Part 2 Hello, Mr. Major General I'm Gu Nianzi

245. I betrayed you!

You can crack it in a day?!" Zhao Liangze and Yin Shixiong exclaimed at the same time. "The Europeans changed the channel encryption key for the Copernicus System after the Americans announced that they had cracked it. You'll have to crack it all over againare you sure you can do it in a single day?!"
The password for something as secure as a sat-nav system could only be cracked by a computer with a massive amount of processing power.
The Harvard School of m Engineering had cracked the channel encryption for the Nandou System with the help of a supercomputer running 24/7. They would have been waiting for years by the time Gu Nianzhi's dinky little laptop managed to do the same.
Huo Shaoheng had lifted his head in surprise upon hearing what Gu Nianzhi had said, and was now watching Gu Nianzhi calmly with his dark eyes. They were separated by a computer screen, but Gu Nianzhi could feel his gaze bore through her, all the same.
Gu Nianzhi forgot how to breathe. She lowered her eyes, not trusting herself to look at Huo Shaoheng again, and said, softly, "Miss Xin's website has the original record of the signals from the Copernicus System. The amount of data seems overwhelming at first glance, but that's only because there's a lot of clutter and noise in it. If we can eliminate the noise, the amount of data we need to process will be massively reduced, which means the computing power required will also be reduced. My laptop" At this point, she paused, raised her head, and looked directly at Zhao Liangze, who was sitting in one corner of the video feed on her laptop. She said, laughing, "Brother Ze modified it. It has nothing on an actual supercomputer, but it's still a lot more powerful than the average computer."
Huo Shaoheng looked sideways at Zhao Liangze, who was sitting beside him. "You modified Nianzhi's laptop? Why didn't I know about this?"
Zhao Liangze wished he could run over and clamp a hand over Gu Nianzhi's mouth.
She had promised him she would keep it a secret from Huo Shaoheng!
How can you just snitch on me like that?! Zhao Liangze's thought anxiously.
He should have known better than to trust Nianzhi to be able to keep a secret from Mr. Huo. She had readily spilled the entire can of beans, without even waiting for Mr. Huo to ask her about it! The child was utterly spineless in front of Mr. Huo.
Zhao Liangze inwardly swore at both Gu Nianzhi and Huo Shaoheng as he shook his head vaguely and said, "Me dumb dumb, me know nothing"
"Pfft!" Yin Shixiong scoffed at Zhao Liangze's ridiculous attempt at playing dumb. Did he really think that would be enough to get Mr. Huo to let him off the hook?
Huo Shaoheng gave Zhao Liangze a cold, withering look. He rose from his seat and said, "You'll stay up with Nianzhi and help her crack the encryption. You're not allowed to sleep, not until you have the password." With that, he left the room.
Zhao Liangze immediately replied with a loud "Yes, sir!" He made a face at Gu Nianzhi. "My dear Nianzhi, you sold me out." He laughed wearily.
Gu Nianzhi saw that Huo Shaoheng had left, and was immediately a lot cheekier than she dared to be in his presence. She returned Zhao Liangze's funny face with one of her own. "Yup, I betrayed you. What're you gonna do about it? I have no secrets from Uncle Huo. You should have known better, Brother Ze."
Gu Nianzhi's cheeky act was endearing; Zhao Liangze could not find it in him to stay angry.
"Oh forget it, I forgive you. So what do you want to do?" Zhao Liangze smiled, shook his head, and quickly got down to business.
Gu Nianzhi's eyes lit up. She quickly explained to Zhao Liangze, with the help of a chart, what she had in mind. "I've studied their decryption methods. I think we should concentrate on how to eliminate all the noisethat's a much bigger problem than our current lack of computing power."
Signals that had been bounced off high-orbit satellites were full of noise and interference.
Cracking the channel encryption key was simple, in theory: they had to first eliminate all interference, capture the relevant signals, and then reverse-engineer the encoding in the predetermined order.