"Technically speaking, the ctOS System completed the preliminary work, after which I personally executed the hack and successfully obtained access to the Dog Town stadium's server."
Venus spoke softly, as Mercer turned his head and saw the little cat on his shoulder looking at him with eyes identical to his own blue ones, as if seeking credit.
"How did you manage that?" Mercer was very interested and began examining the data within the server and the state of the devices connected to the local network while asking.
"The ctOS System hacked into several Netherworld Dog soldiers surfing the net in Dog Town, and from there, initiated a large-scale infiltration of the soldiers' connected devices.
Their awareness of network defense was weak; many soldiers, whose brain-computer interfaces were uploaded with hidden virus programs, would carelessly connect their networks to the various servers of the Netherworld Dogs.
Through multiple hacks and viral spread, we successfully seized an opportunity when a Netherworld Dog soldier operated a device, spreading the virus into the stadium's core server and cracking the local network access permissions."
Venus made it sound simple, but Mercer was well aware of the complexity of the work involved.
This hacking method was essentially casting a wide net—the hack program built into the ctOS System indiscriminately infiltrated all connected devices and used hidden virus programs to assess the target's value.
Once the target's identity and value were assessed, ctOS categorized these devices based on different priority levels.
The lowest-level devices, similar to city surveillance cameras, only handled basic data collection and big data analysis, automatically processed by system algorithms, which filtered out unimportant information after summarizing the collected data.
The intelligence information, refined by algorithms, was compressed and stored on the server.
This server wasn't just Mercer's personal server—he didn't have that much storage space—but rather borrowed the databases of the City Hall and NCPD to hide these low-level data.
The system would even secretly call upon the opposing servers' computing power to analyze this data, saving the space on Mercer's base servers.
Then there were the medium-value targets, which were private devices identified by Venus as 'high-value individuals.'
This included high-ranking corporate employees, active gang members, certain key position government officials, and so on.
These personal devices included private computers, various Network Access Vaults, and the target's brain-computer interfaces.
This aspect was particularly terrifying—in the Cyber World, very few people feared viruses in their brain-computer interfaces.
Part of the reason is that without a Network Access Vault, people's brain-computer interfaces are generally run solo, and who would fear a standalone computer being infected without downloading anything?
Additionally, the brain-computer interface itself has a very small capacity; without a Network Access Vault, hacking into it is extremely difficult.
Even if there's brief network connectivity with a device, the brain-computer interface, without direct wiring, has incredibly low data transfer rates.
This leaves most hack programs, unable to transfer the program before the brain-computer interface detects the data anomaly, or they fail to hack because the target disconnects the network in time.
To put it simply, wired transfer rates might be 10M/S, whereas unwired, this drops to just 100kb/s; anyone who has ever downloaded something online knows how vast this difference can be.
But under Mercer's personally-written automatic hack program, the ctOS System seized possibly just a one or two-second time window to deliver a compressed super-virus to the target's brain-computer interface.
This program automatically disguises itself as part of the data transmitted during target network connections; to ordinary people, it may just seem like a temporary network lag of one or two seconds.
Once it stealthily infiltrates the target's brain-computer interface, as long as the interface connects with any device, the virus will automatically replicate and spread via the data connection.
Upon determining that it resides in a runnable device, it will silently begin self-extraction, and after decompression, automatically execute analysis tasks.
The virus analyzes the device and automatically reports back to the ctOS System, then continues lurking until another networked target appears, and it replicates and spreads again...
Doesn't it sound like a lurking cyber version of a zombie virus? As long as a device is infected, it'll unknowingly become the next virus carrier.
Eventually, these medium-value targets will unknowingly bring the virus into high-value targets, like the Dog Town stadium server Venus was showing Mercer.
The Dog Town stadium is the Netherworld Dogs' lair.
It can be said to be the network core of Hansen and his Netherworld Dogs; it includes the whitelist and blacklist checks at Dog Town's entrance, the soldiers' data, even Hansen's smuggling records, all stored within.
Currently, all of these are at Mercer's disposal for viewing and modification as he pleases.
Achieving this through manpower alone or purely with virus programs would be absolutely impossible.
If a single hacker were to accomplish all this, they would have to be on standby 24/7, as no one knows exactly when their target might suddenly connect to critical equipment.