HTP

A CLI-based hacking strategy game/MMO which is deployed on a Linux SSH server. Clients interact through an SSH client. The game should be hosted on a *nix server.

Setup

1. Install an SSH server and allow remote connections: 1.1. Enter the command sudo apt-get install openssh-server 1.2. Make a copy of the config file before changing it:

   sudo cp /etc/ssh/sshd_config /etc/ssh/sshd_config.factory-defaults
   sudo chmod a-w /etc/ssh/sshd_config.factory-defaults
   

2. Install other dependencies with sudo apt install mysql-server python-dev python-pip python-mysqldb libmysqlclient-dev. During installation of mysql-server, make note of the default database password you set.

3. Log into MySQL with the command mysql -u [username] -p, then create the HTP database with CREATE DATABASE htp; and exit MySQL.

4. Load the schema into MySQL with mysql -u [username] -p htp < db.sql

5. Install necessary Python libraries with pip install MySQLdb termcolor yagmail

6. If you are setting up a production server, uncomment lines 36–37 in game.py to disable keyboard interrupts (Ctrl-C, Ctrl-D, Ctrl-Z)

7. Set the htpuser and htppass environment variables to the database credentials the game should use. For example, to set the htpuser password to secr3t you could add the line export htpuser='secr3t' to your ~/.bashrc file.

8. Run the game with python game.py.

Email Functionality

Email can optionally be used for password resets. It uses the yagmail Python library. If you are enabling email, emailuser environment variable should be set to a valid Gmail address, and emailpass should be set to the password for that address.

You may also need to enable Allow Less Secure Apps and Display Unlock Captcha on your Gmail account.

Deployment

1. Create a UNIX user account on the server, e.g. guest.
2. Edit the user's .bashrc file to contain only python /path/to/game.py
3. Run touch .hushlogin in the user's home directory to suppress the login banner
4. Install lshell with sudo apt install lshell. This is used to restrict access to the file system and shell.
5. Add the guest user account to the lshell group with sudo usermod -a -G lshell guest.
6. Enter the command sudo chsh -s /usr/bin/lshell guest to set lshell as the default shell for guest.
7. Edit the file /etc/lshell.conf to look like this:

   [guest]
   login_script    : "clear && python /path/to/game.py"
   path            : /path/to
   forbidden       : ["ls", "echo", "cd"]
   scp             : 0
   sftp            : 0
   

8. Test by connecting to the server via SSH using the username guest. Ensure that you are not able to run any shell commands or view system files.

Future Work

1. Browser-based SSH client which connects to the game
2. Website with connection instructions and information about the game
3. APIs which allow the website to interface with the backend code
4. Fully-featured browser application which can be used in place of the SSH client