Before you touch anything
Every job points you at Meridian — a data broker that got rich holding other people's secrets. Behind each of its doors is a real SQLite database, running in your browser. No simulation, no scripted answers. You break in with a genuine SQL injection, then you learn exactly how they should have stopped you.
The five moves
Every job runs the same arc. You always know where you are in it.
Brief
Neo names the mark and the take — never the method. He points at the door; you work out the lock.
Recon
Case the target's front. Find where your input actually lands. The schema you're shown is never the whole building.
Exploit
The heart of it. Type into the mark's form and watch the real query your input builds — live, on the wire — then run it.
Loot
The take, your score, and how clean you were. Nobody stopped you. That is the whole point.
Debrief
The other side of the job: the vulnerable code beside the fix that closes it. This is the part that makes you dangerous on defence.
Reading the wire
The Exploit screen shows two faces of the same moment. On the left, the ordinary form the victim sees. On the right, the raw SQL your input becomes. Colour carries meaning — and it never rides on colour alone:
Crimson is your input, read as code — the break-out, the moment data stops being data.
Steel blue is the query's own keywords — the structure the system wrote.
Dimmed and struck through is what your comment killed. If it's grey, it never ran.
Controls
- Run your payload with⌘/Ctrl+Enter, or theInject / Runbutton.
- Resetwipes your input and reseeds the database. Every run starts clean anyway.
- Full keyboard navigation throughout.Esccloses any dialog.
Stuck? Call Neo
Every job carries three hints, opened in order: a word, then the method, then the play. They cost score, so spend them like they're yours. Guessing blind is for amateurs and dead men — but a nudge beats staring.
The point
This isn't a game about pulling off crimes. It's a game about seeing the one flaw that makes them possible — so you recognise it in the wild and shut it. You learn the break-in so you can build the lock.