Mox entered the examination room. It was a small room, which could at most fit 4 normal-size tables. But there only one, and on that table there were three screens, all connected to computer, which was in turn connected to power as well as a control panel.
“Corporal Mox, reporting for the A17 Network Defence certification exam, sir!” he recited, and even though he saluted he was still glancing at the huge instrument.
Do they really want me to use that? I guess there would be some advantages, but I’ve always used my datapad…“At ease, Corporal. As I understand, this is your final exam?” the examiner said, flicking his fingers on the touchscreen of his datapad.
“Yes, sir.” Mox responded, finally concentrating on the examiner.
“Ok then. The rules say you are allowed to use anything you know about slicing, hacking and network protection to stop the intruder. The exam will last for 30 minutes. Any useful data accessed by the hacker will result in the reduction of marks. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Mox replied
“Alright, get ready and let me know when you are.”
Mox walked up to the computer, as he touched the screen he realized they’re touchscreen.
Sweet… he thought to himself, as he executed a couple of simple commands using the keyboard on the bottom of each screen.
Alright then, let’s get started…. Plugging in his datapad, he loaded up some of his earlier prepared defences, which he hoped would last against the other slicer’s attack.
“Rea…” Mox hesitated for a moment, as he watched all 3 screens, all with their status windows and command lines. “…dy.”
The examiner clicked on his datapad a few times and the exam began.
For a first few minutes it was peaceful. Mox waited with anticipation as one of his firewalls or other protections failed, but it seemed the other slicer was unable to go through them. Just as Mox thought the exam was over, due to a walkover, one of the status screens gave a warning “
Unidentified connection”. Suddenly Mox started thinking why only now has he received this message, and as he force-stopped the connection, he wondered what the enemy slicer actually has in hand.
“
Come on, show me what you got…” he muttered to himself, as he started to create yet another firewall, this time protecting the individual databases. He hoped that the enemy didn’t hack into one of the ‘allowed’ computers in the base to connect to this one, but the moment he put up his last firewall, the status screen of about 4 started glowing red and lines of warnings came from the command lines.
Sneaky fraker… got himself some bots… Mox thought to himself as he systematically closed off all the connections, and went to modify the firewalls to disallow such entry again.
“20 minutes left.” The examiner spoke out, but Mox didn’t pay attention, as suddenly nearly all of the status screens for the outer firewalls shined red. The young slicer with one hand started booting off the bots, and with the other hand he starting coding new firewalls: as the code entered his man, he laid it down on the screen.
Faster… he thought to himself, as twirled his fingers, issuing commands and executing complicating lines of code.
“Stop brute forcing, it’s not going to work!” he shouted into the screen, startling the examination and causing his to jump in his chair.
“Corporal, I must ask you not to shout.”
“Of course.” Mox replied quickly, concentrating on the 3 screens, trying to multitask as much as he could.
I need a bot of my own, dammit… why didn’t I think of this earlier.... With one hand, the man reached for his datapad, and loaded up one of the older bots he made. The bot was designed to identify and block unknown clients, potentially blocking nearly everyone who wasn’t authorized from entering. But as he activated it, the firewalls on the inside gave onto the attacks, and the enemy slicer was inside.
Frak, no! he thought to himself as he manually booted the connections accessing the data, hoping that none of the data got downloaded. He started recoding and reactivating the firewalls, while also giving the basic individual protections to the database.
I should’ve prepared myself better…“10 minutes remaining, Corporal.” The instructor spoke out, his eyes not moving away from his datapad. Mox didn’t pay attention, deploying his own virus, to try and find the file the enemy slicer planted somewhere inside the system.
No wonder he keeps attacking these firewalls… he thought as he returned to recoding the outer firewalls
He must’ve had got a bug on the inside, maybe planted it during the first attack….
As Mox worked on recoding the firewalls with both hands, hoping that his bots would do their jobs of booting off the enemy bots, as well as that the virus find the code.
Why does anything that connects through the inside have to be automatically labelled as authorized… these and similar thought kept blasting through Mox’s brain, unable to get rid off them.
But as Mox glanced at the time on top right of the right-most screen, hoping that the exam was over, all of the status screens, be it of the firewalls on the inside or outside, started flashing red.
Is he… trying to DDoS me? he thought to himself, as he watched his kick bots and the virus’ indexing through the files slow down.
Impossible…“Alright, time’s up.” The examiner stood up, and Mox nearly jumped away from the 3 screens, the alerts populating all the possible pixels.
“A DDoS…” he started talking to himself “But how… why? How?”
“Corporal? The exam ended 20 seconds ago. If you would please exit the room, the exam board will examine the exam’s proceedings, your efforts as well as failings. You should have to results in a week.”
“I understand…” Mox replied, pulling his eyes away from the screens, still disbelieving what just happened.
“You are dismissed, Corporal.” The examiner concluded, and awaited the Mox to leave the room.
- OOC:
- WC: 1013
Critize away, and if the story content is not sufficient, tips would be welcome. In RL I'm on at the beginning of my programming path, and so the presented slicing knowledge this could be all wrong.
