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Chapter 122 Private Message

Xiang Kun knew that to many people outside of the industry, hackers were the top-notch programmers.

Any title with “customer” in it is considered the highest rank, such as black hackers, red hackers, white hackers, and shock hackers. Titles with “master” in it indicate experts, like engineers or architects, and those with “staff” in it are…

well, not the best.

But in fact, there is no hierarchy between top-tier programmers and top-tier hackers; they just specialize and excel in different fields. One would do anything to fulfill and implement requirements, building systems; whereas, the other would strive to discover and exploit loopholes, infiltrating systems. One studies construction, and the other focuses on security.

There isn’t a clear boundary between the two. Hackers are a subset of programmers, and a programmer can become a hacker at any time.

It’s merely a matter of interest and specialty.

During middle school, Xiang Kun was deeply captivated by the cool-refined image of the hackers portrayed in TV dramas and novels. He fantasized about hacking computers worldwide, controlling everything from behind a screen, the puppet master in the shadows. Occasionally, he would follow tutorials to hack a few poorly maintained websites with weak passwords. But in reality, he didn’t do much — just a glimpse here and there, leaving a txt or jpg file as a souvenir. He was merely an amateur scripter.

The current Xiang Kun was familiar with terms like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, buffer overflow, heap spray, etc. He knew the principles behind such terms, but if asked to attack or infiltrate a specific target, it would be challenging. Not only does it require a different way of thinking and approach but also a considerable amount of other prerequisites such as standby PCs hijacked for use (zombie PCs), reserved trapdoors, social engineering databases of differing levels, special tools developed by him or others, and so on – not something one can master in a short period.

Of course, even top-tier hackers are not omnipotent.

Just like if someone wants to enter your house, they wouldn’t normally bring a hammer to smash the door. They might disguise themselves as a deliveryman, a utilities checker, a computer repairman, a takeaway deliveryman… or they could take advantage of when you are out or asleep to exploit deficiencies in your home security or architectural problems to sneak in through a window or use a skeleton key to unlock your door, or even follow you sneakily when you return home from grocery shopping, entering your house together with you.

Even if you don’t open the door, they can impersonate your identity to accept deliveries on your behalf, and even send deliveries or order takeaways in your name.

Unless you were to obliterate all the roads leading to your house (disconnect from the internet), otherwise, a constant target of surveillance indeed makes life miserable.

But all these require one prerequisite: they have to know your actual address (IP).

In the Internet, the most crucial piece of information is your IP as it represents your location, while your MAC address is your “name.” Similar to someone finding out that you’re staying at a particular hotel, they need to know your name to find which room you’re in, and catch you.

The world is vast. If you don’t interact with others and leave no clues, not everyone can find you because they may not know that you are the person they are looking for.

However, Xiang Kun is now planning to actively “send a package” to those who could potentially bear ill-will towards him and possess the ability to track him down. Therefore, he must be careful and prepare accordingly.

The router in the coffee shop is like a security guard at the entrance of a residential area, responsible of receiving parcels. Xiang Kun asks the guard to send a package on behalf of Xiao Ming. The guard then finds a mailman (Internet Service Provider), hands the parcel over to him, who then hands it over to deliveryman A (a stepping stone) pre-arranged by Xiang Kun. Deliveryman A then hands it over to deliveryman B (another stepping stone), as per Xiang Kun’s instructions.

Deliveryman B hands over the parcel to a deliveryman alliance (TOR), which then repackages it before handing it over to deliveryman C. Deliveryman C only knows that the parcel is to be delivered to X City, so he delivers it and finds a nearby deliveryman D to take over once in X City. Deliveryman D unwraps one layer of the package and finds that the next destination is X Street, so he finds a nearby deliveryman E to take over once on X Street. Deliveryman E unwraps another layer and delivers it to the reception desk of a certain company (Zhihu’s server).

When the reception desk of the company (Zhihu) opens the final package, there is no return address of the sender on it. If they want to return the parcel to the sender, they can only hand it over to deliveryman E.

Then deliveryman E finds deliveryman D, who then finds deliveryman C, and so on and so forth. Finally, the parcel is handed back to the mailman and ends up in the security guard’s office, who hands it over to Xiang Kun who collected it under the name of Xiao Ming.

Therefore, even if the reception desk (Zhihu) is controlled by an “evil person” who tortures deliveryman E, E cannot tell them the address of the sender because he really doesn’t know. He only knows that he received the parcel from deliveryman D.

Of course, this method is not completely safe and trace-free.

For instance, if there are insiders working for the “evil person” inside the deliveryman alliance, or if the “evil person” is ruthless enough to spare no cost or manpower, they could torture deliveryman D after capturing him, then catch deliveryman C, and so on and so forth, until they find deliveryman A and B; they could interrogate each one by one.

Or they could place a locator in the returned parcel, and once Xiang Kun opens the parcel, the locator would start working.

Or they could send Xiang Kun a truckload of parcels, forcing him to spend a lot of time transporting them, thus buying themselves time for investigation.

Even if they eventually find out from the mailman that the final delivery destination is a certain residential area and even find the security guard, learning that the sender’s name is Xiao Ming,

Their first reaction would certainly be to search the entire residential area for someone named Xiao Ming.

Upon noticing this, Xiang Kun, who had been watching on the sidelines, would immediately remove his mask, destroy all the parcels (virtual machines), and promptly retreat.

In the past, Xiang Kun heard about the police investigation into a severe hacker attack. The Deputy Minister of Public Security personally supervised the investigation. Late at night, they disconnected the telecom operator’s zone to determine the attack location, then the engineers drove around, carrying protocol detection equipment, going from one machine room to another for detection. They managed to reach the suspect’s door before dawn.

Even though it’s highly likely that the person on the other side has nothing to do with official entities, Xiang Kun was used to assuming that his hypothetical enemy is formidable while formulating his contingency plan, in case they can find his access IP.

As he was considering whether he had overlooked anything else,

“You’re a vampire too? How can you prove it?”

Xiang Kun had already anticipated this question and replied, “I can tolerate hunger better during the day than at night. At night, if I’m hungry and don’t have blood to drink, I easily become agitated.”

When considering his response, he thought about how to prove his vampire identity without revealing too much. The less information he gave away, the better.

Just like he didn’t mention his baldness, shedding skin, or losing teeth. Nor the fact that he had become stronger with improved vision. After all, he wasn’t sure if other ‘vampires’ underwent the same changes as him. At least the ‘Giant Owl’ didn’t shed feathers and go bald. If he mentioned these traits, chances are the other party would find out he was Baldy, a distinguishing feature.

“Kasumi of August” replied:

“Are you afraid of garlic?”

“Not afraid, but I can’t eat it. Anything other than water I consume ends up getting vomited. I’m not afraid of crosses and Buddha statues either.” “Wow! You really are a vampire! I finally found one of my kind, I’m so happy!”

Xiang Kun looked at the screen emotionlessly, chuckling in his heart: Pretending, keep pretending.

Then he replied, “Yes, I’m quite thrilled too. Finally found one of my kind!”

Kasumi of August: “Let’s chat on QO. I’m afraid Zhihu’s private messaging is not secure, what if the admins can see our chat! What’s your QQnumber? I’ll add you!”

Pipikachu (Xiang Kun’s newly registered ID): “What’s your QQnumber, I’ll add you.”

Kasumi of August:

Xiang Kun merely memorized this QQnumber in his head, he didn’t even bother to search for it, let alone open QQ. After a while, he replied, “Ah, I forgot my QQpassword, I can’t seem to remember it, so let’s just keep using Zhihu’s private messaging. They probably don’t have time to snoop on our conversations.”

Of course, he knew why the other person wanted to chat on QQ. Chatting over Zhihu would involve Zhihu’s servers which they would have little control over. But using QQcould easily facilitate a P2P connection, making it possible to learn the other party’s IP address. It’s as if skipping the company reception while delivering a package and handing it directly to the recipient, the delivery guy could be nabbed immediately.

Of course, with Xiang Kun heavily disguised, if he used tor to chat on QQ, it wouldn’t be that easy for the real IP to be traced. It’s just that Xiang Kun didn’t have an extra QQaccount prepared and was too lazy to switch methods.

After a while, Kasumi of August replied, “How about we switch to WeChat? What’s your WeChat ID? Don’t tell me you’ve also forgotten your WeChat password?”

Pipikachu: “What’s your WeChat ID?”

Kasumi of August: “Hey! I asked first, alright?”

Pipikachu: “Nevermind, I think we should just keep chatting this way for now. How did you become a vampire? When did it happen?”

Kasumi of August: “Why don’t you have any manners?/sad face.”

Pipikachu: “I am not a gentleman, I’m not even sure if you are my kind.”

Kasumi of August: “If you weren’t sure then why did you DM me? Wasn’t my answer pretty clear?

Pipikachu: “So, how and when did you become a vampire?”

Kasumi of August: “There are things I’d rather not say in private messages. Either add me on QQ, WeChat, or we could just talk on the phone.”

Pipikachu: ‘What’s your WeChat and phone number?”

Kasumi of August: “You’re too cautious, aren’t you? Did you create a new account just to send this DM? You keep asking about my information, but you won’t share any of yours? If you want to know when and how I became a vampire, you should share your story first, right? /angry-face.” Pipikachu: “You tell me first, then I’ll tell you.”

After a while, Kasumi of August sent a sighing emoji, then replied:

“Fine, I became a vampire a month ago, and I’m not quite sure how it happened. I just woke up one day and found myself like this. What about you, who was your first victim?”

Xiang Kun raised his eyebrows; this reply revealed too much information, perhaps more than she realized..