140: Chapter 140 Platform Vulnerabilities

What happened that night was not an isolated incident. In fact, for several consecutive days, many "divine benefactors" appeared in various livestream rooms on Panda Live.

They used the method of gifting and instigation to induce those female streamers to do some inappropriate things.

Over these past two days, the super moderators of Panda Live have been exceptionally busy, occupied with banning quite a few livestream rooms.

However, busy as they were, they didn't think there was anything unusual about it.

Originally, this wasn't a big deal—just banning a few obscure small-time streamers. After all, there are so many people in the Dragon Kingdom, and so many users on the Panda Live platform; if one streamer falls, there will be thousands more waiting to take their place.

After all, in their eyes, working as a streamer is both easy and lucrative.

Of course, Xiao Li, the first female streamer to be banned, was now full of regret. That night, she had gotten carried away, thinking that as long as she was a bit bolder and enticed that "big brother" to gift a little more, she could achieve true financial freedom.

She had received so many gifts, so what was there to fear about being banned?

She was even thinking that she wouldn't have to work anymore; she could just save this money and live off the interest for the rest of her life.

But only after she was actually banned and forced off the air did she wake up to reality.

"Damn it, I haven't withdrawn the money yet!"

It turned out that once she was banned, all the money in her streaming account became inaccessible. She immediately filed an appeal with the official Panda Live support, but how could Panda Live possibly agree to her appeal when she had indeed violated the rules?

The platform had sound reasons and evidence; in short, she could forget about getting that money back.

Only now did Xiao Li realize that it had been a scam.

That night felt like nothing more than a pipe dream.

She had woken up, but there were still many other female streamers who, upon receiving gifts, were just as blinded by the massive amounts of money as she had been. They couldn't think clearly for a moment, followed the instructions of those "divine benefactors," and ultimately ended up with nothing, just like her.

However, Panda Live didn't consider this a big deal. In fact, the super moderators didn't even report the phenomenon to their superiors, because female streamers engaging in lewd or vulgar content seemed to be common knowledge. Having one or two streamers induced by "big brothers" to reveal a bit too much, resulting in a ban, was nothing new.

But this phenomenon didn't last long before Panda Live soon discovered something was wrong.

The reason was that they discovered an anomaly during reconciliation. When calculating daily revenue, they found that the total value of all gifts far exceeded the amount users had actually topped up.

After a simple investigation, they found the source of the problem.

Many users hadn't topped up at all, yet their accounts inexplicably showed large amounts of Panda Coins, which was the currency used on the Panda Live platform.

These people used the extra Panda Coins in their accounts to tip those female streamers. Because the amounts involved were so huge—with virtually every female streamer receiving over a million in gifts—the official Panda Live team finally noticed the anomaly.

Although most of the female streamers had already been banned and had not withdrawn the gifts, meaning Panda Live hadn't suffered any substantial loss, leaving the issue unaddressed would undoubtedly lead to even bigger problems.

Where did those Panda Coins in the users' accounts come from? The first thing they thought of was that there was a bug in the recharge system.

After a week of investigation, this was indeed the case, so they urgently fixed the bug and released an announcement: "Some gifts in certain livestream rooms were generated by malicious actors exploiting a system vulnerability, so they are invalid. They will be deducted from the respective streamers' accounts shortly. The platform has already reported this to the police and is currently investigating the accounts that utilized the system vulnerability to generate gifts. Panda Live will file legal lawsuits and will hold them accountable to the full extent of the law!"

Although this announcement was standard, it was still met with suspicion by some conspiracy theorists. They suspected that this was just a play directed by Panda Live itself; they were just claiming a system vulnerability existed because they wanted to withhold the gifts received by the streamers.

Even though the official Panda Live team posted corresponding evidence and continuously refuted the rumors across major media outlets, it still impacted their reputation among the player community to a certain extent.

(There was once a "divine benefactor" named Bored Brother in Xuxu Baobao's livestream room who also exploited a system vulnerability to gift him a lot of items. This isn't made up; there are precedents.)

Panda Live used the information left during registration for these accounts and, through the intervention of public security departments, tracked down the actual users of these accounts and found them.

Only then did they discover that most of them were destitute middle-aged men whose lives were extremely unsatisfactory. Furthermore, they had no ambition whatsoever and had completely adopted a "lying flat" attitude.

They didn't have enough money to pay fines; in fact, most of them had completely given up, spending their days begging on the internet. They had taken out loans from every online lending institution possible, and of course, they had no ability to repay them, simply letting those institutions come to collect debts.

These people were destined to spend the rest of their lives in a daze.

If Panda Live filed a lawsuit against them demanding compensation, they certainly wouldn't be able to pay it.

Even if the court enforced the judgment and emptied out all their possessions, it wouldn't amount to much money.

Even being labeled a "deadbeat" didn't matter; their lives were already like this, and adding the title of "deadbeat" was neither here nor there.

If they were sent to prison to eat free meals, they would be overjoyed. Finally, they wouldn't have to live hand-to-mouth anymore. They heard that the daily routine in the station was quite regular, they could even learn cultural knowledge, and the food was healthy, nutritious, and rich.

After investigating the true identities of these account users, Panda Live was at a loss; there was simply nothing they could do about them.

But these people were definitely not the masterminds! They basically had no education. If you said they were hackers with excellent programming skills who had discovered the vulnerability in the Panda Live platform themselves, no one would believe it.

Therefore, there must be someone else behind them instigating them to do this!

But no matter how the police interrogated them, those deadbeats just couldn't answer.

Because they weren't very familiar with the person who taught them how to use the vulnerability to glitch Panda Coins on the Panda Live platform; they only knew them from a casual meeting and conversation.

The trail had basically gone cold here. Although the police promised Panda Live they would continue to investigate and would definitely smoke out the real culprit behind the scenes, the official Panda Live team no longer held much hope.