Thursday, January 25, 2024

Proposal: Let’s Get Cracking

Timed out, 3-1 with 2 DEFs. Enacted by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 28 Jan 2024 06:25:37 UTC

In the rule “The Mainframe”, add the following text:

Each Agent has a number named ‘’‘CPU Cycles’‘’ which defaults to 1.

In the rule “Clients” add the following text:

A ‘’‘Brute Force Attempt’‘’ is a pairing of a number named Progress and the name of an Agent. Each Client has a list of Brute Force Attempts, defaulting to an empty list.

A ‘’‘Passcode Complexity’‘’ is a derived value that equals the number of characters a Client’s Passcode has, multiplied by how many of the following criteria (which should be a number from 1 to 3) one or more of its characters meets: lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers.

In the rule “Shell Commands”, add a subrule named “Brute Force” with the following text:

{{Flair top|Shell command}}
As a Daily Shell Command, a Client may ‘’‘brute force’‘’ a ‘’‘Target’‘’, which is the name of another Client other than this one. If the name of the Agent performing the command is not in the list of Brute Force Attempts for the Target, the Mainframe should add an entry to that list with the Progress set to 0 and the Agent set to the name of that Agent.

In the entry of Brute Force Attempts for the Target that matches the name of the Agent performing this command, the Mainframe should add the Agent’s CPU Cycles to the Progress of that entry. If that entry’s Progress is equal to or greater than the Target’s Passcode Complexity, the command succeeds, and the Mainframe should secretly communicate the Target’s Passcode to the Agent. Otherwise, the command fails and may not be reattempted that day. On failure, the Mainframe should include the Target and the value of that entry’s Progress in the description of the failure reason and in the Client’s (not the Target’s) Log, but must not include the Target’s Passcode Complexity in either the failure reason or the Log.
{{Flair bottom}}

Comments

naught:

26-01-2024 00:29:23 UTC

for  Though I’m hoping there won’t be many ways to increase CPU Cycles; I’m of the opinion that there should be other mechanisms to figure out passwords, should such a need arise.

Josh: he/they

26-01-2024 10:15:14 UTC

imperial

Desertfrog:

26-01-2024 12:22:56 UTC

against optimal play would require defining clients monstrously long passcodes

Desertfrog:

26-01-2024 12:29:31 UTC

CoV for realised passcodes are max 16 characters

noqturn:

26-01-2024 14:20:56 UTC

for

Zack: he/him

26-01-2024 16:40:45 UTC

imperial

Zack: he/him

26-01-2024 18:02:33 UTC

I’ll just point out that the logical next step for this is people being able to change their passwords and then the meta will just be to change your password as much as possible which might get annoying.

Zack: he/him

26-01-2024 18:03:14 UTC

I mean, not annoying for me, but for everyone to have to keep changing their passwords.

Desertfrog:

26-01-2024 18:17:37 UTC

CoV again against I don’t want to change my password all the time, and guessing passcodes would anyway be more interesting if it wasn’t just a rather abstract growing number

JonathanDark: he/him

26-01-2024 19:08:35 UTC

Maybe Passcodes could be a Codenames type guessing game, rather than the more literal password/passphrase scheme of actual computer logins. Josh did warn against making this dynasty too literal to actual computing life, and I tend to agree that too much realism is not that much fun.

If I can come up with an alternative, I may just withdraw this, or if it times out and is enacted, I’ll replace it if I have a better idea.

Zack: he/him

26-01-2024 21:32:00 UTC

If end goal is just a way to get connected to a Client without knowing the password then maybe a way that doesn’t involve compromising the password itself might be more interesting. That just gave me an idea, maybe brute forcing could be a shell command that has some random chance to open a “tunnel” to another Client, so if brute forcing succeeds then you can connect to that second client as long as you’re connected to the first one.

Zack: he/him

26-01-2024 21:34:29 UTC

Though it would be logical for brute forcing to reveal the password itself, so maybe that would be called something else.