Ransomware (1)
Before I started work, I was subjected to a brief questioning by law enforcement.
The Latin woman in her midforties was named Eleanor Reed. She was with the FBI. The heavyset white man standing beside her was Victor Wilton, from the NSA.
From the way they interacted, it was obvious they’d known each other for a long time.
That made sense. The FBI and NSA were running a joint investigation into the ransomware attack.
I handed over the materials they’d asked for, including records of the trades I’d made.
They studied everything carefully. Since I’d shorted the stock only after the network went down, there shouldn’t have been any real issue.
Investigator Reed asked me, “How were you able to make an investment decision so quickly?”
“I happened to be staying at the JR Blackwood Hotel in Palo Alto. The moment I saw how chaotic everything had become, I realized there had to be a serious problem with the servers.”
“And why were you convinced it was ransomware?”
“CEO Lucas looked into it and said there was a strong chance that was what it was. The call record from that time should still be there.”
The two of them took turns asking questions, and I answered without hesitation.
After about thirty minutes of that, I finally asked them, “So, are your suspicions cleared up now?”
Investigator Wilton said, “Not exactly. Even if you weren’t directly connected to the hacker group, you could still have obtained the information somehow.”
“At higher levels, there are still suspicions that this might have been a staged event.”
I smiled at Reed’s remark.
“If that were the case, I wouldn’t have shown up here at all. And isn’t it common knowledge that the criminal group is Great Net?”
In the end, suspicion naturally faded with time anyway.
Wilton asked in a cold voice, “Why did Continue Capital get involved in this?”
“To help resolve the ransomware attack.”
He let out a derisive snort. “You shorted the stock, and now you’re scooping up shares after they’ve been crushed. Do you really think anyone believes you’re doing this out of pure goodwill? You think I don’t know what’s on your mind?”
“And what exactly do you think is on my mind?”
“You’ll take the profits if this works, and if it looks like it’s going to fail, you’ll dump it before that happens. That way, even if Blackwood pays three hundred million dollars, you figure you won’t lose a cent.”
“Ah, that’s a misunderstanding. If the ransomware can’t be solved, I won’t sell a single share. If necessary, I’ll sign something to that effect.”
“……”
He fell silent, apparently not expecting me to say that.
Then I turned the tables and asked them a question of my own. “I’ve heard the name Great Net plenty of times, but what exactly is it?”
Reed exhaled slowly before answering. “What we’re discussing now is not information that should leave this room. If it leaks, you could be punished under the law.”
“Understood. I’ll keep it to myself.”
It was a warning, but in the end they weren’t going to tell me anything important.
No—more precisely, they probably didn’t know much themselves.
“The leader goes by NetWalker. There are about a dozen members. Judging from their methods so far, they’re likely operating somewhere in the United States.”
I nodded and waited for more, but that was all.
“And?”
“That’s it.”
I made a look of open disbelief. “That’s all you’ve got? I can find that on the internet. You’ve been running a joint investigation for over a year, and that’s the best you’ve learned?”
At that point, wasn’t the taxpayers’ money being wasted?
Neither of them had a comeback, and both looked faintly embarrassed.
“Ahem. Ransomware is notoriously difficult to track.”
“In the past, internet crime was mostly traced through bank accounts. But the rise of cryptocurrency changed everything.”
You could call it one of the ugly side effects of digitalization.
In fact, since cryptocurrency came into existence, cybercrime—including ransomware—had exploded by hundreds of times.
These crimes had become a threat even to national security. In some ways, they were worse than bombings or mass shootings.
At least when a hotel server gets hacked like this, the damage is limited to being unable to make reservations. But if a hospital server is compromised, hundreds of patients’ lives can be put at risk.
That was why the FBI and NSA had focused so much of their investigative power on this area. Even so, their arrest rate was still dismal.
“So you really think you can solve this without negotiating with Great Net?”
“Yes.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure, and yet you bet everything you had on it?”
I shrugged. “Where in investing is there ever a hundred percent certainty? You just run toward the opportunity when it appears.”
That was a different story if you didn’t know the future.
Still, I said with confidence, “Just trust CEO Lucas for once. You won’t regret it.”
Neither of them looked convinced.
It wasn’t unheard of for companies to resolve ransomware attacks on their own, but cases like that were extremely rare.
Wilton said with a mocking tone, “Do you know how many experts have been thrown at the Great Net investigation? And you expect to solve it in three days?”
Actually, this part was surprisingly easy to solve.
In a way no one could have imagined.
I pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of my pocket and set it on the table.
Reed looked at it and asked, “What’s this?”
“Want to make a bet with me? Whether this gets resolved within three days or not. How about a hundred-dollar wager?”
“……”
“……”
* * *
At Yuseong Electronics, meetings chaired by the chairman were being held day after day.
The topic was entering the data center business.
Chairman Yoo Jae-ho exercised firm control over the entire Yuseong Group. Whenever he decided to do something, the general atmosphere was to go along with him.
But this time, the negative opinions were overwhelming.
That was only natural. Entering the data center business was on a completely different scale from acquiring a fabless company or an equipment manufacturer.
Mergers and acquisitions like Dongwoo Precision’s were, at most, a way to strengthen semiconductor capabilities. They weren’t an entry into a new industry.
And if something went wrong, the only loss would be the money spent on the acquisition.
Losing hundreds of billions because of a bad investment would hurt, of course, but money like that could be earned again. Data centers were different.
To enter that market, they would need to commit company-wide resources—Yuseong Electronics, yes, but also Yuseong Construction, Yuseong Electric, and the rest.
Every affiliate would have to jump in and pour in enormous resources. In most industries, if you spend enough money, results eventually follow.
The problem was the competition.
Everyone knew data was the resource of the future.
So the giant IT companies had all rushed into the field, fighting each other tooth and nail.
AMZ, NS, Guble, Enple, and FaceNote were building data centers all over the world and laying undersea cables to connect them.
China wasn’t standing still either.
Jinibaba and WeChant were building data centers centered on China and the Third World, while the Communist Party pushed a doctrine of data sovereignty and forced IT companies doing business in China to build local data centers.
It looked almost like a territorial war.
The companies ranked one through five were all concentrated in the United States and China, and they were backed by massive government support on top of everything else.
Entering this field meant going to war with them.
And those same companies were also Yuseong Electronics’ major customers.
“The Big Three are Yuseong Electronics’ biggest clients.”
“If Yuseong Electronics enters the data center business directly, they’ll immediately slash their DRAM and NAND flash orders and move to a competitor.”
“Do you think the other IT companies will just sit there and watch?”
“If we build a data center and utilization doesn’t meet expectations, we may be the ones who have to eat the losses.”
If they handled this badly, they’d lose money and customers at the same time.
Just the current business already had Yuseong Electronics thriving, and the shareholders were satisfied. Why go out of their way to make enemies of their partners and push into a new industry?
The executives all thought the same thing.
Why is he suddenly micromanaging operations so much these days?
He got a few acquisitions right, and now he thinks he’s invincible?
He caught a mouse by backing into it like a cow.
Who’s feeding him these ridiculous ideas now?
They did their best to talk the chairman out of what they saw as a pointless endeavor.
“The risk is far too great to make Snow Crash our sole partner.”
“It’s still only making a name for itself in enterprise solutions. Its share of the cloud market is tiny.”
“There are already rumors that the Big Three will move to block us or try to take an equity stake.”
“Shareholder opposition is another problem.”
“If we have to acquire related companies and make the necessary capital investments, the immediate cost alone will exceed one trillion won.”
“If our clients push back, the stock could crash.”
“Even when Yuseong Economic Research Institute reviewed this three years ago, it concluded the business wasn’t viable.”
Yoo Jae-ho knew all of that very well.
And yet there was one reason he couldn’t easily let go: Han Miru’s words kept echoing in his head.
You said the future was in the cloud, didn’t you? That if Yuseong Electronics missed this market, it would end up as nothing more than one parts supplier among many.
Yuseong Electronics had been the strongest force in semiconductors since the 1990s.
NS and Enple were one thing, but AMZ, Guble, FaceNote, WeChant, Jinibaba, and the rest were companies that couldn’t even touch Yuseong Electronics’ heels.
And yet, at some point, the positions had reversed.
While Yuseong Electronics grew tenfold, those companies grew thousands, even tens of thousands of times larger. Their market caps had pulled more than twice as far ahead, and in negotiations Yuseong Electronics was no longer the one holding the upper hand.
That didn’t mean those companies were making vastly more money than Yuseong Electronics, either. In some cases, their net profit was only half of Yuseong Electronics’, while their market cap was more than double.
The market didn’t assign value like that for no reason.
It did so because it believed those companies would reap enormous rewards in the future, while Yuseong Electronics would not.
Even after all those meetings, no conclusion was reached, and Yoo Jae-ho’s worries only deepened.
Then, in the middle of it all, news came from the United States about Continue Capital.
Before Blackwood International had even made an official announcement, Continue Capital declared that it had shorted the company after learning of the ransomware attack.
As expected, the attack was confirmed to be ransomware, and the stock price collapsed.
In the securities world, people said Continue Capital must have made at least two billion dollars.
At this point, I’m not even surprised anymore.
Just as he was thinking that, Han Miru called him.
Yoo Jae-ho offered his congratulations.
“I saw the article. You pulled off another one.”
“It’s not over yet.”
“Not over?”
“I’m in Austin, Texas right now.”
The moment he heard the location, Yoo Jae-ho understood.
“That’s where Blackwood International’s headquarters is. What business do you have there?”
But instead of answering, Han Miru said something completely unexpected.
“If I were you, I’d buy Blackwood International stock right now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“CEO Lucas has stepped in to restore the servers. Once the ransomware issue is resolved, the stock will skyrocket.”
“……”
Yoo Jae-ho was so stunned he couldn’t speak.
So you made money by revealing the ransomware and crashing the stock, and now you want to make money by fixing the ransomware?
At this point, no one could argue if someone called it speculation.
“Can it really be solved?”
“Yes. It’ll be wrapped up within three days.”
After hanging up, Yoo Jae-ho thought about it.
Security was one of the biggest concerns for every company. That was why so many firms avoided moving to the cloud.
But what would happen if Snow Crash solved that problem?
Wouldn’t the situation be exactly the same as before?
Right now, Snow Crash was still a company that lagged far behind Yuseong Electronics. But the cloud had limitless room to grow.
And if Snow Crash stood at the center of it?
There might come a day, a few years from now, when Yuseong Electronics would have to go to Snow Crash and beg for a favor.
To make sure that never happened…
We need to join forces now.
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