I can break AES. Now what?
The story
The protagonist (whom will be referred as first person narrative in this question) had a friend, <PERSON>, who was a math genius. <PERSON> was dying of cancer. She kept her mind occupied in her last days studying cryptography. As her condition got severe, she eventually managed to write a computer program that could extract the AES key by taking the plain and encrypted texts as its input. Meaning that she broke the AES. Let's assume the key length does not matter, but the encryption mode is ECB and the program can crack the key in less than three minutes.
<PERSON> died the next day. But before going to the ICU, she gave me her code and told me to run some tests. I am a sort of normal guy (not a genius) with moderate programming skills. I don't know much about network details or cryptography, but I'm familiar with the concepts and also a fast learner. I know that <PERSON>'s discovery is a huge breakthrough and I will honor her name... hmm... 624
well, maybe later.
So, after giving some more thoughts I reckon that this code is basically a treasure and you know, <PERSON> owed me some money. Let's see if she can return the favor at least.
The problem
Now that I have decided to use this potential treasure, I have no idea where to start. Although the code is a giant leap for humanity, but it has limited capability in practice. Can I hack the banking system with it? I have no idea. This is the real world and I am not a magician like the one in the movies who types a few words and breaks into any camera system. I have almost zero knowledge about hacking and stuff. Yes I am a fast learner, but I have no idea what to learn. The biggest problem is, I want to work alone and don't intend to share this knowledge with anyone.
To make things worse, I also have a political agenda. I would like very much to hack into, say, the US government systems and do some wikileaks like stuff. Without getting caught of course.
Question(s)
With this premise, is it possible to come up with a procedure for using this code to make money and expose some dirty secrets, while minimizing the chance of getting caught or exposing the AES vulnerabilities? By procedure I mean a step by step guide for the protagonist to maybe learn this and that, and whatever.
I am not even sure that this code has any actual worth other than its scientific value. It can only extract AES key, but there are still RSA and elliptic curves and other cryptographic schemes and I know that network protocols typically use a combination of these schemes. So, is it better to maybe sell this code to the highest bidder in the first place and forget about the political agenda? That would be very disappointing for the story of course.
I thought about posting this question on cryptoSE or securitySE, but since it has a fictional premise, I decided to post it here. 373