Chapter 28 Provoking Me? I'll Expose All the Vulnerabilities of the Symbian System to Him

The Mercedes-Benz sped away, spewing exhaust fumes.

Niu Dazhuang brandished his pipe wrench, jumping in anger, itching to chase after it and smash the car's windows.

"Young Master, you're just going to let him go like that? That punk was pointing at our noses and cursing!"

Lu Jingming held down his wrist.

"If a dog bites you, are you going to bite it back? Smashing the car would mean paying for damages, Uncle Dazhuang."

He turned and walked toward the office building without stopping.

"Dealing with an arrogant old dog like that, empty talk is useless. You have to smash his rice bowl to pieces."

Old Zhou moved quickly, and within a few minutes, he had dragged Xia Weiliang away from her computer.

The girl had a bird's nest of hair, was barefoot, and was still clutching a half-eaten sausage in her hand.

"Lu Jingming, are you annoying or what! I just reached a critical part in the memory scheduling for Xinghai OS, are you going to pay for breaking my train of thought?!"

Xia Weiliang bit into the sausage indignantly, her cheeks puffed out like a hamster.

Lu Jingming didn't waste words with her and pulled a silver metal USB drive from his pocket.

"Stop for half an hour. I found you a new toy; help me strip Symbian OS down to its underwear."

Xia Weiliang rolled her eyes, looking completely disgusted.

"Symbian? That garbage code is like an old woman's foot-binding cloth—stinky and long. Just looking at it hurts my eyes."

Old Zhou rubbed his hands together on the side, chiming in.

"That's right, Mr. Lu. Although Nokia's system is bloated, they spent billions of dollars on encryption."

Old Zhou sighed, "With just us, a brute-force crack would take months to finish."

Lu Jingming slapped the USB drive onto the computer desk.

"It won't take months. Twenty minutes is enough."

Inside was the [Low-Level Architecture Parser] he had just exchanged for 20,000 Defense-Breach Points from the System Store.

It was specifically designed to cure this kind of fancy code encryption.

Xia Weiliang, half-doubting, pulled the sausage out of her mouth and inserted the USB drive into the computer tower.

The screen flickered twice, and a pitch-black command box popped up.

A few seconds later, the low-level code that Nokia regarded as a core secret began scrolling wildly across the screen like a waterfall.

Without any encryption obstacles, it was presented before everyone, completely exposed.

Zhou Hong's eyes were about to pop out of their sockets.

"This... this packet capture speed! What kind of god-tier software is this!"

Xia Weiliang's expression changed instantly.

Her initial impatience was swept away, replaced by excitement.

Her fingers tapped out afterimages on the keyboard, her eyes locked onto the rapidly scrolling lines of code.

Fifteen minutes later.

"Found it!"

Xia Weiliang slammed the keyboard and pointed at a highlighted red hexadecimal code on the screen.

"These Finnish idiots are basically writing code with their heads on the chopping block!"

Lu Jingming leaned over to take a look, but he couldn't understand the garbled mess on the screen.

"Speak human."

Xia Weiliang grabbed the carbonated drink on the table, took a big gulp, and burped.

"When Symbian OS processes SMS messages with specific character formats, the caching mechanism has a fatal logic overflow error."

She excitedly circled an area on the screen.

"As long as you send this specific string of garbled code to a Nokia phone."

Xia Weiliang grinned, "The system's RAM will be instantly overwhelmed by the error command, and the CPU usage will skyrocket to one hundred percent!"

Old Zhou gasped; he worked on the low-level stuff and knew exactly what this meant.

"RAM overwhelmed? Wouldn't the phone crash on the spot?"

"Crashing is the mild version."

Xia Weiliang snorted coldly and pushed up her black-framed glasses.

"This thing is an infinite loop. As long as you turn it on, the system will try to read the SMS, and as soon as it reads it, the memory crashes again."

She spread her hands, "Even if you pull the battery and restart, as long as that SMS is still in the inbox, it will black screen within thirty seconds of booting up!"

This was an unsolvable dead end!

Lu Jingming listened, the smile on his lips growing wider.

He took the mouse and copied the fatal garbled code into a TXT document.

"Where is Chu Xuan? Tell him to get in here."

Less than two minutes later, Chu Xuan, sporting a middle-part hairstyle, trotted into the lab.

"Mr. Lu, did you call for me?"

Lu Jingming copied the document containing the garbled code onto a floppy disk and tossed it into Chu Xuan's arms.

"Go, post this string of code on all major digital forums and QQ groups."

Chu Xuan was stunned and scratched his scalp.

"Just post a bunch of garbled code? What's the use of that?"

Lu Jingming leaned back in his chair, fingers crossed under his chin.

"Aren't you the leader of the internet trolls? Don't you even know how to stir up netizens' emotions anymore?"

He tapped the desk with his knuckles.

"Give this code a name, call it 'Death SMS'."

Lu Jingming patiently guided this marketing genius.

"Write it like this in the post: Absolutely do not send this code to friends who use Nokia, otherwise bear the consequences yourself!"

Chu Xuan had hung around internet cafes for so many years; the moment he heard this, his internal radar went wild.

Isn't this the most classic clickbait post!

What do netizens love to do most? The more you tell them not to do something, the more fun they think it is, and they just have to try it.

"Mr. Lu, this move is brilliant!"

Chu Xuan slapped his thigh in excitement, his eyes gleaming with mischief.

"Once their curiosity is piqued, these netizens will definitely use the people around them who have Nokias as test subjects!"

He hugged the floppy disk and rushed out, "I'll arrange the accounts immediately, I guarantee it will spread across the entire web within half an hour!"

As the night deepened, the "Feiyu Internet Cafe" in Donghai City was shrouded in smoke.

A young man with yellow hair was puffing on a cigarette, browsing the Jifeng Forum.

Suddenly, a highlighted red post caught his attention.

"Warning! Top Secret Leak, Absolutely Do Not Send This Garbled Code to Nokia Phones!"

The yellow-haired guy sneered and blew a smoke ring.

"Stupid OP, trying to farm replies again."

He clicked into the post; besides a few warnings meant to sound mysterious, it was just a bunch of garbled symbols.

The comment section below was already in an uproar.

"OP is brain-dead, confirmed."

"Is it really that magical? I'll send it to my deskmate to try... holy crap, it didn't work!"

"The guy above is blind, the OP said it only works on Nokia's Symbian OS!"

The rebellious streak in the yellow-haired guy's bones flared up.

He glanced sideways at his buddy sitting next to him playing World of Warcraft.

On that buddy's desk sat a brand-new Nokia N73, which had cost several thousand yuan; he usually showed it off constantly.

The yellow-haired guy took out his PHS phone and painstakingly typed in the garbled code from the post.

Then he hit send, targeting his buddy's number next to him.

"Ding-dong."

The crisp SMS notification sound of the N73 rang out.

His buddy was in the middle of a dungeon raid and freed up one hand to pick up the phone.

"Who's sending texts in the middle of the night..."

He had just pressed the view button.

The N73's formerly bright color screen suddenly froze, the image locking instantly.

Immediately after, strange patterns appeared around the screen, and with a "swish," it went completely black.

"Oh, what the hell! Why did my phone go black?"

His buddy panicked, frantically pressing the keypad, but there was no response.

He cursed, pried open the back cover, pulled out the battery, and reinstalled it.

He long-pressed the power button, and the classic Nokia handshake animation lit up.

But before he could breathe a sigh of relief, less than ten seconds after entering the desktop.

The screen went black again, dead as a doornail.

"It's broken! My thousands of yuan!" His buddy was sweating profusely, nearly smashing the keyboard.

The yellow-haired guy sat nearby, not even noticing the cigarette ash burning his fingers.

He looked at the garbled code he had sent from his PHS, and cold sweat broke out instantly.

This post was actually real!

The same scene was playing out all over the country.

In college dorms, prankster roommates mass-texted the code to everyone in the class who used a Nokia.

In QQ groups, people were spreading it widely as a fun joke.

Under the dual catalysis of curiosity and a mischievous mindset.

The "Death SMS" was like a terrifying digital plague, spreading wildly across the country at an exponential rate.

As long as the machine was running Symbian OS, it was dead on contact, with no exceptions.

The entire domestic Symbian ecosystem suffered an unprecedented paralysis within just a few short hours.

In the Xinghai Technology building, the top-floor office was still brightly lit.

Chu Xuan held a cup of cold coffee, staring fanatically at the computer screen.

"Mr. Lu, it exploded! The whole internet is in an uproar!"

He pointed at the data monitored in the backend, his voice trembling.

"Nokia's Tieba has been flooded by users demanding rights! It's all people seeking help for black screens and crashes!"

Lu Jingming stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, looking down at the scattered lights of Donghai City.

He twirled the plastic lighter in his hand; the "click, click" sound was exceptionally clear in the quiet office.

"What's the rush? Only a small portion is paralyzed right now."

Lu Jingming turned around, a cold, sharp glint flashing in his eyes.

"When dawn breaks tomorrow, those people lining up at Nokia's after-sales service will be the ones to let them know what real pain is."

Chu Xuan swallowed, feeling a chill down his back.

This bloodless knife strike was too ruthless.

"Mr. Lu, if President Kang Peila finds out we did this, won't he send people to kill us?"

"He won't have the time for that."

Lu Jingming stuffed the lighter back into his pocket, a mocking smile curling the corner of his lips.

"When day breaks, you'll do one more thing for me."

Chu Xuan straightened up immediately, pricking up his ears.

"Mr. Lu, at your command!"

"Tomorrow morning at eight, use the official Xinghai account to issue a statement."

Lu Jingming walked to the desk, braced his hands on the surface, and spoke, enunciating every word.

"Just say that our Xinghai lab worked through the night to develop a specialized removal tool for the Death SMS, and furthermore..."

He paused, his smile wicked.

"We'll provide it to Nokia officially for free. If President Kang wants it, have him call me personally."