I’m In Charge of SCP - Chapter 230: A Simple Solution

Chapter 230: A Simple Solution

Site Director Walnut called the big man in charge of network security to the front.

“Advisor Zhang, this is the head of our site’s network security department, Owens. You can ask him if you have any questions.”

Zhang Jue nodded, “Hello Supervisor Owens, my name is Zhang Jue and I am the advisor in charge of investigating the attack on Site-15. I have some questions to ask.”

“Oh, Advisor.” Owens’ voice sounded as if he was a little impatient, “Say what you want to say, we’re not done with our work yet.”

Zhang Jue’s status was special, and he had been hired by the headquarters to help. Site Director Walnut wanted to reprimand Owens, but Zhang Jue stopped him with a wave of his hand.

“Supervisor Owens, you don’t seem to welcome me.” He laughed.

“I’m not even welcomed by the headquarters.” Owens’ face was cold, and he looked like he wasn’t targeting anyone, “If it weren’t for those amateurs always coming to point fingers, the site’s network defenses wouldn’t have been breached, and headquarters would be largely responsible for this matter!”

Looking at his behavior, Zhang Jue knew without having to say that he must have suffered a lot from the headquarters. Regardless of how things work, the most taboo thing to do is to let the outsiders lead here.

These great gods of Site-15 thought highly of themselves and must have looked down on everyone. But Zhang Jue is that person who can understand how people and ghost talks. So, he naturally knows how to deal with such this kind of person.

He glanced at Owens with a disdainful look, “This guy, are you really that stupid? the site’s network defense was breached, and you blame the headquarters? Doesn’t that mean you guys aren’t really good at your job?”

“Bullshit!” Owens seemed to be touched by the scales, “The old firewall has been in use for more than ten years, there has never been a security incident. If they didn’t insist me to upgrade the firewall, how could the system be vulnerable and how could the enemy take advantage of it?”

Owens was emotional and spoke extremely fast, Zhang Jue hurriedly said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You said that the enemy caught the vulnerability because of the upgraded firewall, this logic is not very clear to me. Shouldn’t the firewall upgrade be more and more secure?”

“Cut it, amateurs are amateurs.” Owens hummed, “Do you think Site-15’s firewall upgrade is something that can be done in a few minutes? The whole process is going to last for hours! These hours, we have to restart hundreds of servers, thousands of services and components. Although the site’s firewall is using the distribution and clustering way service, but in the other security server restart, the firewall to the outside world defense strategy will undoubtedly be leveled to another unit. As long as the enemy mastered this time node, then they can take advantage of the situation and you say that this was not their fault, then who?”

Owens said a lot of things, server components, distributed clusters and so on. All of them were some words that Zhang Jue did not understand, but he comprehended the central idea. To put it simply, the server firewall was in the weakest time, and from what Owens said, the enemy had invaded Site-15 network at that time and successfully breached in.

Seeing that Owens was so sure, Zhang Jue asked, “Is there any evidence?”

Owens turned his head away, “Something so obvious! Do you still need evidence? Amateurs are amateurs!”

Seeing this, Zhang Jue knew that they were guessing. These people were very proud of their technology, and they didn’t want to believe that the firewall had been breached in normal operation. So it was only logical that the problem must have occurred at this time, and it must be the fault of those at headquarters.

Zhang Jue thought about it and asked, “I’ve heard that some defense systems do have logs. If the enemy really invaded at that time, they should have left some traces, right?”

Zhang Jue looked at Owens to hear what he had to say, but who knew that this person hummed and didn’t say anything.

Site Director’s Secretary Robert, explained awkwardly, “Advisor Zhang. Theoretically speaking, it’s true that an enemy invading our network should have left traces. But we conducted a comprehensive analysis of the logs on the server, but no traces of enemy intrusion were found.”

“So that’s how it is.”

Zhang Jue was about to continue asking, but Owens continued, “The enemy must be a very skilled geeks. Who not only could judge the precise time we started each service and component, but also cleverly hid his trail so that we couldn’t detect his presence, and leave us with a fatal blow. Just like a Chinese swordsman, killing people invisibly.”

“Pfft…”

Zhang Jue almost couldn’t hold back, he didn’t expect this Owens to look like a geeky nerd. But his knowledge was quite extensive, it looked like he hadn’t read many Chinese martial arts novels.

Zhang Jue thought about it and said with a smile, “Secretary Robert, Supervisor Owens. I don’t know anything about technology, but from your descriptions, I think that you’re overthinking the problem.”

Owens raised his eyebrows, “What do you mean?”

Zhang Jue did not throw out his conclusion directly, but smiled, “Let me tell you a story I’ve heard before.”

“The story also happened in a big Internet company. Their security team, although not as powerful as Site-15, had a high salary that attracted a lot of big people to join.”

“One day, they received a threatening letter, and the content of the threatening letter is that they let them pay a bitcoin account, or else they hacked their company’s network.”

“Naturally, these tech gurus weren’t intimidated by such small fry stuff, so they didn’t take it seriously.”

“Then at ten o’clock. Suddenly, their company’s building lost power for ten seconds.”

“Immediately after that, there was another email: This is a warning, if you still do not call. The consequences are at your own risk.”

“They panicked for a bit, and like you, they checked the entire server logs, while troubleshooting the company’s circuits, and everything was fine.”

“At ten o’clock the next day, despite the fact that those technical geeks had been on standby and ready for a long time. The blackout still came on time, this time for 30 seconds.”

“We knew that a power outage of a few tens of seconds would have little effect on a large and big company. After all, all of the servers had a backup power. But this hacker’s superior technology gave them chills.”

“They compromised and transferred money to that bitcoin account, and the matter was dropped.”

“The cybersecurity team at this major company tried to find the problem, but was never able to crack that man’s methods.”

“One day, a few years later, that hacker was caught for piracy and was deported to his home country before the truth came out.”

Speaking of which, Zhang Jue paused for a moment and looked at the expressions of several people around him. It’s not that he deliberately dragged out his shift, it’s entirely the aftermath of listening to his father’s book reviews as a child.

As expected, several people, including the Site Director Walnut listened with great interest, and even Owens had his ears sideways wanting to hear the continuation. After all, the story Zhang Jue told was too similar to what had happened to them here.

Zhang Jue laughed, “You guys, do you want to guess how that man actually did it?”

Simmons was closest to Zhang Jue and he hurriedly waved his hand, “Advisor Zhang, don’t sell yourself short. Just tell us.”

Seeing several other people also nodding in favor, Zhang Jue laughed, “This hacker once visited this company and then bribed their company’s electrician.”

“….”

“….”

“….”

Several people were speechless for a while. Was the end result of this story so boring? Several people in the hall looked at Zhang Jue with a strange look, the expression on their faces translated into five words – are you fucking kidding me?

Zhang Jue spread his hands, “I know you want to hear the legend of a hacker vs. a group of people, but no. This story is that simple.”

Robert pondered, “Advisor Zhang, are you saying that we encountered the same situation at our site?”

Zhang Jue nodded, “Eight or nine times.”

“How can you tell?” Owens said unconvincingly, “How do you know the other party isn’t a master of it?”

Zhang Jue was tempted to tell Supervisor Owens to read less those Chinese novels. They were all cool articles, nothing good came out of it.

He said, “If they played with you for a long time and finally won by a narrow margin. Then I believe he is a master, a great one. But Supervisor Owens, to say that you can’t even find traces of the enemy’s intrusion. With all due respect, I don’t believe there is such person in the world.”

Zhang Jue’s words were clever. Owens didn’t like Zhang Jue and wanted to refute him, but Zhang Jue was complimenting him, so he couldn’t deny it and say that all the people in the site were actually bad.

Just like in the streets of Northeast China, you look at someone and ask them, “What are you looking at?” If the other party says, “What are you looking at?”, you can naturally have a big fight.

But if the other person says, “You look like my father!” Even if his attitude is extremely arrogant, you have to admit it, right?

Owens is now in this awkward situation. He hummed for half a minute, but did not figure out how to answer Zhang Jue’s words. He could only shut up.

Robert looked amused and asked, “Advisor Zhang, even if this incident at Site-15 is man-made as you say. How do we find the person who caused it?”

Zhang Jue showed a profound smile, “From now on, things have already left the technical level and this is what I am best at. Supervisor Owens, please invite the several people who were responsible for upgrading the firewall that night to the conference room in turn, and leave the rest to me so you can wait for my good news.”

…

Several network security officers were placed in the corridor outside the laboratory door. Robert looked grave and said to them, “Gentlemen, the two people in the room are the special agents sent by the headquarters to investigate the attack on the site and they have questions to ask you. I hope you can cooperate.”

The people spoke with one voice, “Yes! Lord Robert!”

Seeing that his face looked bad, one of the researchers asked, “Lord Robert, what’s wrong?”

“Hey, don’t mention it.” Robert shook his head, he pointed to the conference room with his chin, “those two shouldn’t be messed with. Recently big things happened in this site, you know, we may have blame the headquarters. But I hope you guys are in best behavior.”

Robert left, leaving several programmers face to face, a sense of foreboding lingered in the hearts of the people. Not long after, the door of the conference room opened. According to the order Robert had arranged before, Malfoy walked in first.

When Malfoy entered the conference room, he saw two special agents sitting with serious faces, and at a glance, he knew they were not to be messed with. Especially the one on the left, the dark-haired, dark-pupiled Asian. He could even feel the gloomy aura emanating from the other side.

Robert had told him that this seemed to be the famous Advisor Zhang. He never knew that the other party was such a vicious person, and from the other party’s eyes full of killing intent. It seemed that he would hate to skin himself.

Malfoy did not know what he was about to face. Just one look at the other side, his feet had already started to get weak. When he managed to get to the center seat and just sat down, he heard that Advisor Zhang said: “Malfoy, why are you doing this?

Malfoy was scared to death and said with trepidation, “Advisor Zhang, what are you talking about? I, I don’t understand, what did I do?”

“Don’t understand?” That Advisor Zhang coldly snorted, “You do things yourself. Do you want me to remind you? It was you who tampered with the server that brought down Site-15 defense system, wasn’t it?”

Malfoy then realized that the other party actually suspected that he did it, and hurriedly said, “My Lord, it wasn’t me…”

“Still playing with me, eh?” Advisor Zhang slapped the table with a thud, “Simmons, shoot him for me!”

After getting the order, the man sitting beside Advisor Zhang smiled fiercely and pulled out a pistol, walking towards Malfoy step by step. Malfoy was scared out of his wits and fell off the stool.

Simmons walked towards him step by step, and finally came to his face, stepped on his chest and pointed the gun at his head, “Say it, is it you?”

“My lord, it really wasn’t me…”

His words were interrupted by a gunshot. Malfoy looked at Simmons in horror as he covered his stomach and closed his eyes.

Zhang Jue waved his hand and said to the staff at the side, “Drag them away!”

The door to the conference room opened, and the few people waiting outside saw Malfoy being carried away. They didn’t know what had happened inside, but the gunshot was heard. Several people’s faces went white at once.

The man inside shouted, “Next!”

Whitacre who was second in line, looked ashen. Sure enough, less than five minutes after he went in, another shot rang out. Immediately after that, his body was also carried out. The three people who were left looked around the room and they all had the urge to escape.

But just then, two teams of security personnel suddenly appeared at both ends of the corridor, seemingly anticipating their thoughts. The next and fourth security officers did not admit to doing it, so without exception, they were all taken care of with a single shot by Simmons.

Owens, who was watching all this from the monitor, worriedly said to the Site Director WAlnut, “My Lord, is this really Advisor Zhang’s method of solving problem? In case we still can’t find it, we won’t have a way to explain to these employees later.”

Site Director Walnut touched his hair, feeling helpless, “In fact, I don’t know. Just like Advisor Zhang said, when it comes to procedures, we are insiders. But for other things, we are not. You see that Advisor Zhang has its own way to do it and could filter that kind of people.”

As they spoked the words of the Site Director Walnut, the last security officer entered the conference room. Before he could take a few steps, he instantly knelt down in front of Zhang Jue and Simmons.

“Please, don’t. Don’t kill me, I’ll tell you everything.”