Chapter 479



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The Smith Corporation’s situation was not as good as Joel had just laid out.

The physical industry was currently in decline in the United States, while new media networks were flourishing. The Smith Corporation had also opened a few companies doing business online.

All the servers were at the Smith Corporation. Once the servers went down, the servers in other places….

I had just thought about that when someone rushed in and said, “Mr. Smith, all the players of our games are sending in comments that they can’t access the games. They are threatening to uninstall the applications.”

“Mr. Smith, those who live stream on our live streaming app are asking why they can’t access the app and what’s wrong with the servers!”

“Mr. Smith, we had to make a transfer of funds for the big deal today, but now that there is no internet, we can’t complete the transfer…”

All kinds of problems ensued.

Joel had his subordinates deal with them one by one, then went into his office.

By then it was dark. The troubled Joel rubbed his temples and pulled out his phone. His finger was already on Nora’s number when his executive assistant pushed open the door and entered. “Mr. Smith, we’re trending on social media!”.

Joel was surprised.

He closed the calling app and went to take a look at the trending topics on social media.

There were five or six trending topics, such as #SmithCorporationServersCrashed, #SmithCorporationIsHacked, #GameServerXXCrashed, and so on. They were at the top of the most popular topics.

Obviously, someone had paid money to make them trend.

The comments had already exploded:

‘Good grief, has something gone wrong with the Smith Corporation network, can we still trust the Smith Corporation?’

‘Why did they get hacked, do they take cybersecurity so unprofessionally being such a large company?’

‘My personal information registered with the Smith Corporation won’t be stolen, will it?’

‘This is unacceptable! How can they continue to call themselves the second best company in the country when this is all they can do? Is a company whose network defenses were so easily breached really trustworthy!’

‘This is too much! I’ve finally taken a day off to play games and yet all of a sudden they tell me the server is down and I can’t connect. What the hell, I’m going to uninstall this! Goodbye’.

All kinds of rumors flew all over the Internet.

Everyone in the company could only monitor the developments with their own Internet access points. They were all terribly anxious, but also helpless.

The IT department even started to ask for help. However, the moment the IT experts found out that it was Q who was targeting them, no one dared to come and help.

The people in the IT department had no choice but to work overtime. But try as they might, they were no match for the other side!

Q was constantly on the line. When they found a bug and fixed it, Q would strike again. It was impossible for them to protect themselves from him.

They all panicked.

“Mr. Smith, this is terrible! Our stock is plummeting.”

His executive assistant delivered another piece of bad news. All the trending topics about their server downtime had given way to the most terrifying crisis for the Smith Corporation!

Once the stock reached the lower limit, his company would be in jeopardy.

Joel narrowed his eyes and said, “Find a way to intercept Q and stop him from further damaging the servers for now. I’ll find someone to help me.” The assistant nodded. Just as he was about to leave, someone pushed on the door again. It was Samuel.

He looked at Joel angrily. “What’s going on with the Smith stock? The price has gone way down. Are all the people the Smiths are breeding garbage? Can’t they even fix a lousy Internet network?”

Behind him stood his executive’s assistant. She looked absolutely stunned as she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Smith. I couldn’t stop it.”

Joel looked at her and then looked at his executive assistant.

The executive assistant nodded and walked out of the office with her assistant.

Samuel sat down across from him. “Did I hear that it’s Nora who offended Q? I knew that woman was bad luck. She caused a lot of trouble the moment she came back to the family! Since she’s only doing it because she’s angry, how can she keep fighting him so stubbornly and put our whole business at stake? Our stock is plummeting right now, and we’re very likely to be delisted after reaching the bottom! The Smith Corporation is a publicly traded company, it’s not something you can use to defend it for its nonsense!”

Joel corrected him. “It says it’s Q, but it may not really be Q. I’m already looking for someone to confirm its identity.”

Samuel was so furious that he gasped. “How would he be able to bring down our network and put so many people in trouble if he’s not Q? Besides, why would he impersonate Q? What is he thinking about all day? Is he the problem to begin with?”

Joel ignored him. Instead, he pulled out his phone to confirm something first. He dialed Nora’s number. “Nora, I hear there’s a feud between you and Q? What exactly happened?”.

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