Hacking for Beginners

Do you know anything about hackers? Can you jam with the console cowboys in cyberspace? Never experienced the New Wave? Next Wave? Dream Wave? OR Cyberpunk? Have you even read Neuromancer?

Listen, ignore 12 year old Julia Stiles. Here’s what you are going to need to know:

Anyone with a pair of fingerless gloves and access to a device with an interface can hack. If you want it to be useful, it should also be connected to a relevant network.

You can avoid the following mess if you’ve got the correct username/password combination for the terminal. Hackers typically trade usernames/passwords as a sort of second hand currency. Find someone who claims to have what you need, then pay their price. Or do the favor they need.

The rules (which were stolen from Warren, who stole them from Ava, who stole them from Telcanter) are rather simple: Select the correct hacking actions - composed of Crack, Hack, and Smack - in order. Each terminal requires all three actions, and no action is repeated.

• Crack is the brute forcing to discover passwords.
• Hack is console commands jammed in where they shouldn’t be.
• Smack is exactly what it sounds like: You haul off and smack the system.

Should the Hacker select a wrong action, they’ll be met with an error message. Should a wrong action be selected again, the terminal locks down and becomes unusable.

Depending on the level of devices security rating (1-4; assume 1 if not stated) you may be required to repeat the process.

If you insist on hacking while in combat, each guess takes a turn and requires your full attention. Leaving the terminal restarts the process and may trigger security.

Before you begin Hacking, you’re allowed an Intelligence test:

On a Success you eliminate one option for the first action as incorrect.

Succeeding by 5 or more reveals the first correct action.

Critical success and you immediately gain access

On a Failure you gain no insight or advantage to the situation.

On Critical Failure, the terminal locks immediately.

Now, mind you, just because you’ve hacked a device connected to a network doesn’t mean you’ll be able to make it do anything you want. A door access panel isn’t going to be able to control local cameras. It’s going to open, close, lock, and unlock the door. The console in the security room, however, will be able to control both. It’ll also have a higher security rating and pesky guards who will take offense to you being there.

Making a device do what it shouldn’t is what Warez are for.

So What Can You Do?

There are a few generic actions you can perform, though as said, not all of them will be applicable all the time. Performing them takes about a turn, besides Upload and Download, which are variable based on size of data be transferred

1. Download - You move queried information from the local drive to your portable that you’ve inserted.
2. Query - Ask a question and get an answer to the best of the system’s knowledge.
3. Sabotage - You out right break it, causing an alarm.
4. Suppression - You turn a specified system off for as long as you are at the terminal.
5. Upload - You transfer data from a connected portable drive to the local drive of the system.
6. Use - You use the system as it was intended. Leaving the terminal at this point causes it to continuously run the last command given.