Nexus

Nexus are well known to be the best hackers on the planet, despite the fact that they aren't. The military are undoubtedly better. FrostWalker, Perimeter1, K and Twist are all reputedly better. Nexus attempted to recruit all four of them, and regretted doing so.

Nexus works with the corporates, the government, and the military. They have performed multiple high-profile hacks, made billions, have an incredible amount of resources, and a number of assault units, including tanks and attack helicopters. Nexus have a worrying level of military-grade technology and weapons, and reportedly has four data centres buried at the bottom of the ocean, near the poles. The cold helps to cool down their incredible processing and data analysis from the results of their spyware.

Scans to seek out anomalous heat radiating from these data centres failed to find anything however. Though there is a suspicion they might be stored "within the Perimino Ice Shelf itself".

Despite their high profile and being public about their hacks, the military and corporates seem happy to leave Nexus to it, and don't try too hard to track them down, as long as they aren't the target of any of their hacks.

Nexus have a PR wing and appears to be trying to 'legitimise themselves' and distance themselves from a lot of the hacks. They 'sell out' or 'hunt down' non-Nexus hackers. They expose them and are accused of being 'hacker bounty hunters'.

Unknown & The Nexus War

A hacker refusing a request to join Nexus usually ends up with them, or being found dead. Any Nexus hacker who doesn't do as they are told likewise turns up dead, or is sold out and arrested. Again, since the Nexus War, this is now a PR stunt to try to legitimise Nexus. Few are fooled into thinking Nexus are the 'good guys'. However, for most hackers, being offered a place in Nexus is a lifelong goal.

The term 'Ghost Hacker' comes from a hacker called 'Unknown' who managed to pull off incredible hacks and avoid Nexus for six years. She claimed she was 'A Ghost Hacker so good that even Nexus wouldn't find her. The 26 year old girl known as 'Unknown ' was found dead in her seven million credit penthouse suite, six years after that claim. She had been badly beaten, tortured and [CUT]. Before she died, Unknown reputedly gave up all her secrets, scripts, zero-day vulnerabilities, and methods. All her data and servers had been wiped.

The words. "NEXt Unknown ghoSt hacker please?" were found written in her blood on the wall of her bedroom.

The reference to Nexus is obvious, however Nexus claim they had no knowledge of the event, and someone was attempting to 'frame them'. Nobody bought that, given satellite footage showed what was undoubtedly a Nexus attack squad armed with rifles walking straight into the building without even having to swipe an access card. The doors were already hacked and open.

The following day, Nexus provided details of three of the zero-day attacks that Unknown had used to secure her millions. They are suspected of having kept the rest of the zero days secret.

Nexus claims they received an 'anonymous tip off and correctly shared the three zero days to help protect the people'. Again nobody believed that for a second. The fact that the three zero days were also being used by the military was no coincidence. Nexus were instead trying to 'hamstring the military and give them an excuse to lock down the same vulnerabilities the military was using to hack Nexus'. If one group locks down an unreleased zero-day vulnerability, the military focuses in on them. If millions lock down a vulnerability, they have a lot more to focus on.

It is believed that Nexus didn't patch their fix to the zero days for over a week to make themselves look stupid!

This event led to "The Nexus War", which resulted in a stalemate between Nexus and the military. Surprisingly, over time, Nexus started to win the war and became arrogant, mocking the military. This was their biggest mistake. The military was pretending to be stupid and creating honeypots. The military used those honeypots to infiltrate Nexus,  and in the end, they won. However, they didn't take Nexus apart! They put half a dozen of them in prison, then either blackmailed the rest, or put in their own agents. Nexus is "now held on a tight leash by the military".

After that, The Nexus War fizzled out. Nexus still pull of high profile hacks, but they steer well clear of specific targets, such as the military.

Nexus's attempt to kidnap FrostWalker caused further waves, and surprisingly, three Nexus agents were due to be imprisoned for their part in that. They were all assassinated before it went to trial, reputedly by FrostWalker, though some claim they were killed either by other Nexus agents or the military.

TODO. Manifold / Sliver. ex-Nexus

Sliver and Manifold were reputedly Nexus agent before joining Breach. Neither of these claims have been confirmed. However Sliver does have connections to a number of corporates.

TODO. Add from 'FrostWalker'

Nexus attempted to kidnap FrostWalker. They succeeded for around two minutes before the entire Nexus squad was assassinated by an unknown entity (suspected to be Perimeter1). A single woman took out the entire Nexus squad within minutes using a sniper rifle, a pistol and a knife.

After being pursued, they blew up another Nexus van, swapped escape vehicles twice, and were never seen again.

Reports that the back FrostWalker was carrying contained the med-bot known as XIII seem unlikely. However, the incident happened next to a second hand bot dealer and repairman. The camera footage of the shop was wiped at the time, but it is suspected that Nexus did this to create "yet another ghost story".

A rogue AI that dances between the satellites is laughable, and a full security scan of all the satellites in orbit found no anomalies. The simple fact is that "even combining all the satellites, there isn't enough storage to hold such an entity, and the satellites are ring fenced into small clusters to ensure such a thing isn't possible. The security system is designed so that if one satellite were somehow hacked, it would only have access to the other three. It's simply impossible."