It was a sheer coincidence that D4K was attacked by over a hundred hackers.
There was a user on the forum named Orchid Elf, who enjoyed reading on a site called "Wang" and often posted data on D4K to expose discrepancies. For instance, she would highlight books with only a few hundred bookmarks but tens of thousands of hits, or those with few bookmarks but thousands of votes, which often left authors at a loss. Thus, she earned the nickname "Auntie Orchid" for her ruthless exposure (begging for votes and bookmarks to avoid being exposed).
Some suspected she was a technician from a certain site, otherwise, how could she obtain such hidden data, gossip, and messages? In reality, Auntie Orchid was a member of the Red Hacker Alliance. Although not a central figure, she had achieved some accomplishments and had designed a program specifically to monitor new books on the Chinese website X Point.
Bookmarks, hits, recommendations—all were clear at a glance.
As usual, Auntie Orchid logged into D4K and noticed a post titled "The Fallacy of the F-22 Myth" by a user named XOKO. Intrigued, she thought, "Today's another day for exposing flaws."
Excitedly, she opened the post, but was stunned after reading it.
To her, the content was nothing short of astronomical. The keywords left her bewildered, and after searching for a while, she couldn't find any flaws. Even the most outspoken members of the military literature section were silent.
The responses were mundane:
"Blowhard, F-22 secret data? I'm the chief designer of F-22. What a joke."
"Basement dweller, thinking you're unbeatable with an XO ID? This content looks like trash from a street vendor. Summoning the fact-checkers."
Auntie Orchid immediately thought of the XOKO ID. Having spent a long time in the Red Hacker Alliance, she had picked up quite a few skills. Unexpectedly, when she tried to track the IP, she hit an insurmountable barrier. The ID owner must have anticipated this and implemented protective measures.
Alarmed, Auntie Orchid quickly logged into the Red Hacker Alliance family and recounted the entire incident. Hearing about the strange forced execution of the program, a highly respected hacker decided to infiltrate the system.
However, Leon had deliberately mimicked Victoria's infinite IP hopping to make the address seem more authentic, making it incredibly difficult to trace back to the source. After several minutes of futile attempts, the hacker gave up. This incident spread like wildfire within the Red Hacker Alliance, and the legendary figure XOKO's appearance ignited the internet. By 7 PM, the hackers launched a massive assault. Not only did the Red Hackers join in, but hackers from other countries also got involved.
This was why Grace found such heavy traffic when she logged into D4K.
After kicking out all the hackers, Grace restored the server's smooth operation and accessed XOKO's complete data.
"He's XO!!"
Grace immediately made this connection, detecting a familiar scent of having browsed the core American files between the lines of the F-22 post.
Grace was highly sensitive to such matters. If it was true, her plans had a chance.
After some thought, Grace began to infiltrate Leon's IP address. Being one of China's top hackers, she eventually tracked it to a website in the EU called "Hundred Days Empire." There, she found a top-secret terminal server, which would be difficult even for her to breach alone.
Grace did not attack but cleverly erased her traces and exited.
Having completed this, Grace felt a fine layer of sweat on her skin, her eyes hazy.
"XO? Is he Chinese or part of an EU organization??"
This question haunted her mind. Was it, like Leon suggested, an American trick, fishing for Chinese targets?
Grace suddenly felt very confused.
She picked up her milk cup, then set it down, turned off the computer, and headed to the bathroom.
"Should I ask Leon again?"
Grace, when did you start relying on others? She couldn't help but smirk at her own self-mockery.
...
While the XOKO incident was causing a storm online, the instigator, Leon, was in the library's computer information management office.
Leon was starting to investigate the infiltrator, Victoria.
Based on the fragments Leon currently possessed, Victoria was likely a foreigner, with a 70% chance of being British, a 60% chance of having entered H university this year, and an 80% chance of being female.
Victoria's reference to the "eternal" birth likely related to her activities at H university.
With these criteria, Leon quickly narrowed down the scope.
After hitting enter, the database pulled up all the records of foreign faculty and students this year.
A careful glance revealed there were five to six hundred people, which was quite a number.
Leon then inputted his criteria regarding Victoria's identity into the computer, letting it help search for matching individuals.
Seconds later, the search completed!
Seeing the final results, Leon was dumbfounded.
This couldn't be right, could it???