Chapter 59: Wild Words

February 15, 1995, Wednesday, the sixteenth day of the first lunar month.

This day was the start of the semester at Yun University. After Di Ye got up in the morning, he pressed his palms together, faced west, and performed a prayer for good fortune. Seeing this, Huang Ya asked, "What are you doing?"

"Nothing, just a sudden whim."

Huang Ya was already used to Di Ye's occasional eccentric behavior and couldn't be bothered to ask more, so she went straight to the bathroom to wash up. After she left, Di Ye tapped the monitor on the computer desk and sighed, "It's a pity I can't get online; I have to just watch as I miss the most spectacular hacker battle in history!"

On this day, February 15, the world's number one hacker, Kevin Mitnick, had his tracks discovered by top network security expert Shimomura Tsutomu and was arrested by the FBI in North Carolina, ending his legendary hacker career.

Kevin Mitnick was a computer genius. At 15, he hacked into the North American Air Defense Command system; at 16, he was wanted by the FBI; at 17, he hacked into Pacific Bell; at 20, he hacked into the Pentagon; at 27, he hacked into five IT giants including Nokia and Motorola; at 29, he hacked into the FBI's internal network; and at 30, he appeared on the cover of *Time*, becoming a sensational news figure.

On December 25, 1994, in order to prove his technical prowess, Kevin Mitnick hacked into the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, stole and deleted the computer data of "America's most outstanding computer security expert," Shimomura Tsutomu, and left behind taunting messages like "I am smarter."

Shimomura Tsutomu was the son of Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate Shimomura Osamu. He was also a computer genius who entered the California Institute of Technology before finishing high school. After graduation, he researched computational physics and network security at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. After being provoked, he cooperated with the FBI and, after more than two months, finally captured Kevin Mitnick on February 15, 1995.

There is a time difference of more than 10 hours between China and the United States. When it was the morning of February 15 in Yuncheng, it was February 14 in the United States, and Kevin Mitnick had not yet been arrested. If he could get online at home, Di Ye could have created an incident and used these two computer geniuses as a springboard to build up his own reputation.

However, it was a pity that he couldn't get online at home, so Di Ye could only bow toward the west to mourn for Kevin Mitnick; after all, this guy was one of his mentors whom he had never met.

When Di Ye went to Pengcheng, he had mentioned "Social Engineering" to Ma Huateng, and Social Engineering was a concept proposed by Kevin Mitnick.

After Kevin Mitnick was arrested in 1995, he was paroled in 2000 and wrote a bestseller in 2002 called *The Art of Deception*, which mentioned Social Engineering for the first time. Its core philosophy is to use human weaknesses and loopholes in social rules to build trust with the target, and to obtain valuable information through deception, suggestion, and persuasion.

In essence, Social Engineering is a systematic form of deception. It can be used for legitimate purposes, such as negotiations, sales, and dating, or for crooked paths, such as fraud, gambling, and being a player.

Before he transmigrated, Di Ye was particularly interested in Social Engineering. He had studied it for a long time and operated it many times, doing many things that were not illegal but very exciting. After transmigrating, he still frequently used these techniques, such as dealing with Feng Shijie with feigned compliance, taking the Public Seal from Fan Dazhi, and investigating the social background of Zheng Yingyong.

Zheng Yingyong was very low-key, and even Fan Dazhi didn't know his background. However, he knew nothing about information technology or Social Engineering, and he was tricked into trusting Di Ye by his proactive show of goodwill, leaving behind his private phone number.

With the phone number, Di Ye used Di Yan's position to check the call records and user information at the Post and Telecommunications Bureau. With almost no effort, he figured out Zheng Yingyong's background—he was a man of Wang Beilin, the executive vice mayor of Yuncheng.

Di Ye's current status and position were too far behind Wang Beilin's, so he couldn't do anything about him for the time being. However, as long as he knew of the existence of this core figure, he held the advantage of information asymmetry, and he would be much more composed in dealing with Zheng Yingyong, rather than guessing blindly in the dark.

Not being able to personally participate in the battle between the two top hackers made Di Ye feel very regretful, and it also further stimulated his determination to go to Pengcheng. So, after finishing the registration procedures at school in the morning, he ran to Liu Shaosong's office and asked straight to the point, "Teacher Liu, what is the most valuable thing in your house?"

Liu Shaosong was slightly stunned, then reacted and exclaimed in surprise, "It's only been 10 days, and you've already finished reading that book?"

Di Ye chuckled and said proudly, "Not only did I finish it, I even wrote a Browser."

"Impossible!"

"The only way to overcome the impossible is to believe that everything is possible."

Di Ye used a classic quote from *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland* in English, then took a Notebook Computer out of his backpack and said, "Teacher Liu, talk is cheap; please look at the program."

Liu Shaosong still didn't believe it. While waiting for the Notebook Computer to boot up, he said, "Yuncheng hasn't opened up the internet yet; how did you write this browser?"

"I had a friend use Cfido to send me the source code for NCSAHTTPd, and I set up a web server locally to simulate an internet environment."

"You know how to use NCSAHTTPd?"

"It's Open Source, so I just studied the code and learned it."

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the HTML language and the HTTP protocol, laying the foundation for the World Wide Web. At the end of 1990, he used the C Language to write the world's first web server software, naming it CommonLibrary. In 1993, he made it Open Source and renamed it Libwww. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) expanded on this basis and developed NCSAHTTPd. NCSAHTTPd would evolve into the famous Apache in the coming months, becoming the first killer application in the GNU/Linux environment, thereby changing the landscape of the internet and Operating Systems.

Di Ye plugged in the network cable, transferred the browser program to Liu Shaosong's computer, and used his own Notebook Computer as a web server to demonstrate the effect. After seeing it, Liu Shaosong was dumbfounded, doubting his own eyes, intelligence, and life, and then decided to let others taste this feeling too. He not only called the Dean over but also notified several professors in the department who he was on good terms with.

"This office is too small; let's go to the conference room."

"Don't go to the conference room; go straight to the computer room and copy the code to look at it slowly."

A group of people escorted Di Ye to the computer room in a grand procession. After studying it for a whole morning, the Dean stepped forward to announce the conclusion: there really is a genius in this world!

Di Ye had self-awareness and said modestly, "I'm just an ordinary person with strong learning ability; I don't count as a genius."

Liu Shaosong exposed him directly, laughing and scolding, "You pulled off such a big business during the winter break; the whole of Yuncheng knows you're not an ordinary person, so stop with the fake modesty."

The Dean agreed with Liu Shaosong's view, teased Di Ye a few times, and then said happily, "Our college has produced a genius, and I'm happy in my heart. Today at noon, I'll treat everyone to a special meal on the second floor of the main cafeteria!"

"It's rare for the Dean to treat us; let's go quickly. It's already past 11 o'clock; if we go late, there won't be any good dishes left."

A group of people came out of the computer room and headed to the cafeteria surrounded by others. After ordering the food, the Dean suggested, "Di Ye, a browser has more technical content than Compression Software; why don't you just change your graduation project to this?"

Di Ye disagreed and said indifferently, "This browser is just a toy for practice; it doesn't have any original content and is too far from what I envisioned. Let's forget it."

A professor nearby heard this and sighed, "What big talk! There are only a few people in the whole country who can write a browser, and you actually call it a toy?"

The Dean had communicated with Di Ye at Liu Shaosong's house before and knew what he meant. He raised his chopsticks and gestured, "Di Ye believes that a webpage should consist of three parts: structure, appearance, and behavior. The HTML language only solves the structure problem and cannot solve the latter two, so he plans to develop two new technologies to correspond to appearance and behavior respectively."

Liu Shaosong added from the side, "Besides web technology, Di Ye also wants to improve the content formats on the internet. For example, formats like JPG, GIF, and MP3 are not high enough in quality and are all protected by patents. He plans to develop several free Open Source new formats to replace them."

Several professors looked at each other, all shocked by this grand plan. One of the older ones looked at Di Ye and asked, "Do you know what you are doing?"

Di Ye smiled faintly and said, "I know. I am going to re-lay the foundations of the World Wide Web."