Chapter 96: Mysterious Invitation Letter (Part 1)

Just as he was about to log off after finishing, to his surprise, a message popped up on OO; the other party had accepted his friend request.

"Still online..."

Sun Cheng was slightly surprised. Seeing that the other party's registered gender was female, he hadn't expected them to be awake so late.

"Beep beep..."

Following a familiar notification sound, a chat box quickly popped up on OO. He clicked on it and saw that it was indeed 'Er Er', who had initiated a chat with him.

"Hello, may I ask if you are the publisher of Pure Version XP, 【Cybertron Studio】?"

"It is me, Editor Er Er, hello!"

"Oh, hello there, Big Boss. Pure Version XP is truly an incredible work. I didn't believe it when Blue Star recommended it to me yesterday, but who knew that after downloading and trying it, I would find it to be a truly remarkable piece of work. A work that is so clean and simplified without affecting system stability at all—let alone domestically, even if you look at some well-known Microsoft system forums abroad, it is hard to find a second one. So, Big Boss, I would like to ask, are you interested in signing a contract with our website?"

It must be said that this person's typing speed was quite fast. Sun Cheng had only stood up to get half a glass of water, and upon returning, he saw more than a dozen long messages popped up one after another.

"May I ask, the copyright for XP is in the hands of Microsoft. For works like this, they are generally unauthorized; how do you conduct commercial promotion?"

He was indeed quite curious about this point. In China, especially after the Xinhai Revolution and the subsequent rise of President Yu Chen, copyright protection was very strict. Even if Microsoft was an outsider, without obtaining their authorization, Sun Cheng was truly quite curious about how XP Home planned to promote the Pure Version XP he had created!

The other party's reply was quick and very direct.

"Doing it openly is naturally out of the question, but playing on the edge is perfectly fine. Big Boss, you must have bought system discs before, right? Think about it, a standard genuine Microsoft system disc on the market used to sell for thousands. Even with the annual price drops in recent years, a cheap genuine in8 disc nowadays still costs one or two hundred. While the country supports genuine products, how many families are willing to buy Microsoft's genuine ones instead of a ten-yuan Han-style Disc..."

"Understood..."

Sun Cheng understood immediately; it turned out to be pirated disc burning.

This was indeed playing on the edge. Pirated disc burning really had no difficulty; a small workshop with an investment of a few hundred thousand could get it started.

Yet, it was very troublesome for Microsoft to investigate. Even if they traced it back to websites like XP Home, they could claim that the shared works on the site were being used at will by private pirates. After all, system exchange websites like theirs, which grew by promoting the XP system, did not actually place restrictions on downloads.

Upon further discussion, learning that he would only get three mao per burned disc sold by XP Home, Sun Cheng, who had brought back a batch of priceless jewelry from another world, immediately lost interest in the so-called contract with XP Home.

However, out of the idea of advertising for 【Cybertron Studio】, he ultimately agreed to authorize XP Home to use his work at will, provided that whether in website promotion or during the sale of burned discs, they must indicate that the work was produced by 【Cybertron Studio】, must not erase the logo, and must not remove the producer information he embedded in the installation package.

Perhaps it was a turn of luck, but before he was about to log off Panda OO, Sun Cheng casually clicked on his mailbox, intending to see if the reply he sent to the vulnerability acquisition platform Zerodium had arrived.

To his surprise, as soon as he clicked in, he immediately saw that among a pile of unread emails, there was indeed one reply in full English, and looking at the received time, it was exactly three hours ago in the real world.

At that time, if Sun Cheng remembered correctly, he had been cornered in an alley by a few people led by Xiao Hong and had barely managed to escape.

Although the tens of millions of dollars worth of jewelry used for the experiment had been brought back, these items required some fraudulent procedures to be sold in reality, which was truly quite troublesome.

Therefore, Sun Cheng still valued that huge reward from Zerodium quite a bit.

He immediately clicked on it and read the email sent by the foreigner.

"Dear Mr. Sun Cheng, please allow me to pay my respects to you and your team—Cybertron Studio. Our testing personnel have verified the data you sent and confirmed the existence of the iOS vulnerability. While expressing our gratitude to you, Zerodium will, as agreed, pay your team a reward of fifty-four thousand dollars for the attack, and we hope you can complete the subsequent data as soon as possible. In the email, you mentioned finding two extremely hidden high-risk vulnerabilities in iOS, and everyone at Zerodium is very interested in this. We hope to receive your reply as soon as possible. Please do not worry about the reward; Zerodium is a very reputable platform!"

Zerodium claiming to be very reputable almost made Sun Cheng burst out laughing.

In the Western world, especially within the United States, this vulnerability acquisition platform, which had been fighting against Microsoft, Google, and Apple since its birth, could be called notorious without any exaggeration.

Just from what Sun Cheng had heard, there were countless vulnerabilities in Microsoft's operating systems, Google's search engine, and iOS systems that had been acquired by Zerodium and turned into tools for profit, sold to Western governments, intelligence agencies, and some internet companies. It was truly not easy for it to have survived until now.

However, although Zerodium's reputation was foul, Sun Cheng had indeed never heard any rumors of someone selling vulnerabilities to Zerodium and having their earnings embezzled.

Although his bank card had foreign exchange functions enabled, for some reason, there were no mobile text message alerts.

To confirm whether the other party had transferred the money, Sun Cheng had to use his phone to log into the Agricultural Bank of China app. After checking, he indeed found that his bank account had an additional fifty-four thousand dollars in foreign exchange.

A reward of fifty-four thousand dollars was not high compared to the number of vulnerabilities he had sent, but with the stingy Apple in mind, he suddenly felt it was not unacceptable.

After confirming that Zerodium had paid the reward he was owed, Sun Cheng then found the USB drive where he stored the vulnerabilities from his drawer. After reading it with the ultra-thin laptop transformed by Hanwei, he composed a new email, not only completing the subsequent data for the vulnerabilities he hadn't finished sending last time but also releasing a portion of the two high-risk vulnerabilities the other party was most eager to obtain.

As for the rest, he would wait until Zerodium transferred the reward, and only if the reward was also very satisfactory to him would he provide the rest.

Having delayed a bit of time for these two matters, by the time Sun Cheng was so sleepy he couldn't hold on any longer and prepared to go to bed, the time had already passed one o'clock in the morning.

Before going to sleep, he gave an order to Hanwei to hack into the Nandu Police Bureau and find information and the address regarding Xiao Hong as soon as possible, after which he climbed into bed and quickly fell into a deep sleep.

PS:

1. Woof Woof Woof, a professional single dog is here, wishing all you Big Bosses success in winning over your beauties on this confession day!

2. Thanks to Big Boss 'Gemdr' for the tip and support.