My career change to security hacker

My career change to security hacker

I hadn't particularly been contemplating a career change. I certainly hadn't considered my skills as a security hacker. At the time I was only interested in taking the junior recipe testers to the Easter Show. Turns out I have a hidden talent.

I love school holidays for the break in routine. I love the Easter Show even more.  The juniors love it too and so, I suggested to the juniors that we go. The senior recipe tester does not love the Easter Show. He went to work instead.

I purchased the tickets online, complete with bus trip included. In the affray that inevitably occurs when trying to get three juniors launched and out of the house I didn't particularly notice that the tickets had not come through on email. That was what mobile phones were for, I reasoned. I'd pick them up on the way.

On our walk to the bus stop I opened my email to download the tickets. The tickets was remarkably absent. It was then I remembered I'd used the senior recipe tester's email to purchase the tickets. I tried to open his email.

He'd changed the password.

I rang the senior for the new password. Being the obliging fellow he is, he offered to send me the tickets. A few minutes later my phone rang.

"The ticket email isn't there," the senior reported.

"Perhaps I didn't actually process the payment?" I suggested. "I've checked," he replied, "the charge is on the credit card. They've got the money."

I then commenced a long process of logging into an account I was forced to created on the multinational ticket-selling-platform that sells you tickets to the Easter Show. Apart, that is, from the times when they just take your money and don't give you a ticket at all.

I got to the account login page. The email address I managed. The password however, I had created at least 2 hours before. Quite enough time had passed for it to be completely forgotten. I hit the password retrieve button.

My account, when I finally got in, welcomed "Ross Golding" back to the dashboard. This is a name belonging neither to me nor the senior recipe tester. I paid no attention and clicked the link to "events you are attending". My upcoming events included a folk festival to be held in about 10 days time.

In Canada.

Clearly, the junior recipe testers and I, heading for Homebush, were on the wrong bus. Had I known hacking into someone else's account could be so simple, I might have tried for someone possessing better tickets a little nearer to home.

By the time I got through to someone on a helpline the bus trip was long over and I was standing at the ticket gate at the Easter Show gates ready to plead my case to ticket collector who had nothing to do with the multinational giant who had stolen my money.

I begged mercy from the person on the phone. "When did you want to attend?" she asked. "I'm standing at the gate now with three juniors who are rapidly losing patience." I replied.

"I'll resend the tickets, shall I?" the sympathetic person on the phone replied. "It should only take an hour and they'll be in your inbox."

"Any chance we can have them in less than an hour?"

"No."

"Could you send them to Ross Golding any quicker?" I enquired. "I could probably pick them up from him..."