Who would still start a business seriously after being reborn?

Chapter 706 East Wind, Oh East Wind

The spread of this virus has become increasingly widespread, giving Li Jun, the creator of the virus, a strange kind of pleasure.

His post has been featured on the forum's homepage, with thousands of replies. Some even call him the strongest hacker, and people come to worship him every day.

The strongest...

In a populous country like China, achieving the title of "strongest" in any field is a rare feat.

"I've come to pay my respects to the leader. This virus is amazing! I modified the account-stealing module and got dozens of accounts in a single day."

"I added a file deletion module and made a lot of money. Thank you, Master!"

"Just a heads up, Kaspersky and 360 are now detecting this virus, but my variant can bypass it. Feel free to share it with me privately."

……

Li Jun's happiest moment each day is looking through his own post replies and seeing the words of praise; it makes him feel that life is still worthwhile.

In the morning, in the president's office of Momo OS System Company.

Cheng Yi had just finished his daily meeting with Huang Ganping about system kernel optimization. At this moment, he was habitually browsing several technical forums. This was a habit he had maintained since his rebirth. He would usually browse through the posts on these technical forums every ten days or so to recharge his knowledge.

When he entered a tech forum he liked, a popular post with thousands of replies caught his attention.

The title is "[New little tool I made, what do you guys think?]", the poster is Xiaojun, and the attachment name is Jiangcheng Boy.exe.

"Jiangcheng boy?" Cheng Yi frowned slightly. This simple name gradually overlapped with a virus that swept across the country in his memory.

At this moment, the forum was filled with introductions and sales of the Jiangcheng boy's variant program. He flipped through a few pages and found that there were dozens of variants, some for stealing accounts, some for extortion, and some specifically for causing damage, with all sorts of functions emerging one after another...

He moved the mouse and quickly downloaded a free basic compressed file.

He first installed a virtual machine, then unzipped it, scanned the isolated environment, and ran it.

Soon, a panda holding three incense sticks with a slightly mocking expression appeared on the virtual machine screen.

Immediately afterwards, the icons of the .exe files in the system were replaced one by one with the same panda.

Upon seeing this scene, Cheng Yi's eyes immediately sharpened.

Indeed it is!

Panda Burning Incense Virus.

Cheng Yi didn't look at it closely anymore. He turned off the virtual machine, leaned back in his chair, and took a deep breath.

Despite being mentally prepared, he still felt a slight ripple of emotion upon witnessing the birth of the panda.

Fragments of memories from a past life surged forth.

Businesses shut down, data was lost, the entire population panicked, and ultimately, the perpetrator, Li Junyin, was imprisoned.

He carefully read the replies in the forum and saw Xiao Jun's enthusiastic reply to netizens, claiming that he had left an extended backdoor and welcoming everyone to modify it together.

Upon seeing this, Cheng Yi sneered: "Stupidity isn't scary, what's scary is being fucking stupid. This kid has absolutely no idea what the consequences will be."

He understood very well the most deadly characteristic of this virus.

The initial version, written by Li Jun himself, had limited destructive power and was more like a prank showcasing technology.

However, its sophisticated propagation mechanism and highly modular code structure, coupled with the backdoor that was open to hackers across the internet, made it a perfect virus host.

This is no longer a threat from a single virus, but from an entire platform.

Countless black market operators, lurking in the shadows of the internet, swarm in like sharks smelling blood.

They would add bricks and tiles, stuffing all sorts of malicious functions such as account theft, extortion, pop-up ads, and cryptocurrency mining into this matrix like building blocks.

If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would be this virus that involved the entire population, a chaotic and uncontrolled feast.

Cheng Yi could foresee that, in a very short time, the number of variants based on this matrix would explode exponentially, with dozens or even hundreds appearing every day.

Current antivirus software mainly relies on the traditional antivirus model of updating signature databases. In the face of massive, rapid and random mutations, it will be vulnerable. In this era without cloud-based scanning, antivirus software relies entirely on virus databases to kill viruses. And right now, the world's largest virus database is in Kaspersky.

But in its previous life, Kaspersky could only prevent the virus from spreading; it couldn't actually kill it.

Furthermore, Kaspersky is currently locked in a fierce battle with 360 and 2345, so where would they find the energy to fight this terrifying virus?

His gaze swept across the computer screen, as if he could see the near future.

Countless computer screens were occupied by pandas, disrupting the operation of society and causing the public's trust in Microsoft systems to completely collapse.

He's the only one who can save this situation now.

As malware developers, they had studied the virus carefully.

If he intervenes, this problem will be easily solved.

In this way, he could become an unsung savior, rescuing thousands of businesses from disaster and saving billions of dollars in losses...

At this moment, his remaining conscience was constantly tormenting him deep inside.

"Damn it, let's just draw lots." Cheng Yi tore off three slips of paper, wrote "save" and "don't save" on them.

I crumpled it into a ball and threw it on the table.

He grabbed a piece of paper and opened it.

Above it was the word 'rescue'.

"..." Cheng Yi was silent for a few seconds, then muttered to himself, "Let's go for best two out of three."

He threw it again.

Opening the note, it still contained the word 'save'.

"???" Cheng Yi frowned as he held the note. "Best two out of three is too childish. Let's make it a single game to decide the winner."

He threw the note again.

This time, opening it means there's no hope.

Cheng Yi finally smiled. Sure enough, fate was still advising him not to save him.

It's all fate.

Having shed the burden of his conscience, his mind immediately became more active.

“This is the east wind.” A glint flashed in Cheng Yi’s eyes.

He knew very well that what he had been waiting for was precisely such a perfect crisis that could completely shake the foundations of the Microsoft system.

This panda that has been released from its cage is the fulcrum that could help him overthrow Microsoft.

He immediately took out his phone, dialed Huang Ganping's number, and said, "Dean Huang, please have our government and enterprise procurement system team suspend their non-core work. I have a task for you tomorrow morning."

"Okay." Huang Ganping replied immediately without asking why.

After ending the communication, Cheng Yi took a USB flash drive from the safe.

It contains the final version of the Momo system's government and enterprise version, which has been continuously iterated and improved over the past year, taking advantage of the last government and enterprise procurement opportunity.

Its stability, compatibility, and especially the security brought by its microkernel and mandatory access control architecture, have long reached a level that can replace or even surpass Windows XP.

What they and Microsoft lack now is reputation. Momo's system has achieved a near-monopoly in the entertainment sector, but in the government and enterprise sector, they have never been able to compete with Microsoft. After all, Microsoft has been deeply entrenched for so many years, and no company is willing to take the risk of switching to Momo's system.

Their current situation in the government and business sectors is that everything is ready except for the final push.

Now, the east wind has arrived, but it is also a raging fire capable of burning a city.

This victory will come at a great cost.

But throughout history, any change of power has always come at a heavy price.

The only thing he could do was to promote the Momo system's enterprise version as quickly as possible, turning it into a Noah's Ark in the end times.

Those who boarded the ark would be helped to recover their losses.

As for those who absolutely refuse to board the ship, all we can do is pray that they die and are reincarnated soon.

Over the next few days, Cheng Yi kept an eye on how things were developing.

He used limited resources to closely monitor data from several major hacker forums and virus sample sharing sites.

The situation was just as he had predicted, even more outrageous than he had anticipated.

[Pinned! Optimized version of Panda Burning Incense app, account theft module now integrated!]

[Paid source code! Includes enhanced USB drive distribution and antivirus software process termination functionality!]

[Exclusive! Local Area Network Worm Variant: Infect One Machine, Paralyze the Entire Network!]

Posts with sensational titles are popping up everywhere.

Downloads and discussion volume are both growing explosively.

A variant of the virus, originating from the mother of the boy from Jiangcheng, began to rapidly proliferate and spread in cyberspace.

Since The Matrix became popular, hacking has become a cool profession, and even many elementary school students are imitating hackers, constantly saying things like, "I have a friend who can steal accounts."

This has led to a significant increase in the number of hackers in recent years. Regardless of their programming knowledge, they will generally spread Trojans.

Spreading Trojans is similar to casting a net to catch fish; it's basically a foolproof operation. Just buy the Trojan, find a few websites to distribute it, and you can open your email the next day to reap the rewards.

Legendary private server accounts, various game accounts, QQ accounts...

They really made a killing.

These days, if you haven't hacked an account at least once, you can't really say you know how to use a computer.

Furthermore, the lack of internet regulation has created extremely favorable conditions for its dissemination.

It can be said that this virus is the product of nationwide optimization and nationwide promotion.

He also noted that sporadic complaints about the panda icon virus began to appear on Kaspersky 360's official forum and customer service channels, but they were drowned out by the massive number of complaints about 2345 rogue software and obviously did not receive much attention.

Currently, other antivirus software is being decimated by Kaspersky and 360, and 70-80% of the technical teams of antivirus software such as Rising have left. Meanwhile, Kaspersky and 360 are locked in a fierce battle with 2345.

It's fair to say that, apart from Violet, there's no other decent antivirus software that can stop this virus's advance.

As for Jinshan, he was just punished by an 8MB update for missing Microsoft's security meeting, and was almost kicked out of the Microsoft system.

In Cheng Yi's eyes, the Microsoft system is now a naked giant.

Under the setting sun, it was completely naked, moving swiftly, just like its lost youth.

Cheng Yi did not remind anyone about this, including others within the Momo Group.

Du Yusheng, Zhang Lingyu, and Lin Qingyin each have their own responsibilities, and the group's massive machine needs to operate according to a predetermined track.

As the president of Momo OS system company, dealing with the impending storm is a core strategy that he must independently undertake and secretly plan.

Three days later, in Jiangcheng City, at Changhua Machinery Manufacturing Co., Ltd.

As usual, Finance Manager Lao Zhou arrived at the office at 8:30 a.m. sharp on Monday morning and pressed the power button on his computer.

He needs to finish last month's payroll before 10 a.m. today, and the money must be transferred out before the bank closes its accounts this afternoon.

The computer started up a little slower than usual, and the screen flickered a few times.

Old Zhou didn't pay much attention, assuming that the system was updating automatically because no one was using it on the weekend.

He picked up his teacup and got up to get some water.

When he returned with a steaming cup of tea, the scene on the screen stunned him.

The icons for My Computer, Recycle Bin, and various financial software and documents on the desktop have all turned into pandas holding three incense sticks.

Chubby, smiling, with an indescribable eeriness about him.

"What...what is this thing?" Old Zhou frowned and moved the mouse to open the Excel file containing the payroll.

The icon is a panda, but the filename is correct.

He double-clicked, but instead of the familiar Excel interface popping up, a dialog box appeared with crooked, illegible artistic lettering that read: "Your computer has been captured by our army. Files are locked. Contact QQ: xxxxxxxxx to unlock. Cost: 100 yuan."

Old Zhou's heart sank.

He refused to believe it and went to check other files, Word, PDF... all of them were the same.

Even the historical account data he had backed up on his D drive had all been changed to panda icons and were impossible to open.

"Xiao Zhang! Xiao Wang! Quickly check if there's anything wrong with your computers." Old Zhou's voice trembled slightly as he hurriedly called for his other colleagues.

Other finance staff in the office also discovered the same problem.

Exclamations and curses rose and fell.

All the computers in the finance department—no, all the computers on the company's local area network—were wiped out.

"It's a virus! Quick, call our maintenance staff." Old Zhou remained relatively calm and immediately picked up the phone to call the maintenance staff he often worked with.

The so-called maintenance personnel are just the owner of the computer store downstairs, who is responsible for installing operating systems and installing memory sticks for them.

A moment later, the computer store owner came running over, panting. Seeing the scene, his face turned pale. He said, "Manager Zhou...how did you get infected too? So many people have been infected with this virus lately, I think it's called something..."

"Never mind what it's called, just kill it right now! We're getting paid this afternoon!" Old Zhou said urgently.

"Okay, okay, I'll give it a try." The computer store owner hurriedly took out a USB drive he carried with him, which contained the Kaspersky installation package and the latest virus database.

He tried running an antivirus program on a computer.

The scan has begun, and the progress bar is moving slowly.

Suddenly, the antivirus software popped up a notification: [Threat detected, already handled.]

Despite the notification, the panda icon on the screen remained completely still.

The computer store owner opened Kaspersky, intending to use the powerful mode. Less than a minute after opening the powerful mode, the Kaspersky icon changed to a panda and started burning incense.

This time, the panda not only burned incense, but also danced on the tabletop, accompanied by a strange yet exciting background music, leaving everyone present dumbfounded.

What the hell is this thing?

(End of this chapter)