FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Booooring..." I groan, closing the lid of my laptop, waiting for the typical "beep" that indicated that all hard drives and moving parts had shut down.

When the lights along the side had stopped blinking, I picked my laptop up and went out of the cafeteria. Coffee in one hand, my laptop under my other arm, I walked back into the office -- that is, if you want to call a huge room in the basement, filled with all kinds of computer parts and chips an "office." I went back to my seat and opened the lid again. The quiet, whirring sounds of spinning up hard drives filled the room, and soon the backlight turned on. The scripts that logged me into the 'net begin automatically running, and soon I was online again.

"I'll get you, you motherfucking asshole..." My fingers ran over the keyboard. Codes, trace lines, scripts appeared at my command over the small screen. I could literally see the data packages flying through the lines. DE-CIX3, AMS-IX, LINX, a proxy in London, LINX again, EQUINIX, KIDC, a Server center in Sydney, SIX... that guy was damn good. I couldn't find the source, just more hops. Then, it appeared -- another hint! It was a log file.

"Seems like someone forgot to clear the logs, eh? You're getting inattentive." I examine the file. Is it a trap, a fake, left behind to put me on the wrong way? No; it seems legit. I continue to follow the trail, hopping from server to server, proxy to proxy. A dead end. I run into a firewall. All my packages are getting dropped. So, this damn log file WAS a trap.

I look up. It's way past midnight, and I am the last one.

As always.

I want to leave, but as soon as I yawn and grab my bag to leave, I have another Idea. I turn around and sit back down at my laptop, then reopen my programs and scripts. There had to be something else, perhaps in the cache of that router, a trace would be left after the log file was placed.

The night goes on. I am on the hunt.

My shoulder hurts... "James" ... - Ugh... leave me alone... "James" ... I know that voice. Is this Thomas? - I feel someone touching my shoulder. Ouch. A sharp pain runs through it, pulling me closer to the edge of waking up... "Hey man. If -HE- catches you sleeping here again, he will kill you. So, wake up!" - I open my eyes. It IS Thomas. FUCK. I lift up my head and look at my laptop. I forgot to put it on charge and now I am just facing a black screen of nothing. Damn. All my work is gone. "Hey, hey. Calm down." Thomas gives me a few friendly slaps on my shoulder. "He's not here yet." I look on my wrist and one of these old digital watches tells me it's 9:30 in the morning. This calms me down a bit. I yawn and stretch my arms and legs, trying to get rid of that tired feeling I still have. "Get your ass up to the showers. It will not help much, but at least you will not smell like you fell asleep on your laptop again." Thomas turns around and walks over to his own workstation, turning it on and taking a seat. "... morning... Thomas. - And... thank you." I get up, drag my still sleepy body slowly to the door. "No problem, James. But hurry up. Mike will be here in about 30 minutes."

Mike.

My boss is a bit weird. On one side, he is the leader of my team. He picked us and threw us together in that room full of crap, motivating us to go hunting and catch our prey. He is very strict, pushes us and requests our full attention all the time. On the other hand, he is one of us. He loves to forget time by talking about the pros and cons about new technologies. But he is also not like me. He is... socially accepted...? He doesn't have problems in going out. Going to clubs and stuff. Not like me. I enjoy sitting in my dark corner and be alone. Be for myself and do "my thing" as he calls it. But somehow, he managed it to put me up in one room with three other guys, making us work together and do our job. I think, he can be considered as a friend.

I open the doors to the showers and start dragging my clothes off my body. I throw them into a bag with the other used clothes and put that smelly bag back into my locker. I really have to take that one home with me today and wash it. It's Friday anyway - means I'm free in six hours. I step into the shower and instantly start purring. The warm water, running down my body is a bliss. "Soooooo nice...." I whisper to myself and let out a soft relieving sigh.

"Hey, no dirty things in here!" - I'm startled. "Mike?" I recognized his voice. " 'sup James? Fell asleep on your keyboard again?" I can hear his hands running through his foamy hair. "No...?" I act like I just came in from home. "Ah, come on. I saw your bike outside when I came in. And you would never leave your precious chopper here if you would have gone home. And IF you would have slept at home, you wouldn't be in at this time." He doesn't sound mad. He sounds... amused? "Mmh... yeah... I had was trying to catch the sergeant again and found a good trail..." I clench my teeth, waiting for getting told off again. "Found him?" Mike still seems not to be mad at me. "No... It was a trap. I ran straight into a firewall dropping my trace packages." I put some shampoo on my arms, rubbing it into my fur. "Well then, I have good news for you. I got a message from Interpol. They say he is somewhere in Seattle. Seattle? SIX! I fucking knew it! "Seattle?" My sleepiness is gone. "I... I was... yesterday..." I want to say things faster as my mouth can form the words. My mind is flipping. I need my laptop. FUCKING RIGHT NOW!

I turn around, wanting to get out of here and... >> P A I N << I forget about the about two centimeters' step from the shower to the locker room and bump one of my toes. I stumble and try to get a hold of myself, making a huge step forward and also forgot about how slippery wet tiles can be... My face smashes against the bench in the locker room and I can feel my nose trying to turn into some rubber-like material to avoid breaking. The pain is unbearable and tears shoot into my eyes.

"Fuck! James! Are you ok?" I can hear Mikes voice, someone touches my shoulder again... ouch... it still hurts. I get turned around and I look into the face of a cheetah with a very worried face. Fingers are running through my face, pushing me, moving my head from one side to another. "Are you ok, buddy?" Worried eyes looking for signs of harm. He uses two fingers to check up my nose. "Does this hurt?" He presses his fingers against the tip of my muzzle, wiggling them a bit. I look into his eyes and slowly shake my head, his fingers still on my nose. Mike takes his fingers away and I can see blood on his fingertips. "No... I think... I am fine..." I sit up. "...besides my nosebleed." I swipe the back of my hand over my nose and look at the blood on my red fur. Blood runs down my nose, over my lips to my chin where it slowly forms little drops falling down on the ground. "And now I have a headache." I lay my fingers on the sides of my head and rub them. Mike is getting back on his feet, grabs a towel and ties it around his waist while handing ne over to me. "Here. Cover yourself up." I get back on my feet, take the towel and try to avoid smearing my blood on it.

"Be more careful next time. Dude! Seriously you nearly gave me a heart attack. You are really ok?" Mike lays a hand on my shoulder. "Yes. I am ok. A bit shaky but ok." I sit back down on the bench which hit me just minutes before, watching my blood dripping from my nose, waiting for it to stop. While sitting down I can feel my body telling me to stop this abuse. Working all day, sleeping only a few hours and then jumping fully into work again. My legs feel weak, my heart still races and I have a deep feeling of being tired out.

"Slow down James." Mike stands next to the showers, drying his fur. "You are not very useful if you work yourself up to the hospital. Go home. Sleep in. For once, forget work on this weekend and relax. You worked so many hours' overtime, take Monday and Tuesday off." I nod. "I will. But first, I need to finish one thing." I get up and get myself dry. I slip into fresh underwear, trousers and a shirt and leave the showers, heading back to the office.

"Man, what the fuck happened to you?" Thomas greets me with a wide grin on his face. "Had an argument with the wet floor and the benches in the showers. - I lost." Thomas grins about my slip. "Thomas, I need your help. I was on the hunt for the sergeant yesterday, and I think I got him." - Thomas looks up. "Really? We hunt him since nearly a year now, how did you even found him? We lost track on him last week." I give him a sign to come over. "Here." I point on my screen. "See? He logged in at the forum at 22:04 out of the OVH network in France. Roubaix. From there the connection went down to the DE-CIX3." Thomas eyes follow my finger swiping over the screen. "From there to the Netherlands, London, Seattle, over to South Korea, Sydney, and then back to the US - Seattle. From there it goes into the local system. He switches from Level 3 to Comcast to AT&T. He's using home lines. Dynamic IP addresses." I open another file. "Here, see? This is the point I lost him yesterday." I point to the western side of Seattle. "He leads me into a firewall which made my tracers drop their packages. But he must be in this area somewhere. I think this home server here, is his entry point." I point on an IP Address on the log. "Dude. That's a WD NAS system. Who in the world would use a NAS as entry point?" Thomas looks at me with doubtful eyes.

"Why not? See." I open my ssh client and type in the IP Address. After I hit enter I get asked for a username. "It's open. Someone there hooked his WD up to the 'net and forgot to turn the SSH service offline. From there you can literally go anywhere you want." Thomas still doesn't look convinced. I type in 'sshd and 'passw0rd' and press enter.

[email protected]'s password:

BusyBox v1.10.1 (2011-10-30 15:28:01 CST) built-in shell (ash)

Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

[email protected] root #

Thomas looks away. "Never underestimate the stupidity of people. - Go on, have a look at the logs. Th they're emptied, look at the cache." I shook my head. "No. Not allowed. We need an approval from the us officials." - "You know we will not get it. Taping a home line is not in their focus." Thomas looked at me. "Open the connection overview. Anyone logged in right now?"

[email protected] root #w

23:27:24 up 19 days, 18:15, 1 user, load average: 0,61, 0,59, 0,64

USER TTY FROM [email protected] IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT

root pts/1 146.52.x.x 10:31 0.00s 0.28s 0.09s sshd: critterbee [priv]

root pts/1 191.239.x.x 01:30 0.05s 0.38s 0.19s sshd: sarg3ant137 [priv]

Both of your jaws fell to the floor. We found him. "That... This... Thomas, look at the IP. Is that..." Thomas got a hold of himself a bit faster than me. "Yes. It is!" he grabbed the phone. "Hi Mike. James got him!...... Yes..... A home line in Seattle.... Yes we have the IP, and I swear to god, your eyes will fall out... If we...? Yes I tell him." Thomas turned around. "Wireshark! GO!" I didn't need more words to know what was going on.

I logged in to our AWS Account and booted up one of our proxy instances in North Virginia. After a few minutes, I logged in to the router connected to the nas box, and route all outgoing traffic to our waiting proxy with Wireshark. From that moment on, everything was visible for us. The river of data was flowing, and we could record every drop. "Wireshark is running. We're having it!" If Thomas wouldn't have such big fennec ears, his grin would go around his whole head. "Yes... You call them?... Ok. We keep our paws moving." Thomas hung up.

"Ok James. What so we have?" Thomas sat down next to me. "So far, 23 pictures of cubporn, a few documents about fur trafficking and the first five seconds of a rape video." I moved my laptop in Thomas direction. "The packages are from behind the Firewall.. We need to call them. I even got the internal IP Address. We got him! FINALLY!"

When Mike came back this day, his grin was bigger than ever. "We got him guys. Or... 'her'. She got arrested about fifteen minutes ago." He turns on the TV in the back of our 'office' and switched to a local American TV Station in Seattle. Damn... The internet is a damn cool thing. Streaming and watching TV from nearly everywhere in the world. "... got arrested and is accused of breaking several laws. The police don't want to give out a statement yet, but it looks like Miss Delacroix days in the business management at Microsoft are over...." I looked a bit shocked. A woman? She did all of this? She was "the sergeant"? I turned around to Mike. "She is...?" Mike nodded. "She got caught with her paw in the cookie jar. Then the Security was entering her office, she was caught with her paw between her legs, watching the movie she was just uploading. What a pity." Mike turned the TV off. "She's a pretty lady. And she had a good job. Seems like she's going to enjoy the prison cells if America soon." Thomas huffed in despise. "Those people will not go to prison." He packed his laptop into his bag. "You will see. She will go to court and her twenty million top lawyer will pull her out. She will be free, buy some nice new outfits for her, and then she will wait a few months and hire at another company." - "Thomas..." Mike looked at him. "She got caught while she uploaded the stuff. Forensics will prove it was HER which made the clicks. She's done. You will see." Thomas grabbed his bag. "We will see. Want to make a bet on it?" He smiles at Mike, knowing he would win and to the surprise of everyone, Mike accepted. "Ok Thomas. If her adorable pandas' ass gets thrown into a tiny cell you have to do the weekend shifts for the next half a year. If she gets free, I will do them all by myself." Thomas nodded and left for his weekend. "You will see. She is back on action in three months. Anyways. Will see you guys on Monday!" The door closed. "That also counts for you, James. Your weekend has started. Go home. And I don't want to see you here on Monday. Take a few days off." Mike turned around and also left. "See you on Thursday." The door got opened and closed and I was alone.

I don't like weekends. I mostly just sit around and do nothing. More or less waiting until the weekend passed by and I can go back to do something. But now I had five days off. It was November and I still had all my holidays for this year. Means, together with my overtime, I could stay home for two month. And I was already frightened by five days. I packed up my stuff and left. I put my helmet on and swung my leg over my bike. I pushed the starter and the engine was started growling. I so fucking love this feeling...

I took a longer way home than I needed too. It was already November, but still warm enough to drive around on my bike without freezing to the seat. It was half past three in the afternoon and the sun started to go down. I decided to take the longer way home by using the landside roads instead of the Autobahn. I loved this. Driving along empty roads, the sun on my back, the wind stroking through my fur... I put my tail up and enjoyed the feeling of the wind tugging on it, stroking through my bushy red panda tail. I still could heat my driver instructors' words in my mind: "Always wrap your tail around your waist. If you have an accident, you could lose it." - Aaaah. Fuck it. I turned up the handle and could feel picking up speed. The engine roaring loud, releasing the 90HP, dragging me along the road. I was driving way too fast, but I knew, no one would care about. The streets were completely empty and I was the only one here. After a way too short time, I arrived at home. Parking my nice Honda in the garage and stepped into my apartment. Five days. How would I survive for five days?

I put my bag to the side and walked over to my pc. I pushed the button and listened to the silent sounds of spinning up hard drives and starting fans. After a few seconds the OS Logo appeared and I could log in. I entered my password and walked to the bathroom for a pee. The starting sound was playing and I pulled down my trousers and pants, and took a seat.

'I could have a look into Second Life.' - I don't know why this ran through my mind while I released myself, but it seemed like a good idea. After I finished and flushed, I walked over to my computer. Just wearing my underwear, I took a seat in front of it. MY clothes went to the bin, together with the bag of dirty clothes. I would wash them tomorrow, and since I live alone, Window lids closed... Why should I care about clothing? I should get my mind off work.

I started the Second Life client and logged in.

[critterbee resident is online]

I leaned back into my seat. Weekends.... What should I do first? I went through my old Landmarks. This seems to be a good place to start. I double clicked on a Landmark and the weekend could start.