Nigel assembled Dark Glider in the correct order determined by the ROT-13 clues that were given by the rouge site administrator. Nigel had no clue if these clues would work and install a dropper that would download malware, but he needed to act fast to level Jake’s account. Nigel had to purchase a new game to proceed with the character leveling. The installation of Dark Glider required a node relay server to protect its anonymity. The easiest way to do that was to install the MORP node relay software. However, there were risks in doing that. There was a slight possibility that it could be traced back to Nigel. What if I set Jake up with this capability?
If Nigel were able to set up Jake with a way to level his character himself, he would be off the hook and wouldn’t need to take any more risks with Jake. All it took was a little hardware, which he had, and some time. Nigel picked up his phone and dialed.
“Hey, I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. You have my level seventy?” Jake asked.
“I do, in a manner of speaking.”
“What?”
“We need to set up something at your place for it to work, not only will you have a level-seventy character, you will have the ability to create your own items and hunt other players. Jake, you there?”
“Yeah. What’s the catch?”
“No catch. You need to promise not to ever contact me or my family again. Deal?”
“Yeah, come over.”
Nigel grabbed a few miscellaneous items to make Dark Glider work with the relay server. He had a small project board kit he had assembled last summer. It wasn’t powerful enough to play games, but would serve nicely as a MORP node relay.
About an hour later, Nigel showed up at Jake’s house with his gear. It took some downloading, installing, and some configuration, but his new MORP dark node relay was ready.
“Is my leveling box ready?”
“Almost, still have to do some finishing touches. Do you know how to access your router's configuration?”
Based on the blank expression that Jake emanated, Nigel decided that he had no clue what Nigel was saying.
“Never mind. I need to get on your computer to finish.”
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Jake pointed at the computer.
Nigel visited a website to get detailed information from Jake’s internet provider. He uses the same provider as me. Perfect. From experience, Nigel knew the default authentication credentials for Jake’s router. He was in.
Jake really needs to change from the default credentials.
A few minutes later, Nigel obtained Jake’s IP address that was reserved for Jake’s house and added it to the MORP relay server configuration. Nigel also placed Dark Glider in the “Colossal Machine Mods” folder.
“Done!” Nigel said.
“Can I level my character now?”
“Let’s try.”
Nigel loaded The Colossal Machine game, entered the username and password he created for Jake, and Jake’s level-five avatar appeared.
“Notice that you are level five still? This is going to change.”
“Hell ya.”
Nigel used a keyboard shortcut command to bring up a text-based menu with information such as location, coordinates, modifications, and other metadata. Nigel typed in the following to activate Dark Glider:
“Load Dark_Glider wit full fury 10.10.1.1 admin changeme.”
This command specified to The Colossal Machine that the Dark Glider was loading with his IP and credentials to the MORP relay server. The Colossal Machine wasn’t supposed to work with code from another machine, but Dark Glider took advantage of an unpatched vulnerability in The Colossal Machine to connect to the MORP relay to hide Jake’s unauthorized use of Dark Glider.
The add-on appeared to be working because he noticed the menu bar where text commands were entered was different. “” was displayed.
Nigel typed, “Initiate accelerate mode level five.”
“Now play your avatar, Jake,” Nigel said.
Jake started playing the character. He immediately started killing things like boars, dogs, cats, and anything that he could use his virtual sword to whack.
“I kill so easily now,” Jake said.
“Yeah, and that’s not all.”
Jake’s sword broke as he was indiscriminately killing everything.
“No worries. Allow me.”
Nigel reached over Jake’s shoulder and tapped in some commands. Jake’s sword was instantly fixed.
Jake just stared, dumbfounded.
“This is awesome!” Jake yelled.
“With the power of the server box, I installed your powers off the add-on. You will reign supreme, but there is one glitch.”
“What’s that?”
“You need to limit yourself to ten levels per day. You also need to move around in the game world, a lot. This is to protect yourself against being found out by the game monitors.”
“Got it.”
Nigel didn’t make a move to leave.
“We are finished. I will leave you and your brother alone. Now beat it, Bonehead.”
Nigel turned to leave, then stopped short of the door.
“One other thing. This is important.”
“What is it?” Jake said as he was killing things.
“You need to keep your MORP software patched.”
“Oh, sure.”
Jake waved a hand toward the door.