Operation Shopping Hacks is the chapter-ending Story Mission of Ch. Underground in MW4 DMZ, played at NuriGO Mall in Hajin. You hack a laptop at Lieutenant Jang-ui’s encampment, use the code it gives you to open mall security, power the lab door with four K9 Battery Cores, breach five lab computers, loot the lab’s vault and leave from the rooftop exfil. We ran it on October 20, 2026, the first day of DMZ early access, and it took us about 17 minutes.
Most of that is straightforward. The lab door is not. Only a core you grab from a K9 robot dog before it explodes will power the door, and that one detail is where most squads get stuck.
- Where: NuriGO Mall, threat Medium, chapter-ending mission of Ch. Underground.
- Gear: 2-Plate Armor Vest, Medkit and Night Vision Goggles recommended. NVGs are optional, we did it without.
- Code: the encampment laptop gives you a code for mall security (ours was 3129).
- Lab door: needs 4 K9 Battery Cores. Loot the core from a K9 before it explodes, or you only get a useless Destroyed K9 Battery Core.
- Lab computers: when one shows ERROR DETECTED, restart the hack. The breach timer only moves with the computers running.
- Rewards listed: Coin Mining Den key, Night Vision Goggles, $25,000 cash.
Operation Shopping Hacks at a Glance
The briefing sends you after Lieutenant Jang-ui’s encampment in the shopping district, which Overlord suspects is tied to the enemy’s weapons program. Your job is to find out what that weaponry is.
| Detail | What the game shows |
|---|---|
| Location | NuriGO Mall, Hajin |
| Story Chapter | Ch. Underground (chapter-ending Story Mission) |
| Threat assessment | Medium |
| Recommended equipment | 2-Plate Armor Vest, Medkit, Night Vision Goggles |
| Main objectives | Hack the Network, Reprogram the Protocol, Secure any Evidence |
| Rewards listed | Coin Mining Den key x1, Night Vision Goggles, $25,000 cash |
| Our run | About 17 minutes of radiation countdown, Rating A |
Click to enlarge The mission select screen for Operation Shopping Hacks. 
This is the longest of the three chapter-ending Story Missions we have played so far. Our radiation countdown read 29:57 at infil and 12:45 at Mission Complete, and we had taken down 50 hostiles before the banner popped.
How to Start Operation Shopping Hacks
Open Select Deployment and pick Story Missions, then choose Ch. Underground on the Choose a Chapter screen. Each Story Chapter has 2 pages and 6 DMZ Orders, and Operation Shopping Hacks is the mission that closes this chapter. Once you have finished it, it also joins the pool for Random Story Mission, which runs at Medium to Extreme threat and requires squad fill.
Click to enlarge Ch. Underground ends with Operation Shopping Hacks. 
The other two chapters end with Operation Critical Extraction (Ch. Human Intel) and Operation Silent Ledger (Ch. Counterfeit). If you want to know the mall’s surroundings before you drop, our Hajin map guide covers every POI.
Operation Shopping Hacks Walkthrough
The steps below use the exact objective names the game shows, in the order they appeared in our run.
1. Approach the Encampment
You spawn on the tram near NuriGO Mall. Head for the marker. The encampment sits inside a building at the mall, and expect a few enemies on the way in.
2. Hack Laptop at Encampment
The laptop is on a counter by the window inside the encampment building. Hold the interact button (F on our PC) to hack it. The objective then switches to Standby for Overlord’s Data Analysis, which only takes a few seconds.
Click to enlarge The encampment laptop with the Hold to Hack prompt. 
3. Use the Code to Unlock Mall Security
Overlord’s analysis gives you a code, and it shows up right in the objective text. Ours read Use Code 3129 to Unlock Mall Security. Use the code your own objective shows, since we cannot confirm every run gets the same one.
The route to mall security runs through dark storefronts. We passed a Ghost Shipment operation and the Capture SAM Site side op on the way, and luggage containers along the route are full of Chemicals and Synthetics. Near the office there is a note saying the Mall Security Office is locked for bot core v2 testing, which is your first hint at what comes next.
Click to enlarge The code appears in the objective text. Ours was 3129. 
4. Explore the Security Annex
The Security Annex is pitch dark. Turn on the generator first for extra light, then find the laptop on the workbench next to the robot parts and hold interact to decrypt the note. An Activate UAV Tower side op also shows up around here.
Click to enlarge Turn on the generator before you search the annex. 
5. Power the Lab Door with Robot Cores
This is the K9 Core Terminal next to the lab door, with four empty slots and an objective counter at 0/4. The note taped beside the door says the lab is locked down for testing the output of the robot dog K9 power cores. You need four working K9 Battery Cores, and the next section explains how to get them without wasting half your countdown.
Click to enlarge The K9 Core Terminal needs four cores. 
Once all four are in, the objective switches to Wait for the Lab Door to Open.
6. Hack Into 5 Lab Computers
Inside the lab there are five computers to hack. After the fifth one, the NuriGO Mall Robotics Lab Network Breach banner fires and a breach timer starts. Laptops drop out during the breach and need a restart while enemies push the room. More on that below.
7. Wait for the Lab Servers to Reboot, Then Loot the Lab’s Vault
When the breach finishes, the lab goes dark with a Scrambled banner and you wait for the servers to reboot. Then the objective changes to Loot the Lab’s Vault, which is inside a lit tent in the lab.
Looting the vault is what moved our objective on to the exfil. The laptop on the desk in the vault room holds intel, a Project K9 internal research log marked Eyes Only, which says one sample remains in secure storage and more shipments went to other locations. We read it after the exfil objective was already up, so grab it on your way out.
Click to enlarge The Project K9 research log in the vault room. 
8. Escape to the Rooftop Exfil
Head up to the roof. There you attach yourself to a balloon, a plane flies by to pick the balloons up, and the mission completes. A Chemical Storage container on the way had Nitro Compounds in our run, so check it if you pass.
Our squad did not leave together. Part of the team went to a different exfil without waiting, and the mission still completed for us. Our Mission Complete banner came up while we were out on the street by City Hall.
Click to enlarge Mission Complete, with City Hall in view. 
Click to enlarge A Commander Deathstalker showed up at NuriGO Mall right after. 
How to Get Working K9 Battery Cores for the Lab Door
This is the step that stalls most squads in Operation Shopping Hacks. The mall has machines that spawn K9 robot dogs, and the robots carry the cores. The problem is what happens when you take one down. A K9 explodes shortly after it goes down, and if you loot the core after that explosion, you get a Destroyed K9 Battery Core. That item does nothing for the lab door.
The fix is speed. Take down the K9, run straight to it and pick up the battery core before it explodes. Only then do you get a real K9 Battery Core, a blue Rare item described as used to power robots and door circuitry. Do that four times and the terminal is full.
| Item | Rarity | How you get it | Powers the lab door |
|---|---|---|---|
| Destroyed K9 Battery Core | Common | Looted from a K9 after it has exploded | No |
| K9 Battery Core | Rare (blue) | Looted from a K9 right after you take it down, before it explodes | Yes |
Click to enlarge A Destroyed K9 Battery Core. Common, and useless for the door. 
Click to enlarge The Rare K9 Battery Core is the one you want. 
That is exactly what trips people up, because the destroyed core looks like the right item until you read its name. We got our working cores from the K9s in the mall atrium, and by the time we were hacking the lab computers we still had nine working cores in the backpack, so there are plenty once you loot fast.
Click to enlarge K9 robot dogs in the mall atrium are a good source of cores. 
Check the item name before you run back to the terminal. If it says Destroyed K9 Battery Core, it will not count. Look for the blue Rare K9 Battery Core.
The 5 Lab Computers and ERROR DETECTED
The second sticking point is the network breach. After all five lab computers are hacked, the objective turns into a breach timer with a Computers Running counter. Laptops keep dropping out with an orange ERROR DETECTED screen, and the timer stalls while they are down.
Walk up to any laptop that stopped and hold interact to restart the hack. Restarting quickly is what makes the breach go faster, because the ETA only counts down properly with the computers running. In our run it read 123 seconds with 3 of 5 running, and once we kept all five going it finished in roughly a minute and a half. Enemies and K9s keep coming during the breach, so in our run one squadmate held the room while the restarts got done.
Click to enlarge Restart any laptop that shows ERROR DETECTED. 
Operation Shopping Hacks Rewards
The mission select screen lists three rewards for Operation Shopping Hacks. The Ch. Underground chapter screen adds a separate set of chapter rewards for completing the chapter.
| Source | Rewards shown |
|---|---|
| Mission rewards (select screen) | Coin Mining Den key x1, Night Vision Goggles, $25,000 cash |
| Chapter rewards (Ch. Underground) | DDOS recipe, Decoy Grenade recipe, Night Vision Goggles recipe, 20,000 cash, Basic Restock Kit, Operator Rescue Beacon |
On cash, the numbers do not line up. The select screen lists $25,000, while the after-action reports from our Story Mission runs showed a Story Mission Payout of $5,000. We are reporting both as we saw them.
The run itself graded an A. One completed mission was worth 12,500 XP, we finished with 65 hostiles taken down and 12 loot containers opened, and it pushed us from DMZ level 9 to 10, which unlocks the Gunsmith.
Click to enlarge Our after-action report, Rating A. 
Loadout and Squad Tips for Operation Shopping Hacks
- NVGs are a nice-to-have. The game warns you before deploy if you have none, but we finished the mission without them. They make the dark storefronts and the annex easier, and the generator covers the darkest room. Activision’s own Hajin intel guide recommends NVGs for the underground mall as well. Do not skip the mission because you lack a pair, especially since the mission rewards you with one.
- Bring the 2-Plate Armor Vest and Medkit the game recommends. The atrium fight for cores and the breach both throw a lot of enemies at you.
- Loot the cores fast from the start. Grab every working K9 Battery Core you can, even past four, so a teammate’s mistake does not send you back to the atrium.
- Agree on one exfil before you leave the vault. Our squad split up at the end, and it only worked out because the mission completed anyway.
- Do not relax after Mission Complete. A Commander Deathstalker spawned at NuriGO Mall right after ours, when we were down to two players and low on ammo.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Operation Shopping Hacks in MW4 DMZ?
Operation Shopping Hacks takes place at NuriGO Mall on the Hajin map. It is the chapter-ending Story Mission of Ch. Underground, and you start it from the Story Missions deployment in the Select Deployment menu.
How do you get K9 Battery Cores for the lab door in Operation Shopping Hacks?
Take down a K9 robot dog and pick up its battery core right away, before the robot explodes. That gives you a K9 Battery Core, a blue Rare item. You need four of them for the K9 Core Terminal at the lab door.
Why does the Destroyed K9 Battery Core not work in MW4 DMZ?
A Destroyed K9 Battery Core is what you get when you loot the core after the K9 robot has exploded. It is a Common item and it does not power the lab door. Only the Rare K9 Battery Core counts toward the 0/4 objective.
Do you need Night Vision Goggles for Operation Shopping Hacks?
No. The game recommends them and warns you before deploy if you have none, but we finished the mission without them. They make the dark mall and Security Annex easier, and the generator in the annex gives you extra light anyway.
What is the mall security code in Operation Shopping Hacks?
The code comes from the laptop you hack at the encampment, and the objective text shows it once Overlord has analysed the data. Ours was 3129. Use whatever code your own objective shows.
What are the rewards for Operation Shopping Hacks in MW4 DMZ?
The mission select screen lists a Coin Mining Den key, Night Vision Goggles and $25,000 cash. Our after-action reports for Story Missions showed a Story Mission Payout of $5,000, and the mission itself gave us 12,500 XP.
