Phoenix Network Forums

so here's the thing: i got my inspiration from two articles i read. one was about a hacker convention with a capture the flag type contest where your group would attack another's token which was hidden by them (and override it with yours) and you also defend your own token. the second was about a 'hacking game' (thats what they say it is) where you have a console and a map (not giving the name ot the game) and you type commands like 'hack 127.0.0.1' or 'decode <filename>' and you get the results. nice ideea but very simple even for 5 year old kids, the only constraint being the 'trace time'. thats it with the game related part. here come the technical stuff:

what id like to do is

1. Create a real linux environment (very basic one but real) where you actually chroot in to start playing.
2. Most real commands remain and you can really bust your 'hackbox' for real
3. if you destroy your box by being careless it can be easely rebuilt but you loose all your progress.
4. some commands will be replaced by homemade scripts to 'jail' the player in his box (no internet, etc.) but you can still copy files and create your own scripts etc.
5. the net would be in fact a list of files that would be requested by a script replacing the host command so really tracing a host would mean reading some file contents.
6. some config files for every host/server on the fake net (contents like hostname location etc)
7. the fake hosts wont really be so fake, they will only not be on the net. they will be chroot environments inside the hackbox (it also being a chroot).
8. fake hosts have real servers installed which will ultimately be hacked and/or modified.
9. because the fake hosts are not really 'alive' they dont have any processes running when not chrooted inside so some description files will emulate the output of real host scans. each will have a specific scan and specific output for every supposed running process.

so generally thats it. if you have questions about the size of the game know that each host will run a minimal linux (binutils and servers). so we're talking 10MB max for each one, and less than 1MB min. so think a one dvd game. faking an internet will take time and at start many hosts will have the same config but... it may grow with time.

the purpose of this 'game' is my way of showing to some of my coleagues that ethical hacking can be tought without the need of 10 virtual machines (or more). also a bonus for this method is that anyone can modify the config files and the security of any machine outside the game to create challanges, you don't necessarily know what the host contains (cause its not you who set it up). it is also 'legal hacking' of YOUR systems...

what i'd like from you guys here on the board is to give me some thumbs up or down, a doable/not doable imput and any ideeas you can add to it for the moment (brainstorm session). so what are you waiting for?

Ok I didn't understand a word but it sounds freaking awesome

No, seriously though, if I got it right you are saying you want to make something like a hacking simulation? Some kind of hacking "video game"?

This sounds like a pretty neat idea and I would like to know how this develops. And sorry for not being able to give a better feedback, but I just don't know much about UNIX systems and hacking.

well to start off you would NEED a linux/unix type system, but then again you could use a shell emulator for windows and chroot...

anyway, the goal is to simulate as much as possible BUT, the scripts or commands could be very easy to adapt to a lower level of 'hacking skill' to make it just pure fun (although this is not the purpose)