How to Start Hacking in Uplink: Hacker Elite

A somewhat lengthy guide to making money fast, covering your tracks and setting up a saved optimum bounce path in Uplink.

Originally written by arbayer2 for his personal website in 2012. Writing the guide stopped for a while due to various reasons, then restarted in 2015.

Unnecessary Disclaimer for Funsies

This guide does not teach you how to actually hack real-world computer systems. I'm too much of an idiot to know how that works. See my attempts at humor below for details.

This game does not teach you how to actually hack real-world computer systems either. I'm not enough of an idiot to not know the difference between the game and reality.

I mean, really, what self-respecting corporation would hire someone who thinks changing their International Academic Database dossier to read "manliest eyebrows in the solar system" as a qualification is a good idea? Well... maybe "Combs 'R Us"... but that'd probably be it.

This game is... kind of... like the hacking in Swordfish. You should watch Swordfish. (You probably shouldn't watch Swordfish.)

This game is fun, though, and is among the best games in the hacking genre. I hope this guide helps you enjoy Uplink for what it is: a Hollywood hacking simulator.

Oh, and another thing: what the hell are GigaQuads?

引用自 arbayer2's Electronic Disclaimer Generator：

Also, this guide is meant for the vanilla (unmodded) version of the game available from retail or Steam. That said, Onlink (a neato total conversion mod with a ton of features), if you can find it, is really awesome and I might end up supplementing this guide with respect to Onlink's feature set at some point in the future.

Section 1 - Getting Started

1. Create a new account (username, password). Go through the Uplink registration process (Gateway assignment, etc.) If you're playing the retail version, you'll be prompted to enter in the correct authorization code prompted by the game, but in the Steam version this has been removed.

2. Take the damn tutorial! It's an extremely useful guide for those new to the game, and to experienced players it's a good way to refresh your knowledge of basic hacking and data theft. On top of that, go ahead and visit InterNIC. This step makes your life as a hacker in Uplink much easier and will be covered in detail later on.

引用自 arbayer2's Brain：

The Uplink Test Machine is also very beneficial, both as a bounce in your bounce path (it's owned by Uplink, you have admin privileges on it after you beat the tutorial and it's overall a good addition to your link list) and as a defense against passive traces (you can easily hack it to delete connection and reconnection logs which are left after each hack you perform).

Once you're done with the Tutorial, feel free to delete the file from your gateway; your link to the InterNIC and the Uplink Test Machine will remain and the Tutorial file takes up precious space in your Gateway's storage.

3. Earn money to upgrade your Gateway. You can usually do this through hacking missions, though hacking a bank and exploiting a glitch in the mission request screen are also very lucrative, more on that exploit in the next section.

4. Get used to covering your tracks. Even though the Tutorial didn't require that you go back and delete your logs, it's an extremely important part of any hack. There are many systems on the Internet which not only attempt to actively trace you during a hack, but also try to surreptitiously and passively trace the hack back to your IP address via your bounce path. I'll go into more detail on this in Section 4.

Section 2 - How to Make Quick Money to Upgrade Your Gateway

If I were you, I'd back up my save(s) before attempting this, as it WILL negatively affect your reputation, and it also tends to clutter up your HUD with email messages from the Uplink Corporation and client companies saying stuff like "Your reputation has been downgraded, we'll find someone else more capable of doing the job, we don't take kindly to failure, blahblahblahblah." Though, this may not bother you with a high enough display resolution, your mileage may vary.

Note to self: Uplink's client representatives all apparently seem to be suffering from short-term memory loss. How tragic, dear me. Is it beneath me to exploit this? Absolutely (not). See below.

引用自 arbayer2's Brain：

1. Connect to the Uplink Internal Services Machine. Log in with your Uplink account username + password.
2. Navigate to Missions. Choose a high-paying mission from the Mission List.
3. Click the "Contact" option for the mission in the Mission List.
4. You'll be connected to a contact via chat. Choose the option "Give me all the money now." The contact will either refuse or accept. If they refuse, refuse the mission and try again. Eventually the contact should allow you to take all payment, and when that happens, accept the mission.
5. When that happens, after receiving payment and mission info, abort the mission. The game automatically deletes aborted mission briefings, clearing up the mail clutter you have, but at the expense of your Neuromancer reputation.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you have enough money to buy any and all essential programs, all at their highest level available.
7. Navigate to the main menu, then Software and purchase in order from most to least important this early in-game IMO (ideally at the highest levels available, to make the best use of your money, reputation and criminal record :P):

• Password Breaker, File Copier, File Deleter, Trace Tracker, Log Deleter
  
• Decrypter, Decypher
  
• Proxy Bypass, Monitor Bypass, Firewall Bypass
  
• Log Modifier, Log Undeleter
  
• Voice Analyzer, Defrag
  
• IP Lookup (I personally have not yet used it in-game, though I believe it is necessary for certain types of missions)
  
• HUD: ConnectionAnalysis
  
• Optional: IRC Client (just in case you're interested in getting into Uplink's IRC channel for yourself, it doesn't really impact the game in any meaningful way except as a communication tool)

引用自 arbayer2's Brain：

Dictionary Hacker is ineffective, slow and generally completely pointless; don't purchase it.
Avoid purchasing the HUD LAN View and LAN Tools until you need them; LAN Hacking is a really complicated process that you don't need to worry about early in the game.

I think the HUD MapShowTrace is rather useless compared to the Trace Tracker, as (IIRC) you only get visual feedback on ongoing active traces, overlaid on your bounce path in the Connection window, rather than both a visual and auditory feedback from the Trace Tracker (beeps faster the further along a trace is and you can get percent complete/seconds until trace timer over a pulsing background sync'ed with that beep.)

So, it may be useful to you, in which case buy it, but I personally don't like it all that much. Though, HUD MapShowTrace has a benefit in that it doesn't cost any computing power, so that's something to consider if you've got a weak Gateway. But if you're like me, with the most powerful Gateway available, the Trace Tracker is still my favorite and isn't too hardware-intensive.

Alright, so having done all this, your rep is probably in the crapper at this point. Let's fix that! But first:

引用自 Reader's Brain... probably：

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

you need to set up a bounce path to connect to your targets while giving you enough time to cover your tracks before you're traced.

Don't worry, your rep can be fixed once you figure out how to hack banks, perform missions involving the Int'l Social Security Database and/or the Int'l Criminal Database and/or LANs, pick your poison.

Ranked from simplest to most complex, ISSD/ICD missions are first, followed by bank hacking, then LANs. Keep this in mind for after you complete Section 4.

We'll go back to the matter of renewing your rep later on in this guide, or at least, in a later guide update, although frankly performing any missions improves your reputation.

Section 3 - Setting up an Optimum Bounce Path

Honestly, this is among the more important things you can do in Uplink that will substantially improve your ability to perform tasks without being traced. In other words, among the more important things you can do in Uplink, period.

The important things to think about are the length of the path (the longer your bounce path is, the more difficult it is for the authorities to trace you actively), access to logs (so that you can break the paper trail leading back to your computer and effectively guarantee your anonymity) and admin privileges (which increase the amount of time any particular trace has to take through a particular system in the bounce path, as well as giving you potential opportunities to intrude other computer systems related to the one in question).

Now, there's more than one optimal bounce path in Uplink, so if my strategy doesn't work as well as another you've found, that's fine! (Actually, in that case, please do share :3) But I've vetted this strategy for years as a path that gives you from about a minute to several of trace delay while also giving you an ultra-convenient place to break the log trail every time you perform a hack in Uplink. I'd say it's a fairly well-known strategy and I hope it helps.

引用自 arbayer2's Brain：

• Go to InterNIC and access its link database (may be called something different in-game, will edit next time I play). Add about 50 links to your gateway's link list. (A guideline, not an exact number, YMMV.) Disconnect.
  
• Open the Connection Window (large globemap in the game's HUD). Be disconnected from all systems while performing this, so you'll be able to choose your first bounce in the bounce path.
  
• Find InterNIC and left-click it, thus adding it to your bounce path as your first bounce.
  
• Keep adding bounces to your bounce path (which will show up as a series of marching ant lines connecting large dots) in the longest, most inconvenient way possible, crossing between continents, taking trips to machines located across the globe when there's nearby machines practically in the same neighborhood, until you've connected all machines to your bounce path.
  
• On your Connection Window, you should see a button labeled "Save".
  
  Click this and this bounce path will be saved to your gateway for recall at any time. You can also overwrite a previous saved bounce path if, for example, you're working on a really complicated multi-system hack and you need to specify a certain series of bounces for, let's say, accessing an Internal Services Machine or database.
  
  The "Load" button will also recall said bounce path whenever you need it, which is really helpful if you just need to connect to somewhere specific quickly with a large trace delay. #bankhacking

Now, this should last you a good while in-game, but there may be machines later in the game you have to connect to for the storyline/whatever your motivation may be which have defense systems in place that are fast enough to active-trace you with 50 bounces if you're not careful. When that starts happening, immediately double-check that you've broken the log trail from InterNIC, to prevent a successful passive trace (banks love these). Then, afterwards, re-connect to InterNIC and add another group of bounce targets to the 50 as needed. It doesn't matter which ones, as long as InterNIC remains the first bounce.

I'd also suggest that you might add Uplink's machines closer to the beginning of your bounce path, that way, you might be able to go back in at a later date when you can hack Uplink's systems, whether for the Andromeda storyline or just for gits 'n shiggles and delete even more logs than just those at InterNIC -- just in case you're feeling paranoid.

Section 4 - Why InterNIC is so useful as a first bounce

Now, to fully explain InterNIC's importance to the game, and to provide context for why you should have visited it around the same time you took the tutorial AND added it to your default bounce path as the first bounce.

InterNIC is, essentially, the Uplink universe's answer to ICANN, web domain registrars and search engines in the real world, unless my knowledge of the Interwebs is more terrible than I imagined.

InterNIC is a central link repository for all Internet-connected systems in Uplink which serves as a public IP lookup service, free to everyone. Ironically, those in charge at InterNIC have a lousy IT guy who doesn't believe in security -- or even doing his job in the first place -- so the only defensive mechanism keeping unauthorized persons around the world out of InterNIC's administrative systems throughout the entire game is a password screen... in which the password never changes and is only eight characters in length.

It may sound laughable... and it is. Try not to let it break immersion. HOWEVER, this is a great opportunity for you, since it gives you probably the easiest-hacked machine in the game as a first bounce, AND it has modifiable logs in the admin area, thus giving you a de facto, accessible anytime, opportunity to break the paper trail from any hack in one place. Not only that, but once you hack InterNIC for the first time you will always have admin privileges on that machine, thus extending the length of time it'll take to be traced through, AND it's a government-owned machine, making the time to trace even longer. All because Thy Holiest Sir King IT-Master III, Esq., etc. decided to fall into a coma or black hole right as the events of the game took place.

Just go to the log manager and use the Log Deleter (ideally at the highest level, as lower-level Log Deleters simply blank out logs and can be used forensically by other hackers to catch you later on in the game) to remove all logs involving your IP's admin logins and reconnections to the second machine in your bounce path. (And if you decide to purchase Log Deleter level 4, you'll not only have the protection of obscured bounce logs, you won't have any bounce logs at all since LD lvl 4 actually deletes log files instead of modifying their contents.)

Congratulations! You're (probably) untraceable! Just be sure to clear these logs after every single hack.You don't need to clear any other logs relating to other users, and in fact, this may screw over your chances of completing certain missions later on, so only delete yours to ensure you're protecting only yourself.

However, be sure that when you're deleting logs, that you don't delete the "IP 127.0.0.1 connected/disconnected" logs. All machines connecting to InterNIC, whether legally or no, leave these logs and by deleting a connection log like this it would look suspicious, since disconnection logs are obviously only added AFTER you disconnect, making them impossible to remove without reconnecting. See the problem there? Having no connection log AND a disconnection log?

I'm not sure if this impacts gameplay at all, but one would think it's probably a terrible idea. It's easy to avoid regardless.

Useful Links

Numero Uno: The Ultimate Uplink Guide![guide.modlink.net] It's a classic staple of the Uplink player community and has been around about as long as Uplink itself. A great comprehensive guide on how to play Uplink. I consulted this gem quite a bit when coming up with both this guide and my strategy for playing the game in general.

Epilogue

Okay, all that said and done, thanks for reading this guide! Feel free to let me know if you have any comments, questions or feedback and I'll do my best to answer them.

Happy hacking!

DISCLAIMER: This guide, along with all of my other guides, is perpetually under construction, subject to change. Feel free to check in from time to time and see if anything's changed!

[arbayer2]

Milk Maiden, I understand. The game's not really been supported with compatibility updates since the original release on Steam. Best advice I have is to set its compatibility mode to Windows XP and its core usage to single-core only. As it's the first major title released by Introversion it also has its fair share of quirks programming-wise especially where display configuration is concerned (it was designed in an era where multi-monitor wasn't really a standardized thing and includes an experimental multimon mode involving using two PCs hosting each section of the multimonitor render window, networked together. Real weird.)

[Desmond T. Doss]

Okay so, I made an uplink account in game, changed the format of the screen or whatever it was to 3690x2480 or whatever the fuck it was, it restarded it self and everytime i try to access that account, i just get 1 frame of an eyeball and it stays on a black screen. Tried this so many times, Talk about a fucking horrible start to a game. It says click the new user button but there is none, ive lost all my fucking patience and cant get a refund because i bought the game a while ago and finally had time to try it.

[arbayer2]

TDM. Al Capone, that's absolutely correct. I mentioned that the Log Deleter was more effective, basically, at its highest level but I should probably go back in and add that point, thanks!

[Gorviglio]

So actully you can delete ANY of the logs in the InterNIC server if you have a log deleter 4 which makes the space look like there wasnt anything there to begin with