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Chapter 178 National Cybersecurity

Chapter 178 National Cybersecurity

It obviously isn’t an easy matter to move optical cables, each of which are 800 nautical miles long, into a cave among the reefs. That was why Chen Fan had decided to move them in sections.

The distance to the reefs was about 500 nautical miles. The electrical eel first drug one end of an optical cable, working hard to move it, towards the reefs. Once the weight of the optical cable had reached a certain limit and could no longer be dragged, the electrical eel would then drag the other end, before then switching again to the middle part. In this way, the optical cable could be slowly dragged towards the reefs.

By the time the two broken heads of the optical cables had been dragged into the big cave among the reefs, it was already almost midnight. After washing up, Chen Fan laid in his bed, making up his mind to get some equipment to connect to the satellite internet device when he awoke the next day.

Naturally, satellite internet devices could not be bought within the country, because each network card has a unique twelve digit hexadecimal network address that was designated by the network card manufacturer, during the manufacturing process. These network addresses could be used to control the host’s data communication on the internet, and the information obtained could then be used to pinpoint the target’s location.

This is why Chen Fan was prepared to buy it from Japan, since Japan was only a few hundred nautical miles away from Zhong Yun. Such a relatively small distance would mean that a two-way trip by the electric eel would only take around half a day.

Also, obtaining japanese yen was not an issue, as he only needed to go to an illegal money changer. There were many people who provided this service in Zhong Yun, and it wasn’t as if he was exchanging too big of a sum. What was truly troublesome, was that Chen Fan could not speak Japanese! He could not even get a translator’s help for this matter.

"It seems that the only thing I can do is to continue pretending that I’m mute!" Shaking his head, Chen Fan drifted off to sleep.

At 4 a.m. the next morning, by a barren rocky beach in Amakusa City, Kyushu Prefecture, Japan.

The electric eel scanned its surroundings with its pair of water-tank-sized eyes, which could see clearer than any night vision device. After making sure that the surrounding area was safe, it immediately used its claws to lift the submersible onto a reef. Chen Fan, who was hiding within the submersible, sneakily opened the hatch to peek his head out.

The current top-of-the-line night vision devices that were used by the army have an effective observation distance of between 1500 to 2000 meters. The electric eel was far superior to this, having an observation distance of up to 3500 meters.

The sky was still dark, so Chen Fan decided to wait for the sky to brighten up a little before heading to the busy downtown district to purchase the satellite internet device.

Once the clock showed 6 a.m., Chen Fan carefully checked his appearance. Upon confirming that he looked fine, he set foot on an asphalt road, heading towards the downtown district.

The night before, Chen Fan had used Google maps to mark out the walking route. He had even worn a pair of sunglasses, a peaked cap, and a high-collared windbreaker, as the weather here was much colder than in Zhong Yun. Also, his wearing this Shanghai Bund mogul get-up in the monster-infested streets of Japan seemed out of the ordinary, as was his intention.

As predicted, Chen Fan had only walked the streets of this tight-knit city for half an hour, before a long-haired beauty in a black-and-white striped short skirt stopped him. She gave a vigorous bow, greeting him, "Ohaiyo! Ohaiyo!" Her low-cut shirt gave Chen Fan an eyeful of her chest.

She definitely did that on purpose!

Chen Fan swallowed two mouthfuls of saliva.

Dressing like this, and on such a cold day! Wasn’t she worried about freezing to death? And. bowing so low... Was she an escort?

However, Chen Fan clearly had misunderstood her intentions. Nobody would do that sort of thing so early in the day. That’s only done at night!

After bowing in greeting, the pretty maid gestured an invitation to Chen Fan, beckoning him into what was clearly a breakfast shop.

"Irasshaimase! (Welcome)!"

Chen Fan looked at the pictures of the various foreign snacks on the fiery red glass that decorating the door to the shop. Realizing he was indeed quite hungry, he started salivating all of the sudden. He figured that trying an authentic Japanese breakfast would not be such a bad thing.

His expression was blocked by his wide-brimmed peaked cap, as Chen Fan took out a two thousand yen note. Then, with his leather-glove-covered left hand, he pointed to the glass wall several times at random.

"Hai!" The girl of around 18 immediately bowed excitedly, then ran inside, clutching the banknote.

Dadada... In less than two minutes, the clear sound of footsteps sounded in Chen Fan’s ears.

The breakfast that he had ordered was packed in a pretty, red paper bag. Chen Fan took the bag and motioned for her to keep the change, since it was useless to him anyway.

"Arigato-gozaimasu." As she thanked him, a happy grin blossomed on the girl’s cheeks, which had been reddened by the cold. One could barely resist pinching those cheeks!

The bag contained two pieces of dorayaki with red bean paste filling, muyu suckling pig dumplings, three pieces of onion takoyaki and a cup of miso soup. Most of the items weren’t bad, but the soup tasted a little weird, as it was all sour, salty, and a little too thick. So, Chen Fan threw it away after only two mouthfuls.

Three hours later, Chen Fan returned to the rocky beach, carrying three boxes in his right hand, each containing a satellite receiver that measured 30cm long, 20cm wide, and 10cm high. In his left hand, he carried two boxes, each of which contained a laptop.

Chen Fan had simply entered an insignificant looking electronic shop at random, before taking several satellite internet devices and laptops off the shelves, all with their price tags on, so that Chen Fan need not play charades in order to find out.

He had soon found that little Japan’s electronic goods were much more advanced. The maritime satellite internet devices that were sold in Zhong Yun not only looked ugly, but could only be obtained from carriers or proxy companies.

On the other hand, the ones that were sold in little Japan were about the size of old handphones, having long antennas at the top. Hence, if the wire connecting them to a computer was removed, they could even function as a maritime satellite phone. Varying payment methods were also accepted in little Japan, making it extremely convenient to purchase supplies there.

Chen Fan had already solved the problem of topping up the card. Each device came with a free satellite phone SIM card with 1 USD inside. By communicating with hand gestures, Chen Fan had already managed to top-up 150000 yen into each card, which he figured would last him three years of continuous use.

He left for Japan just past midnight last night, and had not slept since. Exhausted, Chen Fan curled up behind a rock, hugging the paper boxes. He was prepared to wait out the day, then depart at night, for safety reasons.

Awaking the next day, Chen Fan knew that the only problem left now was figuring out how to connect the device to the optical cables. Hence, Chen Fan went to a shop in Zhong Yun that specialized in computer products to get advice. He then instructed a shipyard worker to create a small sealed casing. These kind of international optical cables all contained specialized electrical circuits in order to provide electricity for the repeaters to magnify the signals for retransmission to other countries or to distances too far off.

After running around for two days, he finally connected the signal converters and the power supply wires to the satellite internet devices, then covered them up with a waterproof outer casing. He covered the base of the optical cables with corrosion-proof suspended matter that he had obtained from the shipyard, so that the optical cables wouldn’t sink.

International optical cables were unlike household optical cables, which only required two strands of fibers. They contained countless tightly-packed fibers in order to reach maximum efficiency.

However, connecting all the fibers was an exceedingly complicated process that must be done by a professional. Hence, even though it hurt his heart to do so, Chen Fan had no choice but to use the international optical cables, as if they were household optical cables.

Commanding the electric eel, Chen Fan sneakily took out the optical cables and tested them with the laptop that he had bought from Japan. The Internet speed was ordinary, slightly faster than a wireless network card. The thing was, he had no satellite. Otherwise, the speed would be faster than its bandwidth with a satellite TV dish receiver.

Up next, Chen Fan was faced with the task of framing someone else. An 800 nautical mile long optical cable setting out from the undersea cave can cover the entire four countries of South Korea, North Korea, Japan and the Philippines. In fact, when dragged to its longest, it would only be tens of nautical miles away from the border of Russia! No matter which country it was left in, the fun would be incomparable!

After studying the digital map, Chen Fan smiled sinisterly. He then decided to place the optical cables between Japan and Korea.

As for the layout of the optical cables, Chen Fan employed the modern method of digging out a gully and placing the optical cables in it, letting mud and sand pile naturally on top to cover them. The only difference was that, instead of using high pressure guns, the electric eel used a spear to plow out a gully.

It took the electric eel two whole days to finish laying out the optical cables. As for hiding the satellite receiver dish, after thinking it through, Chen Fan chose a small hill with a size of around dozens of square meters, which was located right in the middle of Japan and Korea, and hid the dish near the hill.

The waters surrounding the hill were filled with reefs, making fishing impossible. Even small boats that were approaching the hill might be run aground if they were not careful, let alone large military ships. Besides, Chen Fan had also installed an underwater surveillance device under the receiver dish, which would alert him immediately of the approach of any boats.

Sitting in front of his computer, Chen Fan again went on several foreign websites to confirm that there was no problem with the reception. There wasn’t, since the maritime satellite internet covered the whole globe, after all!

Upon completion of all the stages, the only thing left to do was to send the information to the French government, charging them an extortionate amount. Using the laptop with handphone reception to surf the web, Chen Fan found several French government websites on Baidu. Among the sites were tourism websites, embassy websites, football association sites and more, but he could not find the military’s website.

However, Chen Fan found something even better, which was the French President’s website. Naturally, it was doubtful whether the website was actually maintained by the President himself. The President was, after all, busy with affairs of the State, so would most likely delegate such unimportant matters to his subordinates. For instance, the US government employed dozens of employees merely to reply to all the messages that were left on the White House’s website.

As Chen Fan perused the net, he discovered that all of the official websites of foreign presidents would have an email address for the public to send feedback to. Just a few clicks of the mouse, and Chen Fan found a series of email addresses.

Using another laptop with handphone reception, Chen Fan opened Yahoo’s online Japanese translation site. At the translation box, Chen Fan keyed in a carefully composed paragraph.

Navigating online translation required skill. It was best to use common terms to increase its accuracy. However, Japanese words originated from Chinese words, and in a Japanese essay, half of the characters would be Kanjis. Hence, no matter how poor the translation was, it would not deviate too much from the original meaning.

As for why he wasn’t blackmailing the government for more money, Chen Fan was of the opinion that he should not go overboard, just in case their tempers flare, resulting in them decisively withdrawing their submarine altogether. Anyway, he still had a killer strategy to end all strategies hidden up his sleeve, which was the nuclear submarine!

He copied the paragraph into WordPad, saved it on a flash drive, then inserted said flash drive into the laptop that he had bought from Japan. Windows operating system is the same everywhere, and there were many linguistic similarities between Japanese and Chinese, so Chen Fan could operate the laptop fine, as long as he wasn’t doing anything too complicated.

The problem of the email address was easily solved. Chen Fan just went on Japan’s Google site, compared it to a Chinese control interface, then registered a sockpuppet gmail account.

Taking a deep breath, Chen Fan pasted the paragraph into an email, then attached the voiceprint recording of the red gem submarine. The recording had been cut in half by Chen Fan, leaving only 23 MB remaining.

A minute later, the document had finished uploading. Chen Fan rubbed his nose, then pressed the Enter key.

"I hope my email will not be treated as spam!" Once the email sent prompt appeared, Chen Fan sat up in his chair and shut down all of his computers.

Walking down from the stone tower, Chen Fan cut off the battery of the connecting receiver. Even a fool would know that, once they discovered the truth of the document, they would mobilize all of the network technicians in the military to investigate the source of the email.

He got back to his house, sat down on his sofa. Then, while teasing Xiao Xue, which had already grown to 35 kgs, he watched the news channel to see if anything major had happened.

Two hours later, in number 15, Andorra la Vella Street, Paris, France.

The four-story greyish-white building looked ordinary from the outside, but the nearby residents all knew that the building was anything but ordinary. In fact, it was a building that made even the people working in those skyscrapers in the distance instinctively tread lightly when passing. That’s because this building housed the National Cybersecurity Agency of France!

"Catherine, would you make me a cup of coffee, please? Thanks!" Sonnenfeldt poked his head out from the office, as he shouted towards a blonde in a black suit.

"Sonnenfeldt, can’t you make it yourself? Why do you have to ask me to do it every single time?" The lady called Catherine grumbled a long while, before she unwillingly got up.

Five minutes later...

"Let’s see who are these complainers, who are so free to whine to the government this time!" While drinking his coffee, Sonnenfeldt leisurely clicked open the server of the President’s website.

Reviewing the emails that had been recently sent to the President’s website was just one of his sundry tasks. His real identity was as a member of the network information security taskforce. As such, his job included maintaining the server of the President’s website, so that he could deal with the harassment sent from hackers all over the world.

However, he was actually really enthusiastic about this task of reviewing the emails, because most of the complaints received were all over the place, making them incredibly amusing. For instance, he could clearly remember an incident from last year, when an 80-year-old lady sent an email praising the President ardently and confessing her love for him. She had even attached a few pictures of herself in a swimsuit!

He had just swallowed a mouthful of coffee, when he saw the email. Upon his surprise in reading it, he nearly choked to death on that very coffee!

Of course, he would submit any emails that contained constructive criticism, and were presented in a professional manner, to the President’s secretary, who would then review them and make the final call as to whether or not the President should read them himself.

"I want the government to amend the law, so that postmodern performance arts would receive greater recognition from society..." Sonnenfeldt clicked open an email at random, reading it aloud softly.

With emails which like this, which were neither constructive nor interesting, he would press the delete button after a mere glance, before moving on to the next one.

"I love Mr. President, particularly his mature and reliable charm..." Sonnenfeldt loved flowery emails like these. Sipping his fragrant coffee, he made himself comfortable and continued reading.

When he had scrolled to the bottom, Sonnenfeldt’s sip of coffee suddenly came spurting out from his nose, causing him to almost hack out a lung, while coughing. After hurriedly deleting a picture of a guy with long chest hairs and toned abs, Sonnenfeldt’s attention was arrested by an email with a Japanese subject line.

"Huh, the Japanese are really something, sending their spam all the way here!" Sonnenfeldt shook his head.

Even the entire online community could not do anything about spam emails, so what could he do? Deleting that email, Sonnenfeldt continued browsing the rest of the emails.

"I am a six-year-old child, and I strongly request that the government allow underaged children to access pornographic websites."

"Haha!" Sonnenfeldt laughed out loud, satisfied with today’s find. He was only halfway through, but he had already read so much amusing stuff.

Unfortunately, that was where his luck ended. The rest of the emails were not amusing in the least.

Bored of maintaining the server, Sonnenfeldt exited the backend interface and glanced at the clock, finding that there was still half an hour to go before the end of his shift. So, he resigned himself to spending that half hour in utter boredom.

After around ten minutes of playing minesweeper, Sonnenfeldt shook his head. While it was a classic game, he had played too much, causing him to gradually lose interest, especially since he was a high-level minesweeper, holding a steady record of around 40 seconds!

He refreshed the server a few times, but there still were no attention-grabbing subjects. Sonnenfeldt refused to give up, scanning the emails through several times, yet still not finding anything.

That Japanese email in between so many French emails was indeed attention-grabbing. After a moment’s hesitation, Sonnenfeldt decided to click on it. Naturally, he could not read the Japanese, but he secretly just wanted to look at some unhealthy sites through the links provided.

"Hmm?" Sonnenfeldt found it odd that the email did not contain any of the links he had expected. There was just one paragraph and an attachment of around 20 MB in size.

Out of curiosity, Sonnenfeldt decided to put the message through their internal translation system. Could it be a challenge issued by a Japanese hacker, asking for them to test their respective Internet skills?