Chapter 362: Chapter 362

The next afternoon, Xiang Shan found the cyber security folks.

"You want to go and talk to those hackers?" The person in charge of cyber security in the security department was a Frenchman. He scratched his somewhat greasy curls and said, "That doesn’t seem like a good idea, Director Xiang. After all, we are still within the Rama Project compound. If our details get traced by the opposite party, it would cause major chaos."

Xiang Shan asked, "Is it really not possible?"

"’Zhu Rong’ is there; it’s likely that other top hackers are as well. The person who set up this website is probably a top-notch Black Hat, maybe even ’Zhu Rong’ himself," the person in charge said. "They’re all top-tier hackers over there. I wouldn’t recommend taking the risk."

Xiang Shan said, "I’m sorry, but please think of a way. It’s a work necessity."

As Xiang Shan spoke, he took out a meeting record: "I have already discussed this with the other people in the research department this morning. We all agree that the ideas being discussed by these hackers are very valuable. I have arranged for a team to verify several key points they proposed. I think it’s necessary to join the discussion."

"This..." The person in charge took the record and hesitated for a moment.

Xiang Shan continued, "This is also in order to break through the ’Orunmila Project’ faster. Although the ’Orunmila Project’ might not be as important as the ’Obatala Project’, it is a shortcut for our humanity to understand the creators of ’Argon’."

The person in charge sighed, "I understand. Today, members of the cyber security department have a meeting with members of the ’Hanuman Project.’ We might temporarily fall under your command. In the meeting, I will list your suggestion as a point of discussion and discuss its feasibility with others. But please note, before we get results, absolutely no unnecessary information exchange should occur with the ’Risk’ community."

That hacker community gathered the most elite "guerrillas" and the most destructive outlaws of this era. Especially so in a special place like the Rama Project. The "intelligence" here itself has the potential to disrupt the existing social order.

Whether it’s uploading data to the website from here or downloading data from the website, it’s risky.

In the former case, you might expose your own location or identity, or trigger the alertness of those hackers.

In the latter case, you might inadvertently let some dangerous code slip into this compound.

These security department folks are indeed the regular army, the elite of the nation. But the most they can guarantee is "the enemy can be destroyed afterward," not that "intelligence will definitely not be leaked."

Xiang Shan nodded as a sign of gratitude: "Thank you. Also, I hope to temporarily join in the work of your department."

The person in charge looked confused, "You? This..."

"I’m a programmer too. Although I’m more skilled in hardware and lower-level stuff, understanding your discussions shouldn’t be a problem, right?" Xiang Shan said.

The person in charge muttered something. It was unclear whether he thought Director Xiang was flaunting his credentials, or he was being overly ambitious.

But now, Xiang Shan was one of the highest officials in this compound. The rest were all at his level. So this seemingly reckless request was actually granted.

After all, during the first phase of the "Orunmila Project," this director had already proven his calibre as a scientist.

Just as Jing Hongtu had predicted. Xiang Shan’s somewhat irregular operations were easily forgiven—as long as the aim of these operations were directed at "his research projects," everyone was quite willing to let him off the hook.

After all, he’s a mad scientist.

This was indeed a good persona.

Xiang Shan then sat down in the cyber security personnel’s conference room, brazenly took out a recording pen, and began recording the progress at that time.

Frankly speaking, the progress of the "Hanuman Project" was not very impressive at the moment.

"Risk" community is a completely anonymous online community. Its architecture is very simplistic, hardly storing any "unnecessary data," and almost no measures outside of usernames and passwords are used to protect user accounts.

At the same time, the community has also adopted distributed virtual servers, and even the application framework is developed by a strong individual hacker or group. This website is not the ordinary type that relies on small-country servers.

When a user accesses this fixed domain name, an algorithm will temporarily allocate, randomly drawing three available proxies from a pool of volunteer servers to form a temporary data chain, allowing the user to ping an IP of a server that is currently available.

But the triple hop is just the first step. For average illegal network activities, the triple hop is sufficient, but these hackers would clearly not be content with something that has already been breached by law enforcement.

To understand it this way, the "entity" of the "Risk" community exists in many different servers, each piece being independent while simultaneously serving as backups for each other. No matter which part is destroyed, it can be backed up again, making it difficult to eradicate completely. The servers that host these "entities" could potentially be located in several completely different countries.

These "entities," or website source codes, may even continually move themselves into other servers.

The parts of all servers that are being used put together are the "complete virtual server" upon which this online community resides.

This community is like a large group of amoebas existing on the internet. It constantly shifts, splits, and transforms. These amoebas are also hiding in murky water, making it extremely challenging to detect them. And if any part of these amoebas is missed, they can regenerate.

To "destroy" this website itself is already a daunting task.

Each time Xiang Shan connects, it’s also hugely risky.

However, there’s one good thing on Xiang Shan’s side. They represent the joint forces of the most powerful political entity on this planet.

"The entrance and exit of the ’internet’ itself are managed by this federation or its member entities."

Based on these foundations, the cybersecurity personnel of the Rama Project could utilize resources unimaginable to ordinary Black Hats to disguise themselves.

In addition, they could mobilize massive resources to dig up every person connected to this website.

For instance, they could deploy some of their own servers, blend them with those servers that act as ’hop nodes,’ and then use DDOS attacks to knock down the majority of hop nodes not under their control. No matter how many botnets black hat groups control, they would not outnumber the resources these people possess.

Or for another example, they could use certain criminological or statistical skills to uncover the real-world identities of most hackers on this website. That is where their forceful agencies excel.

An individual country might face certain political restrictions when trying to take down a hacker stronghold.

But the federation behind the Rama Project has no such concerns.

Those amoebas hide in murky waters, but this forceful entity, in the worst-case scenario, could even evaporate the entire pond. This update is available on novelFirｅ.net

It’s just that the time for that has not come yet.

The hackers would never anticipate facing an assault of this caliber.

Soon, after a long discussion, the cybersecurity department still came up with some methods.

Of course, this was just an interlude.

Their current main task still revolves around finding the "point of information leakage."

They are searching for files that might be the virus within all equipment throughout the campus.

To this day, they still do not know how the virus got in.

The only certainty is that the "infection" happened within the campus.

"Zhu Rong" is not a hacker who likes to spread trojans widely. Intelligence shows that all his previous actions were targeted. He would attack those large technology companies, especially those attempting to construct some sort of technological barriers or hegemony. He would strive to dig out the unpublished technologies controlled by these enterprises.

At times, he would achieve this goal by hacking into the devices of researchers working at these companies. Nevertheless, his usual method is to tamper with the servers within these tech companies, and then through those servers, infect the personal devices of the researchers.

There are no records of ordinary people accidentally getting infected by viruses written by "Zhu Rong."

So the infection must have occurred during the interaction between some scholars and that translation software company.

Other technicians already posed as police officers and went to that enterprise—their police badges were absolutely real, and they even had backgrounds that couldn’t be more authentic.

But the biggest problem is that Ingrid was only nominally connected to that enterprise. She had not participated in the work of that company for the past year.

Ingrid’s devices could not have been the first to come into contact with the virus.

She got infected within the campus.

That is truly terrifying. No one knows when this electronic virus infection happened, nor how many have been affected. You would even find it challenging to determine how many devices contain this thing.

The entire campus might have been penetrated as thoroughly as a sieve.

If it were not for "Zhu Rong" unwittingly posting "Xiduo" online and by chance drawing the attention of the Rama Project’s cybersecurity personnel, he might have drained this place of information.

That’s also why the Federation was so eager to send over their top experts.

Nevertheless, the original cybersecurity department of the Rama Project wasn’t really just idling around. At the very least, they had erected high walls and physically isolated further information leakage.

Now, they are desperately searching for potential virus samples. They hope to do something before "Aqini" arrives to salvage their reputation.

But there still exists a gap in expertise.

On the morning of the third day, there was still no sign of resolution.

And a military vehicle had set off from the airport, heading towards the campus.

Xiang Shan along with several other responsible parties were waiting in the reception area.

Soon, a small squad of Federation soldiers appeared.

They saluted towards Xiang Shan’s group, "Gentlemen, ’the goods’ have arrived."