Rebirth 2010: I taught Mr. Lei how to make a mobile phone

Chapter 892 The First Sword in Hand

Late at night, Chen Mo returned home and locked the dedicated hardware device, which was never connected to the internet and resembled a USB key, into the safe in his study.

So far, the safe contains a hard drive with more than 200,000 Bitcoins, a hard drive with highlights of Chen Mo's friends, a black notebook for recording key events, two property deeds, and the new member that joined today.

Given the gravity of the matter, the Sword-wielding system has implemented an extremely stringent access control system.

The system requires a top-level account, a unique mobile device bound to the system, multi-factor authentication using biometrics (fingerprint/voiceprint/iris), and a dynamic key password. Only when all four conditions are met can you access the final operation page. If any one of these steps is missing, the system will refuse activation.

Thus, the control of a "digital nuclear weapon" powerful enough to shake half of China's internet landscape was firmly in Chen Mo's hands.

Xu Chaojun's task was to ensure that the "sword" was flawlessly forged, making it strong and sharp enough to unleash devastating power at crucial moments.

And the only one who wields this sharp sword is Chen Mo.

After nearly half a year, the idea that had been in my mind finally became a reality.

This gave Chen Mo some peace of mind.

Recalling his recent visit to Professor Li Yining and his discussion of Alibaba and Evergrande, Chen Mo became even more determined to implement the "Sword-wielding" plan.

Before the P2P lending platforms collapsed, his warnings went unheard. At the time, he asked Mr. Li a question: "Anyone with a discerning eye could have predicted how these things would go. Why?"

The elderly professor's eyes were filled with a world-weary helplessness; he simply shook his head and smiled bitterly, offering no reply.

Although Elder Li did not provide an answer, Chen Mo understood the silent reply from the old man's weathered eyes.

As a most optimistic pessimist, Chen Mo knew full well: "Converting rice paddies to mulberry fields is a good thing, but problems have arisen in the implementation process by those below. But what if..."

The Sword-Wielding System is Chen Mo's increased leverage for himself and the Other Shore Group; it is his last resort for self-preservation.

If the Beyond Group, painstakingly built over a decade, were to one day deviate from its original course for some reason and become a tool for others to commit evil.

So he would rather become Luo Ji and press the button in his hand without hesitation.

Let's reset everything!
A nuclear bomb is most powerful when it is quietly sitting in its silo.

"I hope I never have to use you!"

Chen Mo stared at the red bomb-like icon on his phone and muttered to himself.
On November 22, light snow fell in Beijing.

Snowflakes fell in a flurry, draping the bustling city in a silvery coat.

That day, a maintenance notice was pinned to the top of the Bi'an Group's internal forum:
"To improve the stability and security of the internal forum service, we have fixed known issues."

The technical team will conduct an emergency shutdown maintenance on the internal forum system from midnight tonight to 2:00 AM tomorrow.

Friendly reminder: Please arrange your work in advance to avoid relying on the forum for communication during the maintenance window.

For urgent communication, please use the group's instant messaging tools or email.

We will restore service as soon as maintenance is complete.

The maintenance time may be shortened or extended; the actual time will prevail.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this temporary maintenance may cause!

Thank you for your understanding and support.

If you have any questions, please contact our IT support hotline: extension XXXX.

Group IT Infrastructure Department, November 22, 2017

For employees of the Beyond Group, the intranet forum is regularly maintained every month, and this kind of temporary maintenance is not uncommon, so no one took it seriously and just regarded it as a normal routine maintenance.

Anyway, the maintenance takes place in the middle of the night, and very few people will still be browsing the internal forums after get off work.

Unlike employees at other companies, employees at the other side seem to have plenty of energy after a day's work and are more willing to enjoy life, but when they get home they are so tired that they just want to sleep.

Few people would be so idle after get off work as to log into a VPN to access the intranet, unless there's an emergency. But many employees actually look forward to such emergencies, which might only come once a year.
However, only Xu Chaojun knew what this maintenance of the intranet forum truly meant for the Beyond Group. It was not an ordinary system maintenance, but the final preparation before the official launch of the Sword-Wielding System.

Nanshan No. 1 Courtyard.

Tonight, Chen Mo specially arranged for his female companions to take time off, leaving him alone at home.

At 23:55, Chen Mo carried a freshly brewed premium goji berry tea into the study and slowly placed the thermos on the table.

Arrive at the safe, turn the combination lock, and retrieve the key device inside.

At 23:58, a specially modified Xiaomi Mix phone, a key device, a monitor displaying the intranet forum interface, and the thermos cup that had just been placed on the table were neatly arranged on the table.

There were no other items besides these.

The entire study was so quiet that only Chen Mo's steady breathing and the ticking of the wall clock could be heard.

At midnight, Chen Mo reached out and turned on his phone screen, unlocked it with his fingerprint, and entered the phone's interface.

His gaze lingered on the screen for a moment, finally settling on the bottom. Outside the window, the snow was falling heavier and heavier.

The next second, Chen Mo's finger slowly pressed on the red bomb icon.
First layer of verification: Enter your account, password, and mobile verification code.

Second layer of verification: Chen Mo pressed his right thumb onto the corresponding area.

Fingerprint recognition in progress. Verification successful!

Third layer of verification: Chen Mo faced the camera and blinked.

Face/iris recognition in progress. Verification successful!

Fourth layer of verification: "I am Chen Mo!"

Voiceprint recognition in progress. Verification successful!

Finally, a blank area pops up on the phone screen; this is the most crucial key verification step.

Chen Mo picked up the dedicated device next to him that was never connected to the internet, gently pressed the button, and a peculiar, irregular pattern immediately appeared on the device's screen.

This pattern is not a typical combination of numbers, letters, or symbols, but an irregular pattern resembling the scribbles in zombie movies.

He pointed the key at the phone's camera, and with a "beep" sound, the scan was successful, and the same pattern was imprinted on the originally blank area of ​​the phone screen.

The image is then converted into data and transmitted to the server, where a complex parsing and editing process begins to rigorously check the data against logic and rules. The verification is only considered successful when the data on the server and the terminal are completely consistent.

After doing all this, Chen Mo looked at the clock on the wall; it was already 00:03.

Suddenly, some scenes from movies and TV shows flashed through his mind, where villains tried to detonate bombs in a critical moment, but failed because of the cumbersome verification process.

Chen Mo shook his head, trying to banish this absurd idea from his mind.

The next moment, he pressed the yellow button without hesitation!
Instantly, a confirmation box popped up on the phone screen: "Are you sure you want to perform this operation?"

The double confirmation mechanism is not only to prevent accidental operation, but also to give the operator a second chance to think.

After all, if a celebrity accidentally likes a post, it will only cause a public opinion storm.
However, if Chen Mo were to accidentally click that red button at this moment, the consequences would be unimaginable—at this stage, it might only be the loss of internal network data forums, but once the third phase of the Sword-wielding system is completed, trillions of assets would vanish in the blink of an eye.

Chen Mo clicked the "Confirm" button and then refreshed the intranet forum.

The familiar page is still there, but all the data on the page has vanished as if it had evaporated into thin air.

Three seconds later, the page automatically redirected back to the login page of the intranet forum, as if I were standing at the entrance to a virtual world, but I could no longer enter.

Typically, missing or incorrect data will cause the backend system to continuously report errors, and the frontend page will also display error codes such as 404, 500, and 502.

404 stands for Not Found, which means that if we send a request to the server via computer or mobile phone and the corresponding resource cannot be found, this number will be returned.

People often see a huge 404 error on a webpage, with a message like "~I've gone to Mars" or "Oops, I'm lost" below it.

Bilibili even creates a funny comic strip to address these kinds of questions.
A 500 error indicates a general error within the server, meaning that the website or system has a serious vulnerability.
A 502 error indicates a gateway error, meaning the server is unable to respond to the request due to network or other reasons.

The code written by the technical team of the Beyond Group was very robust, and even if all the data was lost, the error was not exposed to the user.

Although the page appears normal, this silent anomaly is more unsettling than a screen full of error codes.
Leaving a clean page for the user and silently recording all error messages in logs for ourselves is also a manifestation of the Beyond technical specifications.

However, this bizarre scene was still captured by the "Otherworld Technology" of a few night owls.

A programmer rubbed his eyes, unable to believe what he was seeing, as he saw the message that the account did not exist.

"Huh? Is the data lost?"

Instantly, he perked up and excitedly popped up in a small WeChat group for businesses: "Something big has happened! The internal forum maintenance might have lost the data?"

"Holy crap, is this for real?" someone immediately responded in the group chat.

"Of course it's real, I've already taken a screenshot, look!" The person then sent the screenshot to the group, sparking a heated discussion.

"Has the database permission been compromised?" someone asked.

"Who knows? Maybe this upgrade and maintenance is only for the database, and they're switching between the old and new databases?" another person guessed.

“Our maintenance notices used to be very clear, but this time they’ve copied our competitors and just say things like ‘fixing known issues.’ Who knows what ‘known issues’ are?”

Everyone chimed in with their own opinions, analyzing the unusual phenomenon.

However, regardless of the discussion, given the strict access control mechanism and high technical standards of the Beyond Group, the occurrence of such a data display error cannot be simply explained by "technical incompetence".

At this moment, the culprit is conducting tests with Xu Chaojun in an orderly manner.

After confirming that the test was successful, Chen Mo clicked the yellow button again.

Just as the technicians were racking their brains trying to figure it out, the intranet forum suddenly returned to its usual calm, and all the data was intact, as if everything that had just happened was just an illusion.

It was late at night, and everyone eventually gave up and went to sleep.
(End of this chapter)