The Tycoon's Odyssey

Aria's mind raced as she processed the information. "Show me the way. I will take over immediately. Also, order every personnel to be on standby; we might need many hands," she commanded and walked out, visibly shocked and confused.

The employee quickly led the way, and they hurried through the corridors of the Next G Innovations office toward the IT departmt. As they tered the room, heighted activity filled the air, with everyone focused tirely on countering the cyber attack.

Aria approached the lead IT specialist, who was monitoring the situation on multiple scres.

"Give me a status update," Aria asked, trying to keep her voice steady despite the growing concern.

Turning to her the IT specialist informed, "The attackers have partially breached our firewall. They're attempting to access our proprietary software files. We've initiated a lockdown of our critical systems and are currtly working to trace the source of the attack."

Aria nodded, understanding the gravity of the situation. "Do we have any idea who's behind this?"

"Not yet," the specialist replied. "But the sophistication of the attack suggests that they are not just some amateur hackers. We're dealing with professionals, possibly corporate espionage."

"Since they couldn't pirate the CodeZipper, they're already making their moves to directly steal from here, huh?" Aria mused, a mix of frustration and determination in her voice.

She didn't know how Evan coded it, but CodeZipper was such a file that could only be downloaded from the app store. One couldn't share the app with others or ev if someone tried to and was successful, the efforts would be futile as it just won't work.

Each CodeZipper has an idtifying code that would only work for each download. This meant that once someone had downloaded it, the details of their device would be etched on it, making it impossible for the transferred file to be oped.

All websites and companies that pirated things were in a hard pinch as they couldn't create copies of the app nor could they study the source code.

So, Aria had already expected such a scario to happ. While working with Pear and others, she had already faced much espionage.

However, she wasn't worried about it as Evan had giv them Breach Protector to safeguard them but after that deal, Aria couldn't afford to use it lest those bastards pushed charges.

Aria decided to gage. She rolled up her sleeves, signaling that she was ready to dive into the technical fray alongside her team. "Let me see the system logs and the firewall configurations. I might be able to pinpoint their method of try."

The IT specialist looked confused for a momt, unsure if Aria truly understood the technical depth of the situation. "Ma'am, with all due respect, do you have experice with this kind of thing? I need to know how certain you are. I am not demeaning you, but I need to know your level so that you won't hamper us later."

Aria met his gaze with a confidt smile. "I might run the company, but I started in the IT departmt just like you. Do you want me to show me my degree? I graduated from MIT."

"Huh!" The man's jaw almost dropped on the floor.

Ignoring his reaction, Aria asked, "What's the attack vector they're using?"

"We believe it's a DDoS attack, combined with a series of sophisticated SQL injection attempts. They're trying to overload our servers while simultaneously searching for backdoors into our database," the specialist explained, still slightly incredulous but warming up to the idea of having Aria involved in this directly.

"DDoS to distract us... classic," Aria muttered under her breath. She moved closer to the console, quickly scanning the incoming data. "Alright, let's reroute the incoming traffic through our secondary DNS servers; that should mitigate the DDoS impact. Meanwhile, patch the SQL vulnerabilities immediately. I assume we're logging all incoming IP addresses?

Let's analyze them, find patterns, and block the sources."

The team sprang into action, following Aria's directives with newfound ergy. Meanwhile, Aria herself started typing commands into the console, her fingers moving with practiced ease.

"Here," she said, pointing to a series of code lines that flashed on the scre, "they're using a polymorphic script to bypass standard detection. Let's implemt a dynamic rule in our firewall to flag and analyze the variations of known malicious code signatures. It won't stop them immediately, but should be ough to slow them down and give us some more time."

The IT specialist watched, now duly impressed. "I... didn't know you had this kind of skill, ma'am."

Aria didn't ev look up from the scre and sneered, "There's a lot you don't know about me. For now, let's focus on securing our system. Once we've fortified our defses, we'll be able to trace the attack back to its source. Th they won't know what hit them."

For the next several hours, Aria and her IT team worked tirelessly, implemting a series of countermeasures and patches to fd off the attack. With every keystroke, they fortified Next G Innovations' digital fortress, repelling the hackers' attempts to breach their data.

As the night progressed, the attackers persisted with reltless determination. Noticing the unusual patterns in the traffic logs, Aria realized that the hackers were probing specific ports and attempting to exploit vulnerabilities through outdated software modules.

"We've got an exploit attempt on Port 3389," one of the analysts reported, pointing to a scre displaying incoming connection attempts. "It looks like they're trying to brute-force their way into our remote desktop services."

Aria nodded, her mind racing to formulate a response. "Isolate Port 3389 immediately and redirect it to a honeypot. Let's see if we can lure them into revealing more of their methods."

The team swiftly executed her orders, setting up a decoy system to monitor the hacker's activities. Meanwhile, Aria dug deeper into the code samples extracted from the attack vectors, searching for any signatures or clues that could be used to idtify the hackers' origin.

"We're seeing signs of code obfuscation," another analyst noted, pointing to a snippet of crypted commands embedded in the malicious script. "They're using a custom cryption algorithm to mask their payloads."

Aria leaned in closer, studying the crypted data. "Let's run this through our decryption algorithms and see if we can reverse-gineer their commands. If we can decrypt their communications, we might gain insight into their next move."

The decryption process was intsive and time-consuming, but Aria remained focused, her determination unwavering. Hours passed as they painstakingly decrypted the hacker's communications, piece by piece.

Finally, a breakthrough came. "We've intercepted a communication," an analyst exclaimed, pointing to a decoded message on the scre. "It's an IP address linked to a server in the Southeast. They're coordinating the attack from there."

Aria's eyes narrowed with determination. "Trace the IP address and prepare a dossier. We're escalating this to law forcemt."

With the hackers momtarily exposed and their operations disrupted, Aria allowed herself a brief momt of respite. But she knew that the battle was far from over just yet.

_____

Several hours wt on until the attack ceased before Aria could finally sigh in relief...

The next day, however, several new attacks followed, coming from multiple terminals.

Finally, someone wasn't able to keep up their composure and screamed in anger.

"Damn, those fucking bullies. Banding on such a small start-up..."

Aria also slowly began to panic. The prest scale attack was overwhelming for her to handle. It began with few, but now there seem to be several of them as if an tire world was after them.

And by all means, she would have reported this to Evan, but he had said to her that unless the company was torn apart or someone threated their lives, he didn't want to be disturbed.

This wasn't just a random talk but a blatant order.

At that time, a sudd idea flashed in her mind.

"We can protect this...Deploy the Breach..."

Aria shut her lips and cursed in her mind. 'Shit...'

They already had a basic package of Breach Protector and once deployed, it would be ough to block the attacks. But th another problem would arise.

First, only Pear could use it now, and if someone hacked into it or managed to discover it, things would take a very, very bad turn.

"Ma'am, what were you saying?"

"Nothing!" Aria cut her off coldly. "All of you hold on as much as possible. I will try to figure something out."

Saying this, Aria walked out and picked up the phone, however, her hands trembled as she dialed the number.

She called Evan, but to her horror, he didn't answer. She dialed a few more times, but the phone just continued to ring without an answer.

"Giv the situation, it seems he still hasn't be able to get over the feelings. All I could do now is to resort to the second option."

Changing the number, she called again and this time, it was immediately picked up.

"Hello! Sister Celina, I need your help."

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