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+--- Thread: The Conquest of Ginger [Attn: Grace] (/showthread.php?tid=282)
The Conquest of Ginger [Attn: Grace] - Cellatus - 08-07-2013
He had mentioned it in passing. Then again, with the way he tended to jump from topic to topic who could tell what was a viable avenue of action and what was only 'in passing' with the Gadfly? According to the emails Grace starts getting, however, he actually was serious about Striver's Answering Service and their Fat Girls.
The first email includes basic information of the company itself. It is, in essence, the company brochure as it exists today. It is also the company brochure as it existed when the company was founded some time in the nineties. Back then it was exactly what it sounded like: an answering service. Rows of work stations each with telephone extensions attached, and those telephone extensions managed by a brand spanking new digital operator. Top of the line. The latest thing in office services. At the time, at least. They advertised back then as a personal answering service. Sure it was already the age of micro-cassette answering machines and the early days of voice mail, but Striver's provided a personal touch. A personal secretary fielding your calls anywhere you were, minus sick days and providing office space and several other annoyingly human hindrances. Not long after they started taking on customer service complaints on behalf of businesses and companies with offices nowhere near the Answering Service's Denver location.
This, according to the financial graph Gadfly sent along, was the beginning of the end. It was an image of a simple graph the companies financial progress in six month intervals over the years up to current. At the beginning Gadfly included a note with an arrow pointing toward the steep upward incline of the company's stock. The note read 'innovative idea'. The graph inclined less steeply, which Gadfly noted with 'increased automation, decreased human resources'. Then it plateaued for several years. There was no note there, but from the corner where the plateau fell sharply into a series of inclines and short upstarts to a point lower down on the y axis and far more recent on the y axis where it once again leveled off, Gadfly labeled the entire span 'Cheap parlor tricks'. Along the span several points were designated with more specifics of the parlor tricks in question, the first being 'customer service', then 'tech support', then 'party line' and so on, and so on. It continued in this trend, the company relying on more and more embarrassing and derisive applications of telephony technology (at least in Gadfly's opinion) until it came to the last note, and the most recent point of variance in financial value. Here, the eccentric Virtual Adept placed the simple label of 'Phone Sex'. And while it wasn't his injected opinion it seemed that this was the lowest form of technological application that could still be profitable. In the last three years, phone sex was the only thing keeping Striver's Answering Service afloat.
According to the more recent brochure they offered automated services in pre-packaged forms. The fees were still monthly or annual, only instead of your own personal secretary you could have your own twenty-gigabyte block of telephony server space. Over the years single users had been replaced by single corporations with many different end users, requiring the expanded storage space. This also applied to internal services, such as their own phone sex schemes. It was one of these that Andrew had mapped and, while he hadn't sent the contents to her in an email, he did describe it to her through extended remote conversations. Those conversations all had the same erratic inclusion of details but all came down to a single point: Their '1-800-FAT-GRLS' hotline used four gigs for the purpose of automated pre-recorded answering messages, hold tones, routing messages, and sub-routines, most of which involved forwarding calls to other numbers. It was, in essence, a non-judgemental secretary (with a damn sexy voice) who was being woefully underemployed.
"Can we call her Ginger?" Gadfly asks one day, apparently out of the blue. "She sounds like a Ginger, I think. Also, she's up for maintenance in a couple weeks. If we take her right after, it'll give us a couple weeks to wipe our tracks before anybody goes looking again so, get your tools ready."
--------
Andrew gets his tools ready. (Sorry for the messy transcript)
Cellatus @ 11:42PM
Empower Mind [ Arete 2, diff 1+3], spending 1 wp
Roll: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 4) ( success x 1 ) VALID
Cellatus @ 11:42PM
((Except I forgot to hit the WP thingy.))
Samael @ 11:43PM
Witnessed!
niko @ 11:44PM
Witnessed!
Cellatus @ 11:46PM
Custom Cracking Software (Let me into your network!) [Int 4 (Creative Specialty) + Comp 4, Diff 8 -1 (empowered mind)]
Roll: 8 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) VALID
Samael @ 11:47PM
Also witnessed!
Cellatus @ 11:47PM
Custom Cracking Software (This server space shall be mine!) [Int 4 (Creative Specialty) + Comp 4, Diff 8 -1 (empowered mind)]
Roll: 8 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 ) VALID
Cellatus @ 11:49PM
And finally, Security precautions (I am not and never was here) [Int 4 + Comp 4, diff 7-1]
Roll: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 4, 7, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 4 ) VALID
niko @ 11:49PM
Dre are you supposed to be re-rolling 10s?
Cellatus @ 11:50PM
I was yeas. I keep forgetting toggles.
Cellatus @ 11:54PM
Re-roll first ten
Roll: 1 d10 TN7 (5) ( fail ) VALID
Cellatus @ 11:54PM
Re-roll second ten
Roll: 1 d10 TN7 (9) ( success x 1 ) VALID
niko @ 11:54PM
Woo witnessed!
((That makes -2 diff on two future hacks and +2 diff to a future attempt at detecting said hacks))
RE: The Conquest of Ginger [Attn: Grace] - FadedNoel - 08-08-2013
Grace had to wonder if the choice of targets wasn't a bit on the intentional side. Why phone sex? Why 1-800-FAT-GRLS? But then, it was about the last place anyone would go looking for her. There was some comfort in that, even if she was sure Gadfly's own motives weren't quite so pure.
Ginger. She sounds like a ginger.
And there's such affection in that, that Grace is fairly certain that he's talking about the server, and not the pre-recorded voice messages. He's anthropomorphizing a 4 gig storage locale as 'Ginger'.
Grace sighed at the words on her screen, but came back with a, "You sound like you're in love already. Go ahead and call her what you want, you found her."
"Man, I haven't done anything like this in years," she added to her response. She hadn't needed to. Cracking into a remote server was a child's game to her mind, because that's what it had been for her. But this time, she was looking for freedom in a place and time where the crackdown on privacy was coming down hard. So take someone else's privacy, if you can't find your own...
First step, as Gadfly said, get your tools together. A good encryption protocol, this came first. Once they took over, it wouldn't do to hash everything out in plaintext. Next, a good vulnerability scanner. Tools of the not-so-legal trade.
The skill needed to crack a commercial server was, sadly, likely a lot less than that needed to point a fellow student's computer to Rick Astley videos. For one, it was a Microsoft shop. Pheh. But here, there was that pesky need for stealth.
Maybe a little something to modify the server access logs, clean up after themselves...
Paranoid? Maybe. A little. But if they really were out to get you...
-------------------------------------
Noel @ 8:13PM
Okay! I'm going to do rolls now!
Custom Cracking Software [Int 4 Creative + Comp 4, diff 8-1 (Ability Aptitude: Computer)]
Roll: 8 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) VALID
Noel @ 8:13PM
Rerolling 10!
Roll: 1 d10 TN7 (9) ( success x 1 ) VALID
Noel @ 8:16PM
Again, because like Grace is going to let Gadfly have all the cool toys...
Custom Cracking Software [Int 4 Creative + Comp 4, diff 8-1 (Ability Aptitude: Computer)]
Noel @ 8:16PM
Roll: 8 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 2 ) VALID
Noel @ 8:17PM
Crypto Security Software [Int 4 Creative + Comp 4, diff 7-1 (Ability Aptitude: Computer)]
Roll: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) VALID
Noel @ 8:17PM
Rerolling 10!
Roll: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail ) VALID
Noel @ 8:18PM
nooo. bad 10.
Noel @ 8:20PM
Data Cleanup Suite (hiding the evidence!) [Int 4 Creative + Comp 4, diff 7-1 (Ability Aptitude: Computer)]
Roll: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) VALID
Noel @ 8:20PM
Rerolling 10!
Roll: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail ) VALID
Cellatus @ 8:28PM
Witnessed!
Cellatus @ 8:29PM
Nice rolls!
Totals:
5 successes on Cracking Software
2 more successes on Cracking Software
4 successes on Encryption
3 success on Data Cleanup