Red Hack's Butterfly Effect
While Yoo Jae-won, the face of the Kookmin PC initiative, was away in Korea, the hacker Red Hack had become a household name. Until recently, Red Hack had been nothing more than a self-proclaimed greatest hacker. His only claim to fame had been a short interview buried in the back pages of the lightest gossip magazine imaginable, the kind that might hang on a rack in an airline VIP lounge. Then, suddenly, he became a celebrity in America—all because of a paparazzi photograph.
The image showed Yoo Jae-won toppling backward in shock. It ran in another tabloid. The quality was poor, and the computer monitor wasn’t even visible, so commenters joked, “Mr. Chairman, you really ought to invest in a better chair.” At first, the self-proclaimed genius hacker Red Hack and the amusing photograph of Yoo Jae-won seemed like two unrelated stories. Neither magazine had significant circulation, so most citizens never even heard about the incidents. Even ID Group’s information team remained unaware.
Everything changed when someone noticed that the timing of the two events overlapped with Red Hack’s alleged hacking of Yoo Jae-won’s PC. The previous evening, while surfing the internet—a cutting-edge hobby—Yoo Jae-won had been riding the wave of 2CH.COM’s most popular posts when a headline stopped him cold: “Red Hack Was Real.” The post claimed that the timing of the paparazzi photo matched Red Hack’s supposed breach of Yoo Jae-won’s computer, which had prompted ID Group to issue an emergency patch for ID Talk.
Because 2CH.COM had been built as the community hub for the second Security Challenge, it was filled with computer experts and hackers. Their single goal was to crack the Android OS. If the post was true, then Red Hack had become the first person to successfully hack the Android operating system—even if he had done so through the ID Talk application. Verification efforts exploded. Some proactive users contacted both magazines for more details. Naturally, ID Group received calls and emails, and Yoo Jae-won’s inbox was flooded to the breaking point.
ID Group maintained complete silence. Yoo Jae-won had already issued instructions, knowing that feeding attention-seekers only made them more frenzied. There was no confusion within the company. Piecing the information together, netizens reached a single conclusion: Red Hack’s hack was real. His fame—and his stock—surged overnight. The phrase “woke up a star” had never felt more literal. The buzz wasn’t limited to the internet. Newspapers and television stations picked up the Red Hack story, turning it into mainstream conversation. After all, millions of challengers had been trying to breach the Android OS for the second Security Challenge, yet none had succeeded. Red Hack had done it in plain sight.
“Good grief,” Yoo Jae-won muttered when he finally grasped the full butterfly effect. In truth, it wasn’t that serious. No classified documents had been stolen from his computer; Red Hack had merely startled him. The hacker had cleverly exploited a vulnerability in ID Talk’s image-file handling, and ID Group had quickly released a patch. Because ID Talk only functioned while online and automatically updated upon login, the patch achieved 100 percent deployment and closed the hole completely.
The real problem was Red Hack himself. His sudden notoriety made unpredictable behavior likely. If he truly possessed the skill, entering the second Security Challenge and winning would be the best move for him—securing a legitimate $100 million prize and genuine fame. But Yoo Jae-won was certain Red Hack lacked that level of ability. The gap between public perception and Red Hack’s actual talent was enormous, and that gap would create two possible disasters: either Red Hack, overestimating himself, would cause an incident, or others, overestimating him, would cause one. The worst-case scenario involved Red Hack revealing his identity during a media interview, after which a gang might kidnap him to force him to hack for the $100 million prize.
“Sigh. Maybe I should just think of it as saving one person’s life,” Yoo Jae-won said. He hadn’t been particularly eager to track Red Hack before. While he was curious about the hacker’s appearance, he had never considered him talented enough to recruit. Now, however, leaving the situation alone seemed certain to end badly. It would be better to act before others moved first and prevent any unfortunate outcomes. Rather than letting ID Group’s image suffer from some ugly incident, it would be far preferable for the public to hear that the company was willing to hire even a hacker if the person proved competent.
“Let’s get started.” Yoo Jae-won took the keyboard himself. Tracking Red Hack from scratch would have been extremely difficult, but this case offered plenty of leads. The screenshots published in the magazine that first interviewed Red Hack were especially useful. They included not only the date but the exact time, and crucially, the chat window between Red Hack and the interviewer remained visible. All ID Talk conversations were encrypted so only the two participants could read them, yet every message passed through the server. File transfers used P2P and bypassed the server, but real-time chat left complete records. Server logs were kept for three years; without the encryption key, the content stayed unreadable.
Many people mistakenly believed they needed to crack the encryption key to trace Red Hack. “No need for that,” Yoo Jae-won thought. The exposed chat window was the key. By extracting the list of IPs active during that time window and filtering for conversations whose length matched the text printed in the magazine, Red Hack’s identity could be narrowed down instantly. By the summer of 1993, ID Talk had just surpassed one million subscribers in the United States. That was a large number, but simultaneous users dropped to roughly one-tenth. Filtering further for users who had been chatting during the exact time window reduced the pool to one-twentieth—five thousand candidates.
“And if we filter again by the length of the sentences typed in chat…” The number dropped from five thousand to fifty. Finding Red Hack among fifty IPs was trivial. There was no need to attempt decryption, no matter how short the key. Instead of wasting centuries on cryptanalysis, they could simply investigate all fifty IPs through sheer volume. Yoo Jae-won didn’t have to do it himself; the American information team, which had so far failed to earn its keep, could finally prove useful.
The method wasn’t perfect. “Hmm. Using a proxy server would complicate things.” If Red Hack had hidden behind a proxy, his real location wouldn’t appear immediately. They would try the straightforward approach first; if a proxy IP surfaced, the best option would be to request cooperation from the company that owned it. Yoo Jae-won compiled the IP list and sent it to the information team leader with orders to begin the search.
“I’ll begin immediately!” Levin Willis, the information team leader, replied at once. Recommended by Remington, Levin had performed his duties diligently, but the Red Hack incident had damaged his reputation. His determination to redeem himself was obvious. The next day, Remington visited Yoo Jae-won’s house, concerned about the growing paparazzi problem. He recommended moving to a more secure residence. The current home’s layout was too vulnerable to surveillance.
Remington suggested Sausalito. The affluent waterfront community where Tiffany’s family lived offered excellent privacy protection. “That doesn’t sound bad,” Yoo Jae-won replied. Being close to Tiffany’s house would make dating far more convenient. He had no particular complaints about his current home, however. “I thought simply applying privacy film would be enough.”
Yoo Jae-won wasn’t overly worried about the paparazzi. While the attention was unpleasant, the photographers hadn’t approached close enough to be stopped by the security guards; they had used long lenses from a distance. He considered his own carelessness—relying on bulletproof glass—more at fault. A privacy film that prevented outsiders from seeing inside should suffice. Remington disagreed. “Will that really stop determined paparazzi? Even Hollywood actors dread them. If there had never been a gap, maybe, but now that they’ve had one success, they’ll swarm like sharks that have tasted blood.”
Yoo Jae-won found himself nodding. Besides, he didn’t attend school every day; he only needed to visit when special events or professors required his presence. There was no reason to cling to the current location. “Understood. I suppose I’ll have to stay at a hotel starting today.” No matter how luxurious, a hotel could never match the comfort of one’s own home, but remaining here was no longer practical. A little inconvenience was acceptable. “Yes, sir. I’ll make the arrangements.”
Once the personal-security discussion concluded, Remington moved on to business. The first topic was the Langley project with the CIA. The agency apparently didn’t believe Yoo Jae-won would actually write the source code on-site, compile it, and deliver a working big-data search engine. They wanted to test it in the field. “A customer’s natural right,” Yoo Jae-won said, readily agreeing. Confirming that the ordered specifications and performance were delivered was entirely reasonable. It was far better than dealing with complaints later.
Remington continued. “Ah, and there’s a request coming in from many companies. They want the words ‘Gaming Edition’ removed from the Android OS.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“It seems some employees are playing games on office computers. Of course, that’s the employees’ fault for gaming during work hours, but executives believe the ‘Gaming Edition’ label is partly to blame.”
Most people shortened Android OS to “And” and added the version number, so the latest release was commonly called And 2.0. The omitted part was “Gaming Edition.” Since the alpha version, Android had emphasized its gaming capabilities, and that branding had continued into 2.0. The Glide X gaming library had been further strengthened, resulting in richer games than in the previous timeline. Office software was also fully supported, and the base Android libraries expanded with every update. Consequently, ID Office and countless professional software packages now ran reliably on Android 2.0. Corporate PCs came with Android pre-installed—Ad-Free Edition for branded machines, Adware Edition for custom builds. Using the Adware version in a company technically violated the license, but ID Group had never punished illegal users. The same applied to cracks that removed advertisements. Android’s market share was ID Group’s power; whether users were legitimate or not, they strengthened that power. The company had maintained this consistent stance from the beginning. Moreover, any crack became invalid after the next update, and the hassle plus the prevalence of virus-infected crack files discouraged many users.
Remington’s point was that openly branding the OS as gaming-oriented drew complaints from corporate customers. Yoo Jae-won’s response was simple. “Hmm. If they don’t like it, they can buy the Enterprise Edition.” Many people assumed the Enterprise Edition was only for servers or workstations. If that had been the intention, it would have been released under those names. Instead, the name reflected its suitability for businesses and organizations by combining all necessary attributes. The Enterprise Edition also allowed administrators to set rules for program execution. If executives disliked employees playing games, they could simply block the game executables on the management computer, and the restriction would propagate to every connected machine.
“Haha, of course. But the Enterprise Edition is rather expensive.” The Adware Edition was free, the Ad-Free Edition cost $9.90, and the Enterprise Edition ran about $120—roughly the price of MS-DOS 4.0 back in the day. Comparing DOS 4.0 to Android 2.0 Enterprise Edition was absurd. No one needed to compare functionality or convenience. Even a simple capacity comparison showed DOS 4.0 fitting on less than one 2HD floppy while the latest Android 2.0 required fourteen. The more complex Enterprise Edition occupied thirty floppies. ID Group deserved a hundred bows for offering such capability at the old DOS 4.0 price. Yet customers complained about the cost while conveniently forgetting the past. Yoo Jae-won had no patience for the argument.
“Good news. New ADSL subscribers in San Francisco have surpassed one hundred thousand.” It had been a little over a month since Nextcomcast began its ADSL pilot service in California, yet the service had already crossed the hundred-thousand mark—an astonishingly steep curve. At this rate, reaching one million subscribers within a year would be trivial. California’s total population exceeded thirty million, the largest in the United States, so one million might not seem significant in absolute terms. The year 1993, however, made the number meaningful. “Most subscribers are in San Francisco and Los Angeles, but other regions are contributing decent numbers as well. Naturally, Nextcom’s paid subscribers have also increased sharply.”
The promotion offered free Nextcom premium service with a 1 Mbps premium ADSL subscription. Most new customers had chosen the premium tier. For reference, the basic ADSL plan provided 512 Kbps for $9 per month, while the premium 1 Mbps plan cost $15. An ultra-premium 8 Mbps option existed but was limited to customers within 500 meters of a Nextcomcast facility equipped with ADSL hardware. ADSL technology was highly distance-sensitive. Although fiber-optic cables were being laid, they were still used only for backbone networks. The final mile to users remained copper wire, imposing strict limitations. At $100 per month, the ultra-premium plan attracted very few customers.
“How are email subscribers doing?” Email had not yet received full-scale advertising compared with Nextcom or ADSL. “We’re gaining three to four thousand new subscribers per week.”
“Oh? That’s more than I expected.” Even without advertising, a respectable number of people were signing up for email. Using a unified login ID as an email address appeared to be an effective strategy. Yoo Jae-won continued receiving various operational reports from Remington for the rest of the morning. Some were pleasant, others concerned employee disputes or sexual misconduct cases that had resulted in terminations. Overall, the reports were routine.
With the morning schedule complete, Yoo Jae-won turned to his single afternoon appointment: an interview with CBS, America’s leading broadcast network.