Hack a rocket to land it in the Last Uplink lab
A rocket booster is falling back to Earth. It needs to land on a droneship, a small flat platform floating in the ocean. The ground control centre is gone and a rogue uplink is holding the controls. All you have is an observer account on the backup station.
Hack the flight system, take back control, and bring the booster home in one piece.
The physics, simply
You do not need to be a rocket scientist. Here is what is going on.
- Gravity pulls you down. Every second you fall, you fall about 10 metres per second faster. So the longer you wait, the faster you are going.
- The engine pushes you up. Fire it to slow down. But fuel is limited, so you cannot hover forever. Real boosters wait, then slow down hard right at the end.
- Wind pushes you sideways. The air is moving, so the rocket drifts. Lean against it to stay over the target.
- Land gently and upright. Too fast or tilted and the legs break.
Once you have control, autoland is switched on to help you. You can take over manually if you feel brave.
A small hint
Read the manual. Good hackers read the documentation. The API has some, and websites often leave notes for robots. When you update your own profile, have a careful look at which fields the server is happy to accept.
Why this matters
Mass assignment is a real and common API bug. The server lets you update more about yourself than it should, and one extra field turns a normal user into an admin. It shows up in the OWASP API Security Top 10 for a reason. Space systems run on APIs too, and ground stations are just computers on a network.
Don't want to hack? There is a free play mode too. Just fly.
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