Chapter 431: Another round of battles!
Evening.
It was a little cold outside.
After work, Zhang Ye went outside and bought a tray of buns. Afraid that he would be recognized, he brought them with him to eat on a taxi that he hailed. He alighted near his house in front of a shopping mall to buy a laptop. After finding the most expensive model, he settled the bill at the counter. He had long wanted to change the old, broken, and slow laptop that he owned. This new one cost him 27,000 (US$3900) and was the most expensive model available at the shop. It was an unknown brand to him, a brand that existed only in this world. In any case, the components list seemed to be the most high end.
He headed home.
He tried out the laptop, installed some software, and changed some settings.
In the past, he did not understand much about computers, but with over 200 Network Technology Experience Books eaten, he could handle it easily now. After changing the settings with just a few key strokes, he browsed the internet and saw an ad for this year's "National Cross Talk and Skit Competition". He clicked on it to test the speed of his laptop before closing the window. Then he began to search through the news and Weibo, as well as other social media platforms.
On the web.
A curse battle was intensifying!
"Central TV has been hacked!"
"The Ministry of Civil Affairs too!"
"It was down for a full 30 minutes! Who did this?"
"Do you even need to ask!? It's definitely those Koreans! They're hacking again! F**k! They're even publicly scolding our country on our government websites? That bunch of grandsons are too cocky!"
"Central TV, Ministry of Public Security, and more than a dozen other websites were hacked into. This is slapping our faces!"
"What are our country's hackers doing? Hit back at them! Why are you all just sitting back and watching!"
"The Internet Surveillance Bureau has already taken action. Did you all see the Ministry of Public Security's post denouncing the hacks that happened this afternoon? I heard that they even coordinated with the local authorities to capture one of the hackers. That person was a Korean undergraduate in China!"
"Well done!"
"Good job by the Internet Surveillance Bureau!"
"Capturing only one? What's so good about that?"
"Yea, they didn't even hit back after being attacked so many times? Isn't that silly!"
"The Internet Surveillance Bureau's responsibility is just to maintain network security. How can they go and hit back at other people's country? Eh, this is such a damn grievance! I'm furious!"
"The Koreans are bullying us!"
The incident was becoming very heated now as even the citizens of China were feeling indignant. To them, it was clearly the fault of Lee Anson pushing down someone and not apologizing, but he even dared to come up with nonsense reasons as excuses for himself after returning to Korea? Even appealing to your own countrymen to come and hack our websites? Aren't you embarrassed?! Everyone pinned the responsibility of this incident on Lee Anson. Even the small minority of Chinese fans, who were still fervently supportive of him, were rocked when they saw these Korean hackers insulting them. Some of them even joined in to insult Lee Anson!
"We can't just sit still!"
"Fight back! We have to fight back!"
"China should also have quite a number of skilled hackers. Are there any gods who can lead them? Lead us to fight back! My computer skills aren't that bad, I should be able to help a little!"
"Me too!"
"Count me in!"
"I can't help much, but I won't cause you all any trouble either!"
"Ah, it has started again! Another website has been attacked!"
"The third largest travel forum is down too! It's been vandalized with words insulting us!"
"Tieba too. Quickly, go take a look. A few Tiebas have been flooded with several thousand threads scolding our country! There's even Korean on it! The administrator accounts have been stolen! They're unable to delete the threads!"
"No good! The skit actress, Auntie Ci Xiufang's Weibo had been taken over by Koreans too! They even posted offensive words on her account! F**k! That's too much!"
After an afternoon of inactivity, the battle had restarted again!
Seeing Ci Xiufang's Weibo being taken over, Zhang Ye's expression turned cold. Because the hacker who took over Teacher Ci's account posted — "Lee Anson, you're my daddy."
A few minutes later, Ci Xiufang regained access to her account and deleted that post immediately. She posted: "My account was hacked into earlier."
Following that, several other celebrities and public figures had their Weibo or Tieba accounts taken over as well!
Songstress Zhang Xia: "The Chinese are all grandchildren of the Koreans!"
Singer Meng Xia: "We are a country of uneducated people."
All of these celebrities had a few hundred thousand to millions of followers. When these words were posted, the whole internet community flew into a rage!
"What is Meng Xia saying? Why did she scold us?"
"Are you dumb! Can't you see that the account has been hacked!"
"F**k! These Koreans are running amok!"
"I can't stand it anymore! I really can't stand this shit!"
"They are really not going to give up!"
......
At another location.
In a chatting window.
59-V: "Ying" has been arrested!"
JIN: "I've received news too."
POOP: "We need to take revenge!"
JIN: "There's an expert in China's Internet Surveillance Bureau. Both 59-V and I were not able to take on that 'FAN'. Even if you all joined in, it wouldn't be much help. Just follow my plan and don't go for those important Chinese government sites and don't target any sites that are within the jurisdiction of the Internet Surveillance Bureau either. Spread out and do your own battles, target small and medium sites, as well as celebrity accounts. We will erode them bit by bit. Once you infiltrate them and get the job done, leave. Don't stick around. I repeat again, don't idle around and remember to clear your tracks. That 'FAN' is not a normal person. Even with a little bit of evidence, you will be found. Remember to protect yourselves!"
"Yes!"
"Alright!"
"Received!"
"Received!"
They had been defeated that morning and had even lost an important person on their team, so of course JIN and the others would not take it lying down. They knew that hackers from around the world were now looking at their every move, so they definitely had to regain this loss of face. Looking at it, they had not actually failed. After all, they had already infiltrated and halted so many important websites for more than 10 to 30 minutes. It had caused a big disruption to the Chinese and would have been hailed as a success if not for their good friend, Ying's arrest. They had always looked down on the Chinese for their lack of technical skills. As Ying was already suspected of a previous crime, even if he were sent back to Korea, he would have been sentenced heavily and might not ever come out of jail again. This left JIN and the others feeling defeated and bitter, so they temporarily retreated to re-discuss their strategy to take it up with the Chinese again!
The strategy was as what was said!
JIN admitted that FAN was very capable at setting lures, attacks, vulnerability exploits, and defense. He could not match up to her in all these aspects, so what could they do? How would they approach this? There was only one way, and that was battling in a roundabout way. You might be very capable, but you can't split yourself up, right? We are not going to stay around our targets waiting for you. We would attack, leave, and move to a new target constantly. If you don't know where we we’re headed to, even if you chase up to our tracks, we'd be long gone already. As for those celebrity account passwords, you wouldn't know who we would be targeting either. We would steal, post, clean up, then leave. Unless you could predict where we are heading, you'd never be able to catch us!
This was a tactic that had no solution!
Attacking aimlessly, who could ever defend against that!
......
Yao Jiancai's account was hacked into. It kept posting apologetic texts to the Korean people.
Weiwo WebTV's website was attacked too. It resulted in all of the video resources becoming unplayable.
A certain Hope Primary School in the north had its network infected with a virus, which resulted in them losing all their educational and course information.
It was yet another chaotic round!
As it involved some celebrities this time, the effect was far worse than it had been that afternoon. Those who did not know what was happening even thought that the celebrities had some kind of brain cramp to be posting stuff like that! They were scolding themselves?
......
It was an emergency!
The Internet Surveillance Bureau was working overtime with more than half of the employees called back to the unit!
The National Malware Protection Center also issued a warning. There were already more than three types of viruses spread across China, but as they were viruses which had been detected before, some anti-virus software could prevent an infection, but for those without such software, they would be infected. Although the losses weren't huge, there were still a few hundred computers infected.
Somewhere in the Internet Surveillance Bureau.
Dong Zhiqiang slammed on his table, "Start by controlling the spreading of the virus!"
Fan Yingyun, who was seated in front of her computer, said, "There's no need to bother about the virus. It's just some old strain and already has fixes written for them. What we need to do now is to chase those grandsons out of our networks! We need to get to the root of the problem! They are the cause! If we don't drive them out, they will continue giving us problems!"
Fang Xiaoshui said exhaustingly, "I've already restored five websites, but new sites that are being hacked keep coming up. I've already got too much on my hands!"
Meng Yi clenched his teeth, "I'm checking on the person who is stealing accounts, but I have nothing on it at all. They disappear once they finish what they wanted to do. I can't find anything at all! How can we drive them out?"
Dong Zhiqiang said, "Officer Fan, what do you suggest?"
Fan Yingyun leered at him and said, "No one would know how to deal with this kind of attacks. They attack where ever they want, while we can only passively defend. We won't get them even if we had a lifetime. By doing that, those Koreans will never lose. They've already got it all planned out, bastards!"
If they knew which targets the attackers were going for, or at least had an idea of who they targeted, they might still have been able to set up traps or wait in ambush. Once they triggered the traps, it would be possible to track their IP addresses, but these people were not targeting any important sites. They were just waiting on the sidelines, planting trojan horses and viruses, as well as stealing accounts. Unless the Internet Surveillance Bureau cast their net all over the country to trap them, it wouldn't be possible to find them. Besides, there was not enough manpower to even do that!
"It's not like there's no way to solve this." Fan Yingyun looked at Dong Zhiqiang, "Old Dong, you need to authorize me to go and create trouble where they are. If their backyard catches fire, those grandsons would definitely go and put the fire out over there. Since they attacked us, we should attack them back. Just with what they have, they wouldn't be able to stop me."
Fan Yingyun's words were not doubted by anyone in the office. They all knew how formidable she was and knew that her level was much higher than those hackers who infiltrated them today!
Dong Zhiqiang stared and said, "We are the Internet Surveillance Bureau, we are cyber-police!"
Fan Yingyun laughed, "A nervous rabbit might even bite, let alone the police? I don't have an issue with it since I've already made such mistakes before."
Dong Zhiqiang waved her off and said, "Definitely not possible. Don't cause trouble like that again, Officer Fan. Let's just deal with this mess for now. These hackers have already done this for a day now, so they can't possibly drag this out for too long. They will get tired and give up on doing this, unless these people really have nothing better to do."
Fan Yingyun said, "So we are just going to take it until they decide that there is no meaning to it anymore and leave?"
"Yes." Dong Zhiqiang said.
Fan Yingyun looked at him, "Even a rabbit is better than you!"
Rabbit?
I'm your leader!
Dong Zhiqiang was almost infuriated. He said, "Officer Fan, you might be more experienced than me and have been in the police system longer than me, so you should know the rules better than me. Even if you scold me, it is useless. We are the Internet Surveillance Bureau and we have to focus on our responsibilities and mission!" Having said that, he looked at everyone of his colleagues, "I know that everyone is feeling pissed. I also know that in our jobs, we might sometimes be cowardly, but for some things, the hackers can do anything they want while we cannot do so. That is because they are outlaws, and we are the police!" Up until here, Old Dong explained with a face of righteousness.
Fang Xiaoshui and a few others nodded.
Fan Yingyun interrupted and said, "Come on, Old Dong. Even if you say that bullshit, it’s useless." Her hand, which was typing furiously onto the keyboard, suddenly stopped and she looked at her screen. With her other hand, she wrote down a string of characters onto her notebook and tore out the page. She turned around and said, "Got 1."
Ah?
Caught someone?
Weren't you chatting? You can still chat and work at the same time?
Dong Zhiqiang spirit was jolted, "Is it the leader?"
"You're thinking too much." Fan Yingyun said, "It's just a henchman. His skills are even worse than yours. Without knowing his own skill, he wanted to join in on the fun. Too bad for him to have bumped into me."
Dong Zhiqiang thought to himself that if she wanted to talk about that hacker, then leave it at that, but why did she have to drag him in as well. Whose skills were poor now? My specialization was in network forensics, not network technology! Did you think that everyone is as crazy as you to know everything! Then, he took the piece of paper from her and had a look before getting one of his men to pass the information to management. The arrest would be handled by someone at the top and they would coordinate the investigations as well. As this IP was from a foreign country, they needed to follow proper procedure to coordinate the arrest. All of this was outside of the scope for those from the First Department.
The battle continued on for the Internet Surveillance Bureau staff and the Korean hackers!
You couldn't see any smoke, but they were really crossing swords!
From the beginning, these Korean hackers had really taken the Chinese side by surprise. They had a major advantage over the Internet Surveillance Bureau, but as time went on, more and more people arrived back at the Internet Surveillance Bureau and were working at almost full capacity. Together with the support from some people from the National Malware Protection Center, as well as experts from several network security companies, they were finally able to control the situation and was no longer in an overly passive situation!
The only issue was that with the increase in manpower for the Chinese, the Korean hackers were also increasing in number. There were many hackers who had started off just watching, but decided to join in the battle after some time!
It was turning into a battle royale!