Somewhere in California, USA.

Jamie is a technical soldier. Due to his excellent network technology, he was entrusted by his superiors with an "important task" to be responsible for the network construction of the squadron's computer room. At the same time, he also has a part-time job in voluntary work and is a network administrator in a military community.

He is satisfied with his job, but it must be said that this is a bad thing because he has a lot of time to do his own thing, and this job is also in line with his interests. It is more of a enjoyment than a job.

After several years of research, his network technology has improved greatly. Now, he has become one of the most admired mysterious professions of American teenagers - hackers.

The server in the community he is responsible for is independent, with only this program in it. Jamie felt very wasteful and believed that he did not make good use of the server's greatest value. Therefore, in addition to creating a little resource for the community to run normally, this server almost became his private property. In order to make this server truly impure, he often invited his hacker friends to help with "friendly detection". It can be said that almost all the patches can be applied and all the loopholes he knows are made. This is his repeated challenges to himself and also responsible for his work. After all, if the server he is responsible for is hacked, his technical authority and honor will be seriously questioned by everyone.

The server has been running for almost two years, and many colleagues have indeed made the idea of ​​using this server in the past two years. However, what makes Jamie proud is that these attacks or invasions have failed, and he has successfully blocked their pace. On several occasions, he has even counterattacked and taught those ignorant hackers a lesson based on the "footprints" they left behind.

Over time, Jamie was also well-known in the hacker circle. He had suffered losses in his hands and gave him a nickname called "Iron-faced Shura", which was quite a bit of accusation of attacking newcomers. However, Jamie was unwilling to do so. On the contrary, he liked this nickname quite a lot and believed that it was a symbol of strength.

Today, Jamie, who has always been sloppy, has transformed herself into a handsome gentleman after carefully dressing up, because he successfully made an appointment with Sari. Sari is a beautiful girl, a netizen Jamie met on the Internet. Poor Jamie usually spends all her time on the computer, and she never goes out of the door and has no time to meet the girls. She finally met a beautiful woman on the Internet. After Jamie's efforts, the other party finally agreed to meet him.

Jamie loosened her tight tie in front of the mirror, hummed a charming American country song, and began to do the last thing before he left - routine inspection of the server.

Because Jamie's server is often "passionate" care from her peers, Jamie's daily check of the server has become a habit, and the time is uncertain, and sometimes it is boring, so she checks it four or five times a day. It is this good habit that ensures that the server is running normally for a long time, and has frustrated many colleagues who want to make up for the server.

First, Jamie checked whether there were suspicious processes in the system.

"Thank God, no annoying flies were found." Jamie usually didn't disgust other people's idea of ​​making servers, and even looked forward to it. But now, Jamie has a lifelong task to do. He prayed to God and hoped that there would be no monkeys who didn't open their eyes to make trouble at this time, otherwise he would have to look good.

However, God seemed to be napping at this time and did not hear Jamie's prayer. Because, the experienced Jamie discovered a trace of abnormality in the system. By checking the WWW log, he found that there were problems with the log within a few minutes.

Although the intruder modified the log file, deleted his intrusion traces, and even forged log records based on the format of the log, the experienced Jamie still discovered the unusual ones.

"He's a great guy!" Jamie said to himself.

A log file is a record file that records the operation of various services or software in a computer system. It is like a surveillance video in a bank, which clearly records what happens in the system in the form of text.

After hackers invade the system, they will also leave their own footprints in the log file, just like "A user from a certain IP downloads a certain file...". Of course, the format of the record may be somewhat different.

Cleaning your own invasion "footprints" is also an art with superb skills. Invaders must not only be very clear about which logging files exist in the system, but also pay attention to many other things.

Rookies generally don’t know how to wipe their butts. Even if they have this consciousness, they often cannot wipe them clean. After all, it is not easy for a rookie to know how many hidden log files exist in the system, not to mention that many people do not have this consciousness.

Those with better skills can discover the number and distribution of logs, but they often do it by clearing these logs or partially deleting their intrusion records - however, this is a disadvantage. As long as the administrator knows how to view the log files, it is easy to find that his machine has been hacked by others, unless he is a fool.

The highest level is to not only clean the "footprints", but also fake the "footprints", so that the records in the log are not only coherent in time, but also look very real in content. This requires the intruder to be very knowledgeable about the format of the log file. Since the amount of record information in the log file is usually very large, it is very troublesome to find a suspicious log record, let alone spending energy to identify the authenticity of the record.

The reason Jamie still discovered that he saw a user downloading image files in the server. From a certain moment, the log records were generated by the behavior of users of this IP. Jamie looked at it and found that the user had downloaded it for more than two hours in a row, and more than two hundred pictures were downloaded. Jamie could see the weirdness at a glance, because the server did not provide one-time download of so many files, even if the registered users of the forum wanted to save the pictures, they could only save them one by one with the mouse, so Jamie immediately knew something was wrong.

According to the log file, Jamie checked the pictures downloaded by the other party and found that most of the pictures seemed to be satellite photos. Based on these photos, he found the post where the photos were. After reading it, he finally knew that these photos might be the legendary masterpiece of "Aurora".

"Damn!" Jamie cursed and quickly blocked the guy's reply from the bold prediction, because if his guess was not wrong, he might have accidentally leaked state secrets.

Jamie had completely forgotten about Sari's date, and he pulled his red tie and his brain spun at high speed.

"Why are the intruders interested in these photos?"

"Is it a purposeful invasion or accident?"

“Does ‘Aurora’ really exist?”

…………

While thinking, Jamie continued to look forward to check the log records, and finally found a fake log for more than two minutes before the download records of those pictures.

"Damn it!"

Jamie vaguely realized the seriousness of the invasion, which might involve foreign spies. According to regulations, he should report it immediately, but Jamie was so angry that his authority was challenged, he decided to teach the invader a lesson with his own hands.
Chapter completed!