Start-Up (Seo Dal-Mi x Han Ji-Pyeong) [FanFic]

Chapter 30: Ransomware

Ji-pyeong reached Dal-Mi's office in a haste where he saw In-Jae and her team present along with Cheongmyeong Company, huddled in front of the computer. Dal-mi was on her phone raising complaint to the cybercrime unit. Her worried face made Ji-pyeong emphasis only on the matter at hand, temporarily overlooking Do-san's existence.

Whatever plan he had to keep him away from Dal-mi needed to wait. Because right now, his only concern was retaining her in one piece so she didn't fall apart.

"Yes, please send some of your best engineers," she said into the phone, thanking them and hanging up. As soon as she saw Ji-Pyeong, her feet wasted no time in rushing towards him.

"Did you call the police?" He asked, examining the situation carefully.

"Yes, I did," she said, out of breath. "Can you call your IT team from SH Venture and ask a security guy to take a look at this?"

"Yes, I'll talk to them right now." Ji-Pyeong said, taking out his cell and calling the security desk. It went to an automated message which told him to hold while they looked for someone free to take the call.

"What about backup?" Ji-Pyeong asked, covering the mic of his phone.

"The backups have been hacked too," she said, regretting everything instantly. "The external drive contains a previous version which is useless now because we used a different algorithm for our final testing."

Ji-pyeong clicked his tongue as he ran his brain to find someone who had previously solved this kind of ransomware attack.

"It's all my fault," Dal-mi said, covering her eyes with her palm. "I should have asked the developers to sync their files every day."

"You didn't know this would happen," he told her in a very professional tone, his mentor mode turning on with a click. "You cannot anticipate every attack you face in your business."

"But I should've been careful from the start," she said, reminiscing everything she could've done to prevent this from happening.

"Don't you dare put this on yourself," Ji-pyeong raised his voice a little, placing his free hand on her shoulder to calm her down. Peeking at her face from under, he added. "We'll get this sorted out, understand?"