79: Chapter 79 No Way to Trace the Origin!

Long Group Cybersecurity Center, 2:00 AM.

Shen Wei took off her gold-rimmed glasses and rubbed her aching eyes. Behind the lenses, her eyes were bloodshot. On the six screens in front of her, data streams surged like waterfalls, and a complex topology of attack paths rotated slowly in 3D space, with hundreds of markers flashing in red, yellow, and green.

"Director Shen, the seventh full-traffic traceback is complete," her deputy's voice was hoarse. "We've traced seventeen jump points from the initial stage of the attack, covering three offshore data centers in Mauritius, Seychelles, and Panama. But every jump point underwent a perfect chain erasure—logs cleared, hard drives overwritten, and even power management records were modified."

Shen Wei didn't speak; she simply pulled up another report.

It was a visualization map generated by Zhaoshu Technology's self-developed "Time Anchor" analysis system.

Shen Wei finally spoke, her voice as calm as if she were stating laboratory data. "Where does the attack's source IP ultimately point?"

"It points to ourselves," the deputy said with a bitter smile. "The last jump point was disguised as a backup server within the Long Corporation responsible for log archiving. That server went offline three months ago due to a hardware failure, but the attacker reactivated its network identity and used it as an attack launchpad. This means..."

"It means that from a technical perspective, the attack appears to have originated from within us," Shen Wei finished his sentence. "A perfect frame-up."

She pulled up the detailed analysis report of the tampered core code. The three logical backdoors planted by the attacker each exploited code flaws introduced by the Long Corporation's own development team.

What was even more terrifying was that the trigger conditions for the backdoors were set extremely cunningly, and the last backdoor had no trigger condition at all.

The deputy pulled up a map, where a red dot flashed within the Arctic Circle. "Greenland, an abandoned scientific research station. The server is virtual, the rental information is all fake, and the payment was made in Bitcoin."

Shen Wei leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

In her fifteen years in the industry, she had seen the methods of state-level hacker organizations, the tactics of corporate spies, and the rampancy of ransomware. But this time, it was different.

What the attacker displayed was a level of restraint and precision that was almost artistic.

"Director Shen," the deputy hesitated, "something is very strange."

"Speak."

"While analyzing the attack traffic, we found that about 3% of the packets used... quantum-resistant algorithms for encryption." The deputy's voice tightened. "It's not the popular post-quantum cryptography used today; it's a lattice-based variant we've never seen before. Our decryption cluster ran for six hours just to crack the header of one packet."

Shen Wei's eyes snapped open.

Quantum-resistant algorithms.

That wasn't something a hacker should have.

That was a field only state cryptography research institutions, top academic labs, or... certain intelligence agencies would venture into.

"The content of the packets?" she asked.

"All empty," the deputy shook his head. "After decryption, it's just zero-padding. It's like... they intentionally let us see the encryption method, intentionally flexing their muscles."

A demonstration of power.

The word flashed through Shen Wei's mind.

"What's the status of the repairs?" she asked.

"The production management system has recovered 5%, and it's expected to be fully back to normal in two days," another team member reported. "The backdoors in the financial system have been cleared, but data integrity verification will take at least twelve hours. The repair for the real estate smart home system is the most troublesome—we had to temporarily cut off all remote control functions for all devices and switch to local manual mode."

"The loss assessment has been updated," someone else spoke up. "On the heavy industry side, due to repeated starting and stopping of the production line and supplier chaos, direct losses have expanded to 43 million. The Middle Eastern client has given an ultimatum: if a reasonable explanation and compensation aren't provided within forty-eight hours, they will initiate international arbitration."

"President Long's office..." the deputy paused. "Following your instructions, the Security Department has installed a full-band electromagnetic shielding layer. All electronic devices entering or leaving must undergo Faraday cage isolation scanning."

"Director Shen," the deputy lowered his voice, "over in the technical department... people are panicking. Director Zhang was taken away by the internal investigation team for questioning. It's said an unregistered encrypted laptop was found at his home. Also, three core developers didn't show up for work today, and their phones are unreachable."

The purge of moles had begun.

Shen Wei wasn't surprised at all. When someone like Long Zaitian couldn't find a breakthrough at the technical level, he would inevitably turn to the "human" level. Finding scapegoats, calming the situation, and maintaining control.

But this wouldn't solve the root problem.

The real attacker was still in the shadows, watching the internal panic within the Long Corporation, watching the executives' mutual suspicion, and watching the technical team exhaust themselves under high pressure.

And then, waiting for the next opportunity to strike.

"Continue the repair work; prioritize based on business impact," Shen Wei issued the command. "Also, assign two people specifically to analyze that 3% of quantum-encrypted traffic. I want to know if those empty packets are truly 'empty'."

"Yes."

The team members returned to their work.

Shen Wei sat back at the console and pulled up the attack path topology. The red lines spread like a spiderweb, eventually disappearing into some black hole within the Long Corporation's internal network.

No way to find the source.

No way to clarify the methods.

She couldn't even understand some of the opponent's technology.

This sense of powerlessness had appeared for the first time in her career.

She stared at the screen, suddenly remembering something her mentor had said years ago:

"In the cyber world, the best hunter isn't the one who chases the closest, but the one whose existence you know of, yet whose traces you can never find."

At the time, she had thought nothing of it.

Now, she understood.

The attacker was exactly that kind of hunter.

And you would never know when he would pull the trigger next, aiming for the center of someone's forehead.

Shen Wei picked up the internal phone and dialed Long Zaitian's number.

The phone rang five times before it was picked up.

"Speak." Long Zaitian's voice sounded weary.

"President Long, the technical-level traceback... has hit a bottleneck for now," Shen Wei reported truthfully. "The attacker's counter-tracking methods are beyond our scope of response. However, system repairs are progressing, and we expect to return to basic normal operations within three days."

There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds.

Then came Long Zaitian's low voice: "In other words, we've taken a beating, but we don't even know what the person who hit us looks like?"

"You could say that."

"Understood." Long Zaitian hung up the phone.

The dial tone echoed in her ear.

Shen Wei put down the receiver and looked at the brightening sky outside the window.

A new day had begun.

But the mist remained thick.

And the hunter was still in the shadows.

Although Shen Wei had confirmed that it wasn't the work of internal personnel, someone indeed needed to take responsibility for the losses caused this time; otherwise, there would be no way to account to the group's shareholders, his elder brother, and his father.

Thinking of this, Long Zaitian silently picked up the phone and dialed the head of the Human Resources Department.