492: Chapter 492 Off-the-Spot Tactics: Hacker Alliance Attack

"There are those top-tier hackers locked up in federal prison.

You should have heard of Lizard and Ghost.

They have actually been working for us all along."

Thompson's heart skipped a beat; those people were legendary figures in the United States hacking circle.

Things like hacking the Pentagon, creating worm viruses that spread globally... because of various actions, they were sentenced to life imprisonment.

He had assumed they would be locked in the most heavily guarded federal prison, but he didn't expect... they were eventually recruited after all.

"The President's intention is to hand these people over to you, to let them continue to atone for their crimes through service.

Your Silver Lake Capital will lead the effort to form a cyber development team, specifically to develop a virus targeting Transsion's Taishan System, breach their core servers, steal core data, and ideally, make the Taishan System collapse completely."

This plan left Thompson astonished; he hadn't expected them to be this ruthless this time!

But the outcome seemed very promising!

"Go ahead and do it without worry; the United States will not mistreat any meritorious servant.

For this operation, the expenses will be fully reimbursed by the Eagle Eye Alliance, so you won't have to pay a single cent.

Moreover, after the matter is accomplished, the government will open green channels for your investment projects."

Under this temptation, Thompson agreed almost without any hesitation.

After all, Silver Lake Capital itself is an important component of the Eagle Eye Alliance.

It's just that their previous operations were a bit... a bit too poor.

Currently, they have only bought a few nails in China, but that is far from enough.

This time, with Obama's endorsement and top-tier hackers assisting, it is simply a god-given opportunity.

"No problem, sir. Give me three days, and the team will be able to complete it.

I will turn Transsion's Taishan System into a sieve full of holes within three days."

...

The next afternoon, an unplated black van took three top-tier hackers from the White House and headed straight to a secret data center on the outskirts of Silicon Valley.

These three were "Lizard," who specialized in system vulnerabilities; "Ghost," who excelled at writing viruses; and "Shadow," who was responsible for network concealment and tracing counter-measures.

Lizard, sporting a goatee, looked at the rows of top-configured servers and high-end equipment in the server room, itching to get down to business.

"Mr. Obama has already told me about the target, but for this operation, the three of us are definitely not enough."

"Our target is Transsion Holdings, so I have long since prepared a crack team for you."

After saying that, he clapped his hands, and a top-tier hacker team of 30 people entered immediately.

Looking at these people, Ghost whistled.

If he guessed correctly, many of these people were his former defeated opponents.

After all, they were not as bold as he was!

"Gentlemen, you will assign the work for these people. Later, other teams will cooperate with your operation. This time, we have assembled over 1,000 people for the siege."

At this moment, the mission for this operation also appeared on their computers.

First, develop an exclusive virus targeting the Taishan System that can bypass their firewalls, steal user data, and destroy the underlying system...

Most importantly, it must be able to spread covertly!

Second, concentrate fire to attack Transsion's global core servers to obtain their core technical data.

Especially those patents with very high security classification!

Third, make sure to clean up the mess; they cannot let Transsion get a handle on them.

After all, this is a cyber war; if Transsion catches them, China will definitely have a corresponding counter-attack.

"After the matter is accomplished, everyone will share a massive reward of 300 million USD. At the same time, the President will grant special pardons for those little problems you all have."

The 30-plus people who had just arrived had their eyes light up at this moment.

Huge bonuses plus freedom—this temptation was indeed enough to make them risk their lives.

After all, since they were already hackers, how could they not have a few arrest warrants on them?

"Taishan System? That system developed in-house by China?"

"It seems a bit familiar. I think I tried to hack their servers before, but the protection was quite tight, and they even issued an arrest warrant for me!"

"The protection is very tight. I've studied their open-source community version. The underlying architecture is different from Android and Windows, and the encryption logic is very tricky; it's hard to deal with."

"It's precisely because it's hard to deal with that we brought you top-tier hackers here."

Seeing them all discussing there, Thompson knocked on the table.

"Besides you hackers, we have also equipped you with 20 senior security engineers.

Note that this operation concerns the national destiny of the United States.

Therefore, Silver Lake Capital will mobilize all resources for you, and we will also get you a batch of test machines loaded with the Taishan System, as well as underlying code fragments obtained from various channels previously.

Remember, partners, you only have one week!

If the results are good, the bonus will double."

Under heavy pressure and high rewards, the entire hacker team began operating at full speed.

Of course, the main force of the operation was still those three, who each led a small team to begin action.

One group looked for vulnerabilities, one group wrote viruses based on the vulnerabilities, and the last group set up multi-layer network jump servers to clean up traces of the attack.

...

In 7 days, they managed to dig out three undisclosed underlying vulnerabilities from the open-source branch of the Taishan System.

One of them was a kernel-level zero-day vulnerability.

Based on this vulnerability, Ghost developed a highly targeted virus named "Dark Thorn."

The miraculous thing about this virus is that it can spread through various channels such as emails, third-party applications, and web links. After invading a device, it silently lurks and secretly steals user data.

At the same time, it can receive remote commands to directly format hard drives and destroy the underlying system. More importantly, it can bypass all security protections of the current version of the Taishan System and is almost impossible to detect and remove!

On the day the virus was successfully developed, Thompson ordered the launch of the general offensive.

This time, it was a direct cyber war, played with cards on the table.

Shadow led a team and directly utilized hundreds of thousands of bot devices to launch a distributed denial-of-service attack on Transsion's seven major data centers in various regions including Shenzhen, Europe, the United States, and Africa.

Massive amounts of junk traffic flooded in, attempting to overwhelm the servers.

The other front was releasing the virus, led by Ghost, who spread the Dark Thorn virus through pre-embedded channels across networks in various countries in Europe and Southeast Asia.

It specifically attacked mobile phones, tablets, and enterprise terminals using the Taishan System.

In the first hour after the attack was launched, the effect was very significant.

Over 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in China experienced abnormalities in their Taishan office system terminals.

Devices experienced various lags, file loss, and even blue screens of death.

"What's wrong with the Taishan System now? Has it been attacked? We were working fine... and it just went straight to a blue screen!"