Lu Zhou swore that if he ever found out which student was behind this, he would upload a photoshopped photo of this student onto the school website…
Of course, he was just dreaming.
The school would never help him do something like this.
Not to mention that Lu Zhou realized that this cyber attack wasn’t as simple as he had thought…
At the Beijing Grand Hotel.
Lu Zhou and Director Li were inside a small meeting room, and they began to talk about the situation.
“How did the US react?”
“The US is also confused. Director Carson contacted me this morning. I know they would never do anything like this.”
Lu Zhou: “…”
Who could it be?
All of the super countries are here at the conference, who could be behind this?
Aliens?
Director Li drank some tea and moistened his throat before saying, “I’ve notified the relevant departments… But it seems to be too late.”
Lu Zhou sighed and said, “What’s the damage like?”
Director Li said with a serious tone, “It’s not difficult to recover from the damages, but the problem is that we don’t know where they will attack next.”
This was the most difficult part of cybersecurity.
When faced with an unknown hostile cyber force, the defender was always in the weaker position.
It would be much easier if they knew about the attacker’s motive, for example, which kind of financial gain they were after. As long as they knew the attacker’s motives, they could set up a defense line and set a trap. However, if there was no clear motive behind the attacks, all they could do was to sit and wait.
This was similar to how someone could “kill a random person on the street” and likely get away with it.
After hearing Director Li’s explanation, Lu Zhou’s intuition told him that this was an organized cyber-attack. However, he didn’t know what was the point of this attack.
“What do they want?”
“They want us to suspend the International Lunar Hadron Collider conference… It seems like they also want us to discharge you.”
Lu Zhou smiled and said, “If discharging me is their only request, I can easily satisfy them.”
Director Li seriously said, “Don’t think about it! Do you know what will happen if you do that?”
“Okay, okay. Fine, I know, I was just kidding, we’ll never agree to their demands…”
Director Li is quite serious about this…
Lu Zhou thought for a second and said, “Are there any ways we can deal with this?”
Director Li said, “We don’t… We have already contacted the United States. Let’s hope that they can cooperate with our investigation. However, they don’t seem to be enthusiastic. They said they will cooperate with any criminal investigation, provided we have enough evidence.”
Lu Zhou thought for a second and said, “So we just have to find them then.”
Director Li: “Yeah, we have to identify these people. That’s the only way to stop these attacks. Otherwise, even if we defeat them in a short period, they will find a way to come back.”
Lu Zhou: “Okay, I’ll try to think of a way.”
“You?” Director Li shook his head and said, “Leave this kind of stuff to us, I’m just telling you to not put any important personal or academic information online. We’re in a special time right now, and they are targeting you.”
Lu Zhou: “…”
They already targeted me okay!
They posted such a humiliating photo of me online!
Lu Zhou sighed and said, “I can’t just let this go… With more power, comes more responsibility. It would have been fine if they left me alone, but they placed me as a target. I can’t forgive them.”
Director Li: “…?”
Lu Zhou looked at the old man and said, “All in all, I just can’t forgive them!”
Director Li shook his head in disbelief and said, “Okay forget about it, with your programming skills… Just leave it alone. We have already set up a cyber warfare task force.”
Director Li looked at Lu Zhou and spoke emotionally.
“As for you, I hope you can put your focus on this conference. You’re representing the entire Chinese academic community!”
…
This cyberwar had gone into a stalemate.
It would be a lot easier if the attackers were domestic as the major network operators and electronics suppliers had left back doors for the security department. They could easily catch the hackers.
However, the problem was that the hackers were overseas.
No one had heard of the “Eagle Hunter” group before, but after the news broke out, their name began to spread.
Most people were criticizing them…
[F*ck, these Americans are despicable! Where are our hackers, let’s give them a taste of their own medicine!]
[We don’t have any hackers left, all of the good ones went to work for tech companies. (sigh)]
[I heard that there are underground hacker groups that have started to help fight back!]
[I think this battle is going to be difficult. They have the high ground here. Unless we can somehow implement military-grade security on every system, they’ll just attack the weakest servers.]
[F*ck sake! Don’t these Americans have anything better to do? What’s the point of hacking some web servers?]
[Ahh, I’m afraid the United States government might be behind this…]
After Director Li left, Lu Zhou went back to his own room. He browsed through Weibo and saw that the Eagle Hunter group was on the trending page.
The hackers must be ecstatic to see their name spread around like this.
I can’t just sit here and do nothing…
I can’t just leave this alone.
Lu Zhou took out his phone and called Dean Qin.
“Hey, it’s me, how’s the computer server room going?”
Dean Qin sighed and said, “There’s still a virus here, and the cybersecurity department sent someone to have a look. They said they couldn’t do anything, so they wrote a report and left… We’ve already given up, we’re going to reinstall the server OS and replace all of the hard drives.”
They’re giving up?
I can’t let that happen.
Lu Zhou immediately said, “Don’t reinstall just yet, there are a lot of computer experts at the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study. I’ll send someone to help you.”
After hearing Lu Zhou’s words, Dean Qin paused for a second. He didn’t expect Lu Zhou to do something like this.
“You have… experts in information security?”
“Of course!” Lu Zhou smiled and said, “We’re also an independent information technology research institute, so we have plenty of cybersecurity experts.”
Dean Qin smiled and shook his head.
“Okay then, quickly send someone over.”
Dean Qin didn’t have his hopes up at all.
The Jinling Institute for Advanced Study was a good research institute, but their main area was mathematics, computational materials science, and chemistry.
When it came to information technology, more specifically cybersecurity, these research institute scientists were not as strong as security engineers from large companies.
Not to mention that there was no way the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study information technology institute was comparable to the Jin Ling University software department. Even Principal Xu himself was in the information technology research field.
Even experts from the computer science department had no idea what to do…
After hanging up the phone, Lu Zhou told Xiao Ai what to do. He then called Luo Wenxuan.
Luo Wenxuan’s voice came from the phone.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“… Just tell me what you want, you must want something from me again.”
Lu Zhou smiled awkwardly.
Is it that obvious…
Lu Zhou’s smile quickly disappeared as he spoke in a serious manner.
“I need you to do me a favor.”