“Actually, it’s not.”
“What?” That was the absolute last response Sawyer had expected to hear.
“It’s so long that it would be easy to forget a portion of it or
otherwise get it incorrect. Or if you were communicating it to someone
else orally, they could easily get it wrong in the transmission,
transpose a number, that sort of thing.”
“But because it’s so long, it wouldn’t be capable of being broken,
right? I thought that was the beauty of it.”
“Certainly. However, you don’t have to use all those numbers to
accomplish that goal. Ten would’ve been ample for most purposes.
With fifteen numbers you’re pretty much invulnerable.”
“But these days you’ve got computers that could crank those combos
through.”
“With fifteen numbers you’re looking at well over a trillion combos and
most encryption packages come with a shut-down feature if too many
combos are tried at one time. Even if it didn’t have the shut-down
feature, the fastest computer in the world doing a numbers crunch still
wouldn’t pop this password because the presence and placement of those
decimal points make the possible combinations so high that a traditional
brute-force assault wouldn’t work.”
“So you’re saying–”
“I’m saying whoever put together this password went way overboard.
The negatives far outweigh its imperviousness to being cracked. It
simply didn’t need to be this complex to avoid being penetrated. Maybe
whoever put it together was a novice about computers.”
Sawyer shook his head. “I think this person knew exactly what he was
doing.”
“Well, then it wasn’t solely for protection purposes.”
“What else could it be?”
“I’m not sure, Lee. I’ve never seen one like this before.”
Sawyer didn’t say anything.
“Anything else?”
“What? Uh, no, Liz, that’s it.” Sawyer sounded very depressed.
“I’m sorry if I wasn’t much help.”
“No, you were. You gave me a lot to think about. Thanks, Liz.”
He brightened. “Hey, I owe you a lunch, okay?”
“I’m going to hold you to that one and this time I get to pick the
place.”
“Fine, only make sure they take the Exxon card. That’s about the only
plastic I have left.”
“You really know how to show a girl a good time, Lee.”
Sawyer hung up and looked down at the password again. If half of what
he had heard about Jason Archer’s mental prowess was true, then the
complexity of the password had been no accident.
He looked at the numbers again. It was driving him nuts, but he
couldn’t shake the feeling that they somehow seemed familiar. He poured
himself another cup of coffee, took out a scratch piece of paper and
started doodling, a habit that helped him think. This case seemed to
have been with him for years. With a start he looked at the date on the
e-mail message Archer had sent his wife: 95-11-19.
He wrote the numbers down on the scratch paper: 95-11-19. He smiled.
Figures a computer would kick it out like that, more confusing than
anything else. Then he found himself staring at the numbers more
intently. His smile faded. He quickly wrote them down another way:
95/11/19 then, finally, 951119. He quickly scribbled again, made a
mistake, scratched it out and kept going.
He looked at the finished product: 599111.
Sawyer’s face turned whiter than the paper he was writing on.
Backwards. He read the e-mail from Jason Archer again. All backwards,
Archer had said. But why? If Archer were under so much pressure that
he had mistyped the address and not finished the message, why take the
time to type two phrases–“all wrong” and “all backwards”–if they meant
the same thing? The truth suddenly dawned on Sawyer: unless the two
phrases had entirely different meanings, both quite literal. He looked
at the numbers comprising the password one more time and then started to
write furiously.
After several mistakes he finally finished. He numbly drained the last
of his coffee as he took in the numbers in their true (unback-ward)
order: 12-19-90, 2-28-91, 9-26-92, 11-15-92 and 4-16-93.
Archer had been very precise in his selection of passwords. It had
actually been a clue within the password itself. Sawyer didn’t need to
consult his notes. He knew what the numbers represented. He took a