Tracing Hacker

Stuck in Uplink? Need Help?

Moderators: jelco, bert_the_turtle, Chris, Icepick, Rkiver, Punisher Bass

Veni
level0
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu May 17, 2007 12:04 am

Tracing Hacker

Postby Veni » Thu May 17, 2007 12:50 am

Just so you know, I just spent the last two mind-numbing hours trying to track this guy down so forgive me if this post is just a tad rambling.

Okay, so I start my first "Trace down hacker who recently broke lbah blah blah" mission. Everything goes smoothly at first: I break into the employer's central computer with minimal effort and procede to do the same with several others, each time jotting down the IP of the log left behind by the hacker as indicated by the time given by the mission brief.

Eventually I managed to trace the IP chain back to personal computer, which I have no access to. This is where things go horribly, horrribly wrong. I send the name back to the employer who promptly tells me that they somehow managed to find out that this was not in fact the actual hacker and that I have to somehow find a way to trace the person who transferred money into his account.

Fair enough, I thought, even though I was a bit puzzled as to how we were expected to track down a money transfer with only a name to go on. In retrospect, I really should have asked the more obvious question "How exactly is a person who supposedly received payment and whose computer has been directly implicated not 'personally involved'?", but I digress...

In any case, I eventually decided that there was really no easy way I could track down an account with just a name, so I went about hacking into every bank listed on internac and checking each one by one until I found the account. THis took me about an hour, but it worked, and I soon found a single deposit dating about a week before the hack.

"Great!", I thought. Now I just have to trace the accounts back to the original account. At this point, I was clearly losing it because it didn't really make sense for the payment to be that long ago, not to mention none of the deposits in the other accounts really matched with the sum in the first account nor paired with a transfer with the same amount. After four or five different bank accounts I eventually come to account with no deposits. All of the names from the previous accounts had turned up the "money was transferred to this guy's account, but he's not the hacker! LOL" reply I got when I first found the PC, and this one was no different. Shit.

Thinking maybe the hacker had wiped the statement logs, I fired up the undeleter and after disabling hte bank proxy server, started picking over every single log, even the blank spaces underneath. Nothing.

At this point I'm not even sure where or if I screwed up, or if this is mission was doomed from the start. After searching this forum a bit and testing it out on my own, I realized that the mission is actually bugged and that whatever name I sent them, it would always come up with that reply. So in all likelihood, none of the bank accounts had anything to do with the hack whatsoever, and I just had to trace the IPs back to whoever did it.

I'm fairly certain the PC I tracked it to was the right one since I had to use the log undeleter to get the IP and it matched the timestamp perfectly, but no matter what variation of the name I send them, I still get Mission Incomplete, and with a name like Paul Bolton, it's hard to get the name wrong.


So what's up? Did the hacker just completely throw me off his trail or am I missing something?
User avatar
frenchfrog
level5
level5
Posts: 2572
Joined: Sun Sep 22, 2002 7:11 pm
Location: Quebec

Postby frenchfrog » Thu May 17, 2007 1:17 am

Search or just by the title, Log undeleter.
The Ultimate Uplink Guide (for any question on Uplink)
Latest Uplink Patch
Veni
level0
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu May 17, 2007 12:04 am

Postby Veni » Thu May 17, 2007 2:40 am

Wow. That totally had nothing to do with what I asked.

Oh, since someone else is bound to suggest the obvious: I've already read the part about tracing hackers in the guide as well. No help.

Edit: Nm, accidentally lost my account when I got caught hacking without a bounce. Funny how Uplink immediately demoted me to Skilled, but then deletes my account two hours later.
User avatar
KingAl
level5
level5
Posts: 4138
Joined: Sun Sep 10, 2006 7:42 am

Postby KingAl » Thu May 17, 2007 8:37 am

Either you've started the mission too late and they've covered their tracks, you've explained yourself poorly or this is an actual bug, though the latter seems unlikely. Regardless, spare us the narrative in future and just cut to the chase - it's easier to identify the issue that way ;)
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here: this is the War Room!
Ultimate Uplink Guide
Latest Patch
User avatar
frenchfrog
level5
level5
Posts: 2572
Joined: Sun Sep 22, 2002 7:11 pm
Location: Quebec

Postby frenchfrog » Thu May 17, 2007 4:15 pm

eh, I was on the run :)
kinggore
level0
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2015 8:06 am

Re: Tracing Hacker

Postby kinggore » Fri Aug 07, 2015 8:20 am

I have the exact same problem

normally i just trace the private computer give the name and mission solved.
but...

after tracing the private computer and giving the name I get a mail saying:
We've determined that the money was transferred into an account owned by that person
but we do not believe he was personally responsible.

we want the name of the hacker who performed the transfer.

THIS IS aN aUTOM.......


so what exactly are one to do with this?

Return to “Hints and Tips”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 7 guests