Who would still start a business seriously after being reborn?

Chapter 702 The Godfather Struggle
"Ten...ten million?" Pang Dongzi gasped, the color draining from his face instantly.

His current monthly active users on 2345 Navigation are at most two to three million. To increase them four to five times in two months? That's simply a fantasy!

This impossible task almost made him lose his composure on the spot.

Seeing Pang Dongzi's face turn deathly pale, Cheng Yi couldn't help but feel a wicked sense of amusement. He looked at Pang Dongzi and said, "You should know that the strong never complain about their circumstances."

This phrase was Pang Dongzi's catchphrase in his previous life, because this guy always gave out impossible tasks. Whenever Cheng Yi and the others went to argue with Pang Dongzi, they always got this phrase.

The strong never complain about the environment.

Cheng Yi and the others were so frustrated that they wanted to strip Pang Dongzi naked and throw him onto Mount Everest. Since strong people never complain about their environment, he should be able to run naked down Mount Everest, right?
"What? Mr. Pang thinks you can't do it?" Cheng Yi's voice carried a hint of pressure as he said, "If you can't even complete this challenge, then I find it hard to believe that you have the ability to operate a social platform targeting Asia."

Pang Dongzi's heart pounded, and his brain raced.

Ten million monthly active users is virtually impossible through normal means...

However, he does indeed still possess a powerful weapon that he has not dared to use easily, or rather, lacks sufficient resources and courage to fully promote.

A highly efficient, but also gray-area, software bundling and traffic hijacking solution.

The grand vision of 51com's revival and even expansion into Asia was so compelling that it instantly overwhelmed the fear of difficulty and the worry about risk.

He gritted his teeth and said, "I can do it, President Cheng, please rest assured, two months, ten million monthly active users! Even if I don't eat or drink, I will definitely achieve this goal for you!"

His voice became hoarse with excitement.

Seeing his reckless attitude, Cheng Yi knew that the time was almost right.

He slowly stood up, walked to Pang Dongzi, and looked down at him.

Pang Dongzi subconsciously wanted to stand up, but Cheng Yi gently pressed him back down with a gesture.

"President Pang, remember this." Cheng Yi's voice was not loud, but it carried a cold chill as he said, "If you succeed, the investment and resources of Momo Group will transform you and your company. If you fail, just pretend you were never here today, as if we never met."

He leaned forward slightly, his eyes full of warning: "If you can't control your mouth and leak even a single word about what happened today or any subsequent operations..."

Cheng Yi didn't finish his sentence, but the undisguised threat in his eyes terrified Pang Dongzi.

He had no doubt that with Momo Group's current influence in the Chinese internet industry and Cheng Yi's rumored ruthless methods, they were absolutely capable of making him and his company disappear completely.

Pang Dongzi quickly waved his hand and said, "I wouldn't dare, President Cheng, I absolutely wouldn't dare. I swear to God, whatever you said today, once it came out of your mouth and into my ears, will never be known by a third person. If even a single word is leaked, I... I will die a horrible death!"

Looking at his boss, who had been so confident and high-spirited in his past life, now so fearful and trembling as he swore an oath of loyalty, Cheng Yi felt something was off.

This was the first time he had ever seen his boss be so well-behaved.

He gently patted Pang Dongzi's shoulder, a gesture meant to comfort him, but it made Pang Dongzi tremble violently.

"Very good." Cheng Yi withdrew his hand, his face returning to its previous calm, and said, "Then I look forward to your good news."

After leaving the Momo Technology Industrial Park and getting back into his Buick sedan, Pang Dongzi realized that his back was completely soaked with cold sweat.

His hands, gripping the steering wheel, were still trembling slightly, a mixture of relief at surviving the ordeal and excitement from the immense opportunity.

"Two months...ten million..." he muttered to himself, a mad flame gradually burning in his eyes.

He knew this was the most important opportunity of his life, and perhaps the only one.

Although Cheng Yi gave him a seemingly impossible path to heaven, he had to climb it.

Back at Zhonghai's company, Pang Dongzi immediately locked himself in his office and summoned his most core and trusted technical staff and marketing manager.

"Brothers, our chance to turn things around has come!" Pang Dongzi's eyes were bloodshot, but his tone was unusually excited as he shouted, "We're going to fight a tough battle in the next two months. Everyone, cancel all vacations and work overtime!"

"Huh?" The core members were all a little confused.

what's wrong?

Why did the boss get so hyped up after just one trip out?
Pang Dongzi couldn't explain why to these people.

He didn't need to explain, because he was the boss.

When he worked at Alibaba, he had to explain things to his superiors. Now that he's his own boss, if he still has to explain things to his employees, then what kind of boss is he?
He quickly laid out a plan he had prepared six months earlier, a comprehensive promotional scheme that combined software bundling, silent browser locking, homepage hijacking, and even exploiting system vulnerabilities for persistent persistence.

This plan is extremely radical, and can even be described as dancing on the edge of the law. Once it is fully launched, it will inevitably cause a huge uproar in the industry and will inevitably attract fierce attacks from security software, especially Kaspersky and 360.

"Boss, isn't this...isn't this too much of a commotion?" Several key members were stunned after reading the plan.

That's a bit too radical.

"We can't worry about that anymore." Pang Dongzi waved his hand abruptly, his face filled with a desperate look. He said, "We must get the traffic of 2345 up as quickly as possible. As for Zhou Hongyi and her people, they can either use their skills to hold me back or send someone to kill me, as long as I have a breath left..."

When Pang Dongzi got into the swing of things, he launched into a long, inspirational speech that made the twenty-odd key members in front of him a little hungry.

Finally, a ruthless glint flashed in his eyes as he said, "Use all the techniques we've researched to bypass security software monitoring. The variants must be quick, the deployment must be precise, and the channels must be wide. Offline computer malls, software download sites... everywhere you can think of, spread them out and make them explode!"

Driven by Pang Dongzi's ruthless and all-out efforts, an extremely rapid battle for traffic was launched.

A few days later, the undercurrents on the internet began to surge.

Many users have found that after installing some seemingly ordinary software, their browser homepage is inexplicably locked to 2345 Navigation and is extremely difficult to change.

The built-in bundling of some shareware and cracking tools has become more covert and persistent.

Even software installation packages downloaded from certain channels may contain 2345's promotional modules.

To recoup their promotion costs, they also bundled many competitor software programs, such as eMule, FlashGet, Video Player, and Kuaibo...

As long as they successfully access users' computers, they will definitely not let their brothers down and will ensure that everyone benefits.

First, they bundle a whole suite of software: Lu Jin's Windows Optimization Master, ER's WinRAR, Ziguang's Ziguang Pinyin, Cai Xuan's Super Rabbit, Zhongda's Tianwang Firewall, Jinshan's Shuangba - Kingsoft Antivirus and Kingsoft Dictionary... They bundle whichever software offers the highest data usage fee.

In order to maximize traffic, they adopted a more brutal approach.

First, they created a pirated Windows XP fast green system and uploaded it to Tomato Home. Then, they implanted 2345 Navigation into the system. As long as these systems are installed, their 2345 will be forcibly implanted into the user's computer, and the user will be forced to jump to the navigation page as soon as they turn on the computer.

In addition, they heavily promoted their 2345 suite of plugins by paying a commission of 1.5 yuan for each software installed through their network of 800 million computer repair technicians nationwide.

Soon, 2345 Navigation's traffic began to surge at a visible rate, and the data curve rose rapidly.

Meanwhile, in Jingzhou, Cheng Yi sat in his office, listening to Li Weiwei's report.

"Mr. Cheng, according to monitoring, 2345's traffic growth is unusually rapid and its methods are very aggressive. Many users have already given feedback and small security forums have begun to complain. It is expected to attract the attention of Kaspersky and 360 soon."

Cheng Yi stared at the rapidly rising growth curve of 2345 on the screen, his face expressionless. All of this was exactly what he had expected.

2345 has been able to thrive despite over a decade of suppression from 360, thanks to its genuine capabilities.

The title "Takuya Ito of the bondage world" is no joke.

"Okay, I understand." He replied casually, "Try to subtly reveal the Kaspersky 360 defense mechanism that Lin Qingyin's team has researched to Pang Dongzi's team, and quietly give them a boost."

"Yes!"

Meanwhile, in Yanjing, Zhou Hongyi quickly noticed this unusual new wave of rogue software from the background data and user feedback of 360 Security Guard.

The sophistication and stubbornness of these rogue software techniques are comparable to those of his 3721.

This is different from the style of those previous rogue software programs.

The former is slightly conservative, while the latter is more unrestrained.

It feels like...

It's like he's rushing to be reborn.

“That’s interesting…” Zhou Hongyi stared at the report, adjusted her glasses, and said, “Besides Cheng Yi, there are actually people going against the grain? They’re not taking Kaspersky 360 seriously.”

On the large screen, a densely packed stream of user-reported malware data and background interception logs scrolled by.

Zhou Hongyi stood in front of the screen with her arms crossed, her eyes behind her glasses gleaming with shrewdness.

“Boss, according to the analysis, the source of this new traffic is highly concentrated.” A technical lead pointed to several data nodes marked in red on the screen and said, “The method is very sophisticated. It’s no longer a simple pop-up or silent installation, but uses a variety of combined methods, mostly system-level bundling and exploitation of pirated system images.”

Another employee in charge of public opinion monitoring added: "User feedback is also very strong, mainly focusing on the homepage being forcibly locked to 2345, as well as a large number of other software installed along with it, forming a whole suite of installation packages, which are extremely difficult to uninstall. Even after using our dedicated removal tool to clean it up, it will automatically recover after a period of time, which is suspected to be a daemon process or a system vulnerability that is used to persist.

“2345…” Zhou Hongyi muttered the name, frowning as she said, “I knew this style had a familiar thuggish vibe. It turns out that Pan Dongzi couldn’t hold back and started causing trouble again. Is he desperate for money? Or has he found some powerful backer who dares to play this game with us?”

"Clean up a bunch of them first, teach them a lesson." Zhou Hongyi gave the order, and the entire Kaspersky 360 technical department sprang into action.

Zhou Hongyi personally oversaw the technical department, watching the engineers reverse-engineer the 2345 sample to find its core logic and hidden methods.

"Boss, they used driver-level hiding this time, and the signature is changing frequently, which is a bit troublesome," an engineer reported.

“Troublesome?” Zhou Hongyi raised an eyebrow and said, “Then we’ll bypass the signature verification and directly target the behavior. If it dares to modify critical system settings, inject into other processes, or secretly download from the internet in the background, we’ll beat it to a pulp. Better to kill the innocent than let the guilty go free.”

Zhou Hongyi's inherent fighting spirit and unwillingness to admit defeat were fully unleashed.

Comparing bundled services? Comparing plugins?
Isn't this like provoking the wrath of the gods?
Soon after, 360 Security Guard and Kaspersky Firewall pushed out emergency updates.

Warnings began popping up on many users' computers, indicating that 2345 series malware had been detected and offering a one-click cleanup option.

Inside China Overseas 2345 Company, the atmosphere shifted from initial excitement to a somewhat somber one.

"Boss, 360 reacted too quickly. The survival time of our new variant has been greatly shortened, and it was blocked as soon as it was launched on many channels." The promotion manager reported anxiously to Pang Dongzi.

The technical lead also said with a grim expression, "Their offensive was too ruthless. They cracked several of our core hiding and resurrection mechanisms. The feedback from our offline channels is that it's very difficult to reinstall our software on computers with Kaspersky and 360 installed."

Pang Dongzi stared at the traffic data in the background, which showed a significant slowdown in growth and even started to fluctuate slightly, his face becoming somewhat gloomy.

Two months, ten million!

With the targets set by Cheng Yi in front of him, he couldn't afford to fail.

"What's the panic?" Pang Dongzi forced himself to remain calm and scolded, "Zhou Hongyi isn't a three-headed, six-armed man! If he can update, why can't we?"

Just then, the technical lead's computer received an encrypted email from an anonymous sender.

He clicked on it with a puzzled look. Inside was a technical document titled "A Discussion on Some Logical Defects and Avoidance Solutions in Kaspersky 360's Proactive Defense Engine".

The technical lead quickly glanced through it, his eyes widening instantly. He exclaimed, "Boss, come and look at this!"

Pang Dongzi leaned closer to take a look, and his heart skipped a beat.

The document provides a detailed analysis of several areas where the Kaspersky 360 behavior monitoring engine's judgment logic is not rigorous enough, and even provides some theoretically feasible code ideas and obfuscation methods to bypass the monitoring.

"Who...who sent this?" Pang Dongzi was both surprised and delighted.

“I don’t know, it’s an anonymous email from Europe. But the content looks very professional, it doesn’t seem fake.” The technical lead said excitedly, “If we modify our code according to this approach, it might effectively extend our lifespan.”

The image of Cheng Yi's sinister smile flashed through Pang Dongzi's mind in an instant.

Could it be him?

Who else but him could provide such precise assistance at such a critical moment?

(End of this chapter)