Transportation Ministry data breach Five years before the Battle of Yavin , a data breach occurred at the Transportation Ministry ' s headquarters on the planet Lothal ' s Capital City . This data breach was perpetrated by Merei Spanjaf , a slicer who was the girlfriend of Zare Leonis , an Imperial cadet and secret rebel sympathizer . Leonis was looking for his sister Dhara Leonis , a cadet at Lothal ' s Academy for Young Imperials , who had disappeared the previous year under suspicious circumstances . Due to their close friendship , Spanjaf agreed to help Leonis find his sister . Spanjaf had developed a computer program which allowed her to access the insecure top levels of the Empire ' s data network on Lothal . However , she was still unable to access any classified information on Dhara . At her school the Vocational School for Institutional Security ( V - SIS ) , Spanjaf met a classmate named Jix Hekyl who put her in touch with Yahenna Laxo , a crime boss who ran the Gray Syndicate , a local crime syndicate . Laxo agreed to supply Spanjaf with three snooper programs in exchange for employing her services as a courier . After learning from her father Gandr Spanjaf that government institutions were vulnerable to physical intrusions , she hatched a plan to infiltrate the Transportation Ministry ' s headquarters , which was a backdoor to the Imperial data network on Lothal . Disguised as a Phelarion School student , Merei entered the Transportation Ministry headquarters under the guise of doing fundraising activities . Feigning a toilet break , Merei planted the snoopers at various locations throughout the building . This data breach brought Merei closer to her goal of finding information about Dhara . With the aid of Zare and the rebel infiltrator Dev Morgan , Merei managed to obtain an Imperial decoder which allowed her to access Dhara Leonis ' file . After creating a fake Imperial Security Bureau account , Merei discovered that Dhara had been forcibly inducted into a secret Imperial program known as Project Harvester . Despite Merei ' s best efforts , her data breach did not go unnoticed . While two of the snooper programs had managed to delete themselves , Imperial data security experts had managed to freeze the third snooper since it had been loaded onto a network terminal with a faulty chronometer . Merei ' s problems were complicated when she learned that her mother Jessa had been put in charge of the Imperial investigation team charged with investigating breach . With Jix ' s help , Merei attempted to elude the Imperial investigators by tampering with her school photo , attempting to delete her repeater service account , and framing the Gray Syndicate . Following the arrest of her friend Jix , Merei and her parents were forced to flee offworld into hiding with the help of Old Jho and the Spectres . Prelude . During the Age of the Empire , Merei Spanjaf and Zare Leonis were recent migrants to the planet Lothal whose parents had come to take advantage of the new employment opportunities offered by the Galactic Empire . Merei and Zare were close friends at the Junior Academy of Applied Sciences in Lothal ' s Capital City where they played on the school ' s grav - ball team . However , their disillusionment grew after witnessing the Empire ' s increasingly exploitative policies towards Lothal and the massacre of farmers in the Westhills . Leonis ' disillusionment reached a climax with the suspicious disappearance of his sister Dhara Leonis , a star cadet at the Academy for Young Imperials . Despite official Imperial claims that Dhara had run away , Zare and his mother Tepha Leonis disbelieved the official version and suspected that the Empire was covering up her true fate . The following year , Zare embarked on a plan to infiltrate the Imperial Academy in order to learn the fate of his sister . In his investigation , he was supported by Merei , who was a skilled slicer and wanted to be an information security expert . While studying at the Vocational School for Institutional Security , Merei spent her free time penetrating the Imperial data network on Lothal . Despite her slicing skills with the datapad , Merei was unable to penetrate the data network due to the increasingly stringent security measures . From a classmate named Jix Hekyl , Merei learned that she could use snooper s ; programs that recorded information and transferred it to an outside source . With Hekyl ' s help , Merei got in contact with a criminal syndicate called the Gray Syndicate . The Syndicate ' s boss Yahenna Laxo agreed to supply her with three snoopers in return for her services as a courier . Knowing that her parents Gandr and Jessa Spanjaf were information security contractors working for the Empire , Merei kept her activities a secret from them . The breach . Going undercover . After learning from her parents that Imperial institutions on Lothal were vulnerable to physical intruders and that the Transportation Ministry ' s database was connected to the entire Imperial data network , Merei decided to infiltrate the Transportation Ministry ' s headquarters on Lothal and plant her snoopers there . To enter the building , Spanjaf decided to impersonate Kinera Tiree , a student at the prestigious Phelarion School who was the daughter of the education minister Fondana Tiree . Spanjaf would claim that she was visiting the Transportation Ministry to sell raffle tickets to raise funds for charity . To perpetuate this ruse , Merei bought three network drives , a book of flimsi receipts , and a second - hand T - shirt from Phelarion School . During a free period in her school day , Merei put her plan into motion and visited the Transportation Ministry . Posing as Kinera , Merei entered the reception and claimed that she was selling raffle tickets to raise funds for Clone Wars veterans . Using her " mother " senior position in the Imperial bureaucracy , Merei was able to convince the receptionist to let her set up a stall in the cafeteria without needing an appointment or pass . After several minutes of " waiting " in the cafeteria , Merei headed to various locations throughout the building and planted the network drives containing her snoopers . She planted the first network drive on a sink in the men ' s bathroom . After heading to a break station and helping herself to a cup of caf , she planted her second drive on the industrial carpeting beside the counter . Merei then returned to the cafeteria where she planted the tird drive under a table before walking out of the room . Before she could leave the Transportation Ministry , she was greeted by a female civilian who bought a raffle ticket from her . The woman agreed to buy five tickets ( amounting to a total of 15 credit s after learning that the winner would get a free vacation at Boranda followed by a full day at Old City Spa , a new datapad , and other trinkets . After selling more tickets to the woman ' s colleagues , Merei pocketed nearly 100 credits . Stealing secrets . With the aid of the snoopers , Merei was able to get the access codes of an Imperial personnel manager and a systems coordinator . The coordinator ' s access code enabled Merei to give the personnel manager the ability to create new IDs with full security clearance . Putting the next stage of her plan into action , Merei created a fake Imperial Security Bureau ( ISB ) inspector account with full access to the Imperial data network . Merei shared this news with her boyfriend Zare while visiting the Imperial Academy on Visiting Day . When Zare expressed concerns that she would get caught , Merei assured him that she had switched the snoopers off once she had used them . Once dormant , they were almost impossible to find and would erase themselves by the end of the week . Using her fake ISB inspector account , Merei was able to view more files including those of Zare and her former classmate Beck Ollet , who had been arrested following an attack on an Imperial mining facility . However , when Merei tried to access Dhara ' s records , she found that she was unable to access the missing Cadet ' s file without a ZX - 5 access disk , a military - grade decoder . Merei managed to overcome this predicament with the help of Zare and Dev Morgan , a rebel infiltrator at the Imperial Academy . Working together , Zare and Morgan stole the decoder from the Imperial Headquarters on Lothal . After using the decoder to intercept an Imperial convoy , Morgan ' s rebel comrades passed the decoder to Merei . Having procured the decoder , Merei was able to access Dhara ' s confidential special assessment file . She quickly learned that Dhara had been identified as Force - sensitive by the Grand Inquisitor , who enrolled her in Project Harvester . This secretive project was run from a secret installation connected to the Arkanis Academy . Merei relayed the news to Zare , who was elated to learn that his sister was still alive . Aftermath . By breaching the Transportation Ministry ' s database , Merei was able to help Zare Leonis come closer to his goal of finding his sister Dhara . However , Merei ' s troubles were far from over . Despite Merei ' s best efforts , the data breach was noticed by the Imperial authorities who contracted her mother Jessa to lead the investigation . While two of the snooper programs had managed to delete themselves , the third had been loaded into a network terminal with a faulty chronometer . As a result , the snooper ' s timer never went off and Jessa ' s team were able to freeze it and preserve its code . This small piece of evidence enabled Jessa to begin tracing back to the source of the transmissions . To obstruct the Imperial investigation , Merei decided to change her profile photo and tried to delete her account at Bakiska ' s , her repeater service . To prevent the witness at the Transportation from recognizing her , Merei decided to change her V - SIS photograph with that of another girl named Hestia Tarleton , a student at the Young Ladies ' Seminary of Lothal Settlers . With the help of Jix , Merei managed to change her photo but was unable to delete her Bakiska ' s account . Merei ' s problems were further compounded by Laxo calling in her services as a courier in order to pay for the snoopers . Following a failed attempt by Merei and Jix to delete her Bakiska ' s account with a pulse - mag , Laxo decided to punish Merei by forcing her to lead a bounty hunter to apprehend Holshef , a fugitive she had befriending while working for the Gray Syndicate . Before Laxo could carry out his punishment , Merei contacted her mother and framed the Gray Syndicate as the culprits behind the Transportation Ministry data breach . She pretended to be a hostage of the Gray Syndicate , whom she claimed wanted the authorities to end their investigation into the breach . As a result , Laxo and the entire Syndicate were massacred during a raid by the Imperial authorities . While Merei temporarily managed to escape the authorities ' attention , she was burdened by the guilt of causing the deaths of several innocents . Despite Merei ' s efforts to delete the Gray Syndicate ' s data using her pulse - mag , Merei was unable to escape Imperial justice . Following the arrest of Jix and Hestia , Merei realized that it was only a matter of time before the Imperial authorities identified her as the real culprit behind the Transportation Ministry ' s data breach . With the help of the Ithorian bartender Old Jho , Merei and her parents along with Leonis ' family managed to escape offworld with the help of Dev Morgan ' s rebel cell . After rescuing Zare and Dhara from Arkanis , the Spanjafs and Leonises went into hiding on Garel . Behind the scenes . The Transportation Ministry data breach first appeared as a secondary plot in Jason Fry ' s 2015 junior novel " " ; a companion piece to the " Star Wars Rebels " TV series . The data breach was told from the point of view of Merei Spanjaf , the second protagonist in the " " junior novel series .