Scholar's Advanced Technological System

The dark web.

Inside a hacker forum.

A moderator created a discussion group called “Eagle Hunter”, and soon after, a bunch of users went into the discussion channel and began to brag.

However, the bragging didn’t last for long.

A person with the username “Boss” entered the discussion group. The channel instantly became quiet.

Boss: “Everyone is here?”

Hunter: “Here.”

Boss: “Good, let’s begin the meeting.”

Lone Wolf: “Yes, sir!”

Vulture: “Yes, sir!”

“…”

It was easy to organize a big hacker event like this, especially since they lived in the virtual world.

Even though they all belonged to the same “Eagle Hunter” hacker group, this organization wasn’t actually binding.

Most of these people didn’t like to feel constrained, not to mention most of them had dirty backgrounds.

Other than occasionally doing some dark market transactions, most people were doing their own things. Some even belonged to other hacker groups.

However, anyone in the hacker circle would recognize the IDs of people from the Eagle Hunter hacker group.

Most of these users were well-known hackers that came from the dark web, and most of them worked in the information security field. However, none of them knew who Boss was.

But it was clear that Boss was their leader.

After all, to become the leader of a hacker group, one would have to be technically capable.

None of them underestimated the strength of Boss.

Lone Wolf: “It’s just a few servers, we’ll penetrate them in no time.”

Kid: “Yeah, yeah, let’s begin, I can’t wait to give the United States Congress and China a lesson!”

Boss: “Don’t get cocky. China has a lot of experts in information security. Remember, our goal is to stop the Lunar Hadron Collider project. This is the only way to make them take our request seriously.”

Hunter: What if the Chinese hackers retaliate?”

Boss: “Then it would be perfect for us.”

Their goal was to put pressure on the White House to exit from the Lunar Hadron Collider project.

As for the disruption of the Lunar Hadron Collider Conference in Beijing, that was their secondary goal.

Therefore, if the Chinese retaliated with attacks on servers such as NASA or the White House, it would be perfect for them. Panic would spread like wildfire.

After all, it was riskier for them to attack the American servers themselves.

Boss: “I have a list for the first batch of servers to attack. Everyone communicates the servers you’re going to attack to avoid repeated attacks.

“Remember, we are Eagle Hunter, we are defending the dignity of the United States.

“Remember who our enemy is.”

…

While the Lunar Hadron Collider meeting was going on in Beijing, an invisible force was quietly working in the background.

First was the official Everyone Daily website.

The website was soon full of spam and swear words, with a middle finger as the background image.

The web admin quickly discovered the problem, shut down the server, and reported the attack to the Ministry of Public Security.

However, before the Ministry of Public Security could respond, another wave of attacks came.

This attack was on the CTV official website, and this time, the domain name was hijacked. The website was set to redirect to another similarly offensive page.

Just like the Everyone Daily website, the CTV website had a giant middle finger in the background…

On the other hand, thousands of emails were sent to various department workers.

[Immediately terminate the International Lunar Hadron Collider Conference.

[Eagle Hunter]

This matter just got a lot more serious—it went from a cybersecurity attack to a terrorist attack.

After the head of the Ministry of Public Security received reports from his subordinates, his face turned green.

There was no way they were going to stop the Lunar Hadron Collider Conference, China would never compromise with terrorists.

Not to mention that the demands were ridiculous.

The Ministry of Public Security immediately convened an emergency meeting, inviting experts and academicians from the information security field. They formed a temporary task force to respond to this cyber attack. Taking extra precautions in financial and military fields…

…

Lone Wolf: “Boss, China is starting to fight back.”

Boss: “Good! We have to keep attacking, keep the chaos going!”

Hunter: “The Chinese security department has retaliated, I nearly lost control of the CTV website… but their response was too slow.”

When it came to cyberattacks, it was always more difficult to defend than to attack. When an attacker implanted a virus first, it was extremely difficult to recover.

Not to mention that the attack came at an unexpected time, so China wasn’t prepared at all.

Hunter: “Several major Chinese media outlets are down, what’s next?”

Boss: “Stand our ground, I have a gift prepared for them, we’re close to victory.”

Hunter: “Okay!”

Kid: “Haha, the boss is going to murder them!”

Lone Wolf: “Boss, I found that the Lunar Orbit Committee chief designer is the same person as the Lunar Hadron Collider chief designer… His name is Lu Zhou. Apparently, he’s a famous scholar in China, and he’s won the Nobel Prize and Fields Medal. I found out he works at Jin Ling University, maybe I should pay him a visit.”

Boss: “Don’t hesitate, just do it.”

Lone Wolf: “Okay, Boss!”

…

Jin Ling University computer server room.

Dean Qin looked at Professor Wang, who was fiddling with the server, and he couldn’t help but ask, “How is it?”

“Nothing yet…” The professor pushed his glasses and said, “I swear this server has something against Professor Lu. The same thing happened last time…”

Ten minutes ago, the Jin Ling University website was still up and running. Then, it was suddenly attacked. The website displayed an insulting image of Academician Lu. The administrators were completely locked out.

After hearing about the news, the computer science department professor immediately went to the server room.

And because Academician Lu was part of the mathematics department, Dean Qin came over as well.

“Don’t say that. Professor Lu is a huge help to us, we should kiss his as*.” Dean Qin coughed and said, “Just do your best, try to fix the server.”

“It’s not the server, the server is fine. I think there’s a virus inside, it’s not turning on at all… F*ck sake, who is doing this, who hacks a school server…” Professor Wang cursed as he typed on the keyboard.

The teacher standing at the entrance suddenly asked, “What if a student is trying to change their grade? I heard Professor Lu’s number theory class has a huge fail rate… Maybe they hacked the server and wanted to get revenge on Professor Lu.”

Professor Wang shook his head and said, “It’s definitely not a student. If a student could do this, they wouldn’t be a student, they could just become a computer science professor.”

Dean Qin suddenly remembered something and said, “Regardless of whether or not it’s done by a student, don’t talk about the photo and make sure Professor Lu doesn’t know about this! He’ll be furious if he finds out that someone is tarnishing his reputation…”

The teachers in the computer room looked at each other before nodding.

Suddenly, the professor standing at the entrance scratched his head and said, “I think this is bigger than we think.”

Dean Qin: “What?”

“Just go on Weibo.” The professor handed his phone to Dean Qin and said, “We’re not the only ones being attacked, ten minutes ago, Everyone Daily and CTV were also hacked