Afternoon.
Somewhere in the Internet Surveillance Bureau.
It was business as usual. Zhang Ye was reading the news online as Fan Yingyun played games and checked Weibo. The other bureau staff were busy with their own work.
Oh?
Those people were making noise again?
Zhang Ye suddenly noticed a news report regarding Lee Anson"s agency holding a media conference back in Korea. It appeared to have happened this morning, and the report Zhang Ye was reading had already been translated. In summary, it covered the unfair treatment Lee Anson had received during his time in China. After being beaten up at the Spring Festival Gala, the accused, Zhang Ye, was not charged under the law and had been released on the day itself. During his concert, the organizers had caused serious repercussions to him when their equipment malfunctioned. They even requested him to cough up compensation for some items that were damaged. Of course, all these incidents were picked on basis of their positive effects for Lee Anson. As for the negative news, like the female fan who had been pushed over, and other details, Lee Anson"s agency made no mention of them at all.
In the screenshot, there were also comments from the Korean citizens. It was followed up with some translations.
"Too despicable!"
"This bunch of Chinese are all sc.u.ms!"
"Anson-oppa! We will do something about it for you!"
"Seriously protesting!"
"We demand an explanation!"
The Korean people seemed to be very angered. Even if Lee Anson was not that popular in his own country, he still had some popularity. Besides, who didn"t have nationalistic thoughts? They would definitely defend their own kind. Thus, when Lee Anson"s agency issued this statement, the people were stirred. His company, team, the Korean citizens, and even their media outlets were all demanding for an explanation from the Chinese side!
But the Chinese people were even angrier than them!
"The Korean media wants to meddle in this as well?"
"F**k! They don"t know s.h.i.+t!"
"Just whose fault was this to begin with? Why didn"t you bring that up? Lee Anson and his team are a bunch of idiots? Reporting out of context?"
Zhang Ye browsed the internet and realized that a lot of of Koreans had flooded onto Weibo and various large Chinese forums. There were exchange students who scolded in Chinese and others who scolded in Korean!
"ㅅㅂ!"
"ㄱㅅㄲ! "ㅅㅂ!"
"Apologize to Lee Anson!"
He could not understand a lot of the gibberish posted, but he knew they couldn"t be anything good!
Zhang Ye was not too concerned either. He just browsed casually and that was it.
In the beginning, the matter wasn"t too much of an issue. It was just attracting people to join in a war of words. These kinds of incidents were common occurrences in the entertainment industry and many people did not take it too seriously too, but as time went by, the incident took a serious turn. It wasn"t known if it was due to the media exposure or other factors, but several celebrities, especially the famous ones from Lee Anson"s management company stepped forward to issue their statements, expressing their anger at the happenings to Lee Anson during his time in China! This time, it had stirred the hornet"s nest. These celebrities had fans that numbered in millions. With their lead, the fans also found out about the incident and were getting more and more angry! Suddenly, the unfair treatment of Korean celebrities in China spread further and further and even became headlines!
Fang Xiaoshui frowned, "There"s abnormal activity over here."
Meng Yi said, "I saw it too. A bunch of Korean IP addresses are being registered on our servers."
"It"s not just a bunch." A young cyber-policeman said warily, "The traffic is above usual limits by around 80 to 90 thousand. What is going on? Should we inform management?"
Meng Yi said, "It"s not a DDOS attack, so it shouldn"t be a problem, but let"s inform Director Dong first. With so many external IPs accessing, there"s definitely something going on."
The Internet Surveillance Bureau work was very complex as they encompa.s.sed a lot of responsibilities. They had to check sensitive information, filter network traffic, oversee the security of the network, and were responsible for network defense. There were many other departments as well, but as the First Department, they were responsible for more severe cases. You could compare them to serious crimes team of Internet Surveillance and had to crack cases like online scams, arresting of hackers, investigating viruses, and their authors. This was all part of their job. That was why abnormal traffic activity had nothing much to do with them, so they did not worry too much about it.
......
Korea.
On a window of an obscure internet communication software. A column of names were listed on the lower right corner. The list of names increased with time. 10, 20, 50.
"Is everyone here?" A person named JIN sent a message in Korean.
Ying: "A few are not here yet."
JIN: "We"re not waiting anymore. Let"s do it with all that are here."
59-V: "With such a turn out, it"s more than enough to deal with them."
A lot of the other partic.i.p.ants were laughing, "With G.o.d JIN leading us, do you think we won"t be able to destroy China? We"d definitely catch them unprepared! China does have a large population, but their computer and internet technical skills are not even in the top 5 of the world!"
JIN: "Don"t underestimate the enemy. Don"t forget that last year, an American security company"s computers were all left handicapped by an incident. I heard that it was the work of a Chinese hacker. That security company is so well known and had the best defense systems that would prove even difficult for me. The company even had a lot of skilled software engineers under them, yet they were attacked without even knowing. In the end, when they investigated, all they could find was an IP address that belonged to China. Nothing else was known. I will still say the same, don"t underestimate the enemy. Skilled hackers are everywhere."
Ying: "Meeting a pro? That"s sounds good to me."
59-V: "Yea, at most we"ll fight it out!"
If it was anyone who was from this industry or knew about it saw the chat, they would definitely draw a deep breath. Because this turn out was really quite a scary one!
JIN — A top hacker from Korea. Ranked 5th in his country. No one knew his ident.i.ty, but when one of his hacker friends was caught, the only thing revealed about JIN was that he was a man.
Ying — Hacker ranked 16th in Korea. The authorities suspected that he was involved in an online financial related crime and have been pursuing him.
59-V — There was no ranking available for this person on the Korean Hackers" list. He was a security consultant with an anti-virus software company. Even if he was a security consultant, that did not mean he couldn"t be a hacker. In this field, "defense" was considerably harder than "attack". Since he was a well known person in this field, his hacking skills wouldn"t be too shabby either. Of course, this wasn"t necessarily true since there were also some experts who specialized only in "defense". For unknown reasons, he had also joined in today"s matter.
The remaining names were also quite familiar to all.
Some were new hackers who had just surfaced, while some were well-known network experts and programmers. Some had also taken up new ident.i.ties online. As for who they might really be, no one knew for sure either.
After a moment of silence.
JIN: "I"ve already sent out the bait. Everyone get ready. Today"s mission is very simple. We will be demanding an explanation from the Chinese for the treatment of Lee Anson. Of course, our demands are done differently from others, so look for your own targets, carry out your own battles, conquer their systems, and make them admit defeat!"
59-V: "Remember to protect yourselves. Don"t let your IP be found by using more "zombies"!"
"Received!"
"Understood!"
"I can"t wait anymore!"
"Haha, watch me destroy this bunch of useless Chinese!"
The Korean hackers had already sharpened their tools, ready to attack China!
There were also some top hackers and security experts in Korea, or outside Korea who had received news of this attack. All of them were now focused on this matter between Korea and China.
A big battle was about to be triggered!