4-010: Aboard Snark 416 – Oliver’s Cabin
Oliver removes the device from the computer. Once it is removed he can access a small switch that arms or disarms it and he can make it safe – it was armed. The sensor on the side seems to be a smoke detector.
With the fingerprint sensor bypassed (it operates at a hardware level and enables the storage module’s interface), he can try and get past the password protection.
- He can try a human engineering approach, guessing passwords Argyle might have used.
- Advantages: If he gets it right the computer will think he’s Argyle and give him access as Argyle would use the machine.
- Disadvantages: Where to begin? If he fails too many times he might lose the data.
- He can try a technical approach, effectively trying to fool the storage module’s interface into thinking he has given it the password or worming the password out of wherever it is stored inside the device (we’ll leave exact details of how he does that to Oliver’s expert knowledge).
- Advantages: Likely to be the fastest approach, if he does it well he can replicate the Argyle experience, even if he does it less well he should still be able to access all the data.
- Disadvantages: Riskiest approach, most likely to accidentally destroy the data. He might not get access to the interface as Argyle would see it, but only the data in the storage module.
- He can try a brute-force attack on the drive password, trying billions of combinations until he unlocks the storage module (he can probably do this in such a way the fails won’t lock him out.)
- Advantages: Likely to eventually lead to success. He might or might not get access to the interface as Argyle would see it.
- Disadvantages: Slow. Might tie up his laptop or PDA for quite a while. A small risk of losing the data.
- With better/different equipment he could try an engineering approach, essentially dismantling the storage module and bypassing the security layer to get at the data.
- Advantages: Safest. Almost impossible to lose data.
- Disadvantages: He doesn’t have the equipment right now. The hardened hardware makes this a bit more tricky than usual. He probably won’t get access to the interface as Argyle would see it.
Let me know which approach(es) would he like to try and give me some rolls.
I’ll do the “Brute Force” which sounds safest and currently possible. If Oliver can program both the laptop and the PDA to tackle the computer at once without getting in each others way, as well as being automatic that would be optimal.
Sidenote: I’m happy to have “roll requests” to be a comment over a new post to save clutter, up to you though.
I assume I’ll need to roll though, I’m not sure how many times.
I did 6… Not too good… 14 13 15 10 10 10 in that order