3714/Tidepool: The Stark Hack

Tidepool: The Stark Hack
Date of Scene:	22 January 2018
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Rising Tide tries to hack Stark-Fujisawa with the help of Skye. It turns into a very bad day.
Cast of Characters:	Hawkeye (Barton), Iron Man, Quake

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Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Today was the day RT stepped up its game yet again. The New Years Eve attack had brought the inner circle together for an op. Today saw twelve hackers from around the world working on the same op. Their target: Stark-Fujisawa.

Miles had planned things out carefully. There would be three teams. The first team would be the rookies, the code kiddies, who's job it was to hit some of the peripheral Stark systems with query after query from thousands of infected machines. Easily thwarted, but their job wasn't to set a fire that was hard to put out but set a thousand easy fires, that would take time to track down and put down one by one. At least that was the theory.

The second team would be made up of a better class of hacker. Ones expected to do more than just cause chaos. They'd be lead by Saffron and would be tasked with finding the data on the groups Tony had tracked. Then cause as much damage as they could on the way out of the system.

The first two attacks would provide cover for the third. That one would sneak in without any flare or noise then nab the data on how Tony had tracked down those groups in the first place. That group was made up of the best, Hound, Momento and DarkSky. Those three unlike the rest were together in a covert little data centre in Madripoor, set up with their own gear and able to coordinate by speaking rather than wasting time typing messages while they were in the thick of things.

Things were about ready to kick off.

Of course none of the Rising Tide, besides Skye knew the truth. Stark knew they were coming. Tipped off by SHIELD before the attack. Maria Hill had been the one to deliver the news, and to let Stark know that while they had an asset in on the hack (Stark would know she meant Skye) he was under no obligation to let the hack succeed. Indeed, Hill had concluded her tip off with a smirk as she told Tony to: "Just be you."

Iron Man has posed:
Tony adores hosting parties.

But he prefers them in person, where he can do a big spectacle.
This is another party to him. True, it's an attack as well, which makes it personal. He hates thieves, big time. Brings up memories of weapons stolen from him. So, well, absolutely not cool. Still, a party. It means he's hosting a party against his will for nasty party crashers that keep trying to go into back rooms. But that doesn't mean it isn't going to be the biggest and baddest party of raining bullshit from the virtual sky that these people have ever seen. His back rooms are filled with chainsaws and shark tanks today, as if he were a true sci-fi episode where to get to the back you have to dodge random flamethrowers for no reason.

And boy, is he ready. Tony isn't the most amazing hacker himself, which has never been his claim to fame. It's his inventions and his resources. So, creating the AI to do it for him, with his virtual backlog of various iterations that can be pulled online for this? It will be a screaming pile of erratic entertainment. Sensitive systems are not even active. Tony himself is relaxed in his bunker, listening to his music, with JARVIS set up to network between the other AI exclusively, and to channel all queries into the personal little death-boxes with the other systems that he's set up. And the four teams of his own hired hacker teams to go after these arrivals. Tony has resources beyond what most dream of.
Labyrinth of nonsense set up? Something like that. The internal clocks are set for 13 hours, and Tony will play Goblin King, changing the rules of his realm as he goes.

All queries are usually met with 204 pages of lawyer warnings. That's always the case, though; that's not unusual. Still. Playing the game, if they lose, will bring on the massive law machine to go after all parties that get countered. Stark is going to make some money.
Party on.

Quake has posed:
After her meeting and talk with Clint and May, Skye had rejigged her outlook on this mission. And set up some programs with the help of Oracle. Passive track and trace code that would collect data and send it off as a piggyback on all trapped systems regular outgoings. With Oracle's help, nobody should ever be the wiser. That Oracle got access to this information seemed a fair tradeoff to Skye.

That in place, she was looking forward to this latest job with much more enthusiasm. They'd be hacking Stark; she'd be infiltrating them. It was the perfect marriage.

That and Stark knew that there were coming.

Party on, indeed.

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
So far so good. The hack was just about ready to kick off and so far none of the trap and trace set up had been noted. They were all fixated on the job at hand, it was a big one.

As the seconds ticked down Miles paced the small room of their data center checking this thing and that over Skye and Momento's shoulders until, Momento looked up, tucking a bit of pink frizzy hair under her black knit cap and telling him to sit the fuck down.

Miles gave her a look, but retreated to his chair. The time ran down and he jumped onto the chat they'd set up for the hack to talk to the other teams.

Hound >> Check in.

ZeroPain >> Team One ready.

Saffron >> Red Five, standing by.

ZeroPain >> lol

Hound >> :) Later with the jokes, Saf.

Saffron >> Ready.

Hound >> Okay. Stay chill on this one and remember what you're there to do.

He waits a moment, taking a breath then types in:

Hound >> Go

Computers across the world begin to spring to life as queries are sent flying at the Stark systems like so many arrows as Team One gets to work on their distraction.

At the same time Team Two, begins their own hack, the coming at several doors at once, trying to use the noise from Team One's attack as a cover, so what they're doing gets lost in the spam.

Miles looks at the two ladies in the room with him. "It's starting, so like we discussed, we're going to need to crack that password and get in quick, we've only got a couple of tries, so make it count. Skye, you're on point with that."

Iron Man has posed:
Protections light up without Tony having to do anything. "Our guests are here," JARVIS says serenely. "No doubt they came hungry, but appetizers can wait. Standard denials. Follow plan for now, pretend we don't care they're knocking yet," Stark instructs, yawning, spinning in his chair a little and leaning over to see how much of his pizza is left. A good amount. He wanders from his desk to get a beverage to go with that, taking his time to mix it.

The systems in place to deny spamming attacks of this sort light up evenly and without panic, clamping down on the unusual traffic, and denying the unusual activity. The filters efficiently sort using their highly sophisticated traffic scrubbers.

The first of the teams hired by Stark throwing money around are mostly on this now: the more of these intruding people they trace and corner, the more their bonuses will be! They are highly motivated.

Quake has posed:
It didn't take Skye long to realize what she was looking at: a duplicate of her own action against Hydra.. with some very nice tweaks behind it. Skye had to hand it to Lotus and her backer(s), and they clearly didn't mind throwing all of Rising Tide behind their actions. If anything, it only solidified Skye's thoughtss that this was bigger than STark, and that Miles and RT were being used. What worried her is that nobody else seemed to notice.

DarkSky >> Ready. And watch it. He's tricky. And unethical.

It was a bit nerve-wracking until the hard Go. But after that, it was all work and no play. She'd do her best, because anything less would stick out. That, and Skye knew Tony'd had a heads up on this one. He'd be ready. And the longer she could keep the group at him, the more useful information SHIELD (and Oracle, and Stark) would get. She was hacking for all of them today.

"Enh, it's likely his dick length," she mutters, smirking to herself. Knowing it wouldn't be that, even as she could sooooo picture Tony considering it. If only because he was that sort of jackass at times. It went without saying that she liked him.

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
The plan was indeed a modified version of the Hammerfall attack with more bells and whistles and one major difference, there was no sleeper program buried in Tony's system. At least, none Skye was aware of. So it meant they were counting on her to get them in.

Momento looks up and snorts at Skye's comment. "Not secure enough, even if you type it out two inches, is only nine characters," she snarks before looking over at Skye. "You sure you've got this?"

Getting them in had been Momento's job before Skye joined up. She'd given up the spot, given Skye's knowledge of Stark and his code, but she'd done so grudgingly.

Miles for his part was focused on the work of the other two teams. When Stark's anti-spamming defenses kicked in, Miles typed:

Hound >> Zero. Use the counters I gave you.

ZeroPain >> Got it.

The counter Miles had cooked up masked the attack as legitimate queries and the little fires they'd hoped to cause here and there begin to burn.

Team Two for their part had managed to make it into the lower levels of the system and had begun to poke around for their route to the data. Unaware of the traps lurking behind the doors along their way. As Tony's hired guns circled around to tag them as they beat a retreat.

Miles looks up from his overview of the other teams and nods to Skye. "Do it." Their part had begun.

Iron Man has posed:
Unethical? Maybe. The lawyer shit that roars into the front of the fan they're hacking into makes it damn clear that 'ethics' are different from 'law'. The legalese that spawns and hammers the intruders with screen upon screen and festers is truly terrifying! Small print, doubletalk, repetitive items, it's pretty awful. The essence of it really is 'oh hi, visiting piece of shit, would you prefer jail or enormous fees? Maybe both? We will make that happen for you, unless you are lost, and even then you may get hit with some problems, and our lawyer team will enjoy prolonging your suffering while we extract all your assets that you have or will ever have'.

After wading through that wave - which will take considerable expertise actually, to not just be caught in the net of endless disclosure horror, which will happily infect, even changing system backgrounds into massive warnings, the password is eerily easy to get through. It's '12345'. Really.

Stark is definitely playing with them, it's a direct mock. But, well, the kid gloves come off at that point. "Okay, they saw our 'beware of dogs', send the chompers." They've hacked their way into his maze, rang the doorbell, and now? He's going to lead them around in circles on the lawn. Hopefully with much screaming. It will appear that "the AI" has now gotten involved. The fact that it's about eight of them all working disjointedly will be hidden. Quite a few of them aren't particularly 'sane', there's some crazy Skynet in these various rejected programs. At least one will try to hack backwards very aggressively. One really just wants to play Sudoku. In various languages.

For now, Tony's just overseeing it all, eating his pizza, and delegating. And enjoying himself.

Quake has posed:
Skye isn't bothered by Tony's code walls.

To begin with, that's not her job or her problem. Though she is amused by it all. And how easily distracted they are. It's a bigger picture that they just aren't seeing. Mind you, but bulk of those dealing with his mess are fourth and fifth rate hackers who are pretty much the bodily manifestations of his junk code, only working for Rising Tide. Looked at that way, it's even more amusing, even as it strikes her how sad it all is.

Not that she has a lot of time to spend dwelling on that. She'd got a password to begin to hack. And given the very few choices she's likely to get, her algorithyms and such need to be in place before they hit that wall.

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
The legal threats and infected systems with mile high warnings across the screen did its work and much of team one, the small timers, peeled off to protect their limited assets. Some of the hired guns move to chase them, hungry for that bonus and small fry or big names a cheque was a cheque.

Miles cursed, "Losing Team One." A few stayed and fought it out but they were overmatched and flagged, adding to the hired gun's bonuses.

Team Two though was dealing with the AI's who turned their world upside down and came at them from every direction. At the same time the remaining hired guns closed in, trying to force them through trapped doors where tagging them would be that much easier.

Two of them though seem to vanish. A flag being sent up to Tony from the AI that the two were connected but currently unfindable.

Miles, bit his lip. "Skye, get me that password!" he shouts as he let's his lip go. "I am going to have to try and help with these damn AI. Momento, cover her back."

Miles really gets to work then, letting lose with attacks to turn the AI's twisting of the system back on themselves, hoping their limited brains wouldn't be able to parse what was what giving his second team a chance to keep going.

Iron Man has posed:
The reward for discovering the password is musical, as suddenly she has it! ... Tony couldn't resist, not after the last little hacking game where he threw in some music. And he's bizarrely good at forcing audio into things that should be immune to such hack. A weird talent, but he makes the most of it. Constantly.

"RELAX, DON'T DO IT, WHEN YOU WANT TO GO TO IT"
"RELAX, DON'T DO IT, WHEN YOU WANT TO COMEEEEE"

Which, of course, is packed with lovely innuendo over the penetration of the defenses occurring right now, and prolonging it. Prime mockery from Tony.

Quake has posed:
It was a bit of a surprise when the password fell into place, Skye pausing for a moment in the half second before the audio kicked in, the sound pouring out over her end of the hack.

She laughs outright. "Oh, you bastard."

It was clever on several levels, and she had to admit the beauty of it. Even she hadn't thought to disable audio on her rig. In some situations, that sudden burst of sound wouldn't only be a startle to the unexpecting hacker, but an alert to anyone nearby in situations where you might not exactly want someone to hear you.

Of course there was the unnendo, too. The mocking of what they were doing. So meta, Tony. So. Meta.

She'd not had a chance to go head to head with him before. She was soooo going to enjoy this. Everyone else might think she was merely pleased about getting in, but the truth was, she and Tony were about to have a fun afternoon.

DarkSky >> In. Watch your backs.

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Miles and Momento's heads snap around when music starts playing from Skye's rig. "What's happening?" Miles demands. Music? That couldn't be a good sign.

For the rest who can only see the chat, a chorus of good lucks and so forth come back to Skye. Well, from those not currently engaged with the AIs or the hired guns. No words of support from Saffron or Genus either though and nobody had any idea of what those two were doing in the system right now. Only that they were connected and somewhere in the lower levels trying to dig up access to more loftier levels of access.

Miles for his part, is keeping the AIs busy, leaving them all but spinning in place, his fingers a blur on the keyboard as he tries to keep on top of things and give team two some time to get their job done.

When Skye gets in Momento follows, snorting when she sees the password. "Seriously?" she asks.

Then when she's in, she unleashes a few of her own toys, placing code like mines in the inner workings of the Stark system to cover their retreat. While setting loose programs that start sifting files for the data they're looking for.

Iron Man has posed:
"Hold onto your butts," Tony says aloud, amused, keying in a few sets of triggers, skimming his hologram screens, watching his little playgrounds being entered. How long will he occupy them? But part of this is to determine the style of each entrant, sort them, and apply appropriate counters. Will one of them be Skye? He'll watch for markers from her, he has algorithms set up to expect certain behaviors. While he hadn't paid all THAT much attention to her style, he did have old encounters logged, so the resources were there to form up something decent.

"Sir?" JARVIS asks, questioning.

"Let AUDREY loose. Good test for her anyway," Tony instructs JARVIS. His method of 'head to head' involves throwing his tech in large doses. "But keep an eye on her, JARVIS." The AI 'AUDREY' was built to battle hacking attempts in his suits in battle situations, not this, so she's going to be unpredictable for all, though Tony has confidence, seeing as he wrote her.

She starts to walk into those code-mines, which causes problems for everyone, including him. "Well, okay," Tony says, bemused. "That's one way to clear a minefield, I guess."

Quake has posed:
Skye chuckles at Momento's disbelief. "Seriously. And sooo Tony."

She's off and running, then. There's a list of things they're looking for. She's got specific targets, and while Skye doesn't expect that she's going to get them, she's going to try. Or at least make Tony work for his bumping her out of his system.

He was looking for her? She was looking to learn from him.

That, too, set her apart from the others in Rising Tide. Most of them weren't savvy enough to be looking at this as a learning opporutnity. Momento would. Skye knew that much already. Miles.. She wasn't sure about him. He was too ego driven to be looking at this job as anything but a testament to his manhood. He was a smart coder, and wonderfully brilliant in many ways, but it was a shortcoming in his makeup. Prone to the temper tantrum first and the 'how can I use this for myself' last.

While Miles' fingers were a blur, hers were a steady stream of movement over the keyboard, eyes a constant motion between windows, watching code bits fly by and reacting to those that needed her attention, slowly winnowing down the windows to the ones she expected were going to be where he came at her.

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
"Jesus," Momento breathes as AUDREY wades through her code bombs ripping the code apart as it tries to execute. Some of it gets through off, one of Tony's holo screens blanks out, accounting is going to be treated to the 1990's dancing baby gif when they come into work tomorrow, and sprinklers start going off on levels, three, six and ten.

"That's so freaking cool," Momento says as her screen shows her just what AUDREY is doing to her code. Yep. Skye was right about Momento. Definitely a learning experience for her.

"DS, circle back and give me a hand with this thing."

On Tony's remaining screens data was flooding in about the remaining attackers as the algorithm did its work. First off, it told Tony what Skye might have been able to about Miles the one who was wrecking shop on the lesser AIs. Definitely ego driven. If he sees an opening, he's going to go for it.

The rest that they can detect run the gamut but for the most part, they're just extra zeroes on the hired gun's bonuses. Easily delegated.

Two other pings are of note however, one indicating one of the intruders in the higher level systems showed 82% likelihood of being Skye and that the missing two intruders were digging around in the code that controlled the building audio systems.

Iron Man has posed:
"Changing my mix? Nope," Tony signals JARVIS with annoyance, but his tone is amused. "Finish those two out," Tony instructs, finally allowing JARVIS, the most sophisticated of his AI, to throw some hard weight in against those that DARE go after his audio, while he moves to drop a challenge in front of Miles, to coax him off-track: a snippet of something that might be a new weapons system, the GL-44 Missile Bay for tactical vehicles, as a temptation. It isn't, of course, as good as it looks: it's a very elaborate failure of ideas about a weapon system that actually self destructed in a horrible bomb. The results of that test aren't in the files, though. Hopefully Miles will enjoy selling THAT expensive disaster, if he does manage to hack in and get any pieces of it. Looks juicy, and that's what matters.

And then there's what is probably Skye. Tony starts to come after her, locking off pieces along the way. He knows his own systems: home advantage, even if he's not a miracle hacker, and does know which ones are inactive, and which are deliberately replaced with entirely scrambled data. He'll appear to heavily block those as if reactionary, which, of course, will draw interest there.

Quake has posed:
*pfffft*

This isn't Skye's first trip to that rodeo. She's done this a lot more than Tony has. He may have home system adavantage, but she knows her job. At least enough not to be drawn in by the sudden blocks.

He forgets, too, who'd helped clean and restructure SHIELD's systems. Sure, they weren't JARVIS or AUDREY, but she was more than passingly familiar with sleights of code hand and meaningless code chatter. Nope. She was going for what she'd have done, or some varient: Just your everyday, seemingly innocent and innocuous flags along the way.

She might make missteps, but even those she'd add to her program to glean the likelihood of success with the remainder.

That was the thing about this. The system would be static and ultimately predictable. It was the man behind it who was dynamic. All she had to do was watch for Tony.

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Miles takes the bait, the GL-44 wasn't on the shoppling list, but data is data he moves to grab it before the AI's close in and trap him, in a twisting maze of shifting names and ports. "Shit!" he curses hammering at his table with a fist before typing furiously. "I'm getting burned guys."

Momento too is having troubles. AUDREY's after her and while she's throwing up blocks and is delves deep into her stash of code but none of it puts much of a dent in the AI built to defend Tony's armour from Ultron level hacking. "Crap, crap, crap," she says. "DS, time to go!". She sacrifices her searching programs before the AI's wrath to buy her time to escape untraced. When she's disconnected, she sits back, breathing heavy. "Sorry, guys," she says to Miles and Skye, though it's doubtful either are listening.

JARVIS has no problem ousting the hackers from the audio system, he does report back on their locations, one in Vietnam and the other right here in NYC.

With Miles still fighting a holding action with the minor AIs. Skye is pretty much on her own.

Iron Man has posed:
"JARVIS, end game," Tony requests, finally, stretching his neck and finally putting his attention where it really belongs. To... sending a message to Clint. "Got a message for Skye?" Tony asks Clint.

Flanked by two high potency AI, Tony will then divert to Skye's actions, helping to corral the wayward hacker.

JARVIS is nice enough when he shows himself to Skye; easily the first to act. JARVIS is /fast/. AUDREY is on the way as well, dragging a minefield of crap with her she's going to vomit all over the intruder. Less nice, when she does finish what she was doing. She's quick, and on the hunt. She's created to hunt.

"If you do not desist, measures will be taken," Is the nice message from JARVIS, as AUDREY roars in.

Quake has posed:
"You say that like I don't already know," Skye murmurs, frowning when Momento calls it and starts backing out, telling Skye to turn tail and run as well. "However, before I go..."

Really, it was all gravy now. She didn't have to do much more of anything now that the others had called it quits. But every keystroke from this moment on bought her points with whoever it was behind recruiting Miles. And those were the people who's time and attention Skye wanted.

<<Tell Tony Buttercup sends her love>>

Smirking as she types that one out and sends it along the datastream Tony's way. She chose a data direction and followed it, hoping for a door to open. Any door. At this point she wasn't getting what RT wanted.

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Clint was bored, maybe a little buzzed, and poking at Avengers fan sites when Tony's message came through. He'd been looped in about Skye and he knew she'd be coming for Tony with the rest of the RT but he didn't know when. It seemed like the answer was now. Despite having seen her a few days ago, there was so much he wanted to say, but so little of it was stuff he was going to say through Tony. But he did find a message and fires it back quickly adding a picture.

~Tell her Merida says hi~

And the picture: https://imgur.com/a/6JFmf

The group shot made it less of a give away in case any of Skye's hacker buddies saw it.

He fires off the message then he sits back and waits.

Miles battle goes how one might expect. Though he's savvy enough he slips through the AIs and the hired guns before they can trace him. But he's still surly when he disconnects slamming both fists down hard on his desk.

Momento though gets up to hover over Skye's shoulder watching the action.

Iron Man has posed:
Tony catches that nonsense from Clint, rolls his eyes, and snorts.

...And places it in a file marked with interesting characters, mildly encoded, about special Avenger data. It is a bunch of awful fanart, in addition to the piece Clint just provided.

<< Merida says hi. Tell your friends to kiss my shiny metal ass >> Tony sends along to Skye before drawing in the AI. AUDREY is the first on mark, and between them, they abruptly are tossing her out on the digital curb, in a final fanfare of 'COOOOOOOOOOOOOMELiu (talk)' from 'Relax'.

Quake has posed:
The data package is caught. Skye's no doubt it's going to be some form of Tony snark - she's met the man, after all. He's the one sent her for pizza, with his 50 bucks, before he'd talk to her. Which reminded her...

<<Haha. But I'll pass the message along. Oh, guess what? Keeping the money you gave me. Tell Reggie it's on.>>

She wasn't sure if Tony would follow that part of that message was for Clint. Or if Clint would understand the coded message in her retort. But she knew Tony would remember the grand he'd given her to buy lunch with the next time they had a chat. She was pretty sure this didn't count, though. Kinda hard to enjoy a Chablis over the net.

She didn't even try to do anything else. It was a hardline pull from the system, a pull that was helped by the twin powers of JARVIS and AUDREY who showed her the curb. Leaving Skye laughing in her seat, shaking her head.

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Mles didn't have time to get out of his seat before Skye was out of the system. To say he wasn't please by the Rising Tide's performance tonight was an understatement and for all his rage there was an undertone of worry too. Momento for her part, merely shrugged, "Dry run for the real deal anyhow, right? And they don't have monster AIs. We got this H."

Skye is given a nod of respect. "You do good stuff, DS. And you got to tell me how you owe Stark money,"" she says before they have to collect their gear and bounce. They weren't traced but it was always safe to assume you were.

The rest of the crew wasn't so lucky. When all is said and done, Stark's hired hackers had traced six of the hacks and JARVIS had done two more.

In all it was a heck of a party.