Shockingly, a counterfeit factory has produced a 3-nanometer chip.

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

"Those top hackers are locked up in federal prisons."

You've probably heard of lizards and ghosts.

They've actually been working for us all along.

Thompson's heart skipped a beat; those people were legendary figures in the American hacker community.

For his various acts, such as infiltrating the Pentagon and creating a worm virus that spread globally, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

I thought I'd be locked up in the most heavily guarded federal prison, but... I was eventually recruited.

"The president's intention is to hand these people over to you so that they can continue to atone for their crimes through meritorious service."

"Your Silver Lake Capital will lead the formation of a network development team specifically to develop viruses targeting Transsion's Taishan system, breach their core servers, steal core data, and ideally, completely crash the Taishan system."

This setup surprised Thompson greatly; he hadn't expected them to go this far so ruthlessly!

But this result seems quite promising!

"Go ahead and do your work with confidence. America will not let down any meritorious person."

This operation will be fully funded by the Hawkeye Alliance; you won't have to pay a single penny.

Furthermore, once the deal is done, the government will provide your investment project with a green channel for policy support.

Under this temptation, Thompson agreed almost without hesitation.

After all, Silver Lake Capital itself is an important part of the Hawkeye Alliance.

However, their previous actions were a bit... a bit too poor.

So far, we've only bought some nails in China, but that's far from enough.

With Obama's support and top hackers involved, this is a golden opportunity.

"No problem, sir. Give me three days, and the team can finish it."

I will turn the Taishan system of telepathy into a sieve riddled with holes within three days.

…………

The following afternoon, a black van without license plates drove from the white house, carrying three top hackers, straight to a secret data center on the outskirts of Silicon Valley.

These three are "Lizard," who specializes in exploiting system vulnerabilities; "Ghost," who is skilled at writing viruses; and "Shadow," who is responsible for network concealment and tracing countermeasures.

The lizard with the goatee looked at the rows of top-of-the-line servers and other high-end equipment in the server room and longed to make a big splash.

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

"Our goal is to acquire Transsion Holdings, so I have already prepared a top-notch team for you."

After he finished speaking, he clapped his hands, and instantly a top-notch hacker team of 30 people entered.

Looking at these people, Ghost whistled.

If he wasn't mistaken, many of these people were his former defeated opponents.

After all, they weren't as daring as him!

"Gentlemen, you will assign tasks to these people. Other groups will be assisting you in your operations. This time, we have assembled more than 1000 people for this siege."

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

First, develop a virus specifically designed for the Taishan system that can bypass their firewall, steal user data, and damage the system's underlying infrastructure...

Most importantly, it can spread covertly!

The second strategy is to concentrate firepower on Transsion's global core servers and obtain their core technical data.

Especially those patents with a high level of confidentiality!

Thirdly, we must make sure our backsides are clean and we can't let Chuanyin find any fault with us.

After all, this is a cyber war. If Transsion gets hold of something, China will definitely retaliate accordingly.

"After it's done, everyone will share the huge reward of 300 million US dollars, and the president will grant you special pardons for any of your minor issues."

The eyes of the more than 30 people who had just arrived lit up.

The lure of huge bonuses and freedom can indeed drive them to work desperately.

After all, he's a hacker, so how could he not carry a few wanted posters with him?

"The Taishan System? That system developed independently by China?"

"This seems familiar. I think I tried to breach their servers before, but their security was quite tight, and they even issued a warrant for my arrest!"

"The protection is very tight. I have studied their open-source community version. The underlying architecture is different from Android and Windows. The encryption logic is very tricky and difficult to deal with."

"That's precisely why we brought in top-tier hackers like you."

Seeing that they were all discussing it, Thompson tapped the table.

"In addition to you hackers, we have also provided you with 20 senior security engineers."

Note that this action concerns the fate of the United States.

Therefore, Silver Lake Capital will provide you with all available resources, and we will also provide you with a batch of test machines equipped with the Taishan system, as well as underlying code snippets obtained from various channels.

Remember, everyone, you only have one week!

If the results are good, the bonus will double.

With immense pressure and a hefty reward, the entire hacker team sprang into action.

Of course, the main force of the operation was still the same three people, each leading a small team to begin the operation.

One group finds vulnerabilities, another group writes viruses based on those vulnerabilities, and the last group sets up multiple network jump servers to clean up attack traces.

…………

In just seven days, they managed to uncover three previously undisclosed underlying vulnerabilities from the open-source branch of the Taishan system.

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

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

What's remarkable about this virus is that it can spread through multiple channels such as email, third-party applications, and web links. Once it infiltrates a device, it lies dormant and stealthily steals user data.

At the same time, it can remotely receive commands, directly format the hard drive and destroy the system's underlying layer. More importantly, it can bypass all the security protections of the current version of the TaiShan system and is almost impossible to detect!

On the very day the virus was successfully developed, Thompson ordered a full-scale attack.

This time it's a direct online war, a battle with no cards to play.

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

A massive influx of junk data was sent directly in, attempting to overwhelm the server.

Another approach is to release the virus, led by Ghost, through pre-installed channels, spreading the Darkthorn virus in networks across multiple countries in Europe and Southeast Asia.

It specifically targets mobile phones, tablets, and enterprise terminals that use the TaiShan system.

The attack was very effective in the first hour after it was launched.

More than 1000 small and medium-sized enterprises in China have experienced malfunctions in their Taishan office system terminals.

The device experiences various lags, file loss, and even blue screen crashes.

"What's wrong with the TaiShan system? Has it been attacked? We were working perfectly fine... and then it just crashed with a blue screen!"