Reborn in 2006, it's incredibly awesome!

The next morning, after having breakfast with his girlfriends, Raymond Lam drove out of the Blue Ocean Ark, but did not go to the school.

He made an appointment with Lao Liu today—the one who does pop-up ads and helps him build borderline websites.

We agreed to meet at the same Limin Supermarket, a two-story building that looked dusty and grimy, with half of the lettering on the sign missing.

When Lin Feng arrived, Old Liu was squatting on the steps smoking. He was wearing a faded gray T-shirt. When he saw Lin Feng coming, he quickly put out his cigarette and went to greet him: "President Lin is here. Please come upstairs. Today I'll show you my team."

The two climbed the rusty iron stairs, each step creaking as they went.

Old Liu pushed open the door, and a smell mixed with the smell of tobacco, instant noodles, and hot air from electronic devices hit him.

There was no air conditioning in the room, only an old ceiling fan turning slowly. Eight or nine computers were scattered around, all with their screens lit up, and the fans were humming loudly.

Two welded iron boxes stood in the corner, their red lights flashing intermittently; they were homemade high-power signal jammers.

There were six people in the room, and they all looked up when they heard the noise.

A young couple, who looked to be in their early twenties, were sitting in the innermost seats by the window.

The man, wearing black-rimmed glasses and a pill-covered black hoodie, had a blank expression; he was Xia Yan, the younger brother.

The woman had two braids, wore a gray tracksuit, had big eyes, and a upturned mouth; she was Xia Mo, the older sister.

Her first glance fell on Lin Feng's face, and she was clearly stunned. She subconsciously smoothed her bangs, her eyes slightly unfocused.

The remaining four young men, with cigarettes dangling from their lips and wearing flashy T-shirts, didn't look like network technicians at all.

"Stop for a moment, everyone. This is General Manager Lin." Old Liu clapped his hands and introduced Lin Feng, "These two are Xia Yan and Xia Mo, siblings. They are the true core of my team; all the hard skills come from them. These four are assistants; they do the odd jobs like making pop-ups and installing malware. We have a nickname: the Black Hole Commando Team."

Lin Feng pulled up a chair and sat down, his gaze sweeping over the equipment filling the room. "The names are quite impressive. Signal jammers, multi-machine parallel jumpers, offline CD burners—quite a complete setup."

Xia Yan raised his eyes, somewhat surprised. Most people would just find it chaotic; no one could recognize these things at a glance.

Lin Feng didn't beat around the bush and went straight to the point: "Old Liu should have mentioned the purpose of my visit today to you. He's told me about all your business: game cheats, custom-made Grey Pigeon Trojans, website hacking, pop-up traffic redirection—we take on all kinds of jobs, big and small, and none of them are above the line."

Upon hearing this, the four assistants lowered their heads, while Xia Mo continued to stare intently at Lin Feng.

Xia Yan frowned and glared at Lao Liu. Lao Liu felt Xia Yan's gaze, gave an awkward smile, and lowered his head.

Lin Feng continued, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the internet was in its early, unregulated phase in recent years, allowing people to make a living. Things will change. Internet monitoring technology will advance rapidly, and cybersecurity regulations will be updated annually. Your constant skirting of the rules and crossing of the line will inevitably lead to you being targeted sooner or later. Once you're in jail, it'll be at least five years before you're caught. No matter how good your skills are, it won't matter, because by the time you get out, the world will have changed.

The room fell silent instantly upon hearing this. The ceiling fan whirred slowly, with only the hum of the computer fan remaining.

Xia Yan frowned and lightly tapped the keyboard with his fingertips.

Xia Mo also put away her infatuated thoughts, sat up straight, and became serious.

The four assistants looked at each other, all feeling a little guilty. They knew perfectly well what they had done; none of them had done a clean job.

Old Liu chuckled twice, trying to smooth things over, "Mr. Lin is telling the truth. We've also been thinking about transforming our business. I wonder what Mr. Lin's plan is?"

Lin Feng leaned forward, his tone calm yet weighty: "My company's flagship product is called WeChat, a social networking app. You all know you're responsible for driving traffic to my company online. Our user base is growing rapidly, but cybersecurity is a weakness. Your technical skills are impressive, and your connections are flexible enough to fill that gap. If you come, Xia Yan and Xia Mo will have an annual salary of one million, plus year-end bonuses. The four assistants will each have an annual salary of three hundred thousand plus social insurance and housing fund. And you, Lao Liu, with your wide network, connections, and seasoned experience, will be the Director of Online Marketing, with an annual salary of five hundred thousand."

When the numbers were announced, the four assistants' eyes widened instantly, and they almost dropped their cigarettes.

A 300,000 yuan annual salary, plus social insurance and housing fund contributions? This is practically a windfall.

Xia Yan looked at Lin Feng, a hint of surprise flashing in his eyes behind his glasses. He knew his skills were valuable, but a million-dollar annual salary, and from a legitimate company at that, was something he had never dared to dream of before.

Xia Mo bit her lower lip and then secretly glanced at Lin Feng. He was handsome and generous, which made her even more restless.

Old Liu steadied himself and rubbed his hands together: "The price Mr. Lin offered is truly unbeatable, incredibly generous. However, we're used to being free and independent; are we going to be too strictly managed in a big company?"

Lin Feng laughed and said, "There are definitely rules, but your department will operate independently, and I won't interfere with the technical aspects. However, let me make this clear from the start: whether your salary is commensurate with your abilities depends on your skills. My company's technical team is already set up. You'll come back to the company with me for a practical attack and defense test. We'll simulate the backend of WeChat; they'll defend, and you'll attack. If you can break through within two hours, we'll sign a contract on the spot. If you can't, we'll just consider it making friends, and I'll treat you to dinner."

"Okay." Xia Yan was the first to speak, his voice cold and carrying the arrogance of a technician. "When are you leaving?"

"Now." Lin Feng stood up.

The group marched back to Peakfire Technology in a grand procession.

Du Xiaolong had been waiting for a long time. He specially set up two independent meeting rooms with physical isolation on the internal network. The target server was a simplified model of the WeChat backend that he and three technical consultants had built overnight. It was a three-layer architecture with a packet filtering firewall and application-layer intrusion detection. The permission system was strictly made according to enterprise-level standards. It was so solid that it was no exaggeration to say that it was an impenetrable fortress.

Du Xiaolong patted his chest confidently, "Lin Feng, these three consultants are all veteran tech guys from Sohu and NetEase, their security expertise is unquestionable. These unorthodox guys are not easy to beat."

Lin Feng didn't reply, but just smiled and nodded to Xia Yan and the others: "Let's begin, two hours."

The offensive and defensive battle has officially begun.

In the defending team's conference room, three technical advisors leaned back in their chairs, looking at the screen full of interception logs, their tone relaxed.

"Just six people? And what's this 'Black Hole Commando'? The name sounds impressive, but their skill level is just so-so."

"We've been scanning for almost forty minutes, and we haven't even breached our first layer of firewall. It's all low-level SQL injection and port scanning, like something a novice intern would do."

"Although it's just a simulation, it's not that easy to break through, and there's also a time limit, so they're bound to lose."

Du Xiaolong frowned and remained silent.

He felt something was off. If that was all the skill he had, Lin Feng wouldn't have made a special trip to bring him back.

In the adjacent conference room where the attack was taking place, the rhythm was completely different.

Xia Yan's fingers flew across the keyboard so fast they were barely visible. Lines of port scan results scrolled rapidly across the screen: "Target server Linux 2.6.18 kernel, ports 80, 443, and 3306 open. The first layer is a stateful firewall with strict rules."

Xia Mo kept her eyes glued to the screen, her fingers never stopping. "There's an injection point in the front-end login box, but it's blocked by a WAF, so regular statements won't work. We've scanned the back-end directory; there's a CAPTCHA under the /admin path."

Xia Yan said without looking up, "No need for a direct confrontation. Second and third, you two launch a CC attack, saturate the bandwidth, simulate normal user access, and flood the login interface with data to attract attention. Fourth and fifth, run the entire site's paths and find unconventional upload interfaces; don't focus on the main backend."

The four assistants responded in unison, and the sound of their keyboards clattering filled the air.

The defending side was indeed led astray.

"Report: CC attack traffic has surged; request volume has tripled!"

"The login form injection is still being tested; they are all variant statements, which I have blocked with rules."

"It's nothing, a small matter. The bandwidth is sufficient. They're just wasting their time."

An hour passed, and the defending team remained as solid as a rock. The three advisors even started chatting about where to have dinner that night.

Just then, Xia Yan suddenly stopped typing, his eyes narrowing slightly: "Found it. There's an undisclosed buffer overflow vulnerability in the kernel that hasn't been patched."

Xia Mo smiled and said, "I found it too. The image upload interface only verifies the file header and doesn't check the file extension, so it can upload image codes."

Xia Yan spoke quickly: "Follow the procedure. First, launch a feint injection to keep their attention focused on the front end. You transfer a shell, and once you have low privileges, I'll use an overflow vulnerability to escalate privileges."

Once the order was given, the four assistants immediately increased the frequency of the injection attacks.

The defense's alert logs were flooded with SQL injection interception records. Sure enough, the three consultants went over to focus on optimizing the front-end rules, completely ignoring a remote image upload interface in the back-end.

One hour and forty minutes later, Xia Mo successfully uploaded a webshell disguised as a JPG file, gaining ordinary user privileges.

"Insufficient permissions; unable to access core databases."

"Right away." Xia Yan sent over the compiled overflow code. "Execute it, and remember to erase the logs."

Lines of hexadecimal code flashed rapidly across the screen, and then the alarm host in the defending team's conference room suddenly emitted a sharp alarm, and the screen filled with red high-risk warnings:

"A kernel-level abnormal call has been detected!"

"Privilege escalation detected!"

"Unknown lateral traffic has appeared on the internal network!"

The three technical consultants turned pale instantly and rushed to the computer to frantically update rules, block ports, and check processes, but it was too late.

Two hours later, Xia Mo pressed Enter for the last time, and a black command line with root privileges popped up on the screen.

She stretched, turned to look at Lin Feng, her eyes sparkling, and a smug smile played on her lips: "All done, highest administrator privileges. I also changed the homepage and left a mark."

On the other side, Du Xiaolong stared at the hand-drawn black hole pattern on the homepage with the words "Black Hole Commando Team was here" written next to it, and remained silent for a full half minute.

Finally, he gave a wry smile and shook his head at Lin Feng: "I'm impressed. They're really amazing. Their methods are too unpredictable and impossible to defend against. These two kids are geniuses. Their unorthodox methods combined with solid skills have left us, the regular army, completely helpless."

Lin Feng clapped his hands with a smile: "The assessment is passed. From today onwards, the Black Hole Commando Team officially joins Peakfire Technology, with an independent organizational structure, but the team name is retained. From now on, you will be the cybersecurity department of WeChat, while also handling online publicity and public opinion response. The salary will be as we agreed, and the contract will be sent over shortly."

A quiet cheer erupted from inside the room.

The four assistants were all excited. A salary of 300,000 yuan a year, a respectable big company, and they could keep their own team name. They never dared to dream of such a thing before.

Old Liu rubbed his hands together, grinning from ear to ear: "President Lin is so generous! From now on, we'll work diligently under your guidance!"

Xia Mo looked at Lin Feng, her fingers gently twisting the hem of her clothes, and whispered, "President Lin, please take care of me in the future."

Xia Yan pushed up his glasses, didn't say anything polite, but just nodded seriously. He recognized the skill, and he also recognized this opportunity.

Lin Feng nodded: "Do a good job, I won't let you down."

As they walked out of the conference room, Du Xiaolong stood next to him and exclaimed, "Where did you find these people? With them guarding WeChat's backend, I feel much more at ease. From now on, not only will we be able to withstand hacker attacks, but even if our competitors try to sabotage us, we'll have the power to fight back."

Lin Feng smiled but didn't explain.

The unorthodox methods that grow from the wilderness, combined with the system and resources of a regular army, become the sharpest spear and the strongest shield.

With the Black Hole Commando team deployed, the moat surrounding Weibo has truly been deepened.