“I can’t allow myself to be pwned”
Executing the perfect counterattack in Hacknet
If you watch US procedural dramas with any regularity, you’ll have doubtless been subjected to a hacking scene. It probably featured a spunky head of IT typing frantically on multiple keyboards, shouting panicked instructions at a second, more traditionally nerdy sidekick. “It’s no use,” they’d likely lament, “he’s backdoored the interflange through a TCP spatchnozzle.” Their boss, almost certainly a lightly-stubbled technophobe, reaches down behind the PC and yanks. The screens go blank. He holds up the power cord and rolls his eyes. Cut to an advert, probably about car insurance.
Network television never learned the lessons of ’90s cyberthrillers, or of games such as Uplink and Hacknet. Hacking works best when it’s a heist, but with computers instead of George Clooney. It’s a battle of wits; of plans, counterplans, reveals, and retribution.
Case in point: I’m being hacked. It’s retaliation for, as my attacker puts it, being a “pathetic script kiddie”. This isn’t entirely unwarranted— Hacknet, like Uplink before it, is about launching automated programs that do the hacking for you. The challenge comes afterwards, as you search for clues that lead to a specific piece of information. My current mission is to delete data stolen by the hacker Naix. But Naix, unlike my previous targets, is waiting for me. Hence the shitty email I’ve just received, and the fact that he’s now hacking my shit.
An alarm sounds, and my terminal starts filling with ones and zeroes. Whatever Naix is planning, I assume it will be embarrassing. I’m a 32-year-old man. I can’t allow myself to be pwned. And I won’t be. What Naix doesn’t know is I was waiting for him, too.
Flashback! I’m setting up shells— networked terminals that I can use to remotely flood a proxy server. Shells have two options, overload and trap. The latter, I learn, can detect and ‘forkbomb’ remote connections. Assuming that, this being a hacking game, I will sooner or later be hacked, I take to running a permanent shell trap on my own machine, sacrificing some RAM for peace of mind.
Naix is past my firewall when I trigger the trap, crashing his PC. His infiltration attempt thwarted, I check my logs for the IP of another of his proxy nodes. I break in, scan for outside connections, and discover his home system. I hack it, delete his data, and rename his x-server system file to ‘suckit.sys’.
Another email: “ggwp”. I’ve earned the respect of my attacker. More importantly, I’ve played a hacking scene just as unrealistic as a CSI or NCIS, but infinitely more tense and enjoyable.