Hacking



Hacking is exploiting a weakness in a computer system or computer network. This way to access terminals is present in Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76.

Overview
The hacking game is similar to Mastermind, a board game. You will be presented with a list of words, all of the same character lengths, interposed with random characters. The length of the words is determined by the difficulty of the lock. The number of words you get is determined by how high your Science skill is (for Fallout 3 or New Vegas) or how high your Intelligence is (for Fallout 4). One of the words is the correct password, and your goal is to guess it.

You choose a word by clicking on it. If you didn't guess correctly, the terminal will display "x/y correct" where x is the number of correct letters, and y is the word length. A letter is correct only if it is in the right spot. For example, if the password is "RELEASED" and you choose "DETECTOR" then you will be told that there are 2/8 correct because there are 'E's in the 2nd and 4th place for both. The words have other letters in common, like 'R', but it is in the first spot in one word, and the last in the other. You have four attempts to select the correct password: if you fail, in Fallout 3/New Vegas you will be permanently locked out; however, if you have the Computer Whiz perk, you will get another try. In Fallout 4, you will only temporarily be locked out, for ten seconds; the maximum rank of Hacker will remove even this lockout.

There are also things you can do with the characters that are not part of words. Clicking on matching brackets (i.e. [] {} <>, even with other characters between, but not a whole word between) can remove a dud password or reset the number of remaining guesses to four. The brackets must be of the same type and on the same line. Although you cannot match brackets with a whole word between them, you can match brackets separated by the dots that appear when a dud word is removed ( <.......> ). Also, two or more opening brackets can be matched to a single closing bracket ("[ [ ]" on a line gives you two chances), but the opposite is not true ("[ ] ]" only gives you one chance). When you scroll across this type of entry from left-to-right, the entire entry will be highlighted letting you know if you've found one or not.

Previous choices are displayed on the right-hand side of the terminal.

To get to the hacking mini-game quickly, you can click the startup screen on the terminal to skip to the next screen. Click once more to load the hack screen instantly. (Note: in Fallout: New Vegas if you back out after your first hack attempt prior to "locking" computer, you must wait even longer for the initial key in prior to the mini-game)

Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas
In Fallout 3 and New Vegas, when the player begins to hack, the Terminal screen will display some words and several symbols. Every word is the same length, and clicking on one will tell the player how many letters out of their selection are in the right spot. For example, if the correct password was "benign" and the player clicked "design," the Terminal would return "4/6 correct." If the player guesses incorrectly four times, they will be locked out of the Terminal. However, the Computer Whiz perk will allow the player to unlock the Terminal and attempt the hack again. Aside from the words on the screen, the player will also be presented with several ASCII symbols. If the player can find groups of symbols in between sets of brackets, such as []. {}. . and <>, selecting them will remove duds, or incorrect passwords, and replenish the number of attempts the player has before being locked out. Strategy-wise, it is best to select one of the possible passwords to see how many letters are correct and then hunt down bracket sets, since the chance of them removing duds is much higher than resetting attempts. A table of Terminal difficulties, their skill requirements, and XP rewards can be seen on the right.

List of hackable terminals (Fallout 3)
For the Data Miner achievement/trophy, you need to find 50 terminals to hack.

List of hackable terminals (Fallout: New Vegas)
For the Hack the Mojave achievement/trophy you must hack 25 terminals

Fallout 4's Terminals act the same way as Fallout 3 and New Vegas' Terminals, however, their uses are expanded to disabling turrets, alarm systems, and various other defenses in raider camps. A table of Terminal difficulties and perk requirements can be seen on the right.

List of hackable terminals (Fallout 4)
For the RobCo's Worst Nightmare achievement/trophy, the Sole Survivor must hack 50 terminals.

Behind the scenes
It is possible to permanently alter the required level of the Science skill for certain difficulties by adding a section to the game's configuration file. Currently this is only known for Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. See the [Hacking] section, especially the fHackingMinSkillAverage setting for the Fallout.ini file.