Volume 10: Ancient Battleship Chapter 519 DDoS Attack
The hacker attacked the Anaheim company's network server with two purposes: first, to delay the deadlocked press conference; second, to destroy evidence. Even if an audit was to be conducted, he could announce that the data had been destroyed by hackers. At the same time, he could create an image of a victim to win public sympathy.
Of course, in this situation, Ke Lan had no idea how many people would sympathize with them. Although the live broadcast of the press conference was interrupted, the netizens who were watching the live broadcast had come to their senses. The bullet screen in the black live broadcast room was refreshing frantically, and the content was basically all greetings to the female relatives of Anaheim executives...
Public opinion has basically shown a one-sided trend, and this time it is the Morgan Consortium's turn to block the news - but their requests have been rejected by all major mainstream media without exception.
…
At the same time, in an airtight room, six young men dressed like street thugs but wearing high-end VR helmets worth hundreds of thousands of credit points, sat cross-legged around a low table piled with computer cases and mobile terminals, their hands in motion capture gloves quickly tapping the air in mid-air.
Through the transparent panel on the outside of the VR helmet, they could vaguely see rows of densely packed codes projected in front of their eyes. Along with the high-frequency flashing of the chassis indicator light, these codes scrolled rapidly, as fast as the movie credits played at sixteen times the speed.
A middle-aged man in a suit and tie was walking back and forth with an anxious look on his face. He wanted to say something several times, but swallowed the words back into his stomach.
Just when the middle-aged man was about to turn around to get a glass of water, several young men wearing VR helmets let out a light "eh" at the same time.
If you get close to their helmets at this time, you can find that the rapidly scrolling codes have suddenly stopped, as if the invisible shaft was stuck by something.
"What's wrong?" The middle-aged man didn't even bother to pour water. He quickly walked behind the few people and asked.
"We...we seem to have been caught." One of the young men wearing a helmet said, "This is impossible...our IP address keeps changing, how did he catch us?"
"Caught? You mean you were discovered?" The middle-aged man's eyes widened. "Who is the other party? Is it an official white hat?"
“No… no.” The young man who spoke earlier shook his head. “They don’t look like official people. If they were them, we would have received a warning notice by now…”
"This girl is the same color as us, also black." said another young man. From the sound of her voice, she should be a woman, but her almost flat washboard figure and the helmet that covered her entire head made her look exactly the same as the man sitting next to her.
"He is launching an attack on us... Uh, he is using such a primitive attack method?" The hacker who spoke first was stunned for a moment, and then suddenly jumped up from the ground, "This is impossible! Where does he get so many attack resources? How many 'zombies' did he hijack?!"
"What's wrong? What happened?" The middle-aged man also became nervous. "Have your identities been exposed? Is this place no longer safe?"
"Our physical IP address should not have been exposed yet...but we can't continue the intrusion."
"What do you mean? You guys are all top hackers, but you can't defeat that one opponent even if you work together?" the middle-aged man asked angrily, "Isn't the price we offered generous enough?"
"No, Mr. Morgan, you misunderstood me." The hacker shook his head and took off his helmet. "The other party used the most primitive DDoS attack. This attack method has nothing to do with technology. It is simply a competition of the total amount of network resources in the hands of both parties... Although I don't know where the other party got so many resources-"
Before he could finish his words, the middle-aged man interrupted him: "DDoS attack? It's the kind of attack method that blocks our server with a large number of useless data packets, right? Then why don't you just open the firewall?"
"It's not that simple." Facing the "layman" who had only a vague understanding of the attack process, the young hacker could only explain with a wry smile, "The best way for us to deal with it now is to unplug the network cable and take all the servers offline. If we want to continue to invade Anaheim's servers, we must withstand the attacks from the other side... The firewall can block most attacks, but it will also block the data we transfer back."
"How much is left on the Anaheim server?" the middle-aged man pondered for half a second, then asked.
"There is still nearly one-third of the evidence that needs to be 'destroyed', and a full half of the data that needs to be 'relocated'." The hacker replied.
"Don't worry about that information for now. Delete all the documents like bills and try to handle it as cleanly as possible."
Now that the financial sponsor had spoken, the young hacker had no choice but to put on the VR helmet again. But before he sat down, several people in the room smelled a pungent smell similar to that of burnt plastic.
"What's that smell?" The middle-aged man's nose twitched twice. "Is something burnt? Has anyone been to the kitchen?"
But he reacted within a second - this temporarily rented house didn't have a kitchen at all, and several people, including himself, had to rely on boxed lunches for lunch. The paper lunch boxes were piled in the corner of the room!
"Server!" the female hacker suddenly screamed, "The server is overloaded! It's overheating!"
"What did you say?!" The middle-aged man rushed to the next room and opened the door.
Suddenly, a choking smell of smoke hit him in the face and almost made him pass out.
The other two hackers also rushed to the door, pushed aside the smoke and looked inside -
This small room of less than 20 square meters was filled with modular shelves, each layer of which was filled with expensive servers. Hundreds of cables were tied together, like a tangled knot of wires that took up all the space on the floor. At this moment, several servers with poor heat dissipation positions were constantly emitting black smoke, and green-yellow flames were spreading rapidly along the rubber outside the cables.
"This... this..." The middle-aged man rubbed his eyes that were blinded by the smoke, and then he could see the situation in the room clearly. Suddenly, he felt as if he fell into an ice cave and could not help shivering - you know, those valuable technical data copied from the Anaheim database are now all stored in these dozens of servers.
And these servers are now burning...
"Do you have a backup of those data?" He looked at the hacker next to him and asked with trembling lips.
" No." The other party shook his head. "There is no backup... It's too late, and there are not enough storage devices..."
"Then what are you standing there for? Go and rescue the server!" the middle-aged man yelled hysterically. He turned around and looked around, his sight immediately locked on the kettle beside him. Next to the kettle was the cup that he had not had time to pour water into.
"Get out of the way!" The middle-aged man pushed away a hacker behind him, rushed to the table in two steps, grabbed the kettle and rushed to the room where the server was placed.
"Wait! Mr. Morgan! You can't use water!" The young hacker took a look and quickly hugged the middle-aged man's waist. "There are wires in here. If you put this pot of water in, everything will short-circuit! Now only a few servers are on fire. Most of the servers are not damaged. But once a short circuit occurs, there will be nothing left!"
"Then move out the undamaged servers !" the middle-aged man holding the kettle said urgently.
Except for the young hacker at the beginning who rushed in staring at the thick smoke, the others just stood there, staring at the middle-aged man with indifference, as if saying to him: You only paid for the work, and the fire in the computer room is none of our business, so why should we risk electric shock to help you rescue?
This is indeed the case. Except for the young hacker who had been talking to the middle-aged man and was the Morgan Consortium's own technical consultant, the other hackers were all "mercenaries" recruited temporarily. These people had a fixed price and did things for money. If the work was a dirty job that was shameful, they would charge an additional considerable "hush money".
"Why are you standing there?!" The middle-aged man slammed the lid of the kettle to the ground, panting and glaring at several people.
"The contract doesn't specify how to deal with this kind of situation. According to industry rules, we are not responsible for this kind of emergency." The female hacker took out a bubble gum from the pocket of her sweatshirt, peeled off the candy wrapper and put it in her mouth. "You can ask us to help you, but you have to pay extra."
"You!" The middle-aged man gritted his teeth. He wanted to threaten these hackers with words, but he also knew very well that these people were old hands who had been in the business for many years. It was not the first time they took on similar jobs. They were not afraid of threats such as "silencing" - if the Morgan Consortium dared to "rob the robbers" afterwards, these shady things would soon be made public in various ways.
"Okay, you want to pay more, right? How much? Just name a price, quickly!" The middle-aged man suppressed his anger and took out a card holder from the inside pocket of his suit. It was full of large-denomination anonymous credit card holders.
Greed flashed across the eyes of several hackers. The young girl licked her lips and said, "Five hundred thousand... no, one million!"
"Are you trying to take advantage of the situation?" the middle-aged man asked angrily. The one million was not the total price, but one million per person.
"I don't know whether we are taking advantage of the fire or not, but I know that if you delay any longer, the fire inside will get bigger and bigger..."
"Here you go!" The middle-aged man took out a few black and gold stored-value cards and slapped them on the table.
"I changed my mind again. Two million." The girl stretched out her hand and covered the cards.
“Don’t push your luck!” The middle-aged man’s face suddenly darkened. The girl raised her eyebrows. She suddenly felt that the metaphor commonly used in novels, “so gloomy that water could drip out of it,” was not an exaggeration, because now their sponsor’s face was really dripping with water…
Sweat and tears caused by smoke mixed together and slid down the curve of his cheeks to his chin. The muscles in the middle-aged man's upper body were tense, as if he would pounce at any time.
"Don't be nervous, I'm just joking... After all, we are trustworthy." The girl laughed dryly, took the stack of stored-value cards and distributed them to her companions.
"Then get to work quickly..." the middle-aged man said word by word.
"By the way...Mr. Morgan, are we going to continue attacking Anaheim later?" another hacker suddenly asked.
"Attack bullshit! First seize all the servers, and then find a way to recover the lost data... Remember this, if I'm done, you guys won't be able to live either!" The middle-aged man said gritting his teeth. He knew very well that if the technical data "stolen" from Anaheim was destroyed because of this incident, then the rest of his life would definitely be ruined... In this case, even if he risks the matter being exposed, he will drag these bastards to be buried with him.
"Um...Mr. Morgan, there seems to be something glowing in your pocket." the hacker said again.
"What?" The middle-aged man called Mr. Morgan was slightly startled. "What are you talking about?"
"Your phone...seems to have lit up."
"This is impossible. To be on the safe side, I turned ." He said as he lowered his head - but when he saw the white fluorescence coming through the gap in his pocket, he was stunned.
There were only two things in his pocket: the key card of the hovercraft and his cell phone, and the former was impossible to glow.
The middle-aged man quickly took out his mobile phone - his mobile phone had been turned on at some point, and the recording function was automatically activated. Judging from the time displayed on the screen, the recording had been started about ten minutes ago.
That is to say, the recording had already started before they were attacked by DDoS...
In other words, the conversation between him and the hackers just now was all recorded...
Not only that, there was an additional running program in the taskbar of the phone that he had never seen before. Although he didn't know much about computer technology, he could still understand the simple and easy-to-understand UI of this running program - every time the phone recorded one second, it would automatically generate an audio file and then send it to the outside world... As for who it was sent to, it didn't matter anymore...
"It's over." The middle-aged man's heart skipped a beat, his legs went soft, and he sat down on the ground.
