Hacking Anomalies

Hacking anomalies are for all intents and purposes information that has been locked up by it’s previous owners who may or may not be returning for it at some point. In order to find and retrieve that information, the following steps must be met.

1 - Find an appropriate Anomaly

To find a Hacking anomaly, you must conduct searches with a Anomaly Probe. Anomaly probes will have a chance of returning several site types, with a hacking site being one of them. In addition to finding these on your own, a player may sell the coordinates of an anomaly on the Galactic Market for a fee. (In order for a Anomaly to be sold it must NOT have been visited by the original finding player.)

2 - Travel to the Anomaly with appropriate Equipment

In order to go to an anomaly, you must have the means to get there, and the means to perform the hacking endeavor. This generally means at a minimum having a hacking module on a ship, while a vessel scan system can be useful in some cases, too.

3 - Conduct Hacking

Once in range, you can begin the hacking mini-game. In order to begin the hack, you will need the access code. This code can be brute forced by your hacking module over time, but each hour that passes you also risk your system being overburdened and having a system failure. In lieu of brute forcing, you can utilize an Privileged Info Chip, which will automatically unlock the first security system.

4 - Retrieve Data

Once you’ve gotten passed the initial lock, you will have to use your Hacking Modules processing power to overcome the Firewalls and Defense software in place guarding the data. This is largely out of your control, and each hour your Module will Deplete the Total Defense Processing Power. However, during that time the item holding the data will also try to restore and improve that depleted processing power using it’s buffer system. The strength of defense software, and it’s reinforcement ability, vary from container to container. The larger your hacking ship is, the better your odds, but the more expensive it is if something goes wrong!

5 - Data Upload

Once you have successfully eliminated the defense systems of the target, you will receive the data in the form of a Datacore. Datacores can contain anything from extractable knowledge to vessel specifications, civilization data, coordinates, and more.

6 - Research or Profit

Once you’ve returned to your home station with your loot, you can opt to either sell the Datacore on the Galactic market, or you can (If you have the appropriate research facilities), conduct research on the datacore to extract what it contains.