Me the Machine

[Cryax Bane]

Trying to explain to someone just how to slice through some of the galaxy's most heavily safeguarded networks was much harder for Cryax Bane than actually doing it, but he was going to give it the old college try. The Chiss sat in his horrendously messy office surrounded by computers, socket guards and slicing gear, with the high hopes that no matter how badly he karked up the explanations, his assistant and protege [member="Myrlyn Stormstarr"] would be able to follow along.

Cryax was in the middle of gesturing to a particularly complicated wall of numbers and lines up on his Holoscreen. "So instead of telling you what we're about to do here, I'm going to tell you what we're not going to do. We aren't going to try and directly defeat this company's firewall. It's a losing battle and will get you way too much unwanted attention. What we're looking for is the slicer equivalent of a rickety back door or a breakable window."

He plugged his Datapad into his computer with a grin. "This is where my custom software "Little Brother" comes in. What Little Brother does is crawls the network looking for weaknesses in the code. Once he's found those, slicing in is easy. And I don't even need to expose my alias. Now follow me closely, what I'm going to show you how to do is a fairly easy slice. We're just going to siphon some credits. Enough for it to count, but not enough for him to notice. Hopefully."

What he didn't tell his assistant was that he was currently showing Myrlyn how to slice into one of the heavily protected credit accounts of the man, the myth, the legend, and one of Cryax's friends, Mr. [member="Zatten Black"]. For once, Cryax was glad his office had no window views.

 

[Myrlyn Stormstarr]

"So all that's needed is just some software running?" Myrlyn asked.

[member="Cryax Bane"]

 

[Cryax Bane]

Cryax sighed. He was trying his best at being patient with the kid but he was new at this teaching thing. "Not exactly. You could do what Little Brother does manually but only if you like to watch paint dry. Plus it takes way too long. By the time, you've found the backdoor, you'll have the authorities knocking on yours." He gesticulated to the Holoscreen which was now pinging a message that the software had found a pourous line of code. "Once the exploits are found, then it's usually manual slicing from there, especially since you need to be on the lookout for any defensive slicers that might get tipped off by your activity." The Chiss demonstrated, his fingers speedily clicking on the keys.

"Are you following me Thunderscar? Or am I going too fast for you?"

[member="Myrlyn Stormstarr"]

 

[Myrlyn Stormstarr]

"Loud and clear." Myrlyn says as he continued to watch the Chiss show him how to slice.

[member="Cryax Bane"]

 

[Cryax Bane]

"Good good," Cryax nodded as a notification flashed up on his Holoscreen. "Looks like we have an 'in,'" he said with a grin. As the Chiss began to type, line after line of code popped up on the screen at an almost lightspeed pace, the blue numbers and characters reflected in his glowing red eyes.

"So what I'm doing now is writing some malicious programming, basically a computer virus. The beauty of writing it on the fly is that I can tailor the code to each specific bank network. Depending on the planet, the firewalls can all be very different. In this case, I also have some inside information about the target, for example, Zatten has his assets tied up in several galactic banks, and he favors ones with less stringent tax laws. These banks tend to have more porous firewalls in my experience. See, coding is just as much about psychology as it is about computer programming."

He stepped out of his chair and gestured to Thunderscar. "Here, you try writing some of it."

[member="Myrlyn Stormstarr"]

 

[Myrlyn Stormstarr]

"Alright." Myrlyn said as he sat in the chair.

He was about to start writing when it dawned upon him that he never sliced into a computer system before and had no idea about what to write. He turns to Cryax and says, "So, uh, any suggestions about what I should write?"

[member="Cryax Bane"]