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Melbourne, Australia's second largest city, is located in the southeast of Australia, is the capital of Victoria, known as the "Garden State", and is also a well-known international metropolis. Pen, Fun, Pavilion www.biquge.info ""

With 40% of the green area, Melbourne has been rated as one of the most inhabitable cities for many years, and from 1901 to 1927, Melbourne was the capital of Australia and the cultural center of Australia.

Perhaps it is because of Melbourne's history as a talent hub in Australia that young people in this southern city are more receptive to new things from outside than other places, feeding Australia's earliest hackers, thus making Melbourne a mecca of Australia's underground electronic culture.

During this period, according to incomplete statistics, there were more than 60-100 technical BBSs in Australia, and more than 90% of these BBSs were concentrated in Melbourne.

Among the many hacker BBS, the two most famous BBSs are recognized as "Pacific Islands" and "ZEN", on the one hand, because the user level on these two BBSs is generally relatively high, on the other hand, it is very difficult to become a member of these two BBS, and more importantly, these two BBSs support a large number of users who are online at the same time.

Due to the nature of software and hardware, other BBSs can only support up to four or five hundred people online at the same time, while the Pacific Islands can support 1,000 people online at the same time, and ZEN is even more exaggerated, and can support 2,000 people online at the same time.

Some people speculate that Thunderbird One must have used multiple telephone lines to maintain this scale, and since this type of BBS is free for people to browse, it is expensive to support such a BBS, for example, it is estimated that it will cost at least $5,000 to build a BBS like the Pacific Islands alone, plus the monthly phone bill, which is a very large number for the average family.

Not to mention a larger scale like ZEN.

So Thunderbird One can create "Pacific Islands" and "Zen" by himself, making it a very high status in the hacker community.

However, only a small number of people know that Thunderbird One is actually just a young man who is only 23 years old.

He did use multiple phone lines to support so many simultaneous users, such as two lines in the Pacific Islands and four in Zen, and he spent half as much money as the others, for no other reason than because he was an in-house staff member of Australia's only domestic telephone operator. ("" Net 7*

It is precisely because of this internal advantage that Thunderbird No. 1 not only operates two BBSs at the same time, and both BBSs are never offline, while many other BBSs usually go offline during the day and only appear on the network at night.

On this day, Thunderbird No. 1 due to work, has been working overtime until the night to pay attention to the jet lag, online, and when he logged in to his BBS as usual, he was a little surprised to find that there was a post called "The Passage to Freedom - Bit Messenger" in the Pacific Islands, this post is very popular, and now there are more than 150 replies, as many as more than 2,000 views.

What surprised Thunderbird No. 1 was not the popularity of this post, but the account that published this post, which turned out to be his administrator account - Thunderbird No. 1!

He didn't give the password to a second person, and he was pretty sure that he had never made such a post.

Someone stole their account and posted it!

Thunderbird One couldn't tell what it was like in his heart. There was shock, there was surprise, and there was anger.

Nothing like this has happened since the Pacific Islands were created a few years ago.

Also, the place where this post was published is in the "Inner Church" section of the Pacific Islands, which is not open to the public, but only has access to the core members of the Pacific Islands.

Thunderbird One didn't have time to check the content of the post, so it immediately entered the system and began to check for traces of intrusion.

His account is used for administrator privileges, and the other party is not simply stealing someone else's account, but must have hacked the server to be able to steal his own account.

Thunderbird One checked around, but did not find any suspicious clues.

The other party's technology is very high, and he must have taken advantage of a loophole that he didn't know about to invade. (《》网)

The servers in the Pacific Islands are modified with Apple-IIE, which is old but up to the task.

Thunderbird One didn't give up and checked some places again, but still didn't get anything.

He was checking when the phone rang.

"Hello?" Thunderbird One picked up the phone.

"Boss, I'm an elf. Did you really write that bit messenger? Now that there's a lot of noise in BBS, why don't you come forward to explain? ”

"Elves?" Thunderbird One was stunned when he heard this, and he had a bad feeling in his heart, because the elf was a member of ZEN.

Zen and Pacific Islands users do not coincide, and this result is the result of the strict control of Thunderbird One.

Because in order to avoid government departments or journalists lurking inside, he would personally call each member to verify their real identity, and if necessary, he would even meet with them in person.

This is the experience that Thunderbird One has learned from the collapse of the old hacker forum ahvbbs. The forum was shut down and disbanded for violating Australian law.

Since the disbandment of ahvbbs, the fledgling Melbourne hacker society has tended to disband, and at this time Thunderbird One stood up and founded the Pacific Islands. In order to ensure the long-term survival of the Pacific islands, he forbade the members to publish stolen trade secrets and other content that violates national laws. And all members are strictly collected and vetted.

It's a cumbersome but effective one, and the strict censorship system brings the relationship closer together.

In this kind of public place, hackers never discuss breaking the law, but simply exchange hacking techniques, which is an important reason for the steady development of the Pacific Islands.

Later, on the basis of the Pacific Islands, Thunderbird One founded ZEN. ZEN is managed in the same way as the Pacific islands. ZEN was founded because the Pacific Islands were no longer sufficient, and ZEN used more advanced computers and technologies, such as 32-bit computers and multitasking.

To Thunderbird One's surprise, both of his servers were compromised by the other party.

As the head of two of Australia's most famous hacker BBS, this has to be said to be a travesty.

Thunderbird One checked the ZEN server, and the result was the same as before, there were no clues.

The other party was like a ghost, coming and walking gently, without doing any damage, leaving only a post in the name of Thunderbird One-

The Gateway to Freedom - Bit Messenger!

Thunderbird One began to read the post officially.

"I went to the Pacific Islands and ZEN to advertise. Promote your own instant messenger! ”

Thunderbird No. 1 snorted coldly, it is not for nothing to advertise, and it is common to see people on BBS publishing posts in the board to promote their software, but this is the first time he has encountered such a situation.

Thunderbird One continued to read, he was already thinking in his heart about giving the author of this software some color to see, and he dared to run to his two BBS so arrogantly to provoke.

In his opinion, as long as it is an instant messaging software, it must be controlled by a server, and he can't hide his identity in any case.

"Huh? Don't have a center? ”

Thunderbird No. 1 couldn't help but be stunned when he saw this.

The principle of this software is explained in detail.

This is based on a peer-to-peer principle, where there is no single central node to manage this data, everyone is central.

Thunderbird One's originally somewhat disdainful look began to become serious.

"In that case, how exactly is the data stored?"

He is a hacker himself, and he knows a lot about computer technology, so he naturally knows how an instant messaging software works.

But this software seems to be a bit special, it actually uses flat peer-to-peer technology, completely abandoning the central server.

“…… The user's data is encrypted in a very secure way and stored on your friend's computer, and the more friends you have, the harder it is for your data to be lost......"

"Amazing way! It's kind of interesting! ”

Thunderbird No. 1 couldn't help but give a thumbs up to the other party's solution.

It's a very clever design, and it's the essence of a chat and dating app.

According to this design, the other party's friend acts as the server to store the data, and if there is no local backup, they can send a data download command to their friend to download a new copy of the data in their client.

"So? What does it mean to avoid snooping and maintain maximum secrecy? ”

The dissatisfaction on Thunderbird One's face disappeared completely, and he began to be full of interest, this software seemed to be very different from the clumsy commercial software released by previous advertisers.

He continued to read the content of the post.

RAS public key algorithm encryption, anonymous proxy, relay redirect, random egress......

"It can't be!"

Thunderbird No. 1 stood up suddenly, with an incredulous look on his face.

He knew about the RAS encryption algorithm, he also understood the anonymous proxy technology, and he used relay jumps more often, but he didn't expect that these technologies could be combined in such a way to produce a software called Bit Messenger.

"It's incredible!"

Thunderbird One read this post several times, and he did not let go of every detail, both technically and logically, and finally came to the conclusion that it was really feasible.

This post, a technical paper, theoretically proves that it is entirely possible to write a communication software that avoids listening!

Thunderbird 1 immediately started the FTP software and started downloading the bit messenger software from the address published in the post.

At the same time, he quickly picked up the phone and dialed a familiar number.