Hello and welcome to the English Like a Native podcast.
My name is Anna and you're listening to week 47, day 5 of Your English, 5 a day, 7th season.
It's Friday once again, and we are here bringing together all the vocabulary that we've been looking at this week.
And we do that by wrapping it all up into one big story.
So all you have to do is sit back, relax and enjoy.
And if at any point you feel like dropping a comment or giving a thumbs up, then please do.
All interaction is welcomed and appreciated.
So let's jump into today's story and we call this one The Hacker's Story.
Right, so here's a sentence I never thought I'd say out loud.
I once helped rob the Louvre.
And before you ask, no, it wasn't glamorous.
There were no lasers, no black catsuits, no dramatic leaps across rooftops.
I was wearing joggers, drinking lukewarm tea and sitting at my cluttered kitchen table.
But that's hacking for you.
People imagine it's all mysterious green code and impossible maths.
In reality, it's more, why is my Wi-Fi dropping again?
And who on earth still uses password as their password?
Anyway, the story.
It started with a message from an old friend.
And when I say friend, I mean someone I used to sit next to in lectures because she always had snacks and didn't mind sharing.
Her name was Molly.
Quick-witted, annoyingly persuasive.
Could talk a traffic warden out of a parking ticket.
That sort of person.
She messaged me out of nowhere.
Got a job, quick one, pays well.
Which is frankly the dodgiest way to begin anything.
I replied something like, what kind of job?
She sent, techie, you'll be brilliant, promise.
This is exactly the moment where a sensible person bows out, makes a cup of tea, moves on with their life.
I'm not that sensible person.
We met at a cafe in Paris.
She insisted it had to be Paris and she didn't even pretend to ease me into it.
She just leaned over the table and whispered, we need you to get into the Louvre's CCTV system.
I actually laughed.
Not a polite laugh, a snort which earned me a very judgmental look from a man eating a croissant next to us.
I said, Molly, do you realise the Louvre is, well, the Louvre?
She shrugged like I had said the weather might turn later.
We don't need much, she said.
Just access to the cameras on one floor.
For about 15 minutes, you won't even have to leave your house.
It was all very casual.
Terrifyingly casual.
I told her I'd look, which was a mistake because the moment I start poking around, I get curious.
And curiosity is basically my kryptonite.
That night I dug around old reports, half-forgotten data breaches, anything that might give me a clue how their system worked.
And then, I still remember this, I found something that made me physically sit up in my chair.
An old security audit from 2014, and in this dusty, neglected document was a line stating that the CCTV server password had once been literally LUVRE.
All caps, no numbers, no nothing.
Surely they'd changed it.
Surely.
Because even my nan could guess that password.
And she still refers to YouTube as the internet telly.
But I tried it, just in case.
Username, admin, password, Louvre.
And the entire camera network opened up on my screen like it had been waiting for me.
No hacking, no clever trick, just unlocked.
Honestly, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
I texted Molly immediately.
Your job might be easier than expected.
She replied with a string of emojis that made no sense whatsoever.
A few days later, she brought me into the team.
Now, I'd expected hardened criminals, intimidating types with deep voices and tragic backstories.
Instead, they looked like people you might see in the queue at Sainsbury's.
A retired locksmith, a primary school teacher who had apparently reached her limit with bureaucracy and a getaway driver called Leah who looked like she made excellent packed lunches.
Completely normal.
Weirdly wholesome, even.
They explained the plan in dull, practical detail.
No Michael Bay nonsense.
They'd go in during opening hours, which sounded ludicrous, but apparently that actually made it easier.
Blend into the crowd, act natural, take the jewels, walk out.
My job?
Loop the cameras after 15 minutes.
Not turn them off, that triggers alarms.
Just quietly, subtly replace the live feed with a repeated snippet so nothing looks suspicious.
The morning of the heist I sat alone in my flat with my laptop, open heart pounding so loudly I swear the neighbours could hear it.
I kept telling myself, you're not breaking in, you're just tidying up the footage.
Which is nonsense, obviously, but my brain loves a good lie.
At precisely 11.03am, I pressed the key that triggered the loop.
Every camera flickered for less than half a second, enough to notice if you're looking for it, but absolutely no one ever is.
Then the loop started.
A perfectly ordinary few minutes of corridor footage, repeated over and over like a badly edited film.
I said into the headset, You're clear.
Go.
Go.
Listening to them move through the museum was surreal.
Normal background sounds footsteps, shuffling tourist chatter, mixed with these tiny whispered updates.
At one point, one of them actually stopped to admire a painting.
During a robbery!
I wanted to scream!
The real tension came when they reached the display case.
In rehearsal, the fake key opened it smoothly, but real life doesn't care about rehearsals.
On my feed, I saw them fiddling with the lock.
And then I heard it.
A guard's footsteps approaching.
My entire body went icy.
You know those moments when your brain starts preparing a speech for the police, even though they're not there yet.
Yes, that.
But just as the guard walked past, chatting to a couple of tourists, the lock clicked open.
Perfect timing or sheer luck, I still don't know.
Inside the case were the jewels.
Even through the grainy camera footage they looked absurdly beautiful sparkling, almost glowing, and worth more than all of us put together several times over.
They transferred them into a plain canvas tote bag, which felt almost comical, and calmly walked back through the museum.
They even stopped to let a family take a photo.
Unbelievable.
When they reached the street, I gently restored the live feed.
And that was it.
Done.
No alarms, no shouting, just quiet.
It took the museum hours to notice.
Imagine being the poor employee who finally walked past that empty case.
The news broke that evening.
Louvre heist during opening hours.
Over $100 million of jewels stolen.
Security blunder.
CCTV password was Louvre.
I nearly threw the remote at the TV.
Part embarrassed, part disbelief.
Everybody had opinions.
The cyber security experts, the armchair detectives, the internet comedians.
And yes, the password thing went viral.
People were gleefully adding it to lists of the dumbest passwords of all time.
QWERTY deserved an honourable mention, obviously.
There were other classics like 12345, Admin, ABC123.
Meanwhile, the team quietly split their shares and vanished back into ordinary life.
School runs, teaching, dog walking, grocery shopping, the whole lot.
Molly even paid off her student loans, which had been hanging over her for years.
The money didn't solve everything, but it certainly helped to tide her over whilst she figured out what to do next.
As for me, I went to the kitchen, made a proper cup of tea and changed every password I had.
Every single one.
16 characters, random, impossible to remember.
And yes, I finally got a password manager.
The irony is painful.
Do I regret it?
Not in the dramatic way people expect, but it continues to surprise me, especially the simplicity of it all.
The thing I cannot get my head around is we didn't hack the Louvre.
We didn't bypass military-grade systems.
We just, metaphorically, walked through a door they'd left wide open for more than a decade.
All because someone couldn't be bothered to change a default password.
And that, honestly, is the wildest part.
The peculiarity of the whole situation still makes me laugh.
This world-famous institution with priceless treasures, undone by basic laziness.
Once the plan gained momentum, there was no stopping it.
We'd started something that felt almost inevitable, like watching a slow-motion car crash you can't look away from.
But it worked.
Against all odds, it actually worked.
Until next time, take very good care of yourself and goodbye.
I have added the vocabulary from today's episode, along with the definition and the example sentences, to the 5 a day database, which includes all the vocabulary from the whole 5 a day series.
If you would like to access this database then click on the link in the show notes.
