Charles Bieber felt like he had gone mad, even though he and the company’s entire tech team lived in the server room for the next 48 hours.
He had also tried nearly every technical method he knew of, only to be met with the helpless realization that he had no way to deal with this damned hacker's extortion.
The hacker's methods weren't particularly sophisticated, simply packaging and encrypting all the data. Yet, this simple approach proved insurmountable. Unless Charles Bieber could find the key, the data would remain permanently sealed on their hard drives, forever inaccessible.
Meanwhile, the entire company had exploded. The consequences of this data encryption were catastrophic.
Firstly, all data in the company's backend was lost. Many employees woke up surprised to find no data information in the company's backend programs.
Employee work information, driver attendance records, tour guide schedules, and more – all of it had vanished from the company's backend and couldn't be found anywhere.
Even the simplest function, clocking in and out, was no longer operational. No matter how employees swiped their fingerprints at the automatic clock-in machines, they displayed "clock-in failed" because the attendance data couldn't be uploaded to the company's management system.
If it were just the company's own data, it would have been manageable. However, this also included a massive amount of user information. For instance, names, identification details, passport information, destinations, travel plans, assigned tour guides, and crucially, payment information of users who were about to arrive in England were all gone.
This was the reason the entire English Travel Agency was on the verge of collapse. A large number of tourists were stranded at the airport, discovering that their pickup guides were nowhere to be found. Or, if a guide did arrive, they claimed no knowledge of picking them up. In some cases, guides couldn't confirm the tourists' information or itineraries. Some guides couldn't even find transportation. All of English Travel Agency's operations had crumbled at this moment.
This was replaced by a deluge of customer complaints. In just one day, English Travel Agency received over 3,000 complaints, setting a new record for the entire industry. Charles Bieber could no longer even manage a wry smile.
Finally, Charles Bieber resignedly advised the boss to pay the ransom to the hacker. He personally felt incapable of resolving the issue and also offered his resignation to take responsibility for the incident.
The boss of English Travel Agency eventually agreed, but he did not accept Charles Bieber's resignation, stating that once the data was recovered, his priority should be restoring normal company operations.
"Boss!" Hearing this, Charles Bieber looked at his boss with excited, disbelieving gratitude. He hadn't expected his boss, who was usually quite stingy, to be so magnanimous.
"This isn't solely your fault!" The boss pulled out his terminal and handed a news article to Charles Bieber. "Take a look. It's not just our company anymore, but the entire country of England, and even the whole world, that is in chaos!"
Initially, Charles Bieber thought his boss was exaggerating, but after reading the news on the terminal, he realized there was no exaggeration at all. Reality was even more dire; the entire world had descended into a state of apocalypse.
This was because Charles Bieber and his English Travel Agency were not the only unfortunate souls in this world. Almost simultaneously, countless companies globally had met similar fates.
For example, Hamburg Aviation in Germany had all its user data locked down, with the extortionist demanding a ransom of $1 million. Hamburg Aviation refused to pay, and as a result, all of Hamburg Aviation's passengers were unable to board their flights because the airline had no way of knowing if they had paid for their tickets.
The Times newspaper in the same country also suffered misfortune. This century-old media outlet unexpectedly suspended publication, remaining offline for three days.
On the fourth day, although newspaper distribution resumed, users were astonished to find that the newspapers provided by The Times carried the fragrant scent of ink. This aroma excited many elderly readers.
They hadn't smelled such a scent in forty to fifty years, recalling the era of the 70s and 80s when all newspapers and media still used traditional ink printers that were not computer-controlled.
Indeed, The Times had suspended publication because its computer system had also been hijacked, and all pre-written articles were locked.
Many articles were written and updated on the same day, but The Times used a fully computerized typesetting system. Without computers, they couldn't even control the company's electronic printers.
It wasn't until some of their veteran employees managed to find an old-fashioned ink printer from the warehouse and, with the help of a few retired employees who had been out of the profession for over a decade, managed to get the ink printer working again that The Times was finally able to resume its serialization.
However, The Times did not lose significant market share because of this. On the contrary, according to statistics, its market share actually increased by 4 percentage points after this incident.
The reason for this miraculous situation was that The Times' competitors had encountered the same fate. Due to various data lockouts, they were also unable to print newspapers normally.
Ultimately, The Times acted faster, managing to retrieve an old ink printer first, becoming the first newspaper to resume publication. It then published extensive reports on this global computer data hijacking event, naturally capturing a large amount of user favor and recognition, and ultimately earning back 4 percentage points of the market.
It wasn't just Europe; the United States was also filled with unfortunate cases. For example, the prestigious General Motors had its data hijacked immediately.
Despite General Motors boasting the world's most advanced corporate network defense system, it proved powerless against the hackers.
The hackers directly infiltrated General Motors' core, locking all data for cars currently in production and demanding a ransom of 100 million Bt coins.
With its pride, General Motors naturally refused to comply, especially since its executives had never even heard of Bitcoin. Thus, General Motors completely ignored the ransom demand and instead hired the most powerful cybersecurity technical team in the United States to help them unlock the data.
The result was that this top technical team, after a brief inspection, frankly stated that even they couldn't unlock it. They explained that it wasn't a problem that could be solved with technology alone; unless General Motors was willing to deploy the world's top 100 supercomputers.
Then, having these 100 supercomputers work simultaneously for General Motors for a year, perhaps they could find the key through brute force methods to unlock the encrypted data. Otherwise, there was no other way.
General Motors struggled for a full month without finding any solution. During this period, the company was unable to produce any cars. So, they finally had to humiliatingly decide to obediently start raising the 1 million Bt coins for the ransom. It was then that they discovered:
Bitcoin, which had been priced at less than $2 a month ago, had now soared to an astonishing $130. One million coins amounted to $130 million.
Because 30% of the ransoms demanded payment in Bitcoin, almost all companies, after repeatedly trying and failing to recover their data, had to go online and massively purchase Bitcoin to pay the ransom. This ultimately caused the price of Bitcoin to skyrocket, a terrifying increase of 65 times in just one month.
Why did these extortionists choose to demand payment in Bitcoin?
Were they foolish? Why would they prefer virtual Bitcoin over the tangible cash of dollars?
The reason was simple: dollars had to flow through the banking system. Once routed through the banking system, the flow of funds would inevitably be traceable, leading to the capture of the extortionists hiding behind the scenes.
However, with Bitcoin, all transactions occurred online. Bitcoin was stored in encrypted wallet addresses, which no institution could locate. This meant Bitcoin was an absolutely secure currency that could be used freely online, naturally making it the extortionists' favorite tool.
The fact that Bitcoin's price had increased 65 times was a testament to how many companies worldwide had been extorted in this manner.
In reality, almost half the world was paralyzed because of this. During the most frenzied days, approximately 25% of all major global enterprises that stored their data on computers had their data locked. The remaining 75% weren't spared by the extortionists; rather, after learning of this terrifying news, these companies immediately disconnected from the internet, thus physically isolating their data from the network and successfully safeguarding it.
However, the direct result was the disappearance of many public service network functions worldwide. Not only could tourists not travel and passengers not board planes, but many hospitals couldn't admit patients, and even the terminal communication functions of many people ceased to work, as the communication companies' user data had also been compromised.
Under these circumstances, the world naturally plunged into chaos. Countless individuals suffered massive economic losses due to the sudden data loss and service suspensions.
Some couldn't bear the blow and jumped to their deaths, while others vented their anger onto the streets. Fires spread across the streets of almost every country and city.
Ultimately, according to statistics, nearly 2,000 people died directly or indirectly due to this data extortion tragedy. The world media dubbed this day "Network Suffering Day."