United States, Newton.
"Oh! Tommy, look!"
"Their decryption speed has increased!"
"Looks like you can't slack off anymore, hurry up and write the next piece of encrypted data."
In a rather vast secret base, a young blonde hacker with blue eyes, chewing gum, called out to another white hacker with a smile.
His name was Philip, one of the most legendary young hackers in the United States, who had single-handedly broken into major institutions like the First National Bank of the United States and NASA.
And carried out malicious destruction.
Although he was eventually discovered and traced back by the FBI, he still managed to escape unscathed, leaving no trace behind.
He was dubbed the mysterious devil hacker by the local media.
The other person he called Tommy was equally as capable as Philip.
His full name was Tom Anderson, and he had attacked major credit payment institutions.
Including globally renowned Visa, Pepe, Best Buy, and so on.
Despite these companies having extremely powerful cybersecurity personnel, they were still unable to protect much from this hacker who was barely twenty years old.
Ultimately, each institution lost anywhere from millions to hundreds of millions of US dollars.
Tom was consequently on the global wanted list. httpδ:/m.kuAisugg.nět
It could be said that either of them, standing alone, possessed at least Su Luo's hacking prowess.
And there were as many as eleven other hackers as formidable as these two in this enormous base!
They were outstanding in their abilities and shared the same aspirations.
Coming together, they formed the infamous hacker organization, Thirteen Hells.
That's right, a hacker organization.
The difference between "hacker" and "cracker," though just one word, was worlds apart.
Hackers possessed skills and abilities far beyond ordinary people.
They could find various system, software, or network vulnerabilities and fix them.
Making them more complete and convenient.
Crackers, however, were different.
Although they possessed absolute formidable computer comprehension and technical skills like hackers, they had no moral bottom line.
They invaded systems and networks with the purpose of destruction, and at the same time, caused severe damage to the targeted entities.
Therefore, crackers were universally condemned in the computer world.
The attack on Yaqin this time was a remote order they received through the network.
The client's objective was for Thirteen Hells to breach Yaqin's network as much as possible.
Simultaneously, they were to destroy all development projects related to Yaqin, thereby delivering a fatal blow to Yaqin.
Initially, Philip and the others had no intention of accepting the order.
After all, Yaqin, to them, was a kind of obscure micro-company.
Breaking into such a place offered neither enjoyment nor profit.
The final reward was even less than clearing a small level in a game.
However, when the client offered a sky-high reward of over a hundred million US dollars upon completion, they agreed.
One hundred million US dollars was not a small sum for them.
For this money, they could have sent just one person to casually handle it.
Philip was the "unlucky one" who drew the shortest straw.
There was nothing he could do; he had to accept his fate.
He first worked alone, using the most basic DDoS attacks to assault Yaqin's servers.
After being intercepted by the security personnel, he then attempted to capture Yaqin's packet data for backend intrusion.
The result was still failure.
This immediately piqued his interest.
Being able to defend against these attacks clearly couldn't be achieved by simple firewall software alone.
Behind Yaqin, there must be a technically proficient cybersecurity professional.
Thus, Philip, feeling playful, began to launch widespread attacks on Yaqin's network.
And after a series of attacks, he unexpectedly discovered that the other party could not only easily intercept his attacks but even counter-decrypt them, starting to obtain his host's IP address.
This greatly shocked Philip.
What surprised him even more was that around 1 PM this afternoon, the opponent's decryption offensive suddenly became very fierce.
Even his most proud defense methods could not withstand it.
Clearly, at least one more computer expert had joined the other side.
Helpless, Philip had to call Tom, who was playing video games nearby, to join him. Together, they managed to hold the last line of defense.
Through the mutual tug-of-war, Philip and Tom regained the upper hand.
At the same time, they also forged a Siberian IP address and a string containing the word "idiot."
Another few dozen minutes passed.
Sensing that the opponent's decryption speed had clearly slowed down, the two knew that the other party had seen the Easter egg they left behind.
They high-fived each other, hoping the opponent would bring more interesting exchanges.
But unfortunately.
Yaqin's decryption speed began to slow down more and more, until finally, it was only three-fifths of its original speed.
Philip alone was enough to handle it.
So Tom went back to playing video games.
It wasn't until Qin Xuan entered the scene, and Yaqin's decryption speed began to rapidly increase, that the situation at the beginning occurred, with Philip calling Tom to encrypt together.
And to their surprise, the opponent's decryption speed became faster and faster.
At first, it returned to the original decryption speed, which the two could still easily handle.
But in less than half an hour, the decryption speed increased from the original 1 to 1.1.
A direct increase of ten percent!
Could the other side have added more people?
Philip and Tom thought to themselves, while outputting their full effort, trying to stop the opponent's decryption progress.
But not long after, Yaqin's decryption speed increased once again!
"Holy crap, boss, are you a pervert?!" Su Luo's right hand trembled, almost spilling the freshly opened can of coffee onto the ground.
Just like Philip and the others.
Su Luo and the others were also extremely shocked by the increase in decryption speed.
After all, Yuan Mengqi's decryption speed had already reached its limit before Qin Xuan even entered the scene.
This meant that the overall decryption speed was entirely dependent on Qin Xuan!
Initially, when Qin Xuan was not very proficient, his decryption speed was already catching up to Su Luo's.
Later, in just a few minutes, his proficiency in decryption had caught up to Yuan Mengqi's.
Not only that, but in the subsequent half hour, Qin Xuan had also incorporated methods used by Su Luo into Yuan Mengqi's decryption techniques.
This further optimized the data decryption process!
This move made the collective decryption speed of the two increase again!
Where the hell are we supposed to reason this out?!
Su Luo initially thought that Qin Xuan had reached the opponent's limit by doing this.
But as time went on, he found that Qin Xuan's decryption speed was still getting faster and faster.
This speed was no longer an optimization of methods, but a purely physical speed.
Qin Xuan's ten fingers moved like dancing sprites in a forest.
As they shifted left and right, countless afterimages were already flashing across the keyboard.
Watching the encrypted code get closer and closer to the bottom layer, Su Luo's heart trembled.
Could it be that the IP address he had been deciphering for so long was about to reveal its true form under Qin Xuan's inhuman skills and hand speed?!