Transformers Begin

"Is it him?"

Sun Cheng's smile froze, and his eyes flickered.

He recognized the voice's owner, and they were very familiar. It was one of his roommates from college, Liu Kun.

If it had been a few days ago and Liu Kun came to his dorm, he would have been overjoyed.

But not now!

He took out a USB drive from his pocket and played with it in his hand for a moment before getting up and walking towards the door. "He's here..."

After greeting him, Sun Cheng rubbed his stiff facial muscles and, after a moment of preparation, put on a smile and opened the door to the dorm.

The next moment, a young man in a casual long shirt appeared in front of Sun Cheng. It was his former roommate, Liu Kun.

"Ah'cheng, what's going on? I've been calling you, but you haven't answered. Did your phone get cut off due to unpaid bills?"

Liu Kun walked in with a bag of fruit, skillfully placed the items on the blank computer desk next to Sun Cheng, and then looked at him with concern.

"Don't mention it. I was in a bad mood last night and accidentally dropped my phone while drinking.!" Sun Cheng made up a excuse and pretended to look remorseful.

His Apple 5 was still in another world, so he wasn't worried about being exposed.

There was still a lingering smell of alcohol in the dorm. Liu Kun followed the scent and saw several cheap bottles of Su wine in a trash can next to him. He didn't seem to suspect anything, but instead kindly advised him, "You shouldn't drink alone when you're in a bad mood. If you just give us a call, would me, Lao Da, and Lao Si not come out to keep you company?"

This familiar and warm conversation made Sun Cheng suddenly feel guilty.

"It's probably just me overthinking," he comforted himself, but he didn't dare to look at his friend with a scrutinizing gaze, even when their eyes met by accident. He had an impulse to turn his head and avoid it.

Taking advantage of the opportunity to invite him to sit down, Sun Cheng began to doubt whether he was being too petty to question his friend's behavior over a Trojan horse.

Feeling guilty, Sun Cheng busied himself pouring water and moving chairs for Liu Kun. His enthusiasm made Liu Kun feel uncomfortable, and he said after sitting down, "Why are you so polite to me? This is your dorm room. Isn't it also my dorm room?"

"You moved out, didn't you? Now you're half a guest!" Sun Cheng replied.

"We didn't mean to not invite you to move out with us. Lao Da and Lao Si didn't have any trouble with you because of the money we borrowed. It's just that you always felt guilty!" Liu Kun said, "How about it? Let's move in together. After all, we're graduating in two or three months, and it's more convenient to live outside."

After Liu Kun finished speaking, he casually glanced at Sun Cheng's computer screen and his face changed slightly. "You changed the system?"

Sun Cheng nodded. Sensing Liu Kun's unnatural behavior when he mentioned the words "reinstalling the system" and "Trojan horse," he suddenly realized that his previous suspicion might not have been unfounded. His roommate had a problem.

Perhaps because he had a guilty conscience, Liu Kun left shortly after sitting down, using an excuse that he had something to do later.

As soon as he left, Sun Cheng, whose doubts had grown stronger, could no longer sit still. He couldn't wait to know the truth.

After thinking for a while, Sun Cheng thought of where to start investigating.

Unfortunately, he couldn't bring his phone back from another world, which made him feel very uncomfortable as he was used to having it.

Fortunately, after thinking for a while, Sun Cheng remembered that the person who liked playing games.

He sat back in front of the computer and spent some time finding a game voice chat software that they had used before. After downloading and installing it on his computer, he logged in and searched for a while. He was relieved to find his friend's account in the friend list.

Seeing that the other party was online, Sun Cheng quickly opened the chat box and contacted him with text: "Lao Si, please reply as soon as possible. I need to talk to you about something!"

After clicking "Send," he waited for four or five minutes without a response. He realized that the other party might still be in the game.

He had to minimize the chat box and wait for the other person to notice it.

Not knowing how long he had to wait, Sun Cheng quickly shifted his gaze away from the bottom right corner of the screen and opened his browser again.

Tracing the Trojan that appeared mysteriously on his computer was just an attempt to clear up some confusion in Sun Cheng's mind. His most urgent concern was actually to quickly raise money and resolve the debt problems caused by his previous start-up.

For Sun Cheng, although this was troublesome, it was not entirely impossible. In fact, after an attempt in the afternoon that confirmed his high level of computer skills, Sun Cheng had already found a solution.

He quickly searched for an iOS system exchange community and carefully searched for a while before finally finding the latest version of the iOS system installation package in a post, which he chose to download.

One of the ways he thought of quickly earning 100,000 yuan was to search for bugs in Apple's iOS system and get paid for it.

In September 2015, the vulnerability acquisition platform Zerodium issued a wanted notice for iOS 9 system bugs, offering a reward of $3 million for developing a browser-based iOS 9 system jailbreak.

Although the reward that caused a lot of commotion last year had ended by the end of October, on November 3rd, Zerodium announced that one of the hacker teams had successfully created a browser-based iOS 9.1/9.2 system jailbreak and won a reward of $1 million.

However, the fact that last year's reward had ended did not mean that Sun Cheng could not make money from it. Obviously, the jailbreak system obtained by Zerodium through the reward would not be sold to Apple.

As the world's most popular mobile phone brand, there are many people willing to pay large sums of money to obtain more information about Apple's phone system bugs. Unfortunately, Sun Cheng knew quite a few.

The iOS system is not perfect, which he realized after using an Apple phone for several years. However, what really shattered his myth was when he was thrown by Baricade, who he met in another world and went back to see Starscream at the junkyard on the outskirts of Washington. He used the enhancement function of "Frenzy" on his iPhone 5 and took advantage of the powerful intrusion ability of the "Spy Template" to completely crack every line of code in the iOS system, from which he found at least hundreds of various vulnerabilities.

Fortunately, when he returned to reality from the other world, although Sun Cheng lost the powerful intrusion ability of "Frenzy," he still remembered all those vulnerabilities. Even under the influence of "Frenzy," his computer skills had made a leap in growth.

So, what he needs to do now is to download the latest version of the iOS system from the Internet, verify one by one the vulnerabilities he has discovered to see if they have been fixed, and then decide whether to sell them to Zerodium or directly to Apple.

The dormitory's internet speed was not fast, and the 1.4GB installation package took twenty minutes to download and the progress bar was not even halfway there, which made Sun Cheng quite helpless.

Just as he was bored, his computer suddenly made a "ding ding" notification sound. Sun Cheng subconsciously looked at the bottom right corner and saw the chat software flashing.

He quickly clicked on it and saw a reply: "I called you and got no response. Is your phone turned off? What's the matter?"

"Come to Wang's stir-fry, let's talk when you get there. Don't tell the boss and the second in command, just come alone!"

The chat software was silent for a while before responding, "I got it, I'll be there in half an hour!"