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Chapter 275: Chapter 227: Person You Shouldn’t Mess With (Subscribe!)_1
Entering the Command Room.
Tang Qing frowned, unsure how today’s events would unfold.
If negotiations broke down, he would lose his primary means of making money through arbitrage, which would be a devastating blow to his financial status.
On the other hand, if negotiations went ’smoothly’ and the other party tacitly accepted his transactions—even if there were upper limits—it would turn out to be a win-win situation.
But, regardless of the outcome, he had to flex his muscles and show the other party his strength so they wouldn’t dare to indulge in any foul play otherwise, they won’t go anywhere.
’Food’ didn’t have the luxury to lay down terms—it couldn’t even determine its own fate.
"Tang Yi, take down this website, the address is..." Tang Qing, who had made a decision, gave the address and the method of redirection.
"Yes, Commander," replied Tang Yi. Then he spun around, passed the task onto Little Two and set about delegating it.
Tang Yi, while knowledgeable, was not a tech guy but a commander. For such tasks, all it took was a few words from him. Little Two was responsible for task distribution. Tang Yi was responsible for overseeing if the tasks were reasonable and thorough. Anything else was left to the intelligence analysts. Otherwise, he would be overwhelmed with work.
Back when they were surfing the net outside, they had to use a dedicated anonymous browser, but from the Command Room, it was not required. Even if they were to expose themselves to the outside world, with these analysts who were proficient with binary computers, tracing back to their actual addresses was no easy feat.
After receiving the task.
Dozens of intelligence analysts instantly morphed into computer experts and collectively invaded the aforementioned website—a seemingly complex procedure, but essentially it boiled down to exploiting web vulnerabilities and gaining administrative rights.
For easier ’friendly’ visits to the internet in the future, months ago some analysts had thoroughly studied Microsoft’s system and several other programming languages, consistently testing and discovering new, beneficial vulnerabilities.
That’s how they had previously ’shared’ data from police stations and various establishments of several countries. So far, they had discovered hundreds of eclectic vulnerabilities.
And these vulnerabilities were coming in handy now. But since they couldn’t predict which vulnerabilities would be useful, each analyst tested a few different ones.
Bearing their ’natural’ talent for information processing, and also thanks to their thorough preparation, it took these analysts all of three minutes to secure administrative access to the website’s servers and then...the large-scale invasion started. It wasn’t just the web servers—computers, routers, switches, and any other networked devices were attacked.
After taking control, every piece of data was subject to extraction.
...
Africa.
In the massive basement.
A bunch of people huddled together.
The local supervisor and the manager watched from Jack’s side, anticipating good news from him.
They knew Tang Qing’s transactions were always focused at this point. So, when the first transfer order for sixty million euros was issued, the bank intercepted the money.
They were waiting for an anxious Tang Qing to contact them, and then track his location and attempt to confirm his information. For Jack, this seemed pretty straightforward.
They had also considered the possibility that Tang Qing might abandon the sixty million euros and ’run away.’ This was not a far-fetched idea. After all, nearly twenty billion US dollars had been transferred in such a short time, so losing sixty million euros was not a major concern.
Of course, they operated on the off-chance that Tang Qing valued this amount of money, and would indeed contact them. If not, they would happily pocket the money and run.
They weren’t worried about anyone bothering them because they had many big banks behind them. You could say that these banks employed them to do their dirty work. With these groups of people as their shield, they doubted even the United States government would touch them.
However, they still had to maintain a facade. They couldn’t be caught larking about in public; that was the reason they resorted to this sort of place.
But they were waiting for their prey to take the bait when suddenly, Jack, who’d been glued to the computer screen, sat upright, exclaiming, "OH, MY GOD."
His face was a mask of surprise, as if he had seen a ghost.
"What’s wrong, Jack? Found their location?" The supervisor asked excitedly.
"Boss, we’re screwed!" Jack replied, a bitter smile on his face. Simultaneously, he raised his hands, leaned back onto the chair in defeat.
"What do you mean? Is it some bank?" The supervisor said curiously, not understanding anything the six screens on Jack’s computer displayed.
He thought that they had traced the transactions back to a particular bank, but even that was not a concern. If there was a misunderstanding, they would apologise. At the same time, he silently cursed the meddlesome person who issued the instruction.
But Jack’s next words left him stunned. "What I mean is, our server has been compromised," Jack said, looking as if a disaster had struck.
"What? Compromised? How is that possible? We’ve installed all sorts of security software here. How could it be compromised? It’s only been a few minutes. Even the world’s top hacking team wouldn’t be able to do anything, right? The alarm hasn’t even gone off yet," the supervisor argued in disbelief.
This news was a bombshell. He couldn’t believe it. Over the years, they had faced countless cyber attacks, but no one had ever breached their defences. They had spent a lot of money hiring various companies, experts and even hacking teams to strengthen their defense systems, which was far superior to the basic firewalls available in the market.
"Boss, it’s true. I had coded a tiny, innocuous programme into the server and computer codes, which was designed to count the number and status of the users with various levels of access. Now, all the servers, routers, switches and computers here have an additional super user, remember, an additional one. These devices are supposed to have only one super user. The fact that he could force another one in is just...it’s impossible," Jack spoke slowly, his voice heavy with regret. Despite not wanting to accept it, the illogical had occurred. 𝖓𝔬𝔳𝔭𝖚𝖇.𝔠𝔬𝖒
On hearing him, the supervisor realised the gravity of the situation and quickly said, "Then tell them to disconnect the internet immediately."
Shaking his head, Jack added, "It’s no use now, we are too late. Given our internet speed, all the customer data in our database would be copied in a minute. It’s no use disconnecting."
"Then, what do we do?" The supervisor was lost now. It would take longer than a minute to reach the secure server room.
Stretching out his hands in exasperation, Jack said, "Just inform the higher-ups. There’s nothing we can do now. I doubt we even have the authority to execute any useful operation. Look, all super user accounts of ours have been deleted. That’s not all, all other lower-level accounts are gone too. Boss, I think we may have pissed off someone we weren’t supposed to."
PS: Typing this on my mobile, it’s not my usual way of thinking and the logic could be off. Please bear with me if anything seems off.
