The ransom ....concluding part of The mask

The ransom

“Yes,yes we will call it Coronavirus !” Soumaya yelled with joy while his fingers played with the laptop like he was playing a piano key board.

Samaranand, Babulal and Soumaya were in Samaranand’s flat in Golf Green to catchup with  the progress of teaching a lesson to the owner of Pakheer Basha. The readers would recall that Babulal had visited Prantik in Bolpur , under guidance of Samaranand could lift the curtain on the mystery of dancing mask at night that was the doing of the owner to get the guest move out much before scheduled time. Samaranand’s friend Dinu and his family was one such victim.

Samaranand had promised Dinu that he would teach that Ghose ( owner of Pakheer Basha) fellow a lesson. After that talk Samaranand sent Babulal once again to Prantik to collect data about the past guests who stayed in Pakheer Basha and also to collect guest list and details of similar setups run through B& B (bed and breakfast) at Prantik.

Armed with the data he framed a plan with Babulal and Soumaya. Readers may know that Soumaya is a computer geek and a hacker. Initial plan was simple, it was to lower the rating of Pakheer Basha in all social media platforms like Google, Facebook, B& B page etc. This was in Soumaya’s domain of expertise. Soumaya also carries out rating enhancement through his cahoots in Tollygaunge and Sealdah slums. He has 50 boys who carryout this, Soumaya has given each a smartphone and pays for the monthly subscription, the boys are excited with this free phone so they happily carryout the task of putting like in FB,comment, star rating etc in Google and so on as instructed by Soumaya. All of them have established false identity in virtual network. In this particular case false identity would not work as the guest who really stayed there would have to give the rating as the owner Ghose was clever enough to tally the name with the guest list.

Armed with actual guest list Soumaya had a meeting with his team in Sealdah slum. One of the boys who was also savvy in computer pointed out that if they assume the guest name then their IP address can be tracked in case Ghose becomes suspicious and takes help of some IT expert. They also knew Ghose enhances the star rating with the help of such group. Then Soumaya had a bright idea of involving Lee from Chinatown who was also a fellow hacker.

Next they had a meeting with Lee at Big Boss restaurant in Tangra. Lee suggested to use his hacker friends in China who can carry out the rating war.

Soumaya kept Samaranand and Babulal aware of his plan.

 The group in China was given the names of the past guests of Pakheer Basha, Samaranand supplied the content as Chinese were not good in English. Initially 3 star was given by the Chinese group by phising the identity of one of the past guests, they were routing through Pakistan. Immediately within 6 hours someone gave 5 star and the average rating was maintained as 4.5 in Google. It was clear that Ghose had used his agency to neutralize the poor rating.They started the war on Google first. Then 4 of them gave 2 each and the average came down below 4, we all know anything below 4 is shunned. The game of Star War was hotting up between unknown players in the virtual battle field. They found in the meanwhile Ghose was trying to reply on each of the comment by promising to improve the performance. Within 2 days the rating of Pakheer Basha climbed down below 3. The group from China hacked B&B page and put adverse comment about the setup. The group had the list of guests of other such setups in Prantik, they praised those and started discouraging people from going to Pakheer Basha.

After a fortnight Babulal was again sent to Prantik to make a discreet inquiry about the result of the cyber-attack. From the Toto driver Khokon he gathered that Gopi was complaining that no new guests were coming, the owner was unhappy, as Gopi could not make them happy; he feared that he might lose the job.

Samaranand never wanted Gopi to lose job. So he advised Soumaya to suggest the Chinese group to directly meddle with the webpage of Pakheer Basha and other business which that business group controls.

Now the attack was direct, first they meddled with their computing system and thus all emails got screwed. Next they got into their data base and blocked it by using Ransomware.This virus caused total paralysis of the computing system in Ghose's establishment. Ghose could not carryout on line transactions, email etc.

Yes by this time reader must have understood that why Soumaya yelled and said, “We will call it coronavirus” as it came from China, of course not from Wuhan city of China.

Ghose received a Text message on his mobile informing him that if he doesn’t a pay a certain amount then he cannot retrieve his data. The amount was to be paid in cash and at a designated place in Tangra, which will be informed, to him later.

We are not aware of Ghose's reaction but from the Chinese group it was gathered by Soumaya that Ghose was compelled to pay a good sum of money to make his computer system normal.

Overnight the rating of Pakheer Basha started going up and within 4 days reached to 4.5.
A certain percentage of the money came to Soumaya who utilized that in purchasing some smart phones for his new recruit from the slums. He with his team of slum boys were on the lookout for new business area. They had less overhead so could under quote established players. In addition to rating enhancement they were engaged in cyber security also.
Samaranand with a twinkle in his eyes suggested,'Tap Ghose for cyber security job!" Babulal and Soumaya laughed out loudly !
All three headed for WOW,China at Park Street to celebrate as the mission was accomplished  with the help of friendly Chinese hackers!