After the Divorce, I Found a Thousand Bitcoins - Chapter 106

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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I Got Divorced and Found a Thousand Bitcoins Episode 106

As the Dashi incident grew into a major crisis, government departments were moving busily.

The Ministry of Science and ICT was particularly busy, as they were thoroughly examining all of Dashi to find problematic areas.

These reports were being submitted to Minister Park Do-kyeong daily.

“Minister, this is an urgent report.”

“Sigh, don’t you see all these reports piled up here? Even if it’s urgent, I need to process these first.”

Park Do-kyeong’s voice was filled with irritation, unlike usual.

It had already been three days since he last went home.

He was working overtime every day, unable to leave his office.

As this situation continued, even someone with his good nature couldn’t help but accumulate anger in his voice.

However, the aide held out the documents again.

“This is an urgent document from the special task force. Team Manager Lee specifically told me to report this to you first.”

“Team Manager Lee did?”

Team Manager Lee Seong-hun was an extremely meticulous person.

Moreover, he was someone who proceeded with work strictly by the book, lacking flexibility.

But for tasks requiring meticulousness like this Dashi investigation, he was an absolutely necessary person.

Since such a person had sent word that this needed to be checked first, his curiosity grew.

“Understood, give it here.”

“Here it is.”

Minister Park Do-kyeong took the documents and checked them first.

“Hmm…”

The documents recorded the contents of inspecting Dashi’s servers.

It had already been determined that this hacking incident was an internal intrusion, not an external attack.

The problem was what kind of user information they had collected.

If it was just simple personal information as originally announced, the damage wouldn’t be severe, but cases of financial damage were already occurring.

So Minister Park Do-kyeong had told the task force to examine the servers very thoroughly.

The documents contained content related to that.

“These bastards… even financial information was stolen…”

Contrary to Dashi’s explanation, it was confirmed that users’ financial information had also been leaked.

Essentially, if registered cards weren’t canceled or overseas payments weren’t blocked, there was a high possibility of enormous damage continuing.

But what was written in the documents wasn’t all.

“Huh? There are traces of attacking other places too?”

The hacking didn’t end with just Dashi.

There was a report that hacking tools had been installed targeting specific users, and traces remained of attacking other places with them.

“If this is true, linked hacking could occur…”

Since there were many Dashi users, it was a sufficiently possible scenario if specific users’ smartphones were attacked.

If there were many such cases, they might need to put all companies on alert.

However, the report stated that there was one company where attack traces remained.

“That company is…”

It was KH Group.

* * *

Kang Hyeon received a call from Minister Park Do-kyeong and visited the Ministry of Science and ICT.

Minister Park Do-kyeong’s face, whom he met after a long time, was full of fatigue.

“Chairman Choi, it’s been a while.”

“It’s been a while, Minister. You seem quite tired. Are you alright?”

“Haha… As you know, it’s been noisy recently due to Dashi… I haven’t even been able to go home.”

“You’re working hard.”

“Please, have a seat. Would you like some coffee?”

“No, water is fine.”

Minister Park nodded and told his aide to bring water and coffee.

After two cups were placed in front of each person and the door closed again, Minister Park brought up the main topic.

“Chairman Choi, we discovered something strange while investigating Dashi recently.”

“Something strange?”

“Yes. It was traces of an internal employee who hacked Dashi’s user data installing hacking tools on specific users’ smartphones and planting backdoors in a specific company.”

At the mention of backdoors, he could understand why Minister Park had called him.

“You’re talking about the backdoor planted in KH Group.”

“You knew about it?”

“A thief broke into the house. The owner couldn’t not know about it.”

“Huh…”

Park Do-kyeong was quite surprised.

This backdoor program had been planted by someone with considerable skill.

If Team Manager Lee and the task force weren’t among the nation’s top experts, they wouldn’t have been able to find it.

But KH Group already knew about it.

That meant there was someone with skills similar to Team Manager Lee inside.

“Then you must have already prepared countermeasures.”

“Yes. We re-inspected our internal systems to prepare for any contingency. Since it seemed they were targeting Nereid from the beginning, we also separated it from our internal servers.”

“As expected… Nereid was the target?”

“Since we brought Dr. Nathan to Korea, attacking Nereid Headquarters wouldn’t yield any data. If they wanted to obtain data directly, they had no choice but to attack KH Group.”

The idea to bring Nathan to South Korea had come from Minister Park Do-kyeong’s mind.

That’s why when he learned that KH Group had been attacked, he could immediately connect it to Nereid.

That was also the reason he had urgently called Kang Hyeon.

“I see. Internally, we believe China ordered the hacking.”

“As expected, it’s them?”

“Do you know something?”

“Actually, proposals from China wanting to purchase immersion cooling technology have been coming in steadily.”

Minister Park Do-kyeong’s face hardened.

Immersion cooling technology was extremely important technology for South Korea.

China wanting to buy it could lead to technology leakage if handled wrongly.

Reading that expression change, Kang Hyeon dispelled his anxiety.

“Of course, we refused. It’s not about money, but if we hand over immersion cooling technology to China, there’s a high possibility the technology itself would be transferred through reverse engineering.”

“You did well. Once it goes inside China, international law becomes useless. Surely the moment we hand it over once, they’ll take the technology.”

“Yes. Perhaps because of that, attacks from China have been continuing since then.”

“Were there attacks besides this hacking incident?”

“Since it’s internal matters, I can’t go into detail, but they’ve been quite persistent.”

At Kang Hyeon’s words, Minister Park nodded.

China was like a tick.

Once they bit, they never thought of letting go.

“Anyway, if that’s why you called me, I’ll tell you not to worry.”

“That’s a relief to hear. And while that was the main reason I wanted to meet today, I still have a proposal for you.”

“A proposal?”

“Yes.”

Minister Park’s face became serious again.

“Does KH Group have any thoughts of entering the logistics and distribution business?”

At his proposal, Kang Hyeon leaned forward.

“Are you thinking of pushing out Dashi?”

“They’ve already crossed the line. They’re trying to pressure us by mobilizing the U.S. Government.”

Using one’s own government to attack another country was a very serious problem.

No matter how much the United States was a superpower and allied nation, Dashi’s current actions were unacceptable.

That’s why the South Korean government was also considering the worst-case scenario.

“The problem is that it’s difficult to directly push out Dashi.”

“If the government pushes them out directly, it would certainly give the U.S. government justification to take action.”

Dashi was undeniably a global corporation.

Moreover, since it was listed on NASDAQ in the United States, the U.S. government could interpret Korea’s actions as pushing out a company listed in their country.

This would complicate matters, so they needed a corporate attacker to step forward.

It seemed they were prioritizing KH Group as that company.

“If KH Group enters the logistics and distribution business, we will spare no effort in providing full support.”

At Minister Park Do-kyeong’s words, Kang Hyeon fell into contemplation.

* * *

In conclusion, he postponed his answer.

‘I need time to think.’

Minister Park didn’t seem to expect an answer that day either, nodding his head, and Kang Hyeon returned to Seoul.

Returning to the chairman’s office, he entered into serious contemplation.

‘Logistics and distribution…’

It was a field he had never considered.

However, if the government backed him, he could enter the business with definite advantages.

While the government had previously focused on defending against large corporations’ business expansion, this time the issue was significant enough that they would certainly provide strong support.

‘If we enter logistics and distribution, could we surpass the existing powerhouses?’

Currently, Dashi held about 25 percent of the total e-commerce market share.

M-Store was closely following behind with 20 percent.

Additionally, with high market share in delivery services, Dashi was practically monopolizing the domestic market.

If they could absorb Dashi’s market share, it would be like getting something for nothing.

‘The question is whether we can absorb Dashi’s infrastructure as is.’

Dashi’s growth to this level was due to massive investment.

The logistics warehouses spread nationwide and the fast delivery they enabled were also reasons why Dashi couldn’t be replaced.

Unless they absorbed this infrastructure all at once, replacing Dashi would be difficult.

‘At this point, finding such logistics warehouses isn’t easy either.’

Building new large-scale logistics warehouses was an extremely difficult task.

Even with government backing, they’d have to start by finding locations.

With these problems scattered throughout, he couldn’t jump in aggressively.

‘Still, I can’t just say it’s impossible. There must be a way.’

Kang Hyeon sat in front of his computer and began searching for solutions.

If they could absorb Dashi’s market share as is, it would create a cash cow for the group.

‘First, I should hold an internal meeting.’

This wasn’t an issue to think about and decide alone.

Now there were enough people within the group to consult with, so it was time to put their heads together.

“Secretary Kim, please schedule a meeting with the Future Strategy Team.”

* * *

The Future Strategy Team was responsible for finding the group’s future revenue sources.

It was an important department that predicted future technologies and discussed how markets would flow, deciding which direction the group should head.

Currently, Lee Gi-cheol was leading KH Group’s Future Strategy Team.

He had been in a key position at Saseng Group in the past, but left Saseng due to health reasons and had been living as a free agent.

Without Chairman Lee Jae-seong of Saseng’s recommendation, they wouldn’t have been able to acquire such talent.

“We’ll begin the meeting now.”

The meeting started with Lee Gi-cheol’s words.

Since the meeting agenda had already been communicated, the employees quickly proceeded with the meeting.

“If we can absorb Dashi’s market share, expanding into the logistics and distribution business would have considerable merit.”

“The question is whether we can absorb their market share as is.”

“To solve that problem, we could go in the direction of purchasing the logistics centers that Dashi has currently put up for sale.”

Dashi had currently put their logistics centers up for sale.

While it was a means to secure funds for customer compensation, some were saying it might be an action to pressure the government.

When the employee who brought up the topic displayed PPT materials, Kang Hyeon’s eyes lit up.

‘Golden light is connecting them.’

As if this was the correct answer, Dashi’s logistics centers in the PPT materials were being connected by golden light.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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