The Script Hacker

Cracking the code of correctly composing cybercrime (an author's resource).

[scripthacker]

Heya! Love your blog. I have a question for a story I'm writing. I need a villain to use some kind of technology to prevent my hero from calling for help while said villain attacks their base. Would using some kind of jammer at the hero's base also block the villain's communications? Would it be better if the jammer was deployed near where the villain thinks the people the hero would call for help are?

Hi!

If you’ve ever been in roughly the same place as a sci-fi book or tv show you’ll probably have come across the phrase “they’re jamming our transmissions!” This trope carries over into modern works as well, often the ones with secret agents and government conspiracies, and with good reason. Communication is vital to anything that requires coordination, which, unless your main character is a one-person-band on the warpath, they are going to need.

You need your villain to stop your hero from calling for help. When thinking about this jamming attack you must think: “how would my hero call for help, anyway?” That will change how the villain prevents it. Jamming a cell phone is very different from jamming a smoke signal, but for the sake of this ask we’ll assume that your villain is planning for cell phones.

Cell phones work by broadcasting and receiving information over certain radio frequencies (in the US two bands are used, ~825-895 MHz and ~1850MHz-1990MHz). A cell phone jammer works by flooding the area within its range with those frequencies, scattering actually useful signals and blocking most if not all information from going in or out on those frequencies. It’s a localized Denial-of-Service attack that affects cell phones and any other radio communication on the targeted bands. Very handy for your villain.

A note for describing the device: the jammer itself can just be a super high-tech black box with an antenna or twelve, or a hacked together circuitboard built from recycled radios and microwave parts, that’s really up to you as an author and reference images are easily google-able. It’s just a small computer whose job it is to make like politicians and yell a whole lot of nonsense at maximum volume. Just like someone shouting obnoxiously, however, one must be in range to actually be affected by it. For the jammer to work well for your villain’s attack, the jammer would need to be deployed as close to the target as possible while still being safe from discovery and unwanted deactivation.

Getting around the jammer: This applies to both your villain and your hero, actually. Yes the jammer will interfere with the villain’s cell phone communication as well, the jammer is not a selective device, it just pollutes the airwaves. However, when dealing with the jammer the villain has the advantage of knowing exactly what it does, and could (read: should) have a secondary communication system. Walkie-talkie’s that use different frequencies would work, morse code blared on a motorcycle horn, telepathic shenanigans, or anything that doesn’t use the compromised frequency bands.

Hope this helped, and good luck with your story!

~Lotus

Disclaimer

[scripthacker]

Super quick question with a bit of background... I'm writing about a top secret, govt run, spy network. This network is separated into smaller teams and each team has its own hacker. Most of what they do is illegal, both the hackers & other spies, but the govt says it's okay for them to do it. Normal people would go to jail if they did this kind of stuff. So would the hackers in my world be considered white hats or black hats or gray hats? (I'm thinking gray but I'm not sure...) Thank you

>.>

This sounds like reality, that’s a pretty government-y thing to do. But sure, quick question, let’s run with it. Keep in mind that these are my personal definitions of these terms; others may have slightly different views but the idea is mostly the same.

Black Hat and White Hat, don’t mean ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ as good and bad are very subjective terms. Rather, they refer to the method and goal. Whether the hacker follows the law or breaks it, and whether the hacker intends to make the shield stronger, or hurt the entity behind it.

White Hat: A White Hat Hacker is someone who uses their knowledge in legal ways, with permission, to find vulnerabilities in products and report them to the provider. The key for me is permission. A White Hat approaches or is approached by a provider with the intent of testing the product to improve it’s security. Method is legal and with permission, and end goal is improvement of the product.

Gray Hat: A Gray Hat Hacker is like a White Hat, but sods that whole permission thing. They attempt to break things without permission, and thus illegally, but take anything they find to the provider of the product with the intent of improving the security of the product. Method is illegal, but end goal is improvement of the product.

Black Hat: This is the one that all the movies are about. Black Hat Hackers attempt to break things without permission, and thus illegally, with the intention of personally gain from finding a vulnerability by allowing said vulnerability to be exploited. Whether this means selling the knowledge to the highest bidder, threatening the provider for a ransom, or using the vulnerability themselves. Method is illegal (or in your case legal by government fiat), and end goal is exploitation.

As defined by me (I say pushing up my lawyer glasses), your elite teams would have black hat hackers. If they were spy-catchers, then I could see an argument for them being gray hats, depending on their station and duties. However, they are spies. Spies don’t generally sit around trying to improve their own organization’s software, they are busy running about breaking into ‘enemy’ software. Regardless of their methods (illegal by normal standards, absolved by government because fight-ye-not-monsters and all that), their goal is exploitation for personal gain, therefor to me they are black hats.

Hope this helped ^^

~Lotus

Disclaimer

[alessandriana]

I’d argue that government-sponsored hackers fall outside the realm of black/gray/white entirely. 

Yes, they’re trying to break software rather than fix it, but what they’re doing is perfectly legal (if their government has said so, and they’re operating out of their own country), and they’re not doing it for personal gain or the fun of it, but rather for the benefit of the country they work for. 

[scripthacker]

I see your points, and I did consider these things in the writing of this post, however I disagree. Remember, this is simply my opinion, and I do enjoy a good debate.

Point raised: ‘... they’re not doing it for personal gain or the fun of it ...’

Counterpoint 1: they are compensated to do it, that is personal gain.

Counterpoint 2: they are doing it so someone (whether it be the head of a criminal syndicate or the director of the CIA, it matters not) can gain from exploitation of the target, that is, by my definition, black hat behaviour.

Point raised: That because their actions are sanctioned by their government, they are legal.

Counterpoint 1: let us say that character A is a spy working for the US government. Character A is sanctioned by their boss to go to Argentina and kill 23 people, and make it look like Brazil did it in order to incite a war. Character A’s actions were sanctioned by their government, and they operated out of their country, are their actions legal?

Counterpoint 2: even if the character’s actions are deemed legal (I doubt it, but let’s explore), I still maintain that they would be black hat by virtue of the definition. They benefit from exploitation of the target. 

For me it came down to very simple definitions regarding the ethics of a given hackers operation.

For the purposes of the white hat/black hat analogy, all hackers wear hats. The color of that hat is determined by their methods, and their goals.

If the goal is exploitation, their hat is black.

[scripthacker]

Super quick question with a bit of background... I'm writing about a top secret, govt run, spy network. This network is separated into smaller teams and each team has its own hacker. Most of what they do is illegal, both the hackers & other spies, but the govt says it's okay for them to do it. Normal people would go to jail if they did this kind of stuff. So would the hackers in my world be considered white hats or black hats or gray hats? (I'm thinking gray but I'm not sure...) Thank you

>.>

This sounds like reality, that’s a pretty government-y thing to do. But sure, quick question, let’s run with it. Keep in mind that these are my personal definitions of these terms; others may have slightly different views but the idea is mostly the same.

Black Hat and White Hat, don’t mean ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ as good and bad are very subjective terms. Rather, they refer to the method and goal. Whether the hacker follows the law or breaks it, and whether the hacker intends to make the shield stronger, or hurt the entity behind it.

White Hat: A White Hat Hacker is someone who uses their knowledge in legal ways, with permission, to find vulnerabilities in products and report them to the provider. The key for me is permission. A White Hat approaches or is approached by a provider with the intent of testing the product to improve it’s security. Method is legal and with permission, and end goal is improvement of the product.

Gray Hat: A Gray Hat Hacker is like a White Hat, but sods that whole permission thing. They attempt to break things without permission, and thus illegally, but take anything they find to the provider of the product with the intent of improving the security of the product. Method is illegal, but end goal is improvement of the product.

Black Hat: This is the one that all the movies are about. Black Hat Hackers attempt to break things without permission, and thus illegally, with the intention of personally gain from finding a vulnerability by allowing said vulnerability to be exploited. Whether this means selling the knowledge to the highest bidder, threatening the provider for a ransom, or using the vulnerability themselves. Method is illegal (or in your case legal by government fiat), and end goal is exploitation.

As defined by me (I say pushing up my lawyer glasses), your elite teams would have black hat hackers. If they were spy-catchers, then I could see an argument for them being gray hats, depending on their station and duties. However, they are spies. Spies don’t generally sit around trying to improve their own organization’s software, they are busy running about breaking into ‘enemy’ software. Regardless of their methods (illegal by normal standards, absolved by government because fight-ye-not-monsters and all that), their goal is exploitation for personal gain, therefor to me they are black hats.

Hope this helped ^^

~Lotus

Disclaimer

[scripthacker]

I apologize because I don't know where else to ask this, even though it is not so much a question about hacking as it is about the internet in general. I'm trying to build a post-apocalypse world where the internet no longer exists, but tablets are still widely used. In my mind, the world ends about 50 years in our future, so internet is completely wireless and landline phones have been completely replaced by cellphones. Does a simple explanation like "we lost contact with satellites" work?

No apologies, Anon, here will do just fine! Not my exact area, but I’ll do my best. And remember, if anyone knows more about this, feel free to add on or correct me (I’m talking to you, ISP people). Alright, let’s get rolling.

The internet, in it’s simplest and honestly accurate terms, is just computers talking to each other. Granted, it’s millions upon millions of them, but boil it down to it’s basics and it’s one computer asking another computer for information. The internet works because as a species we’ve stuck a bunch of computers with ridiculous amounts of information on the same wire and figured out a way to have any one of them talk to any other one.

In the future you describe (~2067), wireless tech has superseded wired in every capacity. This is a possible direction for the world to go, it’s plausible, however I would imagine that there would always be holdouts who refuse to switch completely to wireless. Furthermore, unless some ridiculous breakthrough happens (we’re talking laws of physics or supermaterial, though it’s 50 years, so anything can happen. Really this is up to you as an author), wired will always be more efficient and faster than wireless. Simply by virtue of the fact that it’s easier to make electrons move and dance around if they are confined to a wire and shielded from outside noise than if they are being thrown around through the air.

That said, researchers at the University of Surrey have recently achieved 5G wireless speeds. That’s 1Tb (Terabit) wirelessly, which would allow you do download 10 movies in less than a second. It’s very likely that this would be either the norm or even slightly outdated in your future world.

Remember that this is 50 years in the future, so almost everything I’m about to say can be explained away by 50 years of technological advancement.

Now, to your actual question. If “we lost contact with satellites” then your tablet-wielding survivors wouldn’t be able to access any information from other countries without going there (unless wireless connectivity has stupid range). So that cuts off a good portion of the internet right there. However, with the way the internet works currently, they’d still be able to access a good portion of the internet that was hosted in their home landmass (at least as far as the fiber stretches).

But you want there to be no internet. That’s relatively easy, blow up all the ISPs (Internet Service Providers). No that wasn’t an instruction, put that dynamite away.

The ISP companies are what keep the internet going, keep it easily accessible, and ruin everything when they buy websites and forbid competitor email addresses from accessing them (looking at you, Verizon). They provide the service of connecting your device to the internet at a speed that you pay for. If the ISPs go down and become unable to sustain their vast infrastructure, the internet becomes more and more inaccessible. Now this depends on how the world ended, but if it doesn’t involve tons of people dying and stuff exploding, then on Day 0 most of the internet would be fine. When the satellites die/become useless because of solar flares or whatever, communication over bodies of water, GPS, long distance communication, and all that is lost. When society breaks down and people stop going to work and the looting starts, ISPs go down, and the internet either starts to deteriorate, or completely vanishes.

After enough time, your internet is gone.

However, a point I should mention, with the wireless communication your world has any community with tablets and someone who can make them talk would be able to have their own internet. It wouldn’t have Pornhub Tumblr on it, or any of that stuff, but they’d still be able to communicate with any other of their communities devices that were connected to this internet, share files, allow people to see their now jealously guarded kitten videos, etc.

Sarah pulled Joe aside as the foraging party returned sporting massive grins and baskets of produce to match. Gesturing to the small bucket of wild strawberries he carried, they smirked at him. “You did a good job today, if that haul is to be believed. Here, I’ll trade you a code to see that one cat flexing their paws if you give me half of those.“ Waving their tablet under his nose, they brought the e-key onto the screen to taunt him ever so slightly. ”The code should be good for a whole thirty minutes. c’mon, I know you want to.“

I’d make that trade, lookit that lil’ fluff.

Anyway, yes, “we lost contact with satellites” will work for the most part. You may want to include little tidbits about how society’s collapse caused more and more of the internet to go down, as that will help your case.

And I’d love to know how the world ends ;)

Good luck with your writing, I hope I was helpful!

~Lotus

Disclaimer

[mamapluto]

Wouldn’t that make it an intranet?

[scripthacker]

>.> 

<.<; 

quickly edits 

Yup ^^;

[scripthacker]

I apologize because I don't know where else to ask this, even though it is not so much a question about hacking as it is about the internet in general. I'm trying to build a post-apocalypse world where the internet no longer exists, but tablets are still widely used. In my mind, the world ends about 50 years in our future, so internet is completely wireless and landline phones have been completely replaced by cellphones. Does a simple explanation like "we lost contact with satellites" work?

No apologies, Anon, here will do just fine! Not my exact area, but I’ll do my best. And remember, if anyone knows more about this, feel free to add on or correct me (I’m talking to you, ISP people). Alright, let’s get rolling.

The internet, in it’s simplest and honestly accurate terms, is just computers talking to each other. Granted, it’s millions upon millions of them, but boil it down to it’s basics and it’s one computer asking another computer for information. The internet works because as a species we’ve stuck a bunch of computers with ridiculous amounts of information on the same wire and figured out a way to have any one of them talk to any other one.

In the future you describe (~2067), wireless tech has superseded wired in every capacity. This is a possible direction for the world to go, it’s plausible, however I would imagine that there would always be holdouts who refuse to switch completely to wireless. Furthermore, unless some ridiculous breakthrough happens (we’re talking laws of physics or supermaterial, though it’s 50 years, so anything can happen. Really this is up to you as an author), wired will always be more efficient and faster than wireless. Simply by virtue of the fact that it’s easier to make electrons move and dance around if they are confined to a wire and shielded from outside noise than if they are being thrown around through the air.

That said, researchers at the University of Surrey have recently achieved 5G wireless speeds. That’s 1Tb (Terabit) wirelessly, which would allow you do download 10 movies in less than a second. It’s very likely that this would be either the norm or even slightly outdated in your future world.

Remember that this is 50 years in the future, so almost everything I’m about to say can be explained away by 50 years of technological advancement.

Now, to your actual question. If “we lost contact with satellites” then your tablet-wielding survivors wouldn’t be able to access any information from other countries without going there (unless wireless connectivity has stupid range). So that cuts off a good portion of the internet right there. However, with the way the internet works currently, they’d still be able to access a good portion of the internet that was hosted in their home landmass (at least as far as the fiber stretches).

But you want there to be no internet. That’s relatively easy, blow up all the ISPs (Internet Service Providers). No that wasn’t an instruction, put that dynamite away.

The ISP companies are what keep the internet going, keep it easily accessible, and ruin everything when they buy websites and forbid competitor email addresses from accessing them (looking at you, Verizon). They provide the service of connecting your device to the internet at a speed that you pay for. If the ISPs go down and become unable to sustain their vast infrastructure, the internet becomes more and more inaccessible. Now this depends on how the world ended, but if it doesn’t involve tons of people dying and stuff exploding, then on Day 0 most of the internet would be fine. When the satellites die/become useless because of solar flares or whatever, communication over bodies of water, GPS, long distance communication, and all that is lost. When society breaks down and people stop going to work and the looting starts, ISPs go down, and the internet either starts to deteriorate, or completely vanishes.

After enough time, your internet is gone.

However, a point I should mention, with the wireless communication your world has any community with tablets and someone who can make them talk would be able to have their own internet (technically known as an intranet, thanks mamapluto). It wouldn’t have Pornhub Tumblr on it, or any of that stuff, but they’d still be able to communicate with any other of their communities devices that were connected to this internet, share files, allow people to see their now jealously guarded kitten videos, etc.

Sarah pulled Joe aside as the foraging party returned sporting massive grins and baskets of produce to match. Gesturing to the small bucket of wild strawberries he carried, they smirked at him. “You did a good job today, if that haul is to be believed. Here, I’ll trade you a code to see that one cat flexing their paws if you give me half of those.“ Waving their tablet under his nose, they brought the e-key onto the screen to taunt him ever so slightly. ”The code should be good for a whole thirty minutes. c’mon, I know you want to.“

I’d make that trade, lookit that lil’ fluff.

Anyway, yes, “we lost contact with satellites” will work for the most part. You may want to include little tidbits about how society’s collapse caused more and more of the internet to go down, as that will help your case.

And I’d love to know how the world ends ;)

Good luck with your writing, I hope I was helpful!

~Lotus

Disclaimer

[scripthacker]

Things to remember before you ask:

1) This is a writing advice blog, and not meant for real-life application.

2) I will not teach you how to hack into something in the real world.

3) I do not advocate black hat hacking, any kind of cybercrime, or breaking the law.

All taken from the disclaimer, which is easily found on every ask I answer. I’m not teaching computer science. I’m not here to turn you into a cybersecurity master. I’m here to help writers. There are plenty of places that you can learn what I know and much more, even places that will tutor you in the darker arts, but that place is not here.

[scripthacker]

Hi there. I want my MC to hack or manipulate either a phone into exploding and setting off the fire alarm, or somehow set of the fire alarm. Basically I need the building to evacuate without there being an actual fire, or not one that my MC doesn't remotely cause. Is there any way that I can have that happen? Thanks

Oooh, distraction time! Don’t Try This at Home (or anywhere else for that matter). I’m also not going to go too much into detail in case some clever little bugger decides they want to set off the fire alarm and go home from school early by setting off an exploding phone.

That said, let’s get started.

There’s always setting off a smoke-bomb to trigger the fire alarm, even put it on a timer and hide it in something innocuous, but I don’t suppose that’s quite what you’re looking for if you’ve come here.

Now, did you ever hear about the Samsung exploding battery stink? It was all over the media for a while, got banned on planes and all sorts of fun stuff, ended with a recall (two, actually) to fix the issues. This could very well fill your author needs, especially if your MC has access to the phone beforehand and at least a basic understanding of electricity.

One of the problems with the Samsung battery was the positive and negative terminals of the battery degraded quickly, and shorted out the battery circuit. When this happens, the entire voltage of the battery flows through the resistance of just the path between the terminals and the internal resistance of the battery itself. Long story short, high current flows through the battery’s internal resistance causing rapid heating, which causes gasses to build up, pressure to build up, eventually leading to a lovely dangerous kaboom.

Your character could take advantage of this and, with a little technical knowhow, rig up a system that would short the phone’s battery on command. It would probably take a few seconds to get going, but your character would probably test this beforehand to see how long it takes and decide if it fits their needs. Scientific method, people.

Getting in and tampering with the phone, your MC could create a new path in the complex circuit that is their phone. This path would basically amount to a switch that, when power is applied in the correct way, connects the terminals of the battery and causes the short. This switch could be a transistor, a solenoid, or anything that brings the terminals of the battery into permanent contact somehow. Hook the other end of this new path into a part of the phone that is only given electricity in any great amount at certain times, and viola.

With this setup, your MC could call the phone, set an alarm (specific time or length of time), or do any number of things to trigger the short. Place the phone well, and the fire alarm will probably go off.

Your MC could also just tamper with one of the fire alarm switch housings in the same manner, creating a switch that closes and sets off the alarm upon a set of conditions being met, get a small timing circuit driven by a ten-cent timer IC and a battery. This would mean having enough access to one of these housings to figure that out, however. It’s probably fairly self evident but it is worth mentioning that tampering with or falsely activating safety systems is illegal. Don’t do this.

Of course, your MC would have to be very careful or they’ll be caught when the burned phone is found and the cops called. Fingerprints, a stray hair, the various unique numbers associated with the phone, the sim card (and more), all relatively trackable.

And seriously, don’t try this at home. C’mon, people.

~Lotus

Disclaimer

[scripthacker]

Hi there. I want my MC to hack or manipulate either a phone into exploding and setting off the fire alarm, or somehow set of the fire alarm. Basically I need the building to evacuate without there being an actual fire, or not one that my MC doesn't remotely cause. Is there any way that I can have that happen? Thanks

Oooh, distraction time! Don’t Try This at Home (or anywhere else for that matter). I’m also not going to go too much into detail in case some clever little bugger decides they want to set off the fire alarm and go home from school early by setting off an exploding phone.

That said, let’s get started.

There’s always setting off a smoke-bomb to trigger the fire alarm, even put it on a timer and hide it in something innocuous, but I don’t suppose that’s quite what you’re looking for if you’ve come here.

Now, did you ever hear about the Samsung exploding battery stink? It was all over the media for a while, got banned on planes and all sorts of fun stuff, ended with a recall (two, actually) to fix the issues. This could very well fill your author needs, especially if your MC has access to the phone beforehand and at least a basic understanding of electricity.

One of the problems with the Samsung battery was the positive and negative terminals of the battery degraded quickly, and shorted out the battery circuit. When this happens, the entire voltage of the battery flows through the resistance of just the path between the terminals and the internal resistance of the battery itself. Long story short, high current flows through the battery’s internal resistance causing rapid heating, which causes gasses to build up, pressure to build up, eventually leading to a lovely dangerous kaboom.

Your character could take advantage of this and, with a little technical knowhow, rig up a system that would short the phone’s battery on command. It would probably take a few seconds to get going, but your character would probably test this beforehand to see how long it takes and decide if it fits their needs. Scientific method, people.

Getting in and tampering with the phone, your MC could create a new path in the complex circuit that is their phone. This path would basically amount to a switch that, when power is applied in the correct way, connects the terminals of the battery and causes the short. This switch could be a transistor, a solenoid, or anything that brings the terminals of the battery into permanent contact somehow. Hook the other end of this new path into a part of the phone that is only given electricity in any great amount at certain times, and viola.

With this setup, your MC could call the phone, set an alarm (specific time or length of time), or do any number of things to trigger the short. Place the phone well, and the fire alarm will probably go off.

Your MC could also just tamper with one of the fire alarm switch housings in the same manner, creating a switch that closes and sets off the alarm upon a set of conditions being met, get a small timing circuit driven by a ten-cent timer IC and a battery. This would mean having enough access to one of these housings to figure that out, however. It’s probably fairly self evident but it is worth mentioning that tampering with or falsely activating safety systems is illegal. Don’t do this.

Of course, your MC would have to be very careful or they’ll be caught when the burned phone is found and the cops called. Fingerprints, a stray hair, the various unique numbers associated with the phone, the sim card (and more), all relatively trackable.

And seriously, don’t try this at home. C’mon, people.

~Lotus

Disclaimer

[scripthacker]

Hello! I have a group of characters who want to livestream a video of themselves doing some very illegal activities. They want their stream to be accessible to the general public, and they want to stream quite a bit over several weeks. Their manpower and resources are somewhat limited. How could they avoid being shut down or tracked by the government? Could their internet provider or tech manufacturer close the stream? Thanks in advance! :)

Ah yes, the cocky villains (or the daredevil heroes, delete where appropriate). I’m sure they have a fantastical reason for wanting to do this, I’ll leave that to you ;)

There is actually several apps that do prettymuch that. They exist today, and some of ‘em are even Free!

No, not that kind, bad!

One of these apps, called Periscope, illustrates the concept well. You can download it right now and test it out, see if it fits your character’s needs in terms of what you need it to do. It’s a free live-streaming app that, from what I hear, makes the source pretty annoying to track down.

As for the other questions, is it trackable by The Man, could it be closed down, that’s a little more complicated, and I’m going to have to make some assumptions in order to give you a somewhat satisfactory answer.

Can it be tracked? Eventually, yes. There are ways to make tracking one’s online activities harder, but at the end of the day, your characters can be tracked. However, by using such things as TOR, IP proxies, and other such sneaky things, a character can make it very hard to find them.

Using Periscope (or comparable live-streaming platform) and configuring their device to use TOR (a protocol/method/browser thing that makes a user almost completely anonymous at most links in the chain via encryption and all manner of fun things), your characters could conceivably get away with streaming their naughty, naughty activities cat videos. For added security they could sign up for new Periscope accounts every so often, use different/new phones on occasion, make sure not to give away ANY personal information, or even futz with the GPS chips if you’ve got a savvy tech type character who wants to make The Man think the stream is coming from The White House.

These methods don’t make them invincible, and if they get cocky and make a simple mistake (super subtle plot bunny, shhhh) then they could be found easy peasy if someone is looking. Keep these things in mind ^^

Could the internet provider shut down the stream? Yep, absolutely. If the ISP decides to shut down a particular access point to the internet (probably at the request of Señor Cheeto-In-Chief Baron von BadGuy) then they absolutely can. But here’s the rub: they gotta know which access point to shut off. Tracking the origination point of the stream has to come first, because all internet traffic looks kinda the same. Sure if you look at the patterns of bits it starts to look different, but until The Man (or more accurately, the clever-clogs cyberwarrior that The Man employs) starts to look for it, it’s all the same. Without knowing where your characters are accessing the internet from, it can’t be shut down by the ISP.

And then at that point they’d still be able to transmit data via cellular networks, or just go to a starbucks and use the wifi there which, again can be tracked and cut off, but it is some more red tape for Baron von BadGuy to work through.

Plausibility of the scenario? Absolutely plausible. Granted, I don’t know everything, and the three letter agencies may have shortcuts and such to make finding people a lot easier in this instance (honestly wouldn’t be surprised). But so long as your characters do a bit of research and are careful, they can stream their cat videos :)

~Lotus

Disclaimer

Know something I don’t? I’m not surprised, and I’d love to hear it! Feel free to contribute with a reblog, I do enjoy learning new things.

[scripthacker]

About how long does it take for an ask to be answered?

ahhhh. Yes. With the madness that was finals and assorted other Adulting™ things I have been remiss in my duties to this blog. For this I apologize, and I’ll be answering some things I have queued up in the next few days.

Sorry people.

[scripthacker]

Hi there! Probably a stupid question but I just wanted to know if its possible to hack into security cameras, also would the hacker be able to control the cameras? (Like change angles, zoom in and out, ect.)

Heyo! I’m of a mind that there is really no such thing as an honestly asked stupid question. If you don’t know something, asking a question is a perfectly sensible thing to do. :)

Is it possible to hack security cameras? Yes, absolutely. At it’s heart it’s a computer, computers can be hacked, therefore security cameras can be hacked.

Is it possible to control/move around said hacked cameras after your character’s Super Sneaky Virus™ has nabbed them? That depends. If all your character has done is hijack the feed so that they can see what the camera sees, then no. Moving a security camera requires that a signal be sent to the camera by an external source, so if a character is only ‘listening’ for information, they won’t be able to move the camera. Also this kinda goes without saying but for the sake of thoroughness: if the camera doesn’t have the ability to move/zoom, all that fancy stuff, then no matter how good the Super Sneaky Virus™ is you won’t be able to control that stuff.

If, however, your character has managed to ‘convince’ the security camera that their computer is in fact one that the camera should take orders from (or has just taken over the original controlling computer, or something equally nefarious/heroic, delete where applicable), moving, zooming, changing angles, anything that the camera can do is just one correct command away.

In short, the amount of control your characters have over the camera is whatever your plot requires and/or your characters have the resources/knowhow to accomplish. If the camera can do it, it can do it while hacked.

Thanks for stopping by, good luck with your story! ^^

Disclaimer

~Lotus

[scripthacker]

Thanks for answering my transcendence question! That was perfect, exactly what I needed. (And I did check the tag, but nothing quite fit...but it was helpful!) Follow-up: would it be possible to move the AI around? Like, could we pop it on a flash drive and reinstall it in a different device? Fine if the answer is "you break it, you bought it," just want an idea of feasibility. :) Thanks so much!!

You’re very welcome ^^

Nah, s’not "you break it, you bought it,“ at all. It’s perfectly feasible to explain with modern computer terminology, and with sufficient computing power and a handy-dandy breakthrough in understanding the human brain it could theoretically be made now.

With the way you have defined the system to work, your AIs could absolutely be moved around. The .brain file is just that, a file, it can be moved as any other file. The program that interprets the .brain file can also be moved around, all it is is an executable file. If you went the route that creates a new AI file, then that AI could be moved as well, so long as it was not running at all when moved.

Yes, your characters could move the AI’s around from system to system, theoretically if the AI’s were given (or were to take) the authority to write/run files/programs they could move (or copy) themselves.

[Insert Jaws Theme here]

But that’s all up to you as the author ^^

Disclaimer

~Lotus

[scripthacker]

Hi! I'm writing a story where humans can upload themselves into a computer and basically become an AI consciousness. I'm planning to handwave a lot of it, because sufficiently advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic and the actual logistics are unimportant to the plot, but I want one character to be able to explain it to another using simple words. So would the steps be something like, "You scan the brain into this special device that translates it into data," or...? Thanks so much!

Hey there!

Eyyy, more transcendance. I’ve actually answered a couple things abut this that you may find helpful right here ^^

Now. You’re planning to handwave yours, not a problem, done that myself with far less justification. But in order to explain it at all, there have to be at least basic rules for how it works.

The way that I’ve always understood it, is that the human brain would be simulated by a program pulling data from a hard drive. The data in the hard drive would be memories, which would construct the personality, a set of rules that the simulated brain abides by. This way the architect need only write one perfect program to simulate a human brain, and the program would build the human it’s simulating from that human’s brain file (probably with the file extension .brain or something equally dumb but wtf do I know).

Though from your description, your system would work slightly differently, in that the Human Transcendence Program™ would create an entirely new program which would be the standalone AI. That works, the AI program would be compiled by the initial perfect program using the scanned brain data (granted since you’re handwaving it that detail doesn’t really matter but I think it’s cool).

Going this route means that explaining it in ‘layman’s terms’ is relatively simple. For example: “You take a scan of the brain, storing and backing up memories and essential brain structures. The Human Transcendence Program™ then compiles/re-constructs a personality using that data, creating an AI.”

Hope this helped, I really do enjoy transcendence stories. Feel free to ask more questions if you need anything else. ^^

Disclaimer

~Lotus

[scripthacker]

Hey, thanks for this blog! I'm wondering--if I character were to attempt to log in to a discussion forum on the dark web that had been shut down since she last visited it, what would that look like in terms of user experience? Would it just be an empty page, would she get some kind of error message, would the organizers of the forum have left any kind of explanatory message?

Thanks for the ask! (loving the Willow icon, btw) :D

Everybody love the dark web, let us go diving once again.

The internet is massive. Mahoosive. Search engines can work very quickly to index things, but with the sheer scale of the internet, trying to index everything quickly becomes ridiculously unfeasible. ‘Deep web’ is a term used to describe the parts of the internet what is not indexed (about 96%, and if you think about how much content you can find on google the amount of information in the deep web is just bonkers). That’s all it is, unindexed, meaning you can’t find it using google, or yahoo, or bing. This includes both things that just haven’t been looked at, and things behind paywalls and login pages. Anything that you have to log in or pay to access, that is technically part of the deep web. Bank account information, emails, private tumblr blogs, etcetera. All deep web.

‘Dark web’ is a subsection of the deep web, that’s where all the scary stuff is. The stuff that goes from ‘not sure it’s legal’ to ‘I am now on seventeen different watchlists for even thinking of this.’ That said, it functions the same as the internet, a client browser asks a server computer for information, the server provides what it knows.

A forum that your user posts all their illegal shenangins kitten videos to could look like any webpage that’s belongs on the ‘surface web,’ or it could look like an edgelord’s personal diary. What it looks like is really up to the people who coded it. Granted, sometimes dark web ‘forums’ look nothing like a surface web forum, sometimes they are command line only types of things, so it could look like this:

Obviously, all us hackers still use CRT monitors, have a typing speed of 394 words per minute, and smell faintly of bacon. That goes without saying. >.>

Back to the actual meat of your question, what would it look like if the forum became inaccessible after it was shut down? Depends on the admins. Good admins would leave an explanation, great admins may even leave the site as an archive if they can get away with it. Naturally this may not be a fantastic idea in some cases, all those kitten videos could get someone in real trouble, cuteness overload. Bad admins, those who don’t care, or admins who just drop off the face of the planet (arrested, died of a heart attack from cuteness overload, forgot the password) may leave behind nothing, resulting in a lovely 404 error message, or a browser error message.

If the site is taken down and rendered inaccessible but the server is still up, any computer making a request for that site will receive a 404 error message. The 404 is a standard HTTP response code, if the browser finds nothing to display at the address your character requested, it will give them that. If everything is completely gone, then your character may see a browser error message, or something from their internet service provider that looks like this:

What will your character see? Whatever you want the poor bugger upstanding citizen to see, you’re the author. If the site simply doesn’t exist, a 404 or a browser error is what I’d put my money on.

Go forth and write, my good author! :)

Disclaimer

~Lotus

[scripthacker]

Edited (03/13/2017) in response to goatsgomoo‘s message which is absolutely correct. A 404 would be thrown by a still active server that no longer has the page, if the server is gone a browser error of some nature may be shown. Whoops!

Thanks for the correction :)

[scripthacker]

Hey, thanks for this blog! I'm wondering--if I character were to attempt to log in to a discussion forum on the dark web that had been shut down since she last visited it, what would that look like in terms of user experience? Would it just be an empty page, would she get some kind of error message, would the organizers of the forum have left any kind of explanatory message?

Thanks for the ask! (loving the Willow icon, btw) :D

Everybody love the dark web, let us go diving once again.

The internet is massive. Mahoosive. Search engines can work very quickly to index things, but with the sheer scale of the internet, trying to index everything quickly becomes ridiculously unfeasible. ‘Deep web’ is a term used to describe the parts of the internet what is not indexed (about 96%, and if you think about how much content you can find on google the amount of information in the deep web is just bonkers). That’s all it is, unindexed, meaning you can’t find it using google, or yahoo, or bing. This includes both things that just haven’t been looked at, and things behind paywalls and login pages. Anything that you have to log in or pay to access, that is technically part of the deep web. Bank account information, emails, private tumblr blogs, etcetera. All deep web.

‘Dark web’ is a subsection of the deep web, that’s where all the scary stuff is. The stuff that goes from ‘not sure it’s legal’ to ‘I am now on seventeen different watchlists for even thinking of this.’ That said, it functions the same as the internet, a client browser asks a server computer for information, the server provides what it knows.

A forum that your user posts all their illegal shenangins kitten videos to could look like any webpage that’s belongs on the ‘surface web,’ or it could look like an edgelord’s personal diary. What it looks like is really up to the people who coded it. Granted, sometimes dark web ‘forums’ look nothing like a surface web forum, sometimes they are command line only types of things, so it could look like this:

Obviously, all us hackers still use CRT monitors, have a typing speed of 394 words per minute, and smell faintly of bacon. That goes without saying. >.>

Back to the actual meat of your question, what would it look like if the forum became inaccessible after it was shut down? Depends on the admins. Good admins would leave an explanation, great admins may even leave the site as an archive if they can get away with it. Naturally this may not be a fantastic idea in some cases, all those kitten videos could get someone in real trouble, cuteness overload. Bad admins, those who don’t care, or admins who just drop off the face of the planet (arrested, died of a heart attack from cuteness overload, forgot the password) may leave behind nothing, resulting in a lovely 404 error message, or a browser error message.

If the site is taken down and rendered inaccessible but the server is still up, any computer making a request for that site will receive a 404 error message. The 404 is a standard HTTP response code, if the browser finds nothing to display at the address your character requested, it will give them that. If everything is completely gone, then your character may see a browser error message, or something from their internet service provider that looks like this:

What will your character see? Whatever you want the poor bugger upstanding citizen to see, you’re the author. If the site simply doesn’t exist, a 404 or a browser error is what I’d put my money on.

Go forth and write, my good author! :)

Disclaimer

~Lotus

[scripthacker]

Hi! I was wondering how two people might talk online totally secretly? A supervillain is helping a reporter plan a break in and the supervillain's super paranoid about getting caught. They initially talk through a "private" chat on social media (bc that's the only contact info the reporter has) but the supervillain wants something more secure. Possibly the dark net?? And is there a way to scrub evidence of their initial interaction afterwards? Thanks!

Hallo!

Someone keeping seeeeecrets? Sounds like fun.

Before we dive into this, a quick primer for the sake of covering our bases. The internet is a massive network of computers. The communication and organization of this network is a service provided by a type of company called an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Any information sent to another computer via the internet is sent through that ISP, meaning that if they so wish (and sometimes do) they can look at everything sent. In this sense, nothing ever sent over the internet is ever truly private.

That said, if a character wants to ensure some degree of privacy, they could encrypt (put it through a massively complicated cypher) all their data themselves. This would add a layer of encryption that only them and the intended recipient have the keys for. Decent solution, and some encryptions are really bloody hard to break through. That might suit Supervillain Sneakypants over here, but given enough time, or the right luck, or other reasons, someone who intercepts the communication may crack the encryption and then whoopsiedaisy, Supervillain’s goose is cooked.

(Only tangentially related but I’m a sucker for Spike, gimme a break please don’t hurt me)

So we move on to option two (in my mind, anyway): a Virtual Private Network (VPN). A VPN uses a specialized server called a VPN server (real creative name, nerds) to encrypt a character’s information and allow them to access the internet in a more secure and sneaky way. “But ScriptHacker, that’s what you said before!” Not quite the same thing. A VPN uses a secure, encrypted link called a VPN Tunnel (much better name), which allows a user to access the internet with the IP address of the VPN server instead of their own, and using a well encrypted connection.

This of course means the character is shifting their trust from the ISP to the VPN provider, which has it’s own issues. No matter what a VPN provider says, they will always chose their business over any one customer’s information. While many good VPN providers go to great lengths to make sure they know as little about a customer as possible. Paying anonymously through Bitcoin (which is NOT inherently anonymous, but can be made nearly perfectly so) is another step in the right direction for this to work, and using Tor (a privacy oriented browser, stands for The Onion Router) can boost that bid for anonymity even further. With a VPN, paying the VPN provider with Bitcoin, and accessing it with Tor, your Supervillain can be very close to true anonymity.

But given their paranoia, that might not even suffice.

A truly anonymous way for your characters to communicate would be simply to create their own ‘internet.’ I don’t mean something the same scale as the internet, that would be bananas. No. I mean create their own connection between two devices. Wired is more secure, but depending on your Supervillain’s resources (available workforce, available capital, etc.) running a fiberoptic cable may not be an option. With this method your character really starts to hit the issue of massively diminishing returns.

The ‘dark net’ you speak of, which I covered in this post, is basically just the unindexed part of the internet. It has the same security issues at an ISP level. The characters could set up their own server and call in some of their Evil Misunderstood Contacts™ to make it accessible via the internet but not indexed by a search engine (and hence in the dark web). The server could be set up as part of the Tor network, keyed to only open up when fed a password (for extra security it could be a 256-bit hash generated from the hardware serial numbers in the Supervillain’s computer system), and when it does open up only give out encrypted files (for which the key could be a 256-bit hash of the reporter’s hardware serial numbers, as an idea).

Quick tangent: a hash is an alphanumeric string that is generated from an arbitrarily sized chunk of data. The odds of two generated hashes for two different data sets using a 256-bit hash function is approximately 1/(8.6x10^78). That’s a 1-in-a stupidly-high-number-that-doesn’t-have-a-name chance. Which is ridiculous. Generating this hash from computer hardware serial numbers ensures that getting that same data set to generate the hash is also a redonkulously high amount of unlikely. 

So accessing a ‘dark net’ server using a VPN (paid for with Bitcoin), Tor, an access password, and several layers of file encryption, your Supervillain could achieve a perfectly reasonable level of security and anonymity.

Scrubbing the initial interaction would likely be as simple as deleting the conversation, then deleting the used accounts if that’s an option. Granted, if that conversation has already been flagged or the information sold to someone else, then there’s practically no way of tracking it all down (possible, of course, they aren’t a Supervillain for nothing). They could also try and wipe the Social Media site’s servers and storage sites, but that’s a whole other caper in itself. How strong is their paranoia?

Any of these options seems to work in my mind, and of course there are other options, and strengths and weakness to the ones presented that I haven’t covered. As usual, anyone is welcome to weigh in.

I hope this helped ^^

Disclaimer

~Lotus

[scripthacker]

Thank u 4 owning this blog holy shit!!!!!! Ur v talented and explain v well, and also so nice & sweet 2 ur followers, good job!!!! Keep it up!!! OuO

:o

Thank yew!

That’s very kind of you to say, I’m glad I’m doing alright ^^;