The sounds of the keys clicked and clacked as I rushed my fingers across the laptop keyboard. I only had 30 seconds left.

“Gotta finish this fast,” I thought.

After a couple more finishing touches, I hit “Enter” and watched as a popup window appeared on-screen.

ALERT: MALWARE DETECTED! PLEASE INSTALL NEW ANTI-VIRUS UPDATE!

Beneath the popup were two buttons: “Update” and “Cancel”. Just as I had practiced.

A few moments later, I heard a door open and footsteps coming down the hallway. I shut the laptop, tip-toed to the filing cabinet across the room and began rifling through the papers, as if searching for something important.

Penny, my co-worker, strolled around the corner and made a beeline for her laptop on the counter. My pulse quickened in anticipation. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the alert materialize as she opened her laptop.

Penny said nothing as she read the alert and quickly clicked “Cancel”.I bit my tongue — the last thing I wanted was to give myself away with an unintentional titter. The silence was broken when a new alert popped-up on Penny’s screen.

WARNING: New Virus Detected! Shut Down Now!

#technology #software-development #college #computer-science #programming #data science