Crypto Games

So I’ve been thinking of writing a game based on AES. The idea to make codebreaking accessible.

Hacker Games

Hacker Lore

How can I make the experience of a hacker accessible to the general public?

What do hacker do?

They break into computers and steal stuff.

So the computer can be represented as a vault, and the hacker’s job is to get into it, steal something, and come back without being detected.

The computer is likely to have many security measures in place to prevent a potential hacker from gaining access. These security measures can be represented as guards, maybe even monsters with special abilities.

The target will be represented as a sort of treasure point. The hacker I guess can also have a map of the computer telling them where the target is.

What is essential to the experience of a hacker?

A computer, code, hoodies, darkness, electronic light, surreal, fantastic, freedom, corporations, espionage,

Code breaking is also essential. Hackers are human, and they have tools,

How can we incorportae physical agility? Well a hacker needs to be fast at pressing keyboard buttons.

Navigation through the game world => browsing source code.

A vulnerability is equivalent to a weapon. Of course these weapons are hidden in plain sight. And the hacker must exercise their knowledge and recognition skills to identify weapons.

Weapons can be used to open the vault and extract the key. But unfortunately, sometimes using certain weapons to open the vault results in either the vault being destroyed or in a security alarm being raised. This terminates the game.

Social engineering/phising => word puzzles….

First thing I need to do:

Execution mode is a different mode. Player can slow down. rewind, pause, memory content

New types of bugs will provide new weapon types.

First game: smash the stack:

Demo: Aleph1’s tutorial.

Use the source d00d

Pick open source code base.

Build visual structure.

Assets for assembly view.

Goal: Design a game based on “Smashing the stack for fun and profit”

Source code view. Assembly view.

Grep

Have keywords link to standard manuals

“printf” would be modelled as a message being printed.

Show loops in action

Start by designing challenges.

Maybe the dark web can be incorporated as the underground world.