Film and Television: My Cheat Code is AI

Gao Jun took the floppy disk and left. Zhang Yang said, "Mr. Gao, I still need to familiarize myself with this computer. Once you've decrypted the hardware, just bring it over."

Gao Jun looked at Zhang Yang, who seemed so sensible, and said with a smile, "Okay, I'll bring you food and drinks. There's a restroom nearby."

"Okay, thank you, Mr. Gao."

Zhang Yang stared at the accounts on the screen, his finger hovering over the mouse. Credit Union of Paris, Deutsche Bank, Bank of England—Gao Jun hadn't chosen these three institutions randomly; he had spread all his money among them.

These three banks were among the highest in terms of "information barriers" in the international financial system in 2003.

Credit Union in Paris does not open its data interface to non-EU customers; Deutsche Bank requires a physical USB key and signature authorization for corporate account inquiries; and the Bank of England's interbank transfer system uses a dedicated line separate from the regular commercial network.

Each of them individually is a tough nut to crack, but Zhang Yang is looking at the structure of the three together. In order to facilitate the transfer, Gao Jun put the money in different accounts in the three banks and then used a fund collection program he wrote to automatically allocate the funds.

This program is installed on his own company's server and automatically logs into the online banking systems of various banks every six hours to check the balance and aggregate funds exceeding a certain amount into a main account.

The main account used was the corporate account of the Paris Credit Union. To facilitate the program's automatic operation, Gao Jun stored all the login credentials for the three banks—account numbers, passwords, and digital certificates—in the server's configuration file, performing simple base64 encoding without encryption.

Zhang Yang stared at the screen and mentally uttered, "Deep Blue." He then analyzed the architecture of this fund collection program.

[Analyzing a fund collection program found on the local server... This program was commissioned by Gao Jun and developed by a third party, running on the Windows 2000 Server platform. The scheduled task is triggered via system task scheduler. The configuration file has been located; it is base64 encoded, and decoding it reveals login credentials for three banks. Each time the program executes, it first retrieves the balances of each sub-account from the main account at Credit Suisse Paris, and then initiates the collection and transfer via the API interfaces of Deutsche Bank and the Bank of England. The entire process is unidirectional and synchronous; no bank-side operation logs are stored locally.]

This program possesses technical backdoor characteristics—if complete control of the server is gained, the target account of its aggregation commands can be tampered with.

Zhang Yang's gaze shifted to the server rack monitoring panel on another monitor. He had just rewritten the firewall rules, and all outbound traffic from this server was now going through the NetScreen he controlled. He was now sitting in this intranet, with root privileges on the firewall, the server's administrator password, and the complete configuration file for the fund collection program.

No need to hack into the bank. No matter how strong a bank's defenses are, they can't stop a legitimate login request. All he needs to do is modify the target account parameters of the aggregation program, changing the target account for the next automatic aggregation to a different account, and the money will be automatically transferred out at the next hour. What the Credit Union of Paris, Deutsche Bank, and the Bank of England see is simply a normal transfer initiated with legitimate credentials.

DeepBlue is at your service.

The following is an analysis of the information security architectures of Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and the Bank of England in 2003: Credit Suisse used IBM AS/400 mid-range computers. Its online banking system was based on a self-developed closed protocol and had a dedicated SSL acceleration gateway connecting it to the internet. Deutsche Bank used an enterprise-grade digital certificate system issued by VeriSign, requiring both a USB hard token and a fixed IP whitelist for corporate account login. The Bank of England's interbank transfer system ran on a SWIFT leased network independent of the public internet, and its firewall rule table had a seven-layer access control policy based on transaction type.

[Comprehensive Assessment: Any attack originating from the public internet requires penetrating at least two independent security mechanisms simultaneously. Given the network bandwidth and computing resource limitations of 2003, brute-force attacks would take weeks. Directly attacking banks is extremely inefficient and not recommended. However, local analysis revealed an automated fund collection program deployed on Gao Jun's server. This program periodically and automatically logs into the online banking systems of the aforementioned three banks, performing balance inquiries and fund transfers. Login credentials and digital certificates are stored in plaintext in the server's configuration file, only base64 encoded. This server is currently under complete host control, firewall rules are within the host's administrative permissions, and login credentials can be directly retrieved with local administrator privileges.]

[Suggested Path: Abandon direct bank intrusion. Instead, modify the target account parameters of the fund collection program on the server to replace the target account for the next round of automatic collection with a designated intermediary account. The collection program itself initiates the transfer with valid credentials, and the defense systems of the three banks will not generate any abnormal alerts. The entire operation can be completed locally on the server without launching an external attack, making it extremely stealthy. Start extracting the configuration file and performing base64 decoding?]

Zhang Yang was completely baffled by Shen Lan's analysis. Most of it was incomprehensible to him, as it consisted of Chinese characters. How could he not understand it when they were combined together?

"Deep Blue, can you perform the transfer independently?"

[Internet connection required...]

[Available network found...]

[Connecting to the internet...]

[Network connection failed... Physical network connection required]

Zhang Yang asked, puzzled, "How do we achieve physical networking?"

The phrase "[Physical network connection required]" kept popping into my head.

Zhang Yang looked at the network cable on the computer and wondered if he should unplug it and hold it to test it. He did just that, unplugging the network cable and holding it in his hand, but still no network connection message appeared in his mind.

He thought to himself, "I've tried sticking a plug in my nose when I was a kid, why don't I give it a try?" Zhang Yang gritted his teeth, inserted the crystal tip into his nose, and to his surprise, it actually worked.

[Connecting to the network...]

Deep Blue has entered the computer...

[Upgrading the system...]

Deep Blue V4, at your service...

Zhang Yang still had the network cable plugged into his nose, and he quickly thought, 'Get this done as soon as possible.'

[In operation...]

A series of codes began to appear in Zhang Yang's mind, dazzling him.

[Transferring...]

[Account required from the host...]

Zhang Yang thought for a moment and said to himself, "Disperse it globally, then slowly bring it back, and finally create a shadow account in Hong Kong."

[Completing...]

[Distributing to zombie accounts worldwide...]

[Starting to recoup funds...]

[DeepBlue has completed the operation... Here is the bank account number and password.]

Zhang Yang unplugged the network cable from his nose, wiped it, and then plugged it back in.

I didn't expect to actually connect to the network this time. It seems I'll have to go to the bureau next time to connect to their network and register DeepBlue. That way, retrieving the files will be much easier.

Deep blue.

【I am here. 】

How much money was received?

[The total, converted to US dollars, is 1.26 billion US dollars.]

Zhang Yang was shocked when he saw the number. He hadn't expected Gao Jun's total profits to be so huge. But then he thought that the money was now his own. Although he had to hand it over, it wouldn't be a big problem to use a little bit for the time being.

Zhang Yang turned on his computer and, under Deep Blue's guidance, cleared up all the previous operations before finally letting out a sigh of relief.