60
seconds
You sit in a terminal, a network map glows beside you and a red trace is crawling back along your route. Type each command cleanly, crack the firewalls and empty the vault before it reaches your rig.
Every network is a chain of nodes: a gateway, one or more firewalls, a few servers and a vault at the end. The command you need sits dimmed in the prompt line, something like scan --ports 22,80,443 relay-07 or decrypt vault.key --rot 13. Type over it, press Enter, and the terminal answers with port tables, hex dumps and progress bars while the map lights your path one node further.
Meanwhile the security core on the far side of the map sends a trace back along the route toward you. It never stops. Every node you breach shoves it back a little, every typo makes a bit of noise it can follow, and if it reaches your rig the connection drops.
Firewalls throw up a password: a random string of letters and digits with a timer bar under it. There are no words to lean on, so this is pure finger accuracy. Let the timer run out and the hash rotates, the trace jumps and you get a fresh string to try.
Standard starts with short, plain commands and a slow trace, then adds flags and paths as the networks grow. Advanced starts with long lines full of pipes, quotes and braces, mixed-case passwords and a trace that moves noticeably faster. Each vault you crack sends you to a bigger network with a quicker trace, so every run ends with you caught. The question is how many vaults you empty first.
The commands look real but they are made up and harmless. Nothing leaves your browser, and the network names are invented.
No. Every command is shown in full in the prompt line, so you only need to copy it accurately. They are fictional and do nothing outside the game.
The wrong character turns red and the trace creeps forward a tiny amount. Press Backspace to fix it; the line will not run until it matches exactly.
You score for every command run (more for lines with no typos), for each password cracked (more the faster you are), for every node breached and a big bonus for each vault. Later networks multiply everything.