Reddit Challenge story #13

Topic: a thriller about a hacker who breaks into the pentagon, steal a bunch of classified documents, and pins it on his girlfriend.

Breaking news today this 21st of October, 2011 as the perpetrator of one of the largest cyber crimes against the government in history has been apprehended after eight years at large. Jared Bestworth hacked into the pentagon’s mainframe computer system using only a 14 year old Linux machine and his smartphone.
Over a three month period in 2003, Jared illegally entered the pentagon and used his smartphone to download and store information about the buildings network infrastructure. He then used that data to access the pentagon server system where he stole hundreds of gigabytes of classified data including information on troop movements abroad as well as nuclear secrets. Thought to be acting alone- all he did with the data was post it on the internet along with cute pictures of his cat- Bestworth was discovered hiding out in a Bed Bath and Beyond in a suburban mall outside Washington, DC: the last place anyone would suspect a person to ever set foot.
The reason Jared was able to so easily elude investigators, and so easily break into the pentagon, was his girlfriend at the time, Valerie Johansen. Valerie was an executive secretary for the office of the Secretary of Defense, and Jared would carry out his plot under the guise of visiting Valerie; little did she know he was laying down a trail of bread crumbs that would lead the investigators to her and not him. The data leak was discovered within a few hours, and within a few days the FBI had arrested Ms. Johansen at her home and thrown her in federal prison. She remained in prison for four years until she was finally released after passing a polygraph test in 2007. Now that Jared is under arrest, Ms. Johansen has formally announced she is pressing charges against Mr. Bestworth for damages in upwards of ten million dollars.