179 The Battle of Interne (1/2)

Xiao Luo took two eggs out of the fridge and fried them on a skillet. And breakfast was made.

He knew he couldn't deal with the Dragon Gang all by himself. He had to get help from somewhere.

The most potent and capable force in the Hua Nation was the government. That would mean leveraging on the government's resources was the most effective and straightforward way to combat and suppress underworld organizations like the Dragon Gang. Xiao Luo immediately browsed the official websites of police stations in every district in Jiangcheng. To his pleasant surprise, a small police substation in the Guangming District happened to be recruiting auxiliary police officers.

Age, education, background... Xiao Luo met all the requirements from the job description. He submitted his resume immediately and was ready to take on a new role.

After submitting his resume, Xiao Luo suddenly detected anomalies with certain activities on the internet. He launched his tor browser, typed in a series of codes, and entered the dark web. He stiffened when he realized the internet gateway and all major networks of Hua Nation were being subject to massive cyberattacks from several foreign hackers.

At the headquarters of the National Security Agency of Hua Nation, everyone was strenuously typing on their keyboards with unprecedented urgency. The clamor of hurried voices echoed across the large room incessantly. Everybody in the room was on edge.

”The southern internet battlefront is in a critical condition. Request for reinforcement.” A distressed voice screamed out a cryptic warning.

This was a smokeless and borderless war. And the Hua Nation never lacked in enemies. The opposing states wouldn't dare to provoke Hua Nation in the open. Nonetheless, they had been building an army of black hat hackers to sabotage and attack the Hua Nation. With the pervasive adoption of the internet, the inherent risks of cyberattacks were always a thing waiting to happen. As soon as hostiles breached the network center and its gateways, the banking, transportation, national security, and all other infrastructure systems of Hua Nation would be compromised.

This would lead to a breakdown. The country could not run, its security would be compromised, ultimately leading to complete chaos. It was not hard to imagine: bank accounts suddenly being depleted, traffic lights switched randomly, and worst of all, unauthorized launching of missiles. The impact was devastating.

The unsuspecting population would continue with their daily lives, working hard for their tomorrows and persevering for their dreams, not realizing that a grave threat was looming...

The executives of the NSA looked overwhelmed and were breaking out in a cold sweat. They were swamped and reeling from the offensive.

All of a sudden, an excited shout pierced the air, ”BaiLing's showed up!”

BaiLing?

On hearing that name, the head of NSA breathed a sigh of relief and was almost excited to tears. Who was BaiLing? No one knew, and the NSA only assigned a gender by virtue of name. She was a white hat hacker that went by the handle BaiLing. She surfaced unexpectedly three years ago and helped NSA fend off an attack by a foreign entity. For the past three years, whenever hostile powers from overseas launched attacks on Hua Nation, BaiLing had always shown up at the eleventh hour and beat them off. BaiLing was hailed as the protector of Hua Nation.

BaiLing's arrival signified doomsday for the attackers. This put the entire NSA back in an exalted mood.

...

...

Jiangcheng, Huaye University.

Bai Ling sat in the study room in the library. Her fingers were clicking away on the keyboards of the laptop in front of her. The corners of her lips lifted into a playful smile, a mischievous girl discovering something funny and exciting.

Her white fingers were like ”little dragons dancing and serpents slithering. Sometimes they moved with overwhelming speed of a fierce tiger dashed down from the top of the mountain, yet sometimes they sauntered, meandering in a tranquil garden.”

She had accessed the NSA, and their firewalls were quickly reconfigured to block the intrusions. Traffic was rerouted away from key nodes, malware identified and isolated, and this continued in a constant ”cat-and-mouse” as she tried to stay a step ahead of the attackers.

”Bai Ling, what are you doing?”

Chu Yue took a peek. She craned her head over in curiosity, and all she saw was a screen full of codes, looking like DOS commands in the first few seconds when a computer boots up. As she kept typing, lines upon lines of codes filled her screen, as if being printed out by a printer.