LegendBegins

H@ck3rz

@Finris

I think that's a great avenue. Embedded device security is absolutely horrible, and we have incidents such as the Mirai Botnet (which took out the East Coast internet of the United States) to demonstrate that fact. How I was envisioning interaction is that our group of hackers end up creating an online group where they interact with each other, and they each end up creating various cyber crime incidents for the security professionals (who also know each other) to try to resolve. For example:

Hackers get together and as a team, figure out that a new Pacemaker is vulnerable. They decide that it would be funny if they wrote malware to infect all of them, which sends data back to the hospital saying that their heart has stopped while not actually interfering with the function of the device (since they're not monsters). They just want to get the public's eye to convince them to fix their medical device security. The team of security professionals begins looking into this incident, reverse engineering the malware, etc. They check it out, but it's not top priority until one of the hackers, unbeknownst to the others, begins actually stopping peoples' hearts.

Does that help, or can I do more clarifying?

H@ck3rz

That's awesome!

I would love to do it! I just need to work a while on the idea. And maybe the possibilities...

@Finris

Sure, definitely; thanks for taking the time to check it out! If there's anything I can help with in the meantime, feel free to let me know.

H@ck3rz

Click.
Click.
Click.

...I'm in.

Cyber Attacks. Advanced Persistent Threats. Hacktivist Organizations. All of these have become a standard artifact of daily life in our digitally interconnected world. And as more systems become digitized, a certain subset of the population grows more powerful: Hackers. Threats have skyrocketed to lethally dangerous levels, to the point where a simple script kiddie has the potential to take down physical systems connected to the net. Crash trains. Pollute water treatment. Burn fuel. But fortunately, another group has risen to counter this insurgence of malicious actors. Information Security professionals, many of them ex-hackers themselves, are perpetually at work to restore order to the cyber world and stay ahead of this game of cat-and-mouse, lest those with no stake in the game obtain the power to destroy it.

Which of us haven't wondered at some point in their lives how it's really done? How hackers actually manage to break into systems? Wonder no longer. H@ck3rz is an RP that takes place in our world and engages in scenarios that are akin to what real attackers encounter and how they interact with systems across the globe. No information security or computer science experience required. Every player will generate two characters: A hacker (including hacktivists, foreign government agents, malware developers, lone wolves doing it for the lulz, etc.) and an information security professional (including penetration testers, defense specialists, compromise analysts, local government agents, etc.). The attackers cause some degree of mayhem that corresponds to their particular goals, whereas the security professionals aim to nullify efforts of malicious actors and to protect the world from their antics.

I am an information security professional IRL, and I'm more than willing to answer any questions you might have (now and throughout the RP), and I'll gladly work with you to ensure that you have a good understanding of the direction you want to take the attack/hunt and will give you any resources you'd like to carry out whatever situation you have in mind. H@ck3rz is about the players, not the GM, and in a world where cyber criminals can hit just about any system, virtually no attack is too outlandish to carry out in one way or another, be it through social engineering, exploit development, or even physically breaking into secure facilities. I have access to real attack tools and can provide anything from screenshots to software in order to ensure that your vision of your incident is fulfilled.

If you have any questions or interest, please let me know. Below I've included samples of potential scenarios and engagement locations. Thank you.

Engagement Samples

Mahz's Dev Journal

@NuttsnBolts
"With Persistent RPs, Mahz has stated that he has a reason for keeping them higher up and that is due to visibility. Moving it down bellow means that less people are likely to see it and thus you will have less activity."

In fairness, what does Persistent World offer than warrants it being given (the most) premium real estate? Merely being on the front page is an incredible boost to visibility, and beyond that, I would hope that something intended to be of unique or greater quality/experience than other RPs would stand on its own merits.


Re: Tags
It seems that the conversation has again reached the "not everyone will have the tags they want" point of discussion. Personally, a set of categorical tags and then a custom "create your own" appears to be sufficient.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Lord Wraith

I think everyone would at least need to be able to check a "show hidden posts" box per thread, in that case. Otherwise you could end up with an abusive thread creator hiding posts as he desires.

Mahz's Dev Journal

I remember at one point it's because it broke page redirection. If you had 19 posts on a page and one was deleted, you would post again and it would redirect you to the next page, even though there was technically another slot remaining, and this persisted every page thereafter because the internal counter was off.

Mahz's Dev Journal

If it's not too much to ask, I would love to see the option to delete posts. Not that I have anything to hide, but I noticed that it's a feature we don't already have. It's a little odd since most Roleplaying forums already have it and I would love to see it implemented here.

@Drekalba

If this is implemented, I recommend a timeout feature, so someone can't just go and nuke their post history. I imagine someone shouldn't have to delete a post after two hours.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Mahz

Precisely. I believe that a little added detail in an image goes a long way and (IMO) would make things look cleaner, since some images come out looking blurry. Doubling dimensions should be more than enough.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Mahz

Assumption shattered.
While we're on the subject of images, would it be reasonable to increase the resolution of profile pictures (though not increase their size; that value is fine)?

Image Dump Horizontal

Mahz's Dev Journal

Got a source on some cool bg images I can try out?

@Mahz

I'm assuming vertical work better than horizontal. Let me know if you have anything in mind; I can always edit other images and make their dimensions work on RPG, and it would be easy to upres any of them with Waifu2x.

Drop Incoming