Immensely impressed: Microsoft “captures” hacker Liu Dieyu
About 5 years ago, that is, in the summer of 1998, when Kai-Fu Lee first came to Beijing to set up the research institute, he carried in his pocket Microsoft’s ambitious plan: invest 80 million US dollars over 6 years and find 100 of the most outstanding researchers. At that time he only had two people with him. They settled down in Sigma Mansion in Zhongguancun, Beijing.
From then until today, the young people gathered at Microsoft Research Beijing have gradually astonished the whole world. Microsoft Research China has already been renamed Microsoft Research Asia. The young people gathered on the fifth floor of Sigma Mansion already number more than 400. Today, out of every 100 papers published in the world’s top 5 journals, 5 come from this institute. And most of these people came from Chinese university campuses.
At the beginning of 2003, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, Global Vice President of Microsoft, together with best-selling author Ling Zhijun, explored the road to success of a group of “Microsoft Kids” at Microsoft Research Asia, that is, how they grew from ordinary people into geniuses and masters. This is exactly the theme of this book.
They discovered a hacker, in China
“We discovered a hacker, in China.”
One morning in January 2003, Ya-Qin Zhang came to the office, opened his email, and this line immediately popped up.
The mail came from the security team at Microsoft headquarters. One of that team’s duties was to monitor how the Internet browser was running worldwide, specially looking for “bugs,” then fixing them, and at the same time tracking the elusive movements of “hackers” on the network.
As far as Microsoft was concerned, not all online “hackers” were of the same kind. Some really were hostile to Microsoft, specializing in looking for “bugs” in Microsoft software products and using loopholes in the software itself to attack the users of that software. This kind of attack was highly destructive and also embarrassed Microsoft. Other “hackers,” on the other hand, were purely “technology fanatics”; they specifically looked for faults in big companies’ products.
“We can be sure he is a Chinese student,” they told Ya-Qin Zhang. “He studies at Xiangtan University, and his name is Liu Dieyu.”
Hunan · Xiangtan University · Liu Dieyu
Liu Dieyu sat in his overcrowded room, staring at the computer screen without blinking, not moving for hours. On it was one of Microsoft’s proudest products, the “Internet browser.” He knew that what he wanted to find was in there. He could already clearly sense its existence, but why still wouldn’t it come out? …
As he thought, he tapped the keyboard with his fingers. At that very instant, the “Internet browser” ran into trouble.
He bared a mouthful of big buck teeth and grinned: “I broke its rules, didn’t I?”
Quite a few people around him hated Microsoft, and when they saw what he had done, they could not help feeling delighted. After being delighted, they started guessing what Microsoft would do next. “Really strange,” one classmate said to him, “Microsoft still hasn’t taken action against you?”
Just as they were joking, the telephone rang. He picked it up and heard a voice on the other end say: “I’m from Microsoft.”
Liu Dieyu was instantly dumbfounded.
“Maybe you’d be willing to work with us”
The caller really was from Microsoft, Lin Bin, manager of the New Technology Development Department at Microsoft Research Asia. After receiving the forwarded email from Ya-Qin Zhang, he followed the trail and easily found Liu Dieyu.
“There’s nothing special about why we’re looking for you.” Lin Bin sensed the other side’s nervousness and hoped to ease the atmosphere.
The other side said “Ah,” but still did not speak.
Lin Bin seemed to remember something and hurriedly introduced himself, saying that he was in Beijing and was in charge of an engineering group at Microsoft Research Asia.
“Ah, ah.”
“I’m just a technical person at Microsoft.”
“Ah, ah.”
“Our director is Ya-Qin Zhang. He is a world-class computer scientist.”
“Ah, ah.”
“I once took part in making Windows 2000.”
“That’s cool.” The other side finally spoke.
“We are very interested in your work.”
“Ah.” Liu Dieyu fell silent again.
“We would very much like to invite you to Beijing to have a look. Maybe you’d be willing to work with us.”
“Ah…”
“If you’re free during winter vacation, then come. Plane or train, either is fine. We’ll cover your travel expenses.”
“I’d be very willing,” Liu Dieyu said. “Maybe.”
“Are they really from Microsoft?”
Dieyu put down the phone, his heart still pounding. His first thought was: “These days there are too many scammers. Are they really from Microsoft?” Then another thought: “Even if they are real, why exactly are they looking for me? They aren’t going to lock me up, are they?”
Thinking this way, Dieyu felt for the first time the thrilling weirdness of “The Matrix.”
Actually he did not like being called a “hacker.” “I’ve never seen a hacker,” he once said. “Some people crash other people’s websites, and they’re called hackers; some people are very skilled technically, and they’re also called hackers. The word hacker means too many things. If you think hackers can also be good people, then I’m a hacker.”
To tell the truth, he had stepped onto this road entirely by accident, carrying only a bit of curiosity, a bit of interest, and a bit of the desire to prove his ability.
It all began on June 30, 2002. That day he happened to see an article written by a foreigner, giving many examples to explain how to find errors in a program. Many things that seemed very difficult to Liu Dieyu suddenly became simple, just as the author said: “You don’t need especially profound knowledge or especially brilliant skill; you just need to look at it from a special angle.”
“I can definitely do it too,” Liu Dieyu thought.
His line of thinking worked again and again. He searched all over Microsoft’s “browser” and kept finding “bugs,” but Microsoft was also looking for him. Now Microsoft had finally found him.
Beijing · Microsoft Research Asia
After putting down the phone, Lin Bin went to find Wang Jin, manager of the institute’s human resources department, and asked her to arrange for Liu Dieyu to intern at Microsoft Research Asia during winter vacation.
“All of this could be fake. I only trust email.” Wang Jin felt she did not seem able to persuade Liu Dieyu, so she turned back to Lin Bin: “Why is this kid so interesting? He asked you whether you were really from Microsoft?”
Lin Bin’s phone call came to Xiangtan again: “If you trust email, that’s good. Our email address has ‘Microsoft’ in it. That can’t be fake, can it?”
After the Spring Festival, Dieyu finally arrived at Sigma Mansion.
Lin Bin called Microsoft headquarters and said that the “hacker” they wanted to find was now right beside him.
“Fantastic,” the other side said excitedly. “Let’s have a meeting together.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Lin Bin said to him: “Whatever you want to do, do that. If you want to keep looking for ‘bugs’ in the ‘browser,’ our product group at headquarters can work with you. You find a vulnerability, they immediately fix it, package it, and then give it to you again. You can get the newest programs, ones not yet released.”
As the two were talking, Dieyu’s mobile phone rang. It was his father calling from Xiangtan.
“No problem, I’m very safe,” Dieyu said into the receiver, then looked up at Lin Bin: “I think you at Microsoft aren’t quite the same as what people outside say.”
Headquarters was immensely impressed
Dieyu started working. For 7 straight days, he found 7 “Bug”s in the “Internet browser,” one a day, and they were all very hard to find. He himself was very excited, and the people at Microsoft headquarters were even more excited, exclaiming, “How can this person be this amazing?”
“His work is simply excellent,” Lin Bin said.
On the eighth day, Lin Bin gave Dieyu a book specifically about how to write secure code. The author was a manager in Microsoft’s product division. In the book he listed the errors programmers often made; it was extremely meticulous and thoughtful, so this book became required reading for Microsoft programmers.
Lin Bin said: “Read this book. You’ll be able to discover even better where programmers’ weak points are.”
Dieyu was overjoyed. He took it back, read the first chapter, and immediately got a new idea. He tried to use the author’s own methods against him and go directly deep into the group led by the book’s author.
After hearing his idea, Lin Bin felt nothing would come of it: “He wrote the book himself. He wouldn’t make mistakes in the group he leads.”
But Dieyu trusted his intuition more.
What happened next surprised everyone. Dieyu launched his “campaign” in the browser’s address bar. When he used one method to express a letter, the “browser” had no problem at all. He expanded to a second method and still there was no problem. He kept going in one breath, continuously expanding new expression methods. When the string extended to the 81st variation, the system’s problem appeared. He laughed, pressed on, and expanded at least two hundred kinds of variations, the string reaching an unprecedented length. The result was that from the 81st variation up through the 100th, the system would have problems, and in the end he inexplicably entered a bank’s webpage.
“That’s really unbelievable,” Lin Bin said. “Other people’s testing changes things ten or twenty times and that’s already amazing. In fact his changes went from 0 to over 200 times. It was exactly in one short phase in the middle that he found the problem. When the problem report reached headquarters, the people there were immensely impressed.”
“We simply could never have imagined this kind of testing,” replied the security team at Microsoft headquarters. (Selected from Growth / by Ling Zhijun / to be published by Hainan Publishing House in October, organized by Hu Jinhua.)
Author introduction
Ling Zhijun: senior editor at People’s Daily, famous journalist and best-selling author, Master of Law. His main works include Changes: A Record of China, 1990–2002, Confrontation: A Record of Three Ideological Liberations in Contemporary China, and Following Wisdom: Chinese at Microsoft.
The growth model of the “Microsoft Kids”
1. Their growth had nothing to do with a privileged family background.
2. Strict family education and relaxed family education can both help children succeed. Of course, without exception, these Microsoft Kids hoped for a relaxed educational environment.
3. Being “number one” in exams has no inevitable connection with later achievement. In fact, during their student yearsthey were more often in the third-to-tenth-place range. Their motto was “No need to care about ranking.”
4. 80% of them had broad interests in middle school and college, rather than only meeting the requirements of the teaching syllabus. The time they spent memorizing textbooks and doing exercises was far below the average among their classmates.
5. They did not possess IQs beyond ordinary people. The fact is that at every stage of study, emotional intelligence showed itself to be more important than IQ. The reason they stood out was that they had healthy personalities, good learning attitudes, and good study habits.
6. All of them met outstanding teachers at crucial moments, and the reason these teachers were unforgettable to them lay entirely outside the classroom. For example: teaching them how to conduct themselves, how to study, and in what direction to develop.
7. The author also calls the “Microsoft Kids” E-students, meaning they have high EQ, take learning as enjoyment (Enjoy), and pursue excellence (Excellence). This is obviously contrary to traditional exam-oriented education, which only emphasizes developing students’ intelligence while neglecting the development of their emotional intelligence.
About 5 years ago, that is, in the summer of 1998, when Kai-Fu Lee first came to Beijing to set up the research institute, he carried in his pocket Microsoft’s ambitious plan: invest 80 million US dollars over 6 years and find 100 of the most outstanding researchers. At that time he only had two people with him. They settled down in Sigma Mansion in Zhongguancun, Beijing.
From then until today, the young people gathered at Microsoft Research Beijing have gradually astonished the whole world. Microsoft Research China has already been renamed Microsoft Research Asia. The young people gathered on the fifth floor of Sigma Mansion already number more than 400. Today, out of every 100 papers published in the world’s top 5 journals, 5 come from this institute. And most of these people came from Chinese university campuses.
At the beginning of 2003, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, Global Vice President of Microsoft, together with best-selling author Ling Zhijun, explored the road to success of a group of “Microsoft Kids” at Microsoft Research Asia, that is, how they grew from ordinary people into geniuses and masters. This is exactly the theme of this book.
They discovered a hacker, in China
“We discovered a hacker, in China.”
One morning in January 2003, Ya-Qin Zhang came to the office, opened his email, and this line immediately popped up.
The mail came from the security team at Microsoft headquarters. One of that team’s duties was to monitor how the Internet browser was running worldwide, specially looking for “bugs,” then fixing them, and at the same time tracking the elusive movements of “hackers” on the network.
As far as Microsoft was concerned, not all online “hackers” were of the same kind. Some really were hostile to Microsoft, specializing in looking for “bugs” in Microsoft software products and using loopholes in the software itself to attack the users of that software. This kind of attack was highly destructive and also embarrassed Microsoft. Other “hackers,” on the other hand, were purely “technology fanatics”; they specifically looked for faults in big companies’ products.
“We can be sure he is a Chinese student,” they told Ya-Qin Zhang. “He studies at Xiangtan University, and his name is Liu Dieyu.”
Hunan · Xiangtan University · Liu Dieyu
Liu Dieyu sat in his overcrowded room, staring at the computer screen without blinking, not moving for hours. On it was one of Microsoft’s proudest products, the “Internet browser.” He knew that what he wanted to find was in there. He could already clearly sense its existence, but why still wouldn’t it come out? …
As he thought, he tapped the keyboard with his fingers. At that very instant, the “Internet browser” ran into trouble.
He bared a mouthful of big buck teeth and grinned: “I broke its rules, didn’t I?”
Quite a few people around him hated Microsoft, and when they saw what he had done, they could not help feeling delighted. After being delighted, they started guessing what Microsoft would do next. “Really strange,” one classmate said to him, “Microsoft still hasn’t taken action against you?”
Just as they were joking, the telephone rang. He picked it up and heard a voice on the other end say: “I’m from Microsoft.”
Liu Dieyu was instantly dumbfounded.
“Maybe you’d be willing to work with us”
The caller really was from Microsoft, Lin Bin, manager of the New Technology Development Department at Microsoft Research Asia. After receiving the forwarded email from Ya-Qin Zhang, he followed the trail and easily found Liu Dieyu.
“There’s nothing special about why we’re looking for you.” Lin Bin sensed the other side’s nervousness and hoped to ease the atmosphere.
The other side said “Ah,” but still did not speak.
Lin Bin seemed to remember something and hurriedly introduced himself, saying that he was in Beijing and was in charge of an engineering group at Microsoft Research Asia.
“Ah, ah.”
“I’m just a technical person at Microsoft.”
“Ah, ah.”
“Our director is Ya-Qin Zhang. He is a world-class computer scientist.”
“Ah, ah.”
“I once took part in making Windows 2000.”
“That’s cool.” The other side finally spoke.
“We are very interested in your work.”
“Ah.” Liu Dieyu fell silent again.
“We would very much like to invite you to Beijing to have a look. Maybe you’d be willing to work with us.”
“Ah…”
“If you’re free during winter vacation, then come. Plane or train, either is fine. We’ll cover your travel expenses.”
“I’d be very willing,” Liu Dieyu said. “Maybe.”
“Are they really from Microsoft?”
Dieyu put down the phone, his heart still pounding. His first thought was: “These days there are too many scammers. Are they really from Microsoft?” Then another thought: “Even if they are real, why exactly are they looking for me? They aren’t going to lock me up, are they?”
Thinking this way, Dieyu felt for the first time the thrilling weirdness of “The Matrix.”
Actually he did not like being called a “hacker.” “I’ve never seen a hacker,” he once said. “Some people crash other people’s websites, and they’re called hackers; some people are very skilled technically, and they’re also called hackers. The word hacker means too many things. If you think hackers can also be good people, then I’m a hacker.”
To tell the truth, he had stepped onto this road entirely by accident, carrying only a bit of curiosity, a bit of interest, and a bit of the desire to prove his ability.
It all began on June 30, 2002. That day he happened to see an article written by a foreigner, giving many examples to explain how to find errors in a program. Many things that seemed very difficult to Liu Dieyu suddenly became simple, just as the author said: “You don’t need especially profound knowledge or especially brilliant skill; you just need to look at it from a special angle.”
“I can definitely do it too,” Liu Dieyu thought.
His line of thinking worked again and again. He searched all over Microsoft’s “browser” and kept finding “bugs,” but Microsoft was also looking for him. Now Microsoft had finally found him.
Beijing · Microsoft Research Asia
After putting down the phone, Lin Bin went to find Wang Jin, manager of the institute’s human resources department, and asked her to arrange for Liu Dieyu to intern at Microsoft Research Asia during winter vacation.
“All of this could be fake. I only trust email.” Wang Jin felt she did not seem able to persuade Liu Dieyu, so she turned back to Lin Bin: “Why is this kid so interesting? He asked you whether you were really from Microsoft?”
Lin Bin’s phone call came to Xiangtan again: “If you trust email, that’s good. Our email address has ‘Microsoft’ in it. That can’t be fake, can it?”
After the Spring Festival, Dieyu finally arrived at Sigma Mansion.
Lin Bin called Microsoft headquarters and said that the “hacker” they wanted to find was now right beside him.
“Fantastic,” the other side said excitedly. “Let’s have a meeting together.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Lin Bin said to him: “Whatever you want to do, do that. If you want to keep looking for ‘bugs’ in the ‘browser,’ our product group at headquarters can work with you. You find a vulnerability, they immediately fix it, package it, and then give it to you again. You can get the newest programs, ones not yet released.”
As the two were talking, Dieyu’s mobile phone rang. It was his father calling from Xiangtan.
“No problem, I’m very safe,” Dieyu said into the receiver, then looked up at Lin Bin: “I think you at Microsoft aren’t quite the same as what people outside say.”
Headquarters was immensely impressed
Dieyu started working. For 7 straight days, he found 7 “Bug”s in the “Internet browser,” one a day, and they were all very hard to find. He himself was very excited, and the people at Microsoft headquarters were even more excited, exclaiming, “How can this person be this amazing?”
“His work is simply excellent,” Lin Bin said.
On the eighth day, Lin Bin gave Dieyu a book specifically about how to write secure code. The author was a manager in Microsoft’s product division. In the book he listed the errors programmers often made; it was extremely meticulous and thoughtful, so this book became required reading for Microsoft programmers.
Lin Bin said: “Read this book. You’ll be able to discover even better where programmers’ weak points are.”
Dieyu was overjoyed. He took it back, read the first chapter, and immediately got a new idea. He tried to use the author’s own methods against him and go directly deep into the group led by the book’s author.
After hearing his idea, Lin Bin felt nothing would come of it: “He wrote the book himself. He wouldn’t make mistakes in the group he leads.”
But Dieyu trusted his intuition more.
What happened next surprised everyone. Dieyu launched his “campaign” in the browser’s address bar. When he used one method to express a letter, the “browser” had no problem at all. He expanded to a second method and still there was no problem. He kept going in one breath, continuously expanding new expression methods. When the string extended to the 81st variation, the system’s problem appeared. He laughed, pressed on, and expanded at least two hundred kinds of variations, the string reaching an unprecedented length. The result was that from the 81st variation up through the 100th, the system would have problems, and in the end he inexplicably entered a bank’s webpage.
“That’s really unbelievable,” Lin Bin said. “Other people’s testing changes things ten or twenty times and that’s already amazing. In fact his changes went from 0 to over 200 times. It was exactly in one short phase in the middle that he found the problem. When the problem report reached headquarters, the people there were immensely impressed.”
“We simply could never have imagined this kind of testing,” replied the security team at Microsoft headquarters. (Selected from Growth / by Ling Zhijun / to be published by Hainan Publishing House in October, organized by Hu Jinhua.)
Author introduction
Ling Zhijun: senior editor at People’s Daily, famous journalist and best-selling author, Master of Law. His main works include Changes: A Record of China, 1990–2002, Confrontation: A Record of Three Ideological Liberations in Contemporary China, and Following Wisdom: Chinese at Microsoft.
The growth model of the “Microsoft Kids”
1. Their growth had nothing to do with a privileged family background.
2. Strict family education and relaxed family education can both help children succeed. Of course, without exception, these Microsoft Kids hoped for a relaxed educational environment.
3. Being “number one” in exams has no inevitable connection with later achievement. In fact, during their student yearsthey were more often in the third-to-tenth-place range. Their motto was “No need to care about ranking.”
4. 80% of them had broad interests in middle school and college, rather than only meeting the requirements of the teaching syllabus. The time they spent memorizing textbooks and doing exercises was far below the average among their classmates.
5. They did not possess IQs beyond ordinary people. The fact is that at every stage of study, emotional intelligence showed itself to be more important than IQ. The reason they stood out was that they had healthy personalities, good learning attitudes, and good study habits.
6. All of them met outstanding teachers at crucial moments, and the reason these teachers were unforgettable to them lay entirely outside the classroom. For example: teaching them how to conduct themselves, how to study, and in what direction to develop.
7. The author also calls the “Microsoft Kids” E-students, meaning they have high EQ, take learning as enjoyment (Enjoy), and pursue excellence (Excellence). This is obviously contrary to traditional exam-oriented education, which only emphasizes developing students’ intelligence while neglecting the development of their emotional intelligence.
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C++ ☆☆☆ 中国ＤＯＳ联盟成员 ☆☆☆ C++
C++ ★★★ 爱提问的红色狂想 ★★★ C++
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C++ ☆☆☆ 中国ＤＯＳ联盟成员 ☆☆☆ C++
C++ ★★★ 爱提问的红色狂想 ★★★ C++
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