Hong Kong Storm: The King of Jobs

Chapter 697, Section 287: Early Hackers

"Ding dong."

Meifeng was about to speak, but was interrupted by the doorbell. She hated it when people mentioned eating salted abalone.

But seeing how sweet they were together, I decided not to punish this little cutie!

Mei Feng pinched A-Zai's arm, got out of bed, grabbed Bai Fengxian's ID card, and staggered into the bathroom.

Less than half a minute later, she came out of the bathroom, but now she was wearing a bathrobe, and she walked lazily to the door.

The door opened, and a woman in a hoodie stood outside, coldly looking at Meifeng.

"You only have three hours to get it done."

Seeing the sour face in front of her, Mei Feng's mood immediately soured, and she threw the ID card in her hand at the woman in the hoodie.

The suite door closed, the ID card fell to the ground, the woman in the hoodie bent down to pick it up, put it in her pocket, and walked into the fire escape staircase.

I walked down the fire escape stairs to the underground parking garage and exited through the underground parking garage exit.

In the early hours of the morning, the lights in Tsim Sha Tsui were still shining. At the parking lot of Sun Kee, the parking attendants were yawning, smoking and chatting.

The woman in the hoodie walked on the sidewalk, through the desolate yet bustling main street, and turned into a small alley.

Wastewater from food stalls drained into the alley, and three red bricks served as the only passageway.

The woman in the hoodie stepped on the bricks, crossed this man-made obstacle, and walked into the deepest part of the alley.

At the deepest part of the alley, there is a shoe repair shop with kerosene lamps that weren't very popular even forty years ago.

The woman in the hoodie pushed open the door of the shoe repair shop and went inside. The green-rusted brass bell hanging at the door emitted a jarring warning sound.

Dad, I'm home!

The woman in the hoodie walked up to an elderly man with gray hair and made a few gestures in sign language.

Because of the large range of motion, the hearing aid in my ear became loose and was about to fall off.

The woman in the hoodie quickly reached out, put her hearing aid back on, and looked at the old man.

"The sparrows in Tsim Sha Tsui are getting worse and worse."

"Once I get an order, I'll get to work. I've made some pig's blood porridge, and it'll be ready to drink after that."

The old man sighed and then continued mending the high heels in his hands.

The woman in the hoodie nodded, walked to the wall, pushed hard, and the hidden door in the wall opened. She went inside.

Behind the wall is a small studio, only about 20 square meters in size.

Near the window, there was a bed, and on the bed was a pink panther.

This is the hoodie-wearing woman's work and rest area.

An enormous workbench occupies most of the room, with a Cromemco computer on it, running a Unix-style operating system.

The woman in the hoodie sat down in the chair, turned on the monitor, and waited for it to light up.

The monitor turned on, displaying the Unix operating system. She inserted the ID card into the dedicated card reader and began reading the information from the ID card.

However, after about ten seconds, the monitor displayed a message indicating that the read had failed.

The woman in the hoodie showed no expression on her face. She began typing on the keyboard, opening the cracking software she had written and entering the command code.

ID cards are not yet widely used in Hong Kong; they are only used by police stations. The security system was developed by a software company in Hong Kong.

The vulnerability is numerous and easily exploitable. Simply add code to the security software to create a backdoor, gain root privileges, and you can read messages.

After entering the code, the woman in the hoodie opened the drawer, took out a small chip, and a plastic card similar to the ID card in the card reader.

Ten seconds after the code was generated, a success page appeared, and the indicator light on the card reader changed from red to green.

The woman in the hoodie found an empty floppy disk, inserted it into the computer, and copied all the data from the card reader onto the floppy disk.

The data transfer was very slow, so she picked up her camera, turned on the light, and took a picture of Bai Fengxian on the ID card.

The darkroom was right next door. The woman in the hoodie went in with a camera and a brand-new blank ID card, started developing photos, and placed them in the blank space on the ID card.

The photos are a bit blurry, but there's nothing I can do about it. After all, they're secondhand, and the high-definition military cameras I could get my hands on could only produce this much.

The woman in the hoodie carefully placed the ID card with her photo on a nearby platform and dried it with a hairdryer.

This was just the first step. The woman in the hoodie turned on the tap, clipped the ID card in place, rinsed it several times with water, and then blew it vigorously with a hairdryer.

After doing this three or four times, she finally turned off the tap and left the darkroom with her ID card.

The data had been output to the floppy disk. The woman in the hoodie took out the original ID card and carefully placed the magnetic stripe chip into the card reader.

Only after checking the location and ensuring everything is in order do you begin copying and transferring the floppy disk.

Hundreds of kilobytes of code data are transmitted into the magnetic card chip.

The woman in the hoodie sat in her boss's chair, picked up a bouncy ball, threw it at the opposite wall, and then quickly caught it, repeating this over and over again.

After going back and forth like this for more than thirty times, the data transmission was finally completed.

The chip was carefully removed, and the woman in the hoodie found some industrial glue, took the new ID card in front of her, and injected the glue into the recessed compartment.

Before the glue hardened, she quickly pressed the magnetic card chip into the slot, and then used a blade to scrape off the glue.

After standing for one minute, the glue has completely solidified.

The woman in the hoodie pressed it down with her hand and found that it was firmly stuck on. She then found a piece of coarse sandpaper and began to sand the edges.

She sanded the glue off completely, leaving none, then threw the finished ID card into the sand pile, turned on the switch, and made the sand spin.

This is to make it look old; if an ID card looks too new, anyone with a discerning eye can tell there's something wrong with it.

The new ID card spun in the sand for half a minute before the woman in the hoodie turned off the machine. She only took the ID card out after the sand had completely stopped spinning.

The surface is a bit yellowed and has a lot of scratches, just like an ID card that has been used for a year or two.

The woman in the hoodie inserted the ID card into the card reader, read the information inside, and found it to be exactly the same as the original copy, with no problems whatsoever.

She pulled out the ID card, opened the drawer, took out a slightly yellowed card holder, and put the ID card inside.

Everything is OK!

The woman in the hoodie yawned and looked at the clock on the wall.

Only one hour and forty-five minutes had passed, fifteen minutes faster than before.

Mei-feng, that shrew, will take three hours to deal with. Only half of it has passed. I'll take a nap first.

The woman in the hoodie set her alarm, then lay down on the bed, hugging the pink panther, which was also starting to bald, and closed her eyes.

But she hadn't slept for an hour when her father came in with a bowl of pig's blood porridge, offering it to her as a late-night snack.

The woman in the hoodie reluctantly got up, finished her pig's blood porridge, and seeing that it was almost time, threw the two ID cards into an empty cardboard box and delivered it to Meifeng.

(End of this chapter)