter of fact, it is.”
“I’ve never seen snow. Not in person.”
“You’d better let me talk to your mother,” I said.
Dorothy, my only sibling, was overly solicitous when she got on the phone several minutes later.
“Are you still working so hard? Kay. You work harder than anyone I’ve ever met. People are so impressed when I tell them we’re sisters. What’s the weather like in Richmond?”
“There’s a good chance we’ll have a white Christmas.”
“How special. Lucy ought to see a white Christmas at least once in her life. I’ve never seen one. Well, I take that back. There was the Christmas I went skiing out west with Bradley.”
I could not remember who Bradley was. My younger sister’s boyfriends and husbands were an endless parade I had stopped watching years ago.
“I’d very much like Lucy to spend Christmas with me,” I said. “Would that be possible?”
“You can’t come to Miami?”
“No, Dorothy. Not this year. I’m in the middle of several very difficult cases and have court scheduled virtually up to Christmas Eve.”
“I can’t imagine a Christmas without Lucy,” she said with great reluctance.
“You’ve had Christmas without her before. When you went skiing out west with Bradley, for example.”