10011: Black vs. White (Part 2)

The big digital wall in front of the machine was towering right above me. To get started, I scanned it and discovered a long list of possible vulnerabilities. It looked like they intended to make it easy for me … or did they just try to hide the real entrance point among a lot of possibilities? I decided to take the safest route and tried my luck with an outdated port for file transfer first. It had a vulnerability to inject and execute code on the system without any user interaction, a so called zero-click remote code execution (RCE) exploit.

Getting into a system with that worked a bit like sticking a bent wire through the letter slot of a door to press down the handle on the inside. I just needed a code to execute on the machine, which created a user account for me that I could then use to simply log in.

To get started, I opened my development environment and started coding. Nothing special was necessary – just a few commands to create a new user account and then I was able to log in with it.

“I’m in!” Kayami-senpai said.

“What? Already?”

“There was an old network driver that had a vulnerability through which I can use it like a remote management tool with root access.” She didn’t stop while typing. “It’s quite common with old network cards of this type, so I already had a small script to exploit it.”

I gulped. This girl really played on a whole different level. Hardware and drivers were so far away from anything I was able to comprehend. But she wasn’t the school’s number one for nothing. “Kayami-senpai!” I said. “You know that there are still hundreds of people watching you, do you?”

Her hands rested on the keyboard for a little while. She looked at me, a hint of worry mixed into the blues of her eyes. “Yeah … I do.” She looked up at the audience around us, shoved a loose strand of her blonde hair behind the ear. “The ‘past me’ would have probably done only the absolute necessities. But … I don’t know. It would feel wrong to hold back right now, what do you think?”

I breathed through. “After all it will be your decision, but you might make some people envious or even angry that you deceived them all the time.”

She laid her hand onto mine, smiled. “I don’t think that they will be angrier at me than they already are. What all of this taught me is, that I shouldn’t give a single fuck about those idiots and what they want or do. I have you guys and as long as I do, I can show the world a middle finger and be content with it. So, let’s demonstrate them everything a White Hat is capable of and destroy their egoistic attitude!” Seeing her so determined made my heart do a jump. I could only reply with a bright smile. We nodded and kept on moving forward with our respective tasks at hand.

I opened my browser and looked up all the commands I would need on Stuck Overflow. To be really cautious, I even made sure to erase conspicuous traces for the usage of the exploit. Within a few minutes, it was done and ready for execution. Shimoka-san commented a few of the things that were going on, but I tried ignoring it the best I could to not get distracted.

After a last check up, I executed the script. It ran through in the blink of an eye, but that would not necessarily mean, that everything worked. I tried logging in with the credentials I had created and the barrier in front of me disappeared, uncovering the insides of the corridor.

“Who do we have here?”

I jumped back and grabbed the handle of my katana, preparing to parry a strike. Whoever this was knew exactly, what he was doing. He found me the second I logged in. To my surprise he was still standing a few steps away and had not taken an aggressive position.

He laughed and went through his light blue hair, had a buff appearance. “Isato Kanaoka-kun if I’m not mistaking?”

I looked up from my screen. There was the guy: blue, slightly tousled hair, a stern smile on his lips. I nodded at his question and relaxed myself a bit – still not fully dropping my alerted position. “Yeah … you’re from the Buccaneer Seven, right?”

He bowed slightly, his hands on a handle of his katana and Wakizashi as well. “Bunzaemon Nishihira, place three of the Buccaneer Seven, right in front of number four – your cute bestie.”

My gaze fell to Kayami-senpai. She was still highly focused.

“She never really fitted in with us,” he said. “Even though Akihiro-kun would tell you something different, she never really was a Black Hat. I hope from deep within my heart that she will be happy with you.” He smirked. “You yourself especially.”

I gulped. “You want to stop me, don’t you?”

“Yes, that is my task in this Kibansentou. I am really glad to meet you as my opponent. You are really interesting. There are not many first years who manage to keep up with their senpai, let alone develop a utility like this firewall.”

Where did he know this from? I breathed through to not tell him everything from my nervousness. “Why did you assume that I developed it?”

“If the White Hoods themselves would be capable enough to develop something like it, they would’ve done it already. Airii-chan might be a good programmer, but she is more versed in higher level programming languages. Ando-sensei was probably occupied with setting up your machines with his software, so we are just left with you or Kayami-san. But by the way your little firewall interacts, I am certain it is a custom-built chip. So, by elimination my assumption would be that Kayami-san built said chip and you programmed the software operating it.”

It was eerily exact, but since he was so open to me, my honor led me to return this openness. “You have a really keen perception. Your assumptions are spot on.”

He laughed. “Well, I knew that I’d really like you. Such a shame that we must meet as opponents, but I promise I won’t hold back. You are in the disadvantage since this here is our machine. But I promise you that this will be just you and me without any external help, plus I’ll grant you the first attack. Isn’t that a word?”

My muscles tensed. This guy seemed very confident, and I noticed that it was more than just hot air. He knew what he was doing, but I must not be intimidated by him. I had to also trust in my skills and hope that they would be strong enough to win over him.

I slowly unsheathed my katana and held it up into his direction. “Then ready yourself,” I said.

“I am!”

He hadn’t drawn his weapon which made me a bit anxious. Not that he had some dirty surprises hidden in his sheath. Sadly, there was only one way of finding out. I started with a straight attack. One step and another, strike and … sharp metal echoing through the room. He blocked my blow with the same motion of unsheathing his katana. It was nothing fancy though, just a plain and honest blade.

“Excellent strike,” he noted and deflected my blade towards the ground. I lunged for another one from a different angle and another one and then a stab. He moved routinely, deflecting each of them, still smiling carelessly. Then out of nowhere came his first attack. I barely dodged it and parried the second hit that came right after. He was not lying, when he told me that he would not go easy on me. The strikes were fast and precise. I had my troubles, parrying all his attacks and grew more and more weary. We were on par at the moment, but with rising exhaustion it was just a question of time who would make a mistake first.

We both rested for a while to catch a breath, when I hear something inside the loud murmuring of the crowd. “KA-NA-O-KA! KA-NA-O-KA! KA-NA-O-KA!“ The cheers came from a small group at the very first row to my left side. A handful of guys and three girls cheered my name, bravely fighting against the loud murmuring of the crowd. They wore white hoodies and a black-haired guy in the back even held a big cardboard up, featuring the hexadecimal color code from white (#ffffff). It looked almost like they made fun, overreacting like teenage girls when their boy group went on stage. I noticed Rukami-senpai in the front row. She formed a funnel around her mouth. “You’ll destroy him, Isato-kun!” she screamed as loud as she could, trying to outdo the crowd.

The green-haired girl right next to her grabbed Rukami-senpai around the neck made the same gesture. “Kanaoka-kun! Rukami-chan wants a child from you!”

Rukami-senpai winced and got visibly embarrassed and started fighting with the girl, who was just laughing about the fuzz she had created. It’s true what they say … with friends like these, who needs enemies? I guess that those were her colleagues from the student council. It was great that they were here and cheered on us, but I had to focus my battle right now

“And as it seems, Kayami-san actually managed to get the first flag!” Shimoka-san exclaimed.

Kayami-senpai’s monitor was streamed to the big screens of the arena. There was the file ‘black_3.txt’. She had beads of sweat on her forehead, breathed heavily, as she copied it. Booing came from the audience. Only out little fan club escalated with joy and jumped up and down in their seats. This was the first flag. She held it in her hands and now it was just a question of moving it back to our corresponding device – a rather easy task if all permissions had been granted.

“Where is the defense team for this device?” Nakayama-senpai yelled.

“We all were thrown out! She took over from out of the system kernel and removed all our access permissions from there,” one of the guys right next to him explained rueful. “We won’t get onto the machine unless we would sit right in front of it.”

“Then hack back into it!” He commanded.

“Yes! Of course!”

“We’ve got something interesting here!” Hidaka-kun told him. The white-haired guy from my class had his laptop placed next to him on the table and now sat at his side as they discussed. “Give us a minute and we know how we can solve this.”

A loud ringing went through the hall as a music cue played. “Right as Kayami-san managed to bring the first flag to the white side it seems like Hidaka-kun is right on their tracks,” Shimoka-san explained as his monitor was casted onto the big arena screens. “Looks like he tries exploiting a device that he still has access to. But what device are we seeing there?”

“Hey, what are they hacking there?” Naoki-senpai’s look rushed between us, as he hectically typed on his keyboard.

“That is Ouzen-kun’s laptop.” Ando-sensei’s voice was still as calm as ever. “I try intercepting his requests, but as it seems, he already rooted the machine.”

I did not really have an ear for their matters right now. After countless of attacks and parrying, both, Nishihira-senpai and I, were standing exhausted right in front of each other and breathed heavily. A few slight wounds reached across my arms, chest and a rather nasty one on my forehead – blood running across my face. He got me good a few times – I him not so much – but I was still standing. It was like the attempt to run through a concrete wall. “You didn’t promise too much,” I said and straightened my body.

“I am not disappointed as well.” He was breathing heavily. “But I can’t let you take this flag. I have to defend it under all circumstances.”

I needed to approach this differently and be a bit creative. My mind was rattling, but it just remained a blank. The only approach was to pull the same stunt as Kayami-senpai and escalate my permissions to kick him out and delete his login before he manages to get in again. But doing all this while parrying his direct attacks was beyond my possibilities, as well as coding up a little script to come for my help. By now this was just a pure test of skill. I made another leap for him.

“WHAT HAPPENS HERE?” Ouzen-senpai screamed from out of his box.

“Hidaka-kun took over Yabuki-kun’s device. He completely controls him now!”

“I HAVE TO TURN IT OFF!”

“No!” Naoki-senpai jumped to his side and almost collided with the box. “Try to get back control instead. We need you as well, Ouzen-senpai!”

“He did proper work there.” Ando-sensei scratched his head. “I’m not entirely sure if we will even manage to get him back in time.”

“There is no need to be so desperate,” Hidaka-kun called over to us. “I already closed all ports and services that are not absolutely necessary. You just have to watch as I take over your computers one by one.”

He was right … Ouzen-senpai’s device was a position of trust for our three desktop machines. As everyone of us he had unrestricted access to them and was able to modify whatever he desired. It was necessary, so everyone of us could change configurations when the others were occupied. Through Hidaka-kun’s hack, he essentially remote-controlled Ouzen-senpai’s device and therefore himself had unrestricted access to all our three machines ...

“Great job, Takaya-kun!” Nakayama-senpai patted him onto the shoulder. “Finally, some progress! Can you provide more logins for the others? We’ll use his device as a proxy.”

Naoki-senpai’s expression had grown more serious. He was still smiling, though. “We stick to the plan. Ando-sensei’s software will delay them long enough. Keep going.”

Nakayama-senpai stood up and stomped to Shimoka-san. He ripped the microphone out of her hands and turned to the audience. “We change our strategy. The five down here will take care about getting into their machines through Yabuki-kun’s laptop. All of you fall back and protect the remaining two machines with everything you have!” He pressed the microphone back into her hands and went back to his place. She watched after him a bit intimidated.

“You just heard it,” she said. “The Black Flags change their strategy!”

Nishihara-kun looked at me over his monitor. He stood up and bowed. “Isato Kanaoka-kun, I thank you for this duel. As sad as it makes me, but I have other matters to attend. We will surely find an opportunity to continue this fight.”

“Yeah … uh, sure.” His overly honorable mannerisms made the whole situation a bit awkward. He sprinted off.

“Hey!” Kayami-senpai tapped my arm and grinned. “You need a helping hand? I’m free now.”

I saw the masses of Black Flag students flooding into the corridor in front of me. This were the ones from the audience who were supposed to fight against me. I gulped. There were so many! “Help will be highly appreciated.”

They changed strategies, while we sticked to ours. It definitely was a turning point, but would it change the outcome of this Kibansentou?