The Second Security Challenge Begins
Technopia, 1993. A few days later.
“The second Security Challenge begins now!”
Yoo Jae-won declared the start of the unlimited hacking competition while facing the camera. Unlike the first event, there was no applause or cheering. That was understandable. The place where Yoo Jae-won now stood alongside a cloud of media reporters was inside the data center in Coyote City, a restricted area no ordinary person could enter.
Originally, they had planned to hold the event in the empty lot in front of ID Technology’s headquarters, but the need to set up hacking PCs had forced them to choose the data center instead. As a lighthearted American-style joke, Yoo Jae-won had initially intended to show only a single New Egg PC—one that wasn’t even powered on, let alone connected to any network. It was his subtle rebuttal to Fox News’ initial report.
Fox News had sensationalized the story, claiming that after receiving the mail bomb, Yoo Jae-won had vengefully installed a backdoor on the Unabomber’s PC to extract information. Similar outlets had begun parroting the report, and eventually even the New York Times—though with a different tone—argued that personal data shouldn’t be entrusted to a single company and a handful of owners.
Yoo Jae-won fully agreed with the New York Times article, but the premise was wrong. The Unabomber had been a technophobe who rejected civilization and lived in a remote cabin deep in the woods. Naturally, there had been no computers in his home—only an old typewriter and mountains of paper. To mock that narrative, he had wanted to display an offline New Egg PC. However, after Remington advised that it would look too trivial and that there was no need to respond to every media report, he changed his mind.
There was no better location than the Coyote City data center to demonstrate how seriously they were taking the event. It was also the perfect place to assure computer experts that ID Group wasn’t pulling any tricks. They had shown the New Egg PC connected to an external fiber-optic cable modem and publicly disclosed its IP address. They also planned to use CCTV to record continuously, proving that no one would approach the machine until the competition ended.
The New Egg PC ran Android OS 2.0 Gaming Edition, and its built-in network monitoring program was already collecting real-time statistics on IPs attempting external connections.
“We’ve already surpassed ten thousand participants. The numbers are rising quickly.”
That figure represented people waiting for the competition to start, hoping for fame, prize money, or something else. Yet the New Egg PC remained unaffected. Under normal circumstances, a server computer would have crashed from the traffic or at least had its web server program shut down. The New Egg PC, however, showed no signs of strain. This was actually an advantage of the Gaming Edition’s limited network features. A true server would waste bandwidth sending welcome pages to every connection, but the personal-use Gaming Edition recognized the massive connection attempts as an abnormal situation and simply blocked them.
That didn’t make the second Security Challenge a scam. Such behavior was clearly documented in the thick manuals provided with retail or enterprise purchases. Anyone who copied the adware version from an ID Flagship Store or a contracted retailer could download the ID Word manual from the Android OS website. Of course, the manual was as thick as a novel, so few people had actually read it thoroughly. Still, any competent hacker knew that studying the manual was basic protocol. Therefore, skilled hackers wouldn’t attempt to connect right at the start.
If it were Yoo Jae-won, he would have gone a step further and launched a massive DDoS attack to block competitors for about a month. That way, once everyone else dropped out from exhaustion, he could monopolize the challenge. A true hacker, he believed, should find and exploit a vulnerability that neither he nor the hundreds of Android developers in Redmond had discovered.
“We’ve also opened an anonymous bulletin board for the second Security Challenge. Participants can easily and quickly exchange opinions and information, and updates on the event’s progress will be posted there.”
Along with Yoo Jae-won’s words, the address 2ch.com appeared as a subtitle. Though it was a fully functional internet site with its own domain, visiting it only revealed an anonymous bulletin board where anyone could post and read. Being entirely text-based, it could handle massive traffic without issue. Its defining characteristics were complete anonymity and a thread-based structure. Users could create new threads on any topic they wished and exchange as much information or opinions as they wanted. It wasn’t a one-time thing. Once the second Security Challenge ended, the site was scheduled to evolve into a major community platform. However, because anonymity could accelerate chaos, they planned to enforce extremely strict moderation from the beginning. A large number of monitoring part-timers would be deployed to delete posts filled with profanity immediately.
At the same time, natural language machine learning based on 2ch.com posts would begin. This would help the system learn English while developing internet-specific filtering technology based on the knowledge gained. It was a fairly large-scale project, but only a handful of people within ID Technology knew about it. Given how powerful the technology was, they were collaborating only with a trusted few—Remington, Allen, and Lisa.
“Lastly, new challengers are always welcome.”
With Yoo Jae-won’s closing remarks, the hundred-day unlimited race known as the second Security Challenge began.
The next day.
Upon waking, Yoo Jae-won headed straight to his computer instead of the bathroom as usual. After silently offering a brief prayer, he turned on the computer. Uncharacteristically solemn, he pressed the power button with his finger rather than his toe this time. The boot process finished instantly, and the familiar desktop appeared.
Normally, he would have launched ID Talk and opened the Nextcomm news page with his browser, but today was different. He did open the browser, but the first page he visited was 2ch.com. Thanks to the fiber-optic connection between the high-performance data center and his home, the page loaded instantly without any lag.
Thousands of threads had already been created, each filled with user posts. Slightly tense, Yoo Jae-won quickly read through the most popular threads. His eyes couldn’t hide his nervousness. After all, in the early days of the internet at the beginning of the twenty-first century, hacking competitions had been held frequently. Most were organized by security companies, just like this one, to showcase their defensive capabilities. Yet many of those events had been breached within the first day.
Yoo Jae-won had worried that Android 2.0 might suffer the same fate. Of course, he and everyone else acknowledged that his software development skills far surpassed those of the 1990s. Still, there was always the possibility of an overlooked vulnerability—like the one in the ID Talk hate-image emails—or the emergence of a genius who hadn’t shone in the previous timeline.
“Whew, thank goodness.”
After reading the latest threads, Yoo Jae-won felt relieved. The participants were all marveling at Android’s fortress-like security, comparing it to trying to crack a rock with an egg. Some complained that automatically rejecting connections was a cheap trick, but others had reached the remote login screen and posted screenshots, silencing those critics by proving they lacked the skill.
Hoping nothing would happen during the hundred days of the Security Challenge, Yoo Jae-won closed 2ch.com. After shutting down the browser and launching ID Talk, more good news arrived.
—Boss, the deposit has been received.
It was a report from President Remington. Four million dollars—the down payment for the big data search engine package—had been wired from the CIA. Compared to ID Group’s total revenue, it wasn’t a particularly large deal. The advertising rate for Android adware, renewed every hundred days, had already risen to two million dollars per slot. Thanks to Android OS being installed on PCs across America and the world, the number of people seeing the ads had increased dramatically, and its effectiveness had been proven. There was even talk that before entering the year 2000, a single Android ad slot might surpass the price of a Super Bowl commercial. It sounded outrageous, but it wasn’t impossible.
More than ten million new PCs were sold annually in the United States alone, and over twenty million were being distributed worldwide. Every new PC came with Android OS pre-installed, and at least one-third of them were the adware version. Once the number of deployed PCs exceeded one hundred million, it would surpass the Super Bowl’s viewership, making it only natural for ad rates to exceed those of the Super Bowl. Moreover, unlike a Super Bowl ad that flashed by once, an Android ad was displayed at least once a day—more often for users who rebooted frequently. When integrated with the internet, it could also deliver detailed information or lead directly to purchases. Yoo Jae-won couldn’t even guess where the rising value of Android ads would end.
—They designated Langley headquarters as the installation site. So I’ll be heading to Virginia with the operations team this time.
The most famous landmark in Langley, Virginia, was undoubtedly CIA headquarters. Still, Remington didn’t necessarily need to go there himself. TG’s U.S. branch could handle the computer installation, and Cisco could manage the network setup.
“It’s not just a one-day trip, is it?”
—No. There are still some unresolved details regarding system operation and maintenance. There will also be parts requiring immediate on-site feedback, so it’ll probably take about three or four days.
“That’s quite a while. It’ll be the first time you’ve been apart from Emma for so long. Will you be okay?”
—I’m a bit worried, but I can manage.
Emma was the daughter Remington had with Shannon. Daughters were said to resemble their fathers, but Emma took after her mother so much that it was hard to describe how adorable she was. Barely over a year old, she looked like a little angel. If he were Remington, he wouldn’t want to be separated even for a day, yet he had volunteered for a four-day business trip. His loyalty to the company was once again on full display.
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
—It’s nothing.
After promising to treat Remington even better upon his return, Yoo Jae-won ended the call.
“Is everything at the company wrapped up now?”
Business operations were flawless. The second Security Challenge, which had been a concern, was proceeding smoothly. The simultaneous software development by teams in Korea and the U.S. was also on track. The semiconductor division’s sales and development, which had started recently, had long since entered stable operations, and USB chip development was problem-free. Public matters were perfect.
What remained were personal matters. He planned to stay in Korea for about a month, so if it were anyone else, they would have arranged gatherings with friends they wouldn’t see for a while. But Yoo Jae-won didn’t have many friends to contact. His master plan had included making many friends in college, but currently, the only people he communicated with besides Gilbert and Tiffany were his department professors. Gilbert would come running whenever Yoo Jae-won called, so there was little burden there, but Tiffany was special.
“What would count as a proper date?”
Having spent both lifetimes focused on work rather than play, Yoo Jae-won lacked confidence. He couldn’t exactly ask the internet either. While there were free bulletin boards for various topics, none were suitable for relationship advice. Besides, most Nextcomm users shared similar tendencies to his own—not all of them, but the statistics confirmed it. Far more people preferred sitting in front of a computer playing games or chatting online than going out. Their answers would likely be similar, so it was best to figure it out himself.
“Well, there’s no rule saying we have to have fun only in San Francisco.”
In the end, Yoo Jae-won pulled out what seemed like an over-the-top idea. He would go down to Los Angeles—a much larger and more vibrant city than San Francisco—and visit Disneyland. The logic circuit that led him to Disneyland was more complex than expected. The basic premise was to have an exciting time. Therefore, it needed to be a date involving physical activity rather than something stationary. The problem was that Yoo Jae-won himself abstained from alcohol and was still a minor. That ruled out clubs or bars. Renting a yacht to enjoy the waters off San Francisco was also out of the question—not because of money, but because his intimacy with Tiffany wasn’t at that level yet. Moreover, she might feel burdened by such an extravagant suggestion.
That left activities like bowling or tennis, but those didn’t appeal to him. Watching professional sports like NBA or MLB games might work, but he wasn’t sure if sitting and spectating would be exciting. Then Disneyland caught his eye. Even if it was a bit childish, a theme park was perfect for having a blast. The biggest downside of theme parks was the crowds and long lines for each ride, but in capitalist America, money could solve that too. There was something called a Fast Pass. By paying an express fee, you could skip the long lines. It wasn’t available for every ride, but it applied to all attractions that offered the Fast Pass policy. Even so, when Fast Pass holders gathered, short lines could still form, and some rides didn’t offer Fast Passes at all.
“If she says no, we can just do a Grand Canyon tour instead.”
It was a tour he had enjoyed a few years ago when his parents and relatives visited the U.S. Flying in a helicopter and admiring the stunning scenery had been wonderful. He had also asked executives for recommendations of LA’s best restaurants and compiled a list of at least eight places, ranging from atmospheric fine dining to casual spots like taco joints.
Once he laid everything out, the scale was quite large. The itinerary involved flying to LA, spending the day at Disneyland until evening, having dinner, and returning on a night flight. Of course, being a man, Yoo Jae-won had also toyed with the idea of booking a hotel—just in case the one-day date somehow turned into an overnight trip. But in the end, he left the hotel option on hold. Even with the most optimistic outlook, it felt like too much of a stretch.
Still, overall, it was a substantial date for something short. The expenses would be considerable too, but wasn’t that the point of earning money—to live well and enjoy life? He never wanted to experience the regret he had felt in his previous life right before dying. Even if nothing happened with Tiffany, it would be worth it if he could at least leave behind a bookmark of memories.
“All set.”
Staying true to his meticulous nature, Yoo Jae-won transcribed the organized schedule into an ID Word document. At the same time, he made inquiry calls to confirm whether he could obtain important items like Fast Passes. Once all preparations were complete, he launched ID Talk and double-clicked Tiffany’s icon.
All that remained was the final negotiation with Tiffany.