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Assassinations

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Thu, 2010-08-12 21:14

valen

Assassinations

So lets say I'm a state-sponsored terrorist (so I have some resources to call on) and I want to knock off a major political figure in 10 AF. It seems exceedingly difficult. If I slip a bomb into an embassy party of something all I do is wipe out a bunch of morphs. Security teams recover the cortical stacks and load the despised oligarch into a new morph. I can use a big enough bomb to smash the stacks, but the the DO (despised oligarch) loads from a backup. If I really want to off the DO, I need to hit his secure backup site at the same time, or roughly the same time. This assumes I can figure out where the backup site is and that there is only one backup site. A smart DO might make some reserve copies of those backups and ship them off to alternate sites. All of these conditions seem to make it very unlikely that I would be able to deflect blame from my nefarious sponsors. It does occur to me that if I can knock out the stack, its possible that a particularly busy DO might be so far behind in his backups that he can no longer function in his present position. If a DO has to rewind to six months or a year, s/he might find themselves unable to function effectively and be forced out by internal factions. That's a lot of ifs but could provide some rational for bothering to assassinate somebody. So how would you go about killing a DO?

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Thu, 2010-08-12 21:32

root

Re: Assassinations

root@Assassinations

valen wrote:
So lets say I'm a state-sponsored terrorist (so I have some resources to call on) and I want to knock off a major political figure in 10 AF. It seems exceedingly difficult. If I slip a bomb into an embassy party of something all I do is wipe out a bunch of morphs. Security teams recover the cortical stacks and load the despised oligarch into a new morph. I can use a big enough bomb to smash the stacks, but the the DO (despised oligarch) loads from a backup. If I really want to off the DO, I need to hit his secure backup site at the same time, or roughly the same time. This assumes I can figure out where the backup site is and that there is only one backup site. A smart DO might make some reserve copies of those backups and ship them off to alternate sites. All of these conditions seem to make it very unlikely that I would be able to deflect blame from my nefarious sponsors. It does occur to me that if I can knock out the stack, its possible that a particularly busy DO might be so far behind in his backups that he can no longer function in his present position. If a DO has to rewind to six months or a year, s/he might find themselves unable to function effectively and be forced out by internal factions. That's a lot of ifs but could provide some rational for bothering to assassinate somebody. So how would you go about killing a DO?

"I usually have to infiltrate the DO's computer systems over a decently long period of time and gather enough intel on backup schedules and backup security. It can take quite a long time in the case of some more paranoid DOs, but transhuman security always gets sloppy. You'd be surprised how much a suggestions from a muse can get someone to do, and what you can get them to forget. "So anyway, after I've located all of his backups, I need to trigger a backup situation, so I activate one of the security guards I've programmed to kill him. The "emergency only" backups are usually the first ones they use, (I have to decide if that's true based on their psychological profile, which I've drawn up by now) so anything I couldn't find previously I know about now. "From there it's just a matter of exploiting all the vulnerabilities I've worked up and get a clean wipe all at once. "Alternately, I've programmed the DO to really think about themselves, who they truly are, and drive them to suicide. People are very thorough when they kill themselves."

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Thu, 2010-08-12 21:41

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: Assassinations

What kind of time frame do I have to work with? Is there any chance that I might be able to have unauthorised access to this persons Ego? If so, I would engineer his death for the long haul. Destroy the traits that make him valuable. Change his very being so that he is pushed towards bioconservatism, such that he is motivated to destroy any and all backups other than his cortical stack in the name of being the one true “me”. And then I, after the damage is done, I kill him with an armour piercing sniper round coated in a nano toxin designed to melt his stack to goo. Or space him into Sol if I am feeling dramatic.

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Fri, 2010-08-13 09:23

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Assassinations

Use a custom-tailored virus to corrupt his information. The corruption will be passed on to backups and, after sufficient time, the antiquated, non-corrupted backups will be replaced with the corrupted versions. Then kill the active ego, and hopefully the corrupted versions will prove unusable. The downside here is the odds of getting caught through standard integrity checks and tests make it difficult, plus an early death would undo the whole thing. Replacing him with a doppleganger might help with this, since the backups would be of an entirely different person, and as long as you avoid any brainscans, people won't ever notice the difference. Next would be conspiracy. If you can prove the person guilty of a serious crime, the justice system will do a full-wipe for you. Otherwise, decreasing the person's worth or value until he's simply disposed of is handy, if possible. After that, I'd just consider alternative methods. Blackmail him into compliance and you no longer have to kill him.

Sun, 2010-08-15 11:54

JohnMatrix JohnMatrix's picture

Re: Assassinations

Rather than kill a morph and have to deal with the fallout, why not attempt to switch out a target ego with either a specially trained imposter than can sow chaos into the target's organisational structure or a behaviourally modified fork that's been conditioned for useful personality/goal shifts. With enough subtlety the change in behaviour can occur at such a rate than no one will ever notice until it's much too late.

Tue, 2010-08-17 12:29

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Re: Assassinations

root wrote:
"I usually have to infiltrate the DO's computer systems over a decently long period of time and gather enough intel on backup schedules and backup security. It can take quite a long time in the case of some more paranoid DOs, but transhuman security always gets sloppy. You'd be surprised how much a suggestions from a muse can get someone to do, and what you can get them to forget.

Another useful strategy might be to map the frequency and patterns in which the backed up ego is tested for viability (everyone tests their backups, right?) and after the cycle is done corrupt the backup image in subtle ways, like flipping every fifth one to a zero or overwriting a couple of hundred blocks here and there with cryptographically strong noise (possibly using the EP equivalent of the Gutmann 38 pass voodoo banishing disk wipe technique). Possibly infiltrate a couple of beta forks optimized for patience, infosec, and havoc to watch over each other and the storage field. You could hack a stream filter (like [url=http://freshmeat.net/projects/netsed]netsed[/url]) between the backup software and the storage field to corrupt the backup as it is being made, but there would be a high probability of detection if the backups are bad right out of the skull. At the prearranged time, start overwriting everything the moment the real world hit goes off.

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Tue, 2010-08-17 12:38

root

Re: Assassinations

root@Assassinations "It occurs to me that corrupting a backup doesn't need to be that thorough. If you flip a single bit, the checksum will comeback as a non-match, and then the backup is useless. Hell, you don't even need to do that, just leave a record in the logs of the backup being accessed by an unauthorized party, and they can't use it. "Even better, have one of their backups return a profile indicating a possible Exsurgent contamination. Firewall or it's h-corp counterpart won't take any chances, and will solve your problem for you."

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Tue, 2010-08-17 13:18

PlisQ

Re: Assassinations

Remember: There has to be a reason why someone will be assassinated. This reason most of the times dictates the modus operandi of the Assassin and the outcomes to be achieved. This means if the Target knows something or has solely access to certain informations it is paramount to completely remove his existance. If it is to prevent him from meeting someone in a certain timeframe then killing the Target just before this timeframe starts and trying to prevent it to resleeve before the timeframe passes by is the best solution and so forth. So there is no general answer to this question. Just this: Simply killing someone off is a worse solution for your problems with this person in Eclipse Phase. Most of the times you will also have to take care of possible backups. If not by corrupting them then by preventing the system to detect the necessity of loading a backup. In white noised space no one hears your radio transmissioned ego.

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Tue, 2010-08-17 14:26

King Shere King Shere's picture

Re: Assassinations

No doubt the resleeving clinics have many safety implementations to discurrage tampering & ruining their buisness image. Otherwise customers probably wouldnt use the clinics at all, just a few serious incidents and many would be discouraged. A state/military sponsored hitman might have the resources & connections to sabotage resleeving & backups. Others, im not so sure. Its probably like attacking Fort Knox or a nucklear plant, with similar reprecussions & media coverage.

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Tue, 2010-08-17 14:30

#10

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: Assassinations

I imagine the only real way of doing so is gaining physical access. And that is difficult when the databanks are held in the equivelent of a 10AF vault. Armed guards, nanoswarms and defence robots oh my! And then you would have to break your way through the +30 Modifier tech firewalls and security AIs. And then you have to get out without anyone noticing and using the backups they no doubt keep off site just incase some terrorist gets funny with the C4.

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Tue, 2010-08-17 15:08

#11

valen

Re: Assassinations

Yeah, all of these corrupt the backup solutions seem to be to complicated to be workable. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) plans are the kind of plans that succeed.

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Tue, 2010-08-17 20:33

#12

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Assassinations

root wrote:
root@Assassinations "It occurs to me that corrupting a backup doesn't need to be that thorough. If you flip a single bit, the checksum will comeback as a non-match, and then the backup is useless. Hell, you don't even need to do that, just leave a record in the logs of the backup being accessed by an unauthorized party, and they can't use it.

Even today data striping would mean that switching one bit could be identified to that one byte, and one byte probably isn't enough to corrupt an entire ego. Modifying the audit files to indicate unauthorized tampering would be a HUGE snafu, and they most likely have backups at a second site. I've done enough work in a modern setting to have an idea of how well secured this data probably is. In today's setting, we regularly see companies like Iron Mountain storing backup tapes in hardened locations, even old salt mines. Not quite as tough as Ft. Knox insofar that Ft. Knox is in the middle of an army base with tanks and all, but it's not the sort of place you can waltz into with a fake ID and a winning smile either. Mesh-based attacks won't be very effective either. Backups are non-volatile once received, so they won't be meshed, and they'll be stored in high-fidelity media, in very heavy safes. Realistically, the vulnerable point is prior to reception, either during transmission or in data creation. Alternatively, through political methods, such as leaving evidence suggesting the target was previously infected by the TITANs, or involved in a serious crime.