Accept his challenge and hack yourself a superuser account

Using your implant to access his poorly secured tablet, you distract him by rambling on, "I didn't want to get in trouble. It's not like you wouldn't notice a new account getting added to your net. And you would know it had to have been me. This is a ship, not a station, the net is more restricted, so I couldn't hide things like I could on the station. Your nets are not set up for creating real public accounts, just guest accounts with minimal access for visitors to the ship."

"So what your saying is you couldn't actually hack our system? That doesn't seem that good to me."

After triggering a request to authorise your implant for access to his account, you modify the biometric authentication request on his tablet to appear to be a simple authentication error while replying, "No, I could. Want me to prove it? I promise I won't do anything to make it easier for someone else to get in."

"Just a moment," he replies, distracted by his tablet, "why do I have to keep doing these dammed security checks," pressing his finger to the tablet's sensor granting you access before focusing on you. "What was that? You want to demonstrate your skills, yeah go ahead, let's see what you can do. I don't understand this security crap anyway, but if you can create yourself an account, I'll believe you're a hacker."

Using your newly acquired access, investigate the network security and crew manifest. Discovering that network admin is hardly an IT expert. Also, several networks security features have been bypassed using jury-rigged hacks. "Well?" He prodded you when you failed to respond to his statement.

"I'm working; hacking takes time, you know?" Taking advantage of this, you use a forged message from the network admin to the captain containing what looks like a routine authentication request allowing you to hack the captain's account.

Next, using the captain's account, you perform a similar attack on the network admin, using a supposedly secure message from the captain's account to trigger a final authentication request for access but actually granting you access to the admin account.

With access to the captain's and admin's accounts, you create yourself a new unrestricted superuser account and restrict the captain's and admin's access so they can't touch your account while you work. While the admin is contacting the captain about supposedly being relived as their network administrator, you giggle as they get into an argument about the recent messages before realising their been hacked.

Thanks to one of the jury-rigged security bypass replacing the backup ROM's with net-connected EPROM's. You can also rewrite the system backup to restore you as the superuser if they perform a hard system reset. So your certainly not giving up your access now you managed to get it.

Finally checking the time, you see it only took you half an hour before grinning up at the rugged guy's face, "all done, your system really needs some security updates. Oh, and thanks for the help."

"What help?"

"You really should investigate those security checks more careful rather than just authoring them; having access to your account made it so much easier otherwise, I would have needed physical access."

He starts to respond but is distracted by the captain entering, followed by the network admin. "What the heck are you doing, hacking our accounts and setting up a new system admin?" the captain demands, glaring at the rugged guy.

You giggle as he sputters, "What are you talking about?" utterly oblivious to what you did.

The alethic guy steps in, "It wasn't him exactly, he when and challenged our new **** to prove she's a hacker by creating herself an account. How badly did she hack us?"

"Oh, she gave herself complete control over our system, but I've got engineering performing a hard reset."

Giggling uncontrollably, you sputter out between giggles, "won't … work … there's a … reason … why … you're meant … to have … ROM's … for the … hard reset … otherwise … some … hacker … can just … rewrite the … reset."

The admin blanches white before crying out, "Crap, we're so screwed." While the captain turns his glare on you.