I simply typed -Is-and caught a flash of something flying by.

“Here’s what I think happened,” Lucy resumed. “Someone was in your directory - and we’ll get to that in a minute. Maybe they were looking for something in your files and couldn’t find whatever it was. So this person sent a message, or tried to, to the device called t-t- y-oh- seven. Only he was in a hurry, and instead of typing cat redirect slash d-e- v slash t-t- y-oh- seven, he left out the dev directory and typed cat redirect t-t- y-oh- seven. So the keystrokes weren’t echoed on t-t- y-oh- seven’s screen at all. In other words, instead of sending a message to t-t- y-oh- seven, this person unwittingly created a file called t-t- y-oh- seven.”

“If the person had typed in the proper command and sent the keystrokes, would the message have been saved? ” I asked.

“No. The keystrokes would have appeared on t-t- yo-h- seven’s screen, and would have stayed there until the user cleared it. But you would have seen no evidence of this in your directory or anywhere else. There wouldn’t be a file.”

“Meaning, we don’t know how many times somebody might have sent a message from my directory, saying it was-done correctly.”

“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?”