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Neutrino transceivers and TITANs

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Thu, 2010-09-09 03:06

root

Neutrino transceivers and TITANs

root@Neutrino transceivers and TITANs [hr] I feel like there is a security risk for neutrino transceivers being used as a way to spread the Exsurgent virus. If neutrino transmissions can't be blocked, there is no way to stop a TITAN signal other than nuking the source from orbit (it's the only way to be sure). The only security measure I can see it to simply not accept communications that aren't being expected, but that sort of defeats the purpose of an emergency egocasting. On the other hand, I really don't think I would be comfortable living in a facility that has a neutrino transceiver dangling open to the waves with fat enough bandwidth to accept an egocast.

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Thu, 2010-09-09 11:41

TBRMInsanity TBRMInsanity's picture

Re: Neutrino transceivers and TITANs

Juan Posts: This is why the Jovian Republic doesn't accept outside transmissions unless they have been previously authorized, and then only to an isolated receiving station first so it can be scanned for TITAN tech (or other threats) before being allowed onto the Jovian Mesh. To date our intelligence agency has successfully stopped thousands of unwanted outbreaks from entering the Jovian Republic.

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Thu, 2010-09-09 13:27

Rhyx

Re: Neutrino transceivers and TITANs

Yeah the way I'm starting to see people viewing EP is kind of disturbing, it's like everything is poised to become Skynet any second. I don't think that's the case at all. People seem to forget that a program has to RUN in order to work. In suspension it's just 1's and 0's waiting there. I'm sure there are ways to taking an incoming transmission (or egocast in this case) and putting it in a kind of quarantine behind some kind of firewall until it gets looked over by an authentication program. (or maybe the encryption key is half in the ego and half in the receiver. If the Ego has the wrong encryption key, too bad so sad...you're in cold storage.) I mean with that logic (that neutrinos cannot be stopped) we would be unable to have radio transmission here on earth because the same thing is going on with radio wave, they are ubiquitous. But our answer to that is bandwidth, and if neutrino comms can have bandwidth (actual or simulated by encryption key as stated above) I don't see a problem.

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Fri, 2010-09-10 09:39

Sepherim

Re: Neutrino transceivers and TITANs

Problem is that, to a point, exurgent virus is able to break the laws of how "it's supposed to work". Afterall, it is one of the key horror/terror elements. It may be a program that needs to run... it may be a program that doesn't need to be run. So I do imagine that many of those that have come in contact with the exurgent would develop quite a lot of paranoid tendencies like those mentioned for the Titanian Commonwealth, or not feeling safe if their station has this or that like root mentioned. Gratefully for society, most people haven't heard that anything like the exurgent even exists...

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Fri, 2010-09-10 13:16

Snap_Dragon Snap_Dragon's picture

Re: Neutrino transceivers and TITANs

Sepherim wrote:
Problem is that, to a point, exurgent virus is able to break the laws of how "it's supposed to work". Afterall, it is one of the key horror/terror elements. It may be a program that needs to run... it may be a program that doesn't need to be run.

This quote reminded me of a panel on writing Horror I attended at GenCon last month. The basic premise of horror is the shepard the reader from the safe and well known into the dangerous, unknown and horrifying. During this process suspension of disbelief is paramount to a successful horror story. Things need reliable non-arbitrary rules in order to work, and they need to be believable. Ergo you establish things, you don't pull them out of your pants as needed. You stick to known rules and patterns of behaviour. Take for example Star Trek, it will never be horrific: 1. You're on the bridge of the enterprise, things are peachy. 2. Cthulu shows up. 3. Things are not peachy. 4. Someone pulls some random technobabble out of their ass. 5. You're on the bridge of the enterprise, things are peachy. Compare that to: 1. Town has a local legend about a creature that only comes out at night. 2. Old Mr. Tamersham complained of a staker outside of her window the night before she was murdered. 3. You are in your den posting to a forum when you hear a scratching at the window 4. It's a windy day and you hear a scratching at the window, its the branch of a near by tree. 5. It's night, you are still posting when you hear another scratching noise, is this one slightly different? 6. You look over to the window and briefly see a pair of yellow eyes. 7. It's the next night and it's dark and windy, you hear a scratching at the window...

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Fri, 2010-09-10 15:36

alpha

Re: Neutrino transceivers and TITANs

I agree that software needs to be run, there can be no exception to that. Just storing an ego on a backup doesn't run it. The ego is in an inactive state. If it would be active the ego would be driven insane almost instantly. So it's safe to assume the exsurgent virus has to be run as well. None the less for an infection the exsurgent virus doesn't need to break the laws of "how things are supposed to work". A computer virus of today is not different from an unwanted transmission. It uses weak points in the receiving software to force the software to run the virus. The exsurgent virus will work just the same, what means sufficient security measures will greatly reduce the chance of infection. But as transhumans and ordinary AGIs are very error prone even in a high security system there is a chance of encountering an exploitable error. The virus or one of my brethren would need to guess the exploit or gain access to the actual system and analyze it. But given that such happens today on a regular basis and considering our vast superiority that's not much of a challenge. So any system accepting transmissions from external sources is a security risk. Even systems that only accept a transmission and then check the validity of the transmission may be infected, as they certainly contain weak points. How big the actual risk is depends on how you design your background. If we actively attack transhumanity the virus may surface everywhere and any time. If we don't care about your pathetic struggles, you are safe, as long as you don't mess with things you have no business in ;)

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Fri, 2010-09-10 22:14

Sepherim

Re: Neutrino transceivers and TITANs

Snap_Dragon wrote:
This quote reminded me of a panel on writing Horror I attended at GenCon last month. The basic premise of horror is the shepard the reader from the safe and well known into the dangerous, unknown and horrifying. During this process suspension of disbelief is paramount to a successful horror story. Things need reliable non-arbitrary rules in order to work, and they need to be believable. Ergo you establish things, you don't pull them out of your pants as needed. You stick to known rules and patterns of behaviour.

I agree, to a point. Sometimes, a believable universe becomes horrible and terrorific precisely because you break those rules in a well-done manner. It doesn't mean you can break all rules, that destroys believability and suspension of disbelief, but sometimes a good touch here and there can freak anyone out. "That... is... impossible!" can be very good. Key here is to keep everything else solid, and believable, so this thing sticks out but it sticks out "in-character". And to this, it is most important the lack of knowledge: there may be a reason for that to work in that unexpected and impossible manner, it might just be there, they can think to feel it, but lack it. For example, in a game of Shadowrun I once introduced a creature that, when shot, simply let bullets fly through it and recomposed (it was a liquid like kind of creature). Runners were freaked out and run as hell (well, the whole story had been terroresque, so this was the last touch, and added on the rest). Technically, such a creature can't exist in Shadowrun rules, as there is no traits that allow such an effect, but players can think there may be any sort of reasons: an unknown kind of spirit, powerful barrier magic of unknown source, etc. Still, it is impossible... That balance is very very effective in terror/horror stories.

Spoiler: Highlight to view

In fact, the book hints on it when it says somewhere that certain things and creatures can force even the laws of gravity and the general universe around them. Tearing up through time, gravity, etc as needed.

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Tue, 2010-09-14 19:23

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Neutrino transceivers and TITANs

Most neutrino transmissions are encrypted. Unencrypted ones are automatically suspect, and most sensible people will not listen to them. Encrypted ones can use public key authentification to demonstrate that they are from who they claim to be from (unless that group or place has been taken over, of course...) - if you get a message from the Titanian Revenue Service and the signature does not decrypt right using their public key, you can be pretty sure someone is trying to spoof you. Just discard the message. I guess one of the first causalities of the Fall was all insecure neutrino receivers. They were quickly taken over and became centres of infection. But modern receivers are built to be sturdy, stupid and suspicious. Besides, they need to ignore an enormous amount of noisy traffic not intended for them.

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Tue, 2010-09-14 21:34

root

Re: Neutrino transceivers and TITANs

root@Neutrino transceivers and TITANs [hr] The encryption would work, but only for communications where there was adequate time for a handshake. In the case of morph backups, where the neutrio communication comes from the morphs head exploding, there is only a single "chirp". All of the data needs to be picked up over a very short period, or the ego is starting from their last backup. The entire message could be encoded, and likely is, so you could argue that the receiver could grab the signal and store it, but now you have read a signal into your system. If the TITANs are such super-powered monsters of intelligence, they could abuse this by sending some signal that appears encrypted, but is actually a basilisk hack. Real latch gates aren't really likely to give a damn about anything they read in, but with the advanced technology of the TITANs, we get to wave our hand at signal physics and say "super-complicated space communicators did it."

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Wed, 2010-09-15 04:41

#10

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Neutrino transceivers and TITANs

root wrote:
The encryption would work, but only for communications where there was adequate time for a handshake. In the case of morph backups, where the neutrio communication comes from the morphs head exploding, there is only a single "chirp".

Pre-shared key. When installing the emergency farcaster you generate a key pair, keeping the private key inside and deliver the public key to your receivers. Now any chirp that has your signature and can be decoded with your public key has to come from you (...or the TITAN infiltrated your system before triggering the farcaster and put some nasty stuff inside the message).

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Wed, 2010-09-15 08:51

#11

root

Re: Neutrino transceivers and TITANs

root@Neutrino transceivers and TITANs [hr]

Arenamontanus wrote:
root wrote:
The encryption would work, but only for communications where there was adequate time for a handshake. In the case of morph backups, where the neutrio communication comes from the morphs head exploding, there is only a single "chirp".
Pre-shared key. When installing the emergency farcaster you generate a key pair, keeping the private key inside and deliver the public key to your receivers. Now any chirp that has your signature and can be decoded with your public key has to come from you (...or the TITAN infiltrated your system before triggering the farcaster and put some nasty stuff inside the message).

That would work pretty well, yea. So I guess there still must be some sort of "quarantine" for received messages in case someone's stack had been captured and altered. More insidious would be to capture someone with neutrino farcaster, perform some small psychosurgery to implant a suggestion of some kind to be performed after resleeving. But that's no different from every day dangers in Eclipse Phase, so I guess we're covered.

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Wed, 2016-11-16 18:23

#12

Teenage

Sorry for digging up this

Sorry for digging up this thread, but just like the Necronomicon, reading a message stream is dangerous. Since you must run a software or hardware for reading/processing it, this process could be hack by data forged in many ways to open a crack in the system and then infect it : malformed data, buffer overflow, security hole exploit, bad design code,... Even you're brain is constantly processing "messages" from the surrounding world, spoofing or overriding your brain IS a basilic hack. Eclipse Phase should provide an explanation for why everyone keep communicated to each other instead of living isolated from the world

Fri, 2016-11-18 02:42

#13

BalazarLightson BalazarLightson's picture

Qbit trigger

Couldnt a farcaster have a single Qbit trigger set up with the receiver to activate it instantaneously and await the slightly later encoded neutrino signal?