Shishigui: "You fell for it, fool! Tainted Arm Bomb Attack!"
LQ: "I'm gonna do what's called a Pro Green move." *720-degree nth-dimensional Dempsey yeets explosion*
S: "Wait. That's illegal."
CRX: *pogchamps internally*
Here's more of the programmer / IT version of Ling Qi and the Sect.
They were holed up in one of many tiny computer labs around the sect. Han Jian already had his laptop open, Ling Qi still had the PC at home or whatever lab PC she could find. Carrying everything on a small flash drive until she could afford something more was rather painful.
Han Fang and Fan Yu sat at one long desk, and Ling Qi sat with Gu Xiulan at another long desk on the opposite side. Between the four desktops and Han Jian's laptop they had five PC's to get this done.
Elder Zhou had said this first part was a Competitive, Hackable Team Project. As in, they could mess with other team's projects, and other teams could mess with them.
Physically, they were separated in different areas of the sect, but virtually, there was another team just next door on the network. The Outer Sect's networks were wild and inconsistent. You might be able to broadcast packets across the mountain, but find the lab next door to be on a different subnet. The Outer Sect had four router protocols, and all of the network equipment was hackable by members, once the 3 months was up.
This was her first taste of what unrestricted e-warfare would be like. Since they were able to freely mess with each other's operations during this challenge.
Between Fan Yu and Gu Xiulan there was a disagreement as to how to proceed. They were only competing with two other teams in this first stage of Zhou's challenge. If they could mess with the other teams, they would be free to complete their mission.
Gu Xiulan thought an aggressive approach made more sense, but Fan Yu wanted to instead stabilize their own path to success and force others to come to them. Take over the server that they had to transmit information to, and then they could defend against anyone else trying to complete the mission.
The data to be transmitted was meaningless, just some numbers that Li Suyin said were significant. But it was something they would have to write a program to calculate, and then transmit to a high port (39674) on the server. She hoped the other teams would be able to help more, as she was still just learning the basics of networking.
Li Suyin had taught her a lot as the girl watched her code. It was a bit creepy, the first time. Pair Programming didn't have to be that close.
"I think we should listen to Han Jian," Ling Qi responded quietly, fidgeting under the groups attention. "I… he's supposed to be the leader, right? Besides, we don't really have any good ways of searching for the other groups, I think?" She glanced around nervously, relaxing at Han Jian's approving expression.
"Well I suppose so. I doubt the other disciples will be hard to find though. They have to be on the same VLAN" Gu Xiulan huffs, crossing her arms under her chest and glancing at her frowning fiancee. "Could your script find them Yu?"
Yu looked up from the lab PC he was at, each PC had an old CRT monitor, the once silver boxes yellowed from time and abuse.
Yu seemed to hesitate as Ling Qi looked at his terminal session. Finally, he hit the enter key, and the script spewed text on the screen. He sighed.
"No," he admits grudgingly. "I have not yet mastered that part of the Yellow Mountain art," he shoots you an irritated look, as if it's your fault that he had to admit that. You just glare back.
Yellow Mountain must be some kind of hacker's textbook or group back in their homeland, Ling Qi speculated.
"Which is why I figured defense was our best bet," Han Jian cut in firmly. "We don't have anyone with extended scanning or probing skills yet."
"Then why ask at all?" Ling Qi asked curiously as they all got logged in and opened their programming windows and terminals.
Ling Qi had one window open in the VIM editor for writing her code, one for scripts, one for telnet / SSH sessions, and another terminal window for extra / whatever. During their practice sessions, losing some of your terminals to attacks was common.
"A leader needs to hear his subordinates, even if he thinks he knows best," Han Jian responded with a shrug. "Otherwise he might miss something. We should quiet down and get working though. If we can get into the switch the server's connected to, we'll be able to find the server's IP."
His words seemed to ease Fan Yu's tension, and drew a complicated sigh from Xiulan. Fang simply shook his head and made a sound like a rasping cough that Ling Qi was fairly certain meant laughter from the mute boy as he began to type faster. She herself simply shook her head and followed them all, keeping the division of labor they had practiced. She was a decent coder already, still she had a lot to learn about everything the sect taught.
3 Successes needed.
Concentration+Programming+Flow. 4 dice plus 2 auto successes
7, 8, 2, 4. 2 Successes
"That should go to Standard Out," Gu Xiulan said to her, leaning over to look at her code.
Ling Qi had written the program to calculate the Tribonacci function, the silly random thing they had to send to the server high port, but she had saved each value to a file.
"If this is going to satisfy Elder Zhou, I don't think it's going to want just a few values. You're going to need Big Integers," Han Jian said, looking to the two of them.
"I have no clue what that is? What's wrong with this?" Ling Qi asked. She changed the output to write to STDOUT as quickly as Gu Xiulan could ask.
Gu Xiulan took over, and Han Jian explained as she wanted the two of them work the problem.
"You can only store values up to positive 2,147,483,647," Han Jian said. "Unsigned int would give you a bit more, but I think Elder Zhou would ask for more. Big numbers allow you to go beyond that. As long as we can write them to string. After all the server is just taking strings."
"The Big Int library isn't there, I think we have to make our own," Gu Xiulan said. "I'll go work on that. Just hold on Ling Qi."
Han Jian went back to his PC, and Ling Qi created a separate tab in VIM to play around with this "Big Integer" idea. When would the endless series of new ideas and words end? Every class period she had five new words and two new acronyms to learn, and the classes weren't lasting forever. Even Elder Su said she was cutting down who could stay in her class.
"Found it," Han Jian said shortly after. "The logs show no one has entered since they were wiped this morning. "In on Port 80, working to get in on telnet."
Ling Qi looked to Gu Xiulan, who was making progress on the Big Integers, but slowly. In her own terminal, she had no idea how to proceed with solving a problem like that.
"Missed a semi-colon," she said to Xiulan, trying to help.
"We need to make a plan quickly," Fan Yu grunts as he hits the enter key on his keyboard. It doesn't seem he was entering any commands. "What do you intend Jian?"
"I think…" Han Jian muses, glancing at server information. "I think Fang and I should work together defending the server. His art will be fine for harassing our competitors trying to snoop out the approach, and even if I'm not great at hacking, I can handle a toolkit."
"You don't have one though," Ling Qi pointed out slowly, wondering why no one else pointed this out.
He glanced at her in confusion, and then seemed to understand. "Oh, right. I have it on me, it's just in storage. Father gave me a small preloaded USB stick before I left home." He seems distracted, eyes roaming all over the his screen full of windows.
"Oh, that's nice to have," she said. "What do you want me to do now?"
"Qi," he looked over at her with a frown. "I'd say that you should work with Xiulan, leaving someone alone is usually not the best strategy," he scrubs a hand through his hair looking frustrated. "Defending a server with so few people… it's kind of a challenge. We're almost certain to have to disco if the others are reasonably well organized. On the other hand, you could work with us and leave the code to Xiulan."
Ling Qi had an idea, it was her kind of idea, but she wasn't sure if the others would go with it.
"I'm not sure if this makes sense, but what if we wiped the logs, set a trap and left the server? Then we could sit and wait, finish the program and then spring your toolkit on anyone that came through?"
"Do you really think Elder Zhou would be impressed by such a cowardly approach, using the letter of the objective to escape fulfilling the spirit?" Fan Yu responded angrily. "Han Jian, now do you see why bringing a peasant into this was foolish?"
"I think that Instructor Zhou cares more about results than methods," Ling Qi answered stubbornly. "I mean, didn't you say that just a little bit ago Gu Xiulan? Why shouldn't we do whatever we need too? And don't you think Instructor Zhou would have made the instructions more specific if we wanted us to limit our tactics? When has he ever failed to tell us exactly what he wants us to do?" She found her words spilling out in a rush as she glared at the stout boy across from her."
"... Was it cowardly when Father lured the Ash Walkers vanguard into the honeypot of the Falling Sun temple so they could be stopped with minimal damage?" He asked, glancing at Fan Yu.
"Well, no… It's hardly the same thing Jian!" The other boy blustered, looking uncomfortable at the query. "You cannot really be thinking of taking some inexperienced girls battle plan over your own, where is your pride!"
"Pride has no place on a battlefield," Han Jian responded glibly, with the air of one repeating someone else's words. "And she's right, I got caught up planning for a battle that doesn't even need to happen. I suppose I'm lucky Father isn't here to cuff me for it," he added the last in a musing tone. "Fang, get those logs wiped." He then looked back to Yu, who was still staring at him angrily. "Yu, don't think of this as a duel or a contest between peers, you know? The purpose of the sects is to combat barbarians, so since we're training, doesn't it make sense to treat our enemies the same way?"
Ling Qi shifted uncomfortably as Han Jian tried to calm the other boy, and then she shifted to trying to help Xiulan.
"Would it help to describe what you're doing?" Ling Qi asked. "I've described my problems with assignments several times, in front of Bai Meizhen, and then by the time I'm done, I've got the solution. If not then, it's only a single word from her and the answer is clear."
"Big Integers, it's like doing your multiplication problems, except each digit isn't from 1 to 10, it's from 1 to whatever your biggest number is. I'm doing something wrong with the carry though."
"Um," Linq Qi said, realizing something. Either that or she was missing something. "All we need to do is add, you don't need to implement multiply do you?"
"Oh yeah. next = last + l2 + l3. I started implementing the type and got carried away."
"We're off the server," Han Jian said.
Fang motioned to Han Jian, who stood up to look at the silent member's screen.
"Someone pinged the switch," Han Jian confirmed.
"Save that file," Han Jian said, pulled the usb stick out of his PC and passing it to Ling Qi.
She plugged it into the PC's usb slot, and leaned over , typing on Gu Xiulan's keyboard, the command to list mountable drives and then mount the USB stick.
hantheflames456 was the name of the drive, Ling Qi suppressed a laugh.
"Offline copy is crucial," Jian said, and Xiulan finished that, dismounting the drive and handed it back.
"This stick does not go in until we've dealt with the other teams. I've already got the toolkit copied to local space. Ling Qi, I want you on telnet and kill. Pick an IP address and shut them down. Xiulan, golden fields strats. Burn burn burn."
"Four of them," Yu said.
"Hold fire, wait for them to connect, and then the toolkit and Fang's traps will hit."
"They're in, they are sending bytes on port 39674," Yu said.
"Hit em now. Dot 64, Dot 97, Dot 138. Dot 254"
The toolkit was away, and Ling Qi telnetted into 172.16.1.138. The training ground machines were universally exposed to free telnet connections. And designed to be time consuming to block that.
Ling Qi rapidly entered the target computer and typed the bash fork bomb she had memorized.
The target was killing processes with her own loop, and now Ling Qi noticed her own top command showed a fork bomb against her. She switched to focus on saving her own PC.
Use kill with a mask. Use kill with a mask, she repeated, and managed to finally get the commands to her brain. She managed to stop the attack, but she lost some of her bash windows as well as maybe a critical process or two? The system seemed to still be stable, but who knew exactly what was damaged.
These Test PCs were prepared so you couldn't reboot them. So once a hack got control, it was game over. She skipped the fork bomb when she went back on the attack. Manually killing processes wasn't so easy to stop. Ling Qi went back to the telnet connection to her foe. She prepared a script to repeatedly search for and kill the network service.
Her first attempt failed. She struck again, this time causing an endless stream of bell sounds on the other end. Followed by killing each bash window (user: sb) had been using.
With her target wrecked, she looked around the room.
"Got em. They must have targeted each other first. We faced the winners," Han Jian said.
Han Jian inserted the code they had finished, with Ling Qi's top level code and Gu Xiulian's Big Integer modification.
Connecting back to the server, they waited as the program rapidly began sending huge numbers, dozens of digits long.
Ling Qi hadn't realized you could reach the limit of what was called an integer. She had a lot to learn still.
On Han Jian's screen, a message returned from the server.
Test 1 complete. Report to the Battle Grounds for individual testing. The Battle grounds were the only place they were allowed to access computers with visual interfaces and graphics. They were used to run Virtual simulations and tests.
Ling Qi thought Zhou's test was just about teamwork, but it seemed he had more in mind.
The Sect frowned on use of Graphical User Interfaces, teaching that they sapped brain power and prevented people from becoming the power users the Empire needed.
Alternatively, Zhengui may channel the technique into a focused line out to Very Far range, with a ten meter width. This version of the technique adds a significant bonus to penetration, and increases damage to A.
Do you mean his Rebirth Inferno tech? Bc thats the epic one (that we haven't seen at all. Was introduced early in Forge, it was one of ZG's first arts.
Do you mean his Rebirth Inferno tech? Bc thats the epic one (that we haven't seen at all. Was introduced early in Forge, it was one of ZG's first arts.
The alternate version of his Paradise Forge, I quoted it, though Inferno would be epic too (even though it reminds me self-destruct from pokemon) we never saw either of them in this thread.