Who would still start a business seriously after being reborn?

Chapter 688 2345?

Samsung Express Service Center, Jingzhou City.

Wang Lei wiped the sweat from his forehead. He had just seen off an old man who complained that his computer was lagging like a slideshow.

He took a sip of the cold tea, looked at the mountain of XP Speed ​​Edition lag service requests in the system, and felt utterly overwhelmed.

These past few days have been absolutely infuriating.

Since Microsoft's XP Lite was heavily advertised, Samsung Express's business volume has indeed surged.

But instead of receiving many positive reviews, a series of troubles arose.

At first, only a few users complained that the new system didn't seem much faster, and Wang Lei and his colleagues could brush it off with platitudes like hardware bottlenecks on the old machines or conflicts with individual software.

But in the past week, the situation has taken a sharp turn for the worse.

The complaints came in like a snowball, with remarkably consistent symptoms: they had been infected with malicious plugins.

He was puzzled: where did all these malicious plugins come from?

"Master Wang, please take a look! I just installed this system, and I was drifting in KartRider when it froze like a slideshow. It's even worse than my old system!" At that moment, a middle school student in a school uniform rushed in, carrying a computer case and looking very anxious.

Wang Lei sighed and skillfully connected the cables to turn on the machine.

The system interface seemed to open smoothly, but as soon as he opened KartRider, after only two laps, the screen suddenly froze and the audio emitted a piercing, drawn-out sound.

"Look, look, it's happening again," a middle school student exclaimed, pointing at the screen.

"Young man, have you downloaded some random software again?" Wang Lei asked habitually.

"No, I just downloaded a drama-watching app to watch 'Bright Sword'." The middle school student's face was full of grievance.

"These are all malware programs. You need to download less stuff in the future." Wang Lei said with a look of utter despair as he skillfully uninstalled the drama-chasing app from the middle school student. "Try not to download things from those software download sites. Nowadays, the software on those sites is often maliciously bundled with other programs."

"What do you mean by malicious bundling?" The middle school student couldn't understand what Wang Lei was saying at all.

Wang Lei was too lazy to explain. He quickly helped the middle school student set up the computer, watched the student leave with the machine looking doubtful, and then sat back down in his chair, rubbing his temples wearily.

He had a vague feeling that an unseen hand was poisoning Microsoft's XP Lite version through these despicable malware programs...

Yanjing, the headquarters of Microsoft Asia Group.

President Waters was in a very bad mood; the latest market briefing made him want to kill someone.

[Moc-os Internet Cafe Edition Installations]: Up 18% week-on-week.

[Negative feedback rate from XP Speed ​​Edition users]: Up 350% week-on-week.

[Samsung Express Service Requests Related to Lag]: Exceeded 21% of total service requests.

Next to the briefing were several printed copies of popular forum posts and Toutiao (a Chinese news aggregator) reports, each with a more sensational headline than the last:
"XP Speed ​​Edition Becomes Extreme Card Edition? The Myth of Microsoft Optimization Shattered..."

It's time to say goodbye! A real-world test shows that installing the Momo OS internet cafe special edition on an old computer is twice as fast as XP.

User's tearful complaint: After Microsoft's update, my computer became a PowerPoint presentation.

Waters sat on the sofa, calmly looking at everyone present, and said, "Can anyone tell me what exactly happened? Why was our system ruined like this by a bunch of random junk software?"

In the conference room, the technical team and the head of the marketing department remained silent, trembling with fear.

The CTO, forcing a smile, said, "President, someone is deliberately spreading malware. Our system is open; users can download software freely..."

Waters sneered, "It must be Momo's people pulling the strings behind the scenes. It's not surprising that Cheng Yi would use such underhanded methods. What I'm concerned about now is why, after a week, you still haven't come up with a truly effective solution?"

The CTO quickly said, "We're working on this, but our system makes it not so easy to solve..."

“I hate hearing things like that,” Waters scoffed, turning to the marketing director and saying, “And you guys, why don’t I see any PR-related news?”

The marketing director said in a trembling voice, "President, the public opinion on the internet is too heated right now. If we respond now, it will only fuel the fire. The Chinese people are like this: once the commotion is over, they forget about it. Once they forget about it, the fire will die down."

"Nonsense!" Waters shouted in a deep voice, "Do you think this is just onlookers making a fuss? This is the users making a fuss! As long as this problem isn't solved, these users will keep making a fuss! Prepare a press release first, emphasizing that it's caused by users installing software from unknown sources, and has nothing to do with Microsoft's systems! Contact all our media partners and get public opinion back on track!"

“And you!” Waters stared at the technical director and said, “I don’t care what methods you use, give me a solution within a week.”

"Yes!"

At this moment, the atmosphere in Cheng Yi's office was completely different.

Cao Zheng was excitedly reporting the results: "Boss, the results are amazing! Now the internet is full of people criticizing Microsoft's system."

Cheng Yi sat on the sofa, quietly looking at the scrolling public opinion report on his laptop screen, his face revealing neither joy nor anger.

He knew that the current victory in public opinion was only temporary.

Waters is not a fool, and Microsoft's vast technological reserves and resources are not just for show.

The current chaos is only because the other side hasn't found the key to the problem yet. Once they calm down and organize an effective technical counterattack, the situation may quickly reverse.

He must make good use of this window of opportunity.

"Old Cao," Cheng Yi said, looking at Cao Zhengze, "The propaganda war can't stop. Continue to put pressure on Microsoft and Samsung, but we need to be careful not to leave any obvious weaknesses. Focus on highlighting their incompetence and shirking of responsibility." "Understood," Cao Zhengze nodded vigorously.

A few days later, in the president's office of Microsoft Asia Group, the technical director nervously reported: "President, we mobilized three core security teams and worked continuously for 72 hours to barely complete the reverse engineering of the behavior logic of these plugins."

The CTO's voice was hoarse with fatigue as he sighed, "However, their structure is extremely tricky, employing multi-layered nesting and dynamic decryption, and exploiting at least two known but unpatched system privilege vulnerabilities for deep infiltration."

The computer screen displayed some complex code analysis diagrams.

As the CTO pointed, he explained to Waters beside him, "The most troublesome thing is that they modify several key entries in the system registry and inject themselves into legitimate system processes. Ordinary users simply cannot completely remove them. Even if the main program is uninstalled, the residual modules will automatically revive like a virus the next time the computer boots up. This is the main reason why our regular tools fail."

Waters' face was grim, his fingers tapping unconsciously on the table as he said, "Just tell me, is the problem solved yet? Haven't we already deployed our specialized detection and removal tools?"

"The tool has been released, and it has indeed had some effect." The technical director frowned and said, "But the cleanup process itself is a burden on the user's system. Moreover, according to monitoring data, within 8 hours of our release, at least 7 anti-virus variants targeting our detection logic appeared on the Internet. However, we have contacted several antivirus companies, and they have agreed to let us quarantine and remove these software programs."

The marketing director added at the opportune moment: "Your technical department needs to step up its game. The pressure from public opinion is immense. Although we issued a statement pointing out that this is unfair competition, the impression that XP Speed ​​Edition gets slower with each update has already formed. Samsung Express has also reported that the pressure of on-site service has not eased at all; the only difference is that the complaints have changed from system crashes to system instability."

Waters slowly stood up, a ruthless glint in his eyes.

Momo Group's move is truly despicable. This is not a simple act of harassment, but a well-organized, sophisticated, and protracted war of attrition that anticipates Momo's counterattack.

The other party's goal is not to kill him off with those low-level plugins, but to gradually erode users' trust in XP Speed ​​Edition.

What upset Waters the most was that the other party was using a low-cost method to continuously deplete their valuable technological resources and brand reputation.

He turned around abruptly, staring sharply at the marketing director, and said in a deep voice, "We can't go on like this. If we're just going to play it safe, we'll always be one step behind. It's always easier to cause destruction than to build. We have to find the root cause, find the people who wrote this damn code, and make them pay the price."

He stared at the CTO and said, word by word, "Set up a special technical team, and you will be in charge of it. I don't care what methods you use, but dig deep into the style characteristics and behavior patterns of this code. There is no perfect crime in the world, and similarly, there is no code that leaves no trace. Find its traces for me."

In the following days, antivirus software companies such as Rising and Kaspersky issued announcements stating that, given the large number of computers recently plagued by malware, they had officially released new versions to combat malware.

As long as the user chooses to scan and remove the malware, they can eliminate these malicious programs with 100% success rate.

The problem is that many users need this software so much when installing these malicious programs that they end up turning off their antivirus software.

They believed that even if malicious software was installed and caused problems, they could simply reopen the antivirus software to scan and remove it.

What they didn't realize was that once malware was installed in the registry, it was beyond the detection and removal capabilities of antivirus software.

Even worse, these malicious programs can tamper with the registry of antivirus software, causing the antivirus software to identify them as safe software.

Even with antivirus software taking action, nearly half of the population still contracted the virus.

"Microsoft has been held back by us this time," Cheng Yi said with a smile as he operated his computer. "I reckon their technical team is working day and night to patch it up."

He tested the effectiveness of Rising Antivirus and said, "These antivirus software programs are really working hard; their detection and removal effects are quite good."

While creating the variant, Lin Qingyin said, "They're cracking down on these programs quite quickly now. Several software programs I've recently developed have already been rejected by them."

Cheng Yi nodded slowly and said, "It's time to unleash my ultimate technique."

"A finishing move?" Lin Qingyin looked up, a hint of surprise in her eyes as she looked at Cheng Yi.

“Based on the underlying mechanism of the WinXP system, especially the algorithm by which its update service handles historical patch dependencies, I redesigned the triggering logic.” Cheng Yi explained to Lin Qingyin as he spoke, “This software will only be activated when it detects a call from a specific digital signature from Microsoft and when the system is running under high load.”

"Once activated, it will install several software programs on the user's computer in a very short time."

Cheng Yi's technology originated from a very well-known program from his previous life.

2345 Family Bucket

No matter which software you download from 2345, once the program within that software is triggered, it will install several programs on the user's computer in a very short time. Most importantly, it is extremely stealthy, and antivirus software cannot do anything about it. The only solution is to reinstall the system.

Lin Qingyin stood behind Cheng Yi, staring at the dense assembly code on the screen.

Her delicate brows furrowed slightly as she asked, "How does it work?"

Cheng Yi said, "This is a very streamlined monitoring thread that is deeply hibernating in the system kernel layer. It is only activated when it detects that the system is running Microsoft's Windows Defender specific feature library or downloading system patches from Windows Update."

Lin Qingyin asked curiously, "Is activation just downloading software? If that's all, you don't need to write such complicated code, especially the part about accessing memory."

"Of course it's not just about downloading software." Cheng Yi laughed. "After activation, it will simulate an extreme memory addressing conflict, occupying a large amount of L2 cache, causing the CPU execution efficiency to drop sharply. Especially when running software that requires real-time rendering, such as KartRider, the frame rate will drop precipitously. Moreover, I have also designed it to automatically clear all traces 37 seconds after the conflict occurs and enter hibernation again."

"In this way, it is almost impossible for conventional security scans and log analysis to detect it. It is like a big bug that occasionally appears in the system itself."

"Isn't this a bit too much..." Lin Qingyin felt slightly uneasy.

She doesn't really like this behavior.

Cheng Yi looked at the struggle in her eyes and said very seriously, "Qingyin, this is not a dinner party. Microsoft and Samsung want to strangle us by raising hardware prices and monopolizing distribution channels. They are using an open strategy. We are not as strong as them, so we can only use some extraordinary means. This is not called sabotage, this is called strategic deception. Only when they are in chaos will we have a chance to attack."

Just as Cheng Yi was comforting Lin Qingyin, a top security expert from Microsoft headquarters stepped off the plane's gangway at Yanjing Airport.

He wore gold-rimmed glasses and carried a laptop. He looked somewhat dull, but you could tell from the crowd welcoming him just how high his status was.

Because Microsoft Asia Group President Waters personally led a team to welcome them at the airport.

(End of this chapter)