346 Cyber Battle (1/2)

It was only moments before the challenge got underway in the cavernous hall of Computing and IT Department, and more than a hundred grim faces were positioned in front of their computer stations. Some of the engineers were running through algorithms in their heads, while others had their eyes on Xiao Luo—who was calmly standing in front of his station without a care in the world. It was a battle for honor, no less, and success would redeem the engineers' reputation and proved that Xiao Luo was not the hacker, Mie, as claimed. The atmosphere was getting intense… even the directors and Ji Siying felt suffocated.

”You may begin!”

With that, Gu Zhanguo got the challenge underway.

The ambiance was immediately transformed as the hurried sound of hundreds of personnel scrambling into their seats resounded across the hall, quickly followed by the incessant clatter of keyboards.

Ji Siying had never interacted with the IT personnel before today, and while she had absolutely no familiarity with programming, she was impressed by what she saw. These engineers seemed to be working by rote, hitting the keys on their boards with speed and precision. They appeared very focused, and it was evident that they knew exactly what they had in mind, as lines of codes appeared on the blue screen at an incredible speed. Ji Siying estimated that a string of codes would be written every two seconds.

She simply could not believe the speed with which these engineers were churning out such a volume of codes, and began to wonder if they had mechanically-enhanced hands.

In her mind, Ji Siying saw the use of mechanical hands as the only logical explanation for typing with such precision and speed!

When she turned to see how Xiao Luo was doing, she found that he had only just begun taking his seat and appeared to have no urgency whatsoever. But in the next second, as Xiao Luo placed his hands on the keyboard, Ji Siying's eyes widened in astonishment, for Xiao Luo was furiously striking the keys with the nimbleness of a pianist as he typed the codes at speeds much faster than the IT engineers. Some lines of codes were keyed in at the rate of two lines a second, while others were even quicker at four or five lines a second.

Gu Zhan Guo and Dongfang Shuoyu were equally shocked at Xiao Luo's speed, but it did not surprise them that a top-notched hacker like him could achieve this.

Building a 64-bit attack and defense program…

Xiao Luo mused, and what he had in mind was a radical concept—a program that mirrored intrusive malware by rewriting its code and redirecting the virus to its source, thereby instantly changing defense into offense. He was now entirely focused on finishing up the codes for the program.

The participants were given only five minutes to prepare themselves, and once that time passed, the real showdown would begin. A cyber battle was tactically different from an actual fight in that as long as a single virus struck successfully, the opponent's computer would be compromised, and the other party would immediately be defeated. Therefore, defensive systems were set up to deal with attacks, such as intrusion detection, active defense, and even access authentication requiring random key reconciliation.

As the team leader, Zhou Yuhang had his own set of core skills. He set up a ”honeycomb system,” which lured intruders to unknowingly step into his ambush. Once detected, he only needed to click a function key to immediately ”kill” the attack launched by Xiao Luo. After completing the setup, he gave the other three team leaders a glance and made an 'OK' sign to signal that he was done. Now all they had to do was wait for the prey to fall into their trap.

The sullen faces of the team leaders finally showed some vigor, and they gazed toward Xiao Luo with expressions that could best be described as nasty and devious, somewhat like the look on the face of a molester just before ravishing a victim...

”Time's up!”

Gu Zhanguo shouted into the microphone the moment his stopwatch sounded.

”Attack!”

All four of the team leaders roared in unison, and their respective teams rallied to them, sending their attacks through cyberspace—they resembled a group of warriors with spears and swords, screaming and charging towards Xiao Luo.

The corners of Xiao Luo's mouth lifted into a smile. Against such an attack comprising of numerous hackers, he seemed to be like the Great Sage in the classic novel, Journey to the West, using monkey's hair to create countless friendly troops to defend himself. In this case, his friendly forces were, of course, viruses—he immediately hit the Enter key, and numerous viruses surged from his computer into cyberspace to swarm the IT engineers' machines. Xiao Luo's viruses almost seemed to be emitting a demonic screech as they raced toward their quarries.

Before long, both sides were battling it out on the server, as for this smokeless war, the server was the forward edge of battle!

”A piece of cake!”

Zhou Yuhang and the other three team leaders sneered contemptuously as their fingers continually tapped across the keyboard, and an antivirus program was activated in a few seconds. One could picture virus-swallowing behemoths in the virtual space of the network, gobbling up any virus within range, and then assimilating them, and just like the ”event horizon” of a black hole, there was no escape.