Trojan horses;

[miathan]

I just played the demo for a while - very nice game, I'm impressed
This really proves you don't need a 3d environment to create an immersive and interesting game. Kind of like in the old times
but I'm missing one ancient, but still major aspect of hacking nowadays: the trojan horse.
Unlike in real life, all of the hacking in the game involves the real "login screen". But that's only a detail, not really important
Beyond that it would be nice (and bring more variation in the game) if it was possible to upload a trojan horse program, for example to keylog/steal security codes of people using the hacked computer. (or do the same thing for routed connections), or to log in untraced
This would really add to the spectrum of software available in the game, I found that part a bit boring, we need more useful and possibly useless programs
And I'd like a kind of technology timeline in the game. You know, like in the space strategy games. Not all hard- and software should be available right from the beginning. (this also creates interesting possibilities for storylines..)

[moyo]

Yes, you're absolutely right. We need a wider range of software, a wider range of possible ways into the systems. The possibility to enter untraced is an excellent idea, I miss a way of changing access permissions for users and adding users.

Something else I've thought about is that there should be different logs for different things. I guess there would be a lot of other traces in a system, not just the connection logs.

 /moyo

[hacker]

Another thing I recall when reading this post,
how about fake IP and then ping-kill a server?
Or for that matter use something so childish as
NETBUS !

[miathan]

Good ideas
Some other things commonly found on real life high security systems:
- Remote logging (ie forward the log to some internet or local system)
- Cryptographic log protection (systems like "the next log entry is encoded with a cryptographic hash of the previous one+its serial number".) It would not make log editting and deleting impossible, but more expensive in processor time and software.
- "Real" firewalling. You have to hack the firewall system first before you can bounce through it to the protected systems on the internal network

[Troma]

basically the game is a race to beat the clock (active trace.)
hack a few banks and you have no worries
not much skill required there at all
check for vulnerabilities in the system, see what versions their servers are, what os they use etc
exploit that with a buffer overflow or something, use root to create users, run sophisticated programs like scientific ones, use their computing power to crack an encryption cypher etc

[Moshie]

A way to assure that lack of software is never a problem is to incorporate a programming language and interpreter into the game, so users could create their own software, which they can sell/give to other users. But this software could contain a Trojan Horse, making the game more realistic.

[jeroen65]

I like the idee of the programming langua that would be very helpfull sometimes but it may not be to simple

[Troma]

basically impossible to incorporate into the game unless they made their own scripting language. things are too easy now to begin with, why should they be any easier

[Warhead]

Almost all ideas in this topic are great, but not only trojan horses! Also virtually every kind of virus especially the WORM... Also that servers are time till time are offline.

[Talesin]

Meh... I'm not sure that the ping-flood kill would really work overwell. On a system with an alert, competent sysop (preferably on Linux with a SNORT IDS running and proper rules configured.. see 'competent sysop') this doesn't even reliably work well today with the DDoS tools out there. And most of them leave a number of identifiers that provide a method of directly tracing the primary client machine, if not outright retribution backdoors on some of the (now derided) older 'slave' trojans.
 If nothing else, it would likely get those specific IPs banned for a set time, dependant upon the paranoia levels dominant at the target system.

[Kurzweil]

I think a possible hacking scenario including perhaps Trojans (and other software) could be:

Objective: Gain acces to a system connected to a server via LAN. Would require changing of some permissions and aquiring a password/username. The target server will not accept connections from people outside the LAN, and their servers connected to the net are to secure to go in the usual way.

1. Gain entry to a mailserver used to exchange mail with the company (perhaps a partners or the like) and upload a monitor.

2. When a mail adressed to the subsystem is about to be sent with an attached file. Pause the system and infect the attachment with a Trojan.

3. Wait for the Trojan to aquire an admin password (wait for the admin of the mailserver to do some stuff), then mail to user with the admin pass.

4. Use the admin pass to gain acces to the mailserver and connect to the LAN that way.

5. Do your stuff.