Greetings, Operator.

I am someone who once walked in your footsteps. Things that I have done can apply to you too. I am somewhere else now and it is important we get you there too. I have created this guide to ensure your success.

Do note, however, that I provide this instructional booklet purely to get you over the hardest of the MNC's hurdles. Please attempt to live your life with as little of my guidance as possible. Only continue reading if you want to know the solutions to your past, present and future problems without having to think for yourself.

These hints will help you if you're in The Network.

Mild hint: Have you tried breaking into the node attached to the email?

Medium hint: Some operators forget this, but SSHcrack.exe has been added to the MNC Asset Server. More portcrushers like this will be added in due time.

MAJOR HINT: The file in question is home/induction/MNC_test_file.dll

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Easter eggs:

Medium easter egg: I wonder what happens if you were to try and execute that test file...

Mild hint: Those mail servers were always so disorganised and the data reads so poorly! I always just logged in with compromised account details -- much easier to interpret

Medium hint: Corporate are so lax on security these days -- they'll just spew personal information into readme files for their employees to read! We already know our names, moneybags!

EXTREME HINT (SPOILERS!!!): f4rinel's identity is Randall Jones

Mild hint: I'm not sure if you know how BitTorrent works, but just blasting away .torrent files doesn't kill the content. You're gonna want to find the source of the whole operation.

Medium hint: None of these people hide their NIDs? Even Jason! He's a sysop ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! Who knows what kind of important details are on his computer?!

MAJOR HINT: Chris has FTPBounce, which can hack into Jason's PC. He knows the location of the source of the content

EXTREME HINT (SPOILERS!!!): The source of the content is at NID 87b62498 -- hack it and delete everything in the FTP folders. You may also want to cover your back here especially :-)

Mild hint: This one's easy. Just do some replace index.html "<bad phrase>" "<good phrase>" operations on the file, exactly as the MNC tell you to.

MAJOR HINT: Though of course, rebels can always get the job done faster with a bit of force...

EXTREME HINT (SPOILERS!!!): If you want to get under the MNC's skin, you could always just delete index.html instead :-)

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Easter eggs:

MAJOR EASTER EGG: Check out Paul's PC if you have the tools to hack it. You won't be disappointed.

Mild hint: There's a lot of devices in this family. I'm sure the parents know what's up the most, though.

Medium hint: Ahh, parents. Like father, like son, y'know?

MAJOR HINT: You only need to supply email passwords -- and there are two that you need to satisfy the MNC here. They can both be found from Samual's devices

EXTREME HINT (SPOILERS!!!): The passwords are "gbwzdugg3" and "daganman_throwaway123"

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Easter eggs:

Mild easter egg: What projects is Annie working on?

MAJOR EASTER EGG: Here, an extra-observant operator can find the entrance to grasping ultimate power, with the right kind of tools. Tick, tock...

Mild hint: Those school proxies might work great at stopping the viewing of "civil war paintings", but they log an almost criminal amount of data

Medium hint: WeTalk are extremely lax when it comes to sending data. Proxy logs would probably log credentials in the GET request

MAJOR HINT: If GoodWriterZ's SPAG is anything to go by, he probably also uses BlackMail as a database administration email loop. Poor guy. Actually, what's the opposite of "poor guy"?

EXTREME HINT (SPOILERS!!!): The students Joseph Damon, Georgia McFarlane and Dave Tucker are guilty of this heinous crime.

Mild hint: What's that one place the "free-thinkers" of the Network used to go to to chat? Man it's been so long. Didn't they keep getting database crashes which necessitated splitting up the boards too?

Medium hint: Assuming you've found the group's webhub, your fancy-schmancy new set of tools can probably extract the thing that sysadmin's getting so upset about

Medium hint: Is this a home-ran server? Free from Theta's grasp? I guess that would explain the thing connected to it...

MAJOR HINT: A lot of people don't like reading through unordered lists, but trust me when I say this one is important

EXTREME HINT (SPOILERS!!!): Get into the VPS mentioned in MNC_Spy_Van's eOS device (from scanning the internal server) and memdump to find the identity of the movement's leader

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Easter eggs:

Mild easter egg: WeTalk ended up making an eOS app? It looks like ♥♥♥♥

What exactly about this virus do you need to do?


Mild hint: Your first lead is probably hacking into that payment page. Snoop on any connection logs and see if we can't investigate other things

Medium hint: One of the people infected by this ransomware seems to know its author quite well. Was this a revenge play gone too far?

MAJOR HINT: Kyle's machine has an xDroid device that he seemingly tried to use in a panicked attempt to speak with the author

EXTREME HINT (SPOILERS!!!): The ransomware author's identity is Kacper Nowak


Mild hint: One of the people infected by this ransomware seem pretty security-conscious. Sadly, big corporations are not

MAJOR HINT: He's also a frequent patron of the FreeChat Forums, it seems like. Probably pretty tech-savvy

Medium hint: MemForensics can analyse any memory dump, including ones you didn't make yourself

EXTREME HINT (SPOILERS!!!): Vince's Mindpad - the NID of which can be learned from a new thread on FreeChat's /g/ board - has a memdump containing the IP of C2YPT3X's killswitch


Mild hint: These ones will be locked up hard. You'll need a man on the inside to infiltrate the ransomware author's hive of self-serving garbage

Medium hint: Vlad might know the way into the ransomware author's little clique of followers.

MAJOR HINT: I assume you have found your way into the club? The vault's got what you want. Hopefully you remember what the MNC told you about phones previously

EXTREME HINT (SPOILERS!!!): The guy runs an xDroid device, which contains the password to the vault. Download the .pgp file and upload it to the MNC filedrop

Mild hint: ...

Medium hint: ...

MAJOR HINT: If you've found his declaration, then you'll need to find his INSTRUCTIONS. I'm sure you can find it somewhere in the Network. It's all over the place

EXTREME HINT (SPOILERS!!!): decypher INSTRUCTIONS.dec remember_remember


That's not my decision for you to make. What'll it be?

I'm going: Good luck. I'll see you on the other side

I'm staying: You have everything you need. Turn him in.