Who would still start a business seriously after being reborn?

Chapter 705 Jiangcheng Boy
After finishing with the panda logo, Li Jun lay back in the chair and let out a long sigh.

He wrote this virus in 2003 but never used it. His dream was to become a technician, but things often don't go as planned.

He glanced at the yellowed sticky note in the lower right corner of the screen, which read: Interview: December 26, Tech company, Operations and maintenance position.

This was the 17th resume he submitted this month, and the only one that earned him an interview invitation.

But three days ago, he was still rejected.

The interviewer, seeing the words "self-taught programmer" on his resume, asked him a question directly.

"Have you received formal computer science training? Have you never worked on a real-world project?"

He wanted to explain the LAN management tools he had worked on, but he swallowed his words back. In the eyes of the professionally trained interviewer, those were just minor things.

He was really angry. His resume already contained a lot of details. If they wanted to hire people with formal education and practical experience, they should have rejected him as soon as they saw his resume. So why did they call him in for an interview?

For the interview, he bought a suit, got his hair done, and even spent 15 yuan on a taxi ride.

Isn't this just playing with people?

“Let’s call him ‘Jiangcheng Boy’,” he murmured to himself.

He wasn't trying to cause trouble; he was just holding his breath.

Those who say he's incompetent, let them see that Li Jun can also write something that will impress them.

The original intention of this code was simple: to make the virus display the panda burning incense image on the infected computer, and to make all executable file icons on the computer look like pandas.

He didn't add any modules to damage the system, nor did he write any account-stealing functions. He just wanted to create a visually appealing and unique virus, like setting off fireworks in an alley when you were a kid. It wasn't to burn anything; he just wanted the neighbors to come over and take a look: "Wow, this kid's fireworks are really beautiful."

Yes, it's beautiful.

In order to get the virus running, he spent several days studying the vulnerabilities that allow it to spread via USB drives.

Nowadays, office workers and students love to use USB drives to copy files. He thought that as long as someone plugs a virus-infected USB drive into the computer, the virus can be quietly copied into the USB drive and then transferred to the next computer, like dandelion seeds.

When the wind blows, it becomes even more beautiful, swaying and fluttering.

However, deep within the code, he still left a backdoor.

This backdoor can receive remote commands for possible future functional expansion. He felt that as a complete work, it should have this kind of malleability and allow everyone to happily upgrade the virus together.

At 2 a.m., the code was finally debugged.

Li Jun named the virus compressed file Jiangcheng Boy.exe and sent a copy to the interviewer who had played a trick on him.

After that, he opened a niche website called Black Bar Tech Forum.

This is a group of people who, like him, have learned programming on their own, and they occasionally share small tools and scripts.

His registered account was called Xiaojun. He had posted a few threads about local area network management before, but not many people replied.

This time, he quickly typed in the post title: "[New little tool I made, take a look and see what you think]", and wrote a simple sentence in the body: "[Can change icons, can pop up windows, used USB drive to spread, no damage to functions]", and then attached a link to the compressed file.

The moment he clicked "post," his heart pounded like a student waiting for their teacher to grade their homework.

He sat in front of the computer for an hour, refreshing the page more than ten times, but the post was still empty.

He yawned, his eyelids growing heavier.

"Maybe it's too late, everyone's asleep." He comforted himself, then fell asleep on the table. The screen was still showing the unanswered post. The fat panda held incense sticks, which burned quietly in the dimly lit room.

When he woke up the next morning, his first reaction was to open the forum and see if anyone had replied to his VPN.

To his delight, there were two replies to the post.

The first comment is from moderator Lao Gui, which reads: "[First! Let me check this out, is the original poster just trying to create hype?]"

The second post, from a user named "Flying Fish," reads: "I tried it, and a panda icon popped up on my computer. It really changed the icon, which is interesting, but it doesn't seem to have any other functions?"

Li Jun stared at the screen, his hands trembling slightly. His greatest hope now was to be recognized.

He quickly replied to Feiyu, typing: "[That's all for now. I just wanted to make something fun. If you have any ideas, you can modify it. I've left an expansion backdoor.]"

He wasn't thinking too much about it. At that moment, all he could think about was getting more replies. He was even planning to optimize the code again in the afternoon and add a blinking animation to the panda.

Meanwhile, at the Kaspersky 360 headquarters in Jingzhou, a fierce battle over security was raging, and no one noticed the little gadget the boy was tinkering with in the rented room.

The air in the technical monitoring room on the 25th floor of Kaspersky 360's headquarters in Jingzhou was unusually heavy.

The screen displays a dense array of data, with the red curve representing the activity of the 2345 variant software and the blue curve representing the detection rate of Kaspersky 360.

In the past week, the red curve has been rising like crazy. After Pang Dongzi expanded the recruitment, the 2345 technical team can launch more than 20 variants every day. Some variants can even bypass Kaspersky and 360's monitoring and survive on users' computers for more than 24 hours.

"Three more new variants!" Engineer Xiao Zhang cursed, staring at the screen. "They're all targeting the rules we updated yesterday. It seems like they know our defense logic."

Old Li, who was standing next to him, sighed, rubbed his bloodshot eyes, and said, "We've been working overtime for a week straight, and the guys are about to collapse. The testing department just said that some users reported that after cleaning up 2345, it automatically reinstalled on their computers. They must have added an auto-start item to the registry."

Technical Director Wang Peng downed most of his coffee, strode to the main control screen, stared at it with bloodshot eyes, and gritted his teeth as he said, "Send the variant sample to President Zhou and let him decide whether or not to update the rules urgently."

Wang Peng picked up his phone and dialed Zhou Hongyi's number, saying, "President Zhou, the new variant sample of 2345 has been sent to your email. Everyone is a bit exhausted right now. Can we leave work early today so that everyone can go home and rest?"

Zhou Hongyi's impatient voice came from the other end of the walkie-talkie, with the sound of keyboard typing in the background: "Rest? I didn't even say rest! How dare you say that? If we rest, will Pang Dongzi rest too?"

Wang Peng was stunned for a moment, and was about to say something more when Zhou Hongyi's voice came through the walkie-talkie again: "Make sure the engineering team updates the detection rules for those three new variants today. If they are allowed to spread again, all our previous efforts will be in vain."

"Understood, Mr. Zhou." Wang Peng sighed inwardly, hung up the phone, and said to Xiao Zhang and Lao Li, "Let's work overtime."

Xiao Zhang pursed his lips, then quickly immersed himself in analyzing the 2345 variant.

Three days later, while the owner of a computer mall was copying files for a customer in the morning, the USB drive was accidentally infected with a small virus.

When he discovered it, the icons on all five display machines at his stall had changed to pandas. "What the hell is this?" he cursed, and immediately asked his staff to scan and remove it. But after the scan, a customer copied files onto a USB drive that afternoon, and the virus was reintroduced.

After studying it carefully, he found that the virus did not affect the use of the device. It did not cause any lag or anything that was not smooth. The only problem was that the desktop icons had all turned into pandas, and occasionally a dynamic flash would pop up with a short piece of music.

Aside from that, there were no other problems; even Kaspersky, the computer's antivirus software, didn't detect that it was a virus.

"This looks like a prank plugin. Kaspersky and 360 Security Guard didn't issue any warnings, which means the threat level is very low," the staff member casually remarked.

They've long since become desensitized to these kinds of plugins.

There's no way around it; with dozens of malicious plugin variants appearing every day, anyone would become numb to it.

"Forget it, I won't kill it. It won't affect its use anyway." Old Wang thought for a moment and decided to just leave it at that.

He didn't realize that the customers who copied files from him were carrying virus-infected USB drives to schools, companies, and homes.

Meanwhile, in the Kaspersky 360 monitoring room these past few days, engineers are still locked in a fierce battle with the 2345 variant.

Xiao Zhang stared at the new variant code 2345 on the screen, feeling his eyes getting blurry.

Zhou Hongyi was in her office, venting her anger on her deputy. They had been struggling these past few days, unable to control Pang Dongzi's mutated ways. Yesterday, Ivanov had even called to question them personally. If things continued like this, Microsoft would likely have something to say.

The deputy lowered his head and said in a low voice, "President Zhou, the engineers have done their best. There are many veteran employees from Rising and Jiangmin in 2345's current technical team. They are very familiar with our engine and it's not easy to deal with. Moreover, recently some users have reported that we have too many pop-ups. Some people say that they are more annoying than rogue software."

Zhou Hongyi's face darkened further, and she said in a deep voice, "The pop-up window is to promote the Safe Migration Plan. Now that Rising and Jiangmin have fallen, it's time for us to grab users. This absolutely cannot stop. As for 2345, I will personally go to the technical department tomorrow to supervise the battle. We must suppress their variants."

The deputy whispered, "Mr. Zhou, there's something else I need to report to you. Yesterday, a virus with a panda logo kept appearing in the user feedback form. Apparently, it's spreading quite quickly, and they want us to investigate it."

"What are the dangers of this virus?" Zhou Hongyi asked.

The deputy said, "No harm has been found yet, but it spreads very quickly and through a wide range of channels. This method of transmission is quite rare. Should we set aside a team to study it?"

"Don't worry about it for now, we'll deal with it if problems arise," Zhou Hongyi said in a deep voice. "We're already short-handed, how can we have the energy to figure out this kind of thing? Right now, we must go all out to suppress 2345!"

"Yes!" the deputy replied quickly.

Currently, Cheng Yi's rejection, 2345's counterattack, and Microsoft's pressure are like three mountains weighing on Zhou Hongyi.

All he could think about was how to solidify Kaspersky 360's market position and how to satisfy Ivanov. As for the virus with the panda logo, he didn't care at all.

There are many viruses now, and Kaspersky can handle most of them, so there's no need for him to waste his time.

As night fell, a middle-aged man stared at the code for 'Jiangcheng Boy' on the screen, his eyes gleaming with an unusual light.

He is Lao Gui, the moderator of the Grey Pigeon Technology Forum, and a well-known hacker in the grassroots hacker circle.

His forum has attracted many people like him.

Some are in it to make money, some for technical challenges, and others simply want to stir things up.

A few days ago, he downloaded the virus sample from Jiangcheng Boy. After several days of analysis, he suddenly felt that this thing had great potential.

"No destructive functions, no account-stealing modules, just changing an icon? That's such a waste." Old Ghost shook his head with a smile and opened his programming software.

He had a ready-made account-stealing module, which he had previously written to steal private server game accounts. As long as this module was embedded into the Panda Burning Incense code, the virus could secretly record the user's game account and password after infecting the computer, and then send it to him via email.

Old Ghost's hacking skills were superb. After a night of fighting, he not only got a table full of cigarette butts, but also merged his account-stealing module with the virus from the Jiangcheng boy.

"It's perfect. The way this Jiangcheng boy spreads and infects is simply a stroke of genius." Old Gui typed the last line of code, tested it, and was extremely satisfied.

After the virus ran, it not only displayed a panda icon, but also quietly started a hacking program in the background, sending the game account password he was testing to a designated email address.

He logged into the Grey Pigeon Forum and posted a pinned thread: [Breaking News! Optimized version of Jiangcheng Boy, with account theft function, source code included! Download for only 20 gold coins].

20 gold coins are equivalent to 10 yuan in the forum.

In his post, he detailed how to modify the code, how to add modules, and even attached his modified virus sample.

The "Jiangcheng Boy" virus was already quite popular these past few days, and when the moderator personally stepped in to edit it, the forum instantly exploded.

"Old Ghost is awesome! This virus spreads so fast, adding a hacking module is perfect!"

"I tried it, and it transferred very quickly in the internet cafe. I got more than a dozen accounts in just one morning."

"Could you add a ransomware module? So users have to pay 10 yuan to unlock their computers?"

"I want to change to a pop-up version; I want to make money from pop-up ads."

Old Ghost's lips curled up higher and higher as he read the reply.

He knew his forum was about to become a hit.

Three days later, variants of Panda Burning Incense indeed sprang up like mushrooms after rain.

Some experts have modified the virus to a USB drive-specific version, optimizing the propagation code so that the virus can copy to the USB drive faster. They have also added a hidden function that automatically disables the real-time monitoring of most antivirus software on the market after infecting the computer, including the basic defense of Kaspersky and 360.

Some experts have combined the Panda Burning Incense with their own LAN propagation module to create a LAN version. If one computer is infected, all computers on the LAN will be infected, making it almost ten times faster than USB drive propagation.

The most ruthless ones are those that include a file deletion module in their viruses. After infecting a computer, the virus first steals the account, then deletes documents from the user's C drive, and finally pops up a window: "Want to recover your files? Add QQ: XXXXXXX for paid unlocking."

The number of variants is increasing, and their functions are becoming more and more outrageous.

Some added pop-up ads, some added pop-up modules, some added prank-like music, and some could even control the user's computer's webcam.

These variants were spread by hackers to various forums, online communities, and QQ groups, some shared for free and others sold for a fee.

A basic source code for a virus can sell for as much as 50 yuan on the black market, while one with a hacking module can sell for 200 yuan.

(End of this chapter)