Scenario: You are a lone infomorph hacker hidden in the local mesh of a brinker ship. Your task is to hinder the progress of anyone inquiring about certain past events. Your presence must not be betrayed, or you will be quarantined and interrogated, likely resulting in the complete failure of the greater mission. The ship contains hundreds of people, a cornucopia machine, biomorph growth facilities, fabbers, and everything else a ship needs to be self-sufficient out in the kuiper belt.
How would you go about this? I'm planning to use such a character as opposition to my players.
Edit for additional information:
The event in question is this: A group of people(actually exsurgents, but nobody knows that) egocast to the ship, sleeved into morphs for a while, chatted with the locals, and then egocast away. What the locals don't know is that they alpha forked themselves after their arrival, hiding in the local mesh until the ship reached its destination. Additionally, the team suborned numerous robots on the ship.
When the ship reached its destination, a small research habitat, several of its researchers boarded the brinker ship, and this is when the team struck. They used their suborned robots to subdue each of the researchers in turn and sleeved their egos into them. They then modified the researchers' egos to be helpful and loaded them onto their ectos. Then, armed with the information needed to pass as the researchers for a little while, they reboarded the habitat. After that, the brinker ship went on its way.
The infomorph's main objective is to keep anyone from discovering the link between the team and the research habitat. Failing that, she needs to delay their progress as long as possible.
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Scenario: lone infomorph hacker
Mon, 2011-09-19 15:05
#1
Scenario: lone infomorph hacker
Mon, 2011-09-19 16:53
#2
Re: Scenario: lone infomorph hacker
Well, it depends just what those events are. If they're small-scale or large-scale, the response differs immensely, as does the inquiry we're supposed to deal with. Are we supposed to deal with it by suppressing inquiry, or eliminating the evidence?
These are, by the way, all suggestions as much as requests for more information. If the event's large-scale, the amount of evidence is likely huge, so your attempts will be more to spread disinformation and suppress or change key events, rather than hide it entirely. If it's small, however, making it seem like it never happened is a possibility and, indeed, an avenue of approach, though misdirection never disappears either.
If we're suppressing inquiry, rather than outright preventing it, bribing/blackmailing people in power is a good avenue. If we're destroying evidence entirely, that's a different story altogether, depending on what sort of evidence might exist. Misdirection is, again, a huge tactic that's also possible.
So, yeah, food for thought and request for more info.
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Mon, 2011-09-19 17:54
#3
Re: Scenario: lone infomorph hacker
Updated the original post.
Mon, 2011-09-19 18:20
#4
Re: Scenario: lone infomorph hacker
Further question: Are they hiding the relation between themselves and the habitat, or the people whom they've ego-napped and are impersonating?
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Mon, 2011-09-19 19:00
#5
Re: Scenario: lone infomorph hacker
http://www.eclipsephase.com/attacking-isolated-habitat-and-getting-away-...
The team wants as much time to get away from the research habitat with the artifact as possible.
They're hiding the fact that the team was in any way connected to the habitat. The team's objective was to get on the habitat unnoticed, so they could do the things described [url=
Tue, 2011-09-20 03:57
#6
Re: Scenario: lone infomorph hacker
Neat!
The things they need to hide is 1) the initial hacking putting the infomorphs there, 2) the suborning of the bots, 3) the capture and hacking of the researchers.
Once you have gained total control over a mesh node it is not too hard to edit logs making 1) and 2) fairly easy to hide. There might however have been nodes backing up each other or even logs with digital signatures that are hard to forge - in this case it is better to discreetly sabotage the right nodes (using software or the bots - "oops, bumped into that wall and damaged it. Here is some repair spray.")
The attack on the researchers (and maybe some bot activity) must be hidden from surveillance. This is where the infomorphs had to work the hardest. I would suggest they used AR illusions based on previous recordings on the ship, quietly inserted in most sensors and linked nodes when needed. There might be discrepancies if somebody checks low-level information, but that is fairly unlikely. However, they probably want to know if somebody is looking, so they put in tripwire software that alerts them if somebody is checking. If the check is too close to something sensitive they need to sabotage things - either activate a distraction, attack the investigator or just have the node "break". This will not work indefinitely, but can stop a cursory investigation.
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Tue, 2011-09-20 05:10
#7
Re: Scenario: lone infomorph hacker
If they control segments the repair robots, they could have had those robots essentially build and remodel the mesh in a way that suited them. After all the attackers might have needed to improve the old appalling mesh -if it was to suit their needs.
Helpful things like working components + trojan goodies. "Better" logging systems. Stepmother surveillance. For the finale: incriminating parts reforged into cornucopia machine pellets.
"Despite being a Brinkership, there is a innovating, nice & fresh tone to its mesh."
"They have a well organised logging system. Quite surprising actually. "
"No anomalies within its data... fits"
"You might be looking at a new system that pretend its old."
Inspiration: ITdepartment pranks and malware included in genuine products. Samsung shipping Infected photo-frames to name a few.
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