Earning Money
There are four ways to make money in HackerWars, and you'll lean on them roughly in this order as you grow:
- Viruses — passive income; upload and install them, then come back to collect.
- Missions — one-off paid jobs from NPCs.
- Theft — draining bank accounts and wallets that aren't yours.
- FBI bounties — the occasional reward for seizing a wanted player.
Upload and install an earning virus on a server and it makes money on its own until someone clears it. Do it across enough servers and collecting becomes your main income. There are three earners, each tied to a different part of the server it sits on:
- Miner — runs on the server's CPU and mines Bitcoin.
- Warez — runs on its bandwidth and sells torrents for cash.
- Spam — runs on its RAM and sends spam for cash.
The loop is the same every time, and you'll run it over and over: log into a server, upload and install a virus, clear your tracks, and move on. It's never one-and-done. A virus also has to be reinstalled whenever its server gets cleared or reset. You don't collect server by server, though: the collector software on your localhost sweeps everything you've installed in one go, from Hacked Database → Collect Money. Its version is a flat bonus on the whole haul, so a higher collector means more money from the same viruses.
One habit worth forming early: when you break in, glance at what's already installed. Same-type viruses split that server's earnings between everyone who installed one, so if a box is stacked with miners, install a warez or spam instead and keep the pool to yourself. (There's a fourth virus, the DDoS virus, but it doesn't earn; it powers attacks. That's covered under DDoS & Botnets, coming soon.)
For how viruses actually earn, the same-type split, versions, and picking a type, see Viruses. For which type wins on which server this round, see the switching reference.
Missions are jobs posted by NPC companies: one hires you, you do a task, you get paid in cash and reputation. The task is usually one of a handful: delete a piece of software from another server, steal a file and deliver it, check or transfer money in an account they hand you, or DDoS a target they name. Higher-tier missions involve tougher servers and pay more. Full walkthrough on the Missions page, coming soon.
If you can get into a bank account, you can transfer the money out. Two flavors, very different payouts:
- NPC accounts — often handed to you during missions, or turned up in NPC logs. Each holds a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars: steady, low-stakes pocket money.
- Player accounts — the real score. A player's account number and bank show up in their logs, and the richest moment to catch them is right after they run a collection, which dumps account numbers and Bitcoin keys straight into the log. Sit on an unsuspecting player's logs, wait for that slip, then crack the account and drain it. One good catch can be very lucrative.
Cracking a bank account uses the same cracker you hack servers with; a Bitcoin wallet needs both the owner's public and private keys. This is the offensive side of the log discipline from Hacking 101, and exactly why you clear your own logs religiously.
One caution: never move stolen cash straight into your main account. A transfer writes both account numbers and your IP into the logs, so you'd be handing the next player the very account you just filled. Route it through a throwaway account first. The safe way to launder it lives in Defense & Opsec, coming soon.
The FBI posts a Wanted list of criminal IPs, each carrying a cash reward for whoever seizes that target. You seize someone by DDoSing their hardware down to the floor (covered under DDoS & Botnets, coming soon). Bounties scale with how serious the offense was: most are small, but a player caught running doom can be worth up to around $100,000.
Once in a while the dev also drops busted cheaters onto the list for the playerbase to hunt. That's rare, and bounties won't pay your bills, but it's a bit of money now and then, and sometimes a satisfying target.