(( OOC: This topic is for forum roleplay relating to research on the Kilur civilization, its technology and its (ahem) assisted downfall. It's open to all and doesn't necessarily all have to be taking place at the same time or location. Its main purpose is to capture efforts to learn all we can before the arrival of Admiral Ashkeph but might persist beyond that point if anybody is still using it (at GM's discretion). ))
4 Likes
SIVATH WAS ON THE WARPATH. Engineers in the corridor got out of his way in a hurry; there was something deeply unsettling about an angry Vulcan. Just two hours had passed since someone put the latest Halcyon report in his hands and he'd already taken the heads off an unfortunate ensign looking for guidance on emitter alignments and a pair of noncoms unlucky enough to be caught looking insufficiently busy. Sivath's wrath, initially an explosive thing, had boiled down to something quiet, cold and vicious; this was somehow even worse.
So when he burst into the computer services bullpen, a thrill of panic ran through the code monkeys present. A dozen different monitors throughout the large room suddenly switched focus to streaming lines of structured syntax; a dozen bodies straightened in their chairs. Sivath stormed down the central aisle to the center of the room and stopped.
"Put aside whatever you are working on," Sivath ordered in a tone like liquid hydrogen. He held a PADD up in the air. "This is a copy of the decrypted logs of the USS Halcyon. They describe, in exacting detail, how Starfleet developed malicious software to combat a perceived threat and inadvertently brought about the fall of the Kilur Hegemony. The research notes of Amar Jani, in particular, will be a trove of invaluable information on the subject for you all. That is because from this moment, your only responsibility is to reverse-engineer Jani's virus and develop two new pieces of software: a means of detecting the malicious code in a remote system, and a countermeasure which neutralizes the virus and patches the vulnerabilities it exploits. You have one week. Get started."
Sivath dropped the PADD on a desk and left.
So when he burst into the computer services bullpen, a thrill of panic ran through the code monkeys present. A dozen different monitors throughout the large room suddenly switched focus to streaming lines of structured syntax; a dozen bodies straightened in their chairs. Sivath stormed down the central aisle to the center of the room and stopped.
"Put aside whatever you are working on," Sivath ordered in a tone like liquid hydrogen. He held a PADD up in the air. "This is a copy of the decrypted logs of the USS Halcyon. They describe, in exacting detail, how Starfleet developed malicious software to combat a perceived threat and inadvertently brought about the fall of the Kilur Hegemony. The research notes of Amar Jani, in particular, will be a trove of invaluable information on the subject for you all. That is because from this moment, your only responsibility is to reverse-engineer Jani's virus and develop two new pieces of software: a means of detecting the malicious code in a remote system, and a countermeasure which neutralizes the virus and patches the vulnerabilities it exploits. You have one week. Get started."
Sivath dropped the PADD on a desk and left.
9 Likes
Meanwhile, in Main Operations...
"Well I'll be damned.. barely even any degradation..."
Lieutenant Kermit stepped over to Petty Officer Sanchez's console. He peered over the older man's shoulder, recognizing the bit of code that had been identified in the secondary comms buffer. "Good work," he spoke quietly, "Now let's isolate it and then distribute new search parameters to the other consoles." The Petty Officer nodded and Kermit stepped into the middle of the room.
"Lieutenant?"
"Oh come on, you can't have done it that fast."
"No sir, I haven't even started. But look here.."
Kermit stepped back over to look, and curiously enough, there it was: the Halcyon Virus embedded in an incoming docking request, from just a few moments earlier. The Petty Officer spoke again, "Lieutenant, that freighter hasn't gone anywhere near the Doza Sector."
"Here," Kermit responded as he pointed to the screen, "They docked here last month. They got it from us."
"How can we clear our system if we get reinfected every time somebody sends a docking request?"
"We'll have to check every transmission," He sighed, "I need to speak with Commander Freeman." He stepped back into the center of the room, "Everybody listen up. Starting right now, all incoming transmissions are to be routed through the external comm array. We'll screen each message and purge any instances of the virus, before passing them along to their destinations station-side."
"Well I'll be damned.. barely even any degradation..."
Lieutenant Kermit stepped over to Petty Officer Sanchez's console. He peered over the older man's shoulder, recognizing the bit of code that had been identified in the secondary comms buffer. "Good work," he spoke quietly, "Now let's isolate it and then distribute new search parameters to the other consoles." The Petty Officer nodded and Kermit stepped into the middle of the room.
"Lieutenant?"
"Oh come on, you can't have done it that fast."
"No sir, I haven't even started. But look here.."
Kermit stepped back over to look, and curiously enough, there it was: the Halcyon Virus embedded in an incoming docking request, from just a few moments earlier. The Petty Officer spoke again, "Lieutenant, that freighter hasn't gone anywhere near the Doza Sector."
"Here," Kermit responded as he pointed to the screen, "They docked here last month. They got it from us."
"How can we clear our system if we get reinfected every time somebody sends a docking request?"
"We'll have to check every transmission," He sighed, "I need to speak with Commander Freeman." He stepped back into the center of the room, "Everybody listen up. Starting right now, all incoming transmissions are to be routed through the external comm array. We'll screen each message and purge any instances of the virus, before passing them along to their destinations station-side."
6 Likes
SIVATH WAS BACK in computer services twenty-four hours later, looking for a status update. All he was getting was heartburn.
"You do not have any coders fluent in D-LAM?" he asked of the two senior software engineers seated at the table in front of him, surrounded by ancient hardcopy technical manuals.
"It's a hundred and fifty year old language, Commander," protested Hallen. "It was officially EOL-ed in 2283 and phased out of use on existing ships by 2307. We just don't have anybody proficient enough in it to compete with Amar Jani at it."
"Well," interjected Ophalesh. But then she clammed up.
Sivath fixed her with a Stare. "Well?" he repeated.
"Well," she continued sheepishly, "we've got somebody with Q-LAM proficiency, which is a successor to D-LAM a couple generations removed but from what I've heard is still based on similar fundamentals. It's a lot of tail recursion, hash structures, some weird ideas about polymorphism--"
"But," Sivath prompted.
"Oh. But Lt. Yohamdi is on leave. Command found out she hadn't taken any time off in four years and basically twisted her arm--"
Sivath leaned forward to plant his hands on the table. Ophalesh broke off. Hallen leaned back slightly, as if anticipating more yelling.
"Get her back," Sivath said with quiet intensity.
"You do not have any coders fluent in D-LAM?" he asked of the two senior software engineers seated at the table in front of him, surrounded by ancient hardcopy technical manuals.
"It's a hundred and fifty year old language, Commander," protested Hallen. "It was officially EOL-ed in 2283 and phased out of use on existing ships by 2307. We just don't have anybody proficient enough in it to compete with Amar Jani at it."
"Well," interjected Ophalesh. But then she clammed up.
Sivath fixed her with a Stare. "Well?" he repeated.
"Well," she continued sheepishly, "we've got somebody with Q-LAM proficiency, which is a successor to D-LAM a couple generations removed but from what I've heard is still based on similar fundamentals. It's a lot of tail recursion, hash structures, some weird ideas about polymorphism--"
"But," Sivath prompted.
"Oh. But Lt. Yohamdi is on leave. Command found out she hadn't taken any time off in four years and basically twisted her arm--"
Sivath leaned forward to plant his hands on the table. Ophalesh broke off. Hallen leaned back slightly, as if anticipating more yelling.
"Get her back," Sivath said with quiet intensity.
5 Likes
The next time Sivath stopped in, a harried LT Yohamdi and fellow engineering minions had the following updates and information for him, gleaned from studying the virus itself (copy provided by DS13 operations) and the Halcyon logs.
‣ The virus itself resides as a file in message logs and buffers, so in order to locate it on a system, these are the areas that should be searched. The virus's ability to infect systems undetected is entirely predicated on the fact that in avoids making unauthorized requests. This is the principle behind it spreading through hails; the receiving ship/station must accept the hail in order for it to spread. This is also why a 200 year old virus can still work on modern systems and why it manages to cross different factions' computing systems.
‣ Similarly, when the virus has arrived on a system and is attempting to determine whether or not it should start executing dismantling code, it never requests information from the system it's on. Rather it analyzes and maps a ship's communication routing between various files and systems. Because it never directly asks for data or file information, no unauthorized requests are ever detected.
‣ The virus relies solely on identifying Kilur technology's unique hardware and software structures before deciding to execute. To draw an analogy: imagine if a normal Federation or Klingon technology grid looked like a bunch of squares. Integrated Kilur technology would be like suddenly finding a group of hexagons embedded in it; this is what the virus looks for and it's impossible to disguise.
This is a unique property of the Kilur technology and is the only reason this virus works at all. Attempts to alter the virus to identify and destroy other technologies would push the virus over the acceptable memory size limit for piggybacking comms, making it ineligible for rapid spreading.
‣ After the virus identifies what it's looking for, it starts repeatedly spamming power draw/increase requests to the Kilur technology pieces until they overload, which is what causes explosions and power failures on vessels. This is problematic to stop, because even if one writes software to deny the unauthorized power draw requests, the repeated spamming means there must be a denial to match every request, which means an overload might still occur.
‣ In the original use case of Klingon vessel weapons being augmented, since the technology was only integrated at one system, only that system went offline. But Kilur vessels are made up of nothing but Kilur technology and likely the freighters were patching in pieces in multiple locations, so they endured a worse fate.
‣ The engineers note that they do not have any Kilur technology to study and further progress would be greatly helped if this were remedied. As the "FERG" gel is merely a power source, rather than actual technology, it is not susceptible to the virus.
‣ The engineers also note that among the Halcyon files, there was a prototype countervirus, written by Amar Jani. It was untested and appeared not to work when the Halcyon attempted to deploy it previously, though they are not sure how it's supposed to work still, nor what caused it to fail. Again, having a piece of Kilur tech would be essential for unraveling this information as well.
‣ Similarly, when the virus has arrived on a system and is attempting to determine whether or not it should start executing dismantling code, it never requests information from the system it's on. Rather it analyzes and maps a ship's communication routing between various files and systems. Because it never directly asks for data or file information, no unauthorized requests are ever detected.
‣ The virus relies solely on identifying Kilur technology's unique hardware and software structures before deciding to execute. To draw an analogy: imagine if a normal Federation or Klingon technology grid looked like a bunch of squares. Integrated Kilur technology would be like suddenly finding a group of hexagons embedded in it; this is what the virus looks for and it's impossible to disguise.
Spoiler: Show
This is a unique property of the Kilur technology and is the only reason this virus works at all. Attempts to alter the virus to identify and destroy other technologies would push the virus over the acceptable memory size limit for piggybacking comms, making it ineligible for rapid spreading.
‣ After the virus identifies what it's looking for, it starts repeatedly spamming power draw/increase requests to the Kilur technology pieces until they overload, which is what causes explosions and power failures on vessels. This is problematic to stop, because even if one writes software to deny the unauthorized power draw requests, the repeated spamming means there must be a denial to match every request, which means an overload might still occur.
‣ In the original use case of Klingon vessel weapons being augmented, since the technology was only integrated at one system, only that system went offline. But Kilur vessels are made up of nothing but Kilur technology and likely the freighters were patching in pieces in multiple locations, so they endured a worse fate.
‣ The engineers note that they do not have any Kilur technology to study and further progress would be greatly helped if this were remedied. As the "FERG" gel is merely a power source, rather than actual technology, it is not susceptible to the virus.
‣ The engineers also note that among the Halcyon files, there was a prototype countervirus, written by Amar Jani. It was untested and appeared not to work when the Halcyon attempted to deploy it previously, though they are not sure how it's supposed to work still, nor what caused it to fail. Again, having a piece of Kilur tech would be essential for unraveling this information as well.
9 Likes
A CHEER WENT UP in the bullpen as the checksum completed. The compiled programs were 100% identical. With Lt. Yohamdi's remote assistance, working from her hotel room on Risa, the computer services team had reverse-engineered Amar Jani's original source code. And it had only taken three days.
As congratulations were being passed around, Sivath stood with his arms folded, a grumpy raincloud threatening to ruin the party. He noted that there was one other person looking grim: the monitor image of Yohamdi, whose scowl seemed to be etched into her weathered face. Sivath sat down in front of the screen. "Alright," he said. "Now give me the bad news."
"Our Jani was a clever boy," Yohamdi observed. "It's just about the most passive worm I've ever seen. Doesn't make enough noise to get caught. And it's lightweight enough to avoid most buffer purges. But what really concerns me is the redundancy system in place. It makes three copies of itself when it infects a system: one in the comm logs, one in the transmission buffer, and one resident in memory. They're all watching each other and replacing any copies that get removed or tampered with."
"So we need a simultaneous hard buffer purge, logs wipe and memory flush," Sivath interpreted.
"And that's just to clean the system once. Doesn't protect against re-infection. And it's only possible on ships we control. Any deployable counter-worm that tried even one of these techniques would get flagged as a threat and quarantined."
Sivath nodded, pinching the bridge of his nose. "What about immunizing systems against its influence?"
"Going to be tough for the same reason," Yohamdi cautioned, "but I like a challenge. I'm thinking of looking into the request spam first. It at least has the ring of a comprehensive solution. But listen, any patch we come up with, we're gonna need a way to test. The worm's functionally inert on our systems."
"Leave that to me. I will require a progress report in six hours."
"Sure. Not like I got anything better to do."
"Deep Space Thirteen out." Sivath closed the connection.
He sat for a moment, thinking. Then he wrote a quick dispatch summarizing the team's findings to Ops. It would at least give them a more efficient means of detecting infected systems than packet inspection. That finished, he admonished the programmers around him to get back to work and left.
TWO HOURS LATER, Sivath had convened a small team of the engineering department's sharpest minds. They had the high-res scans taken of the wrecked scavenger vessel and the system schematics retrieved from the Kilur database. And they were going to build a prototype.
(( OOC: any engineers interested in being part of this little dream team, feel free to jump in here. Sivath's keeping a bunch of plates spinning so feel free to take initiative and drive the project forward without him present (unless you need him to be). The idea here is that we've got diagrams to work from, so we now need to build a working Kilur vessel mockup. Now this isn't going to be anything large or even space-worthy, it just needs to be a reasonable cross-section of systems you would find in a Kilur-inspired vessel with a comm system attached that can get infected. It will be minimally powered and should be made as disposable as possible, because we're going to blow it up and probably several more like it. ))
As congratulations were being passed around, Sivath stood with his arms folded, a grumpy raincloud threatening to ruin the party. He noted that there was one other person looking grim: the monitor image of Yohamdi, whose scowl seemed to be etched into her weathered face. Sivath sat down in front of the screen. "Alright," he said. "Now give me the bad news."
"Our Jani was a clever boy," Yohamdi observed. "It's just about the most passive worm I've ever seen. Doesn't make enough noise to get caught. And it's lightweight enough to avoid most buffer purges. But what really concerns me is the redundancy system in place. It makes three copies of itself when it infects a system: one in the comm logs, one in the transmission buffer, and one resident in memory. They're all watching each other and replacing any copies that get removed or tampered with."
"So we need a simultaneous hard buffer purge, logs wipe and memory flush," Sivath interpreted.
"And that's just to clean the system once. Doesn't protect against re-infection. And it's only possible on ships we control. Any deployable counter-worm that tried even one of these techniques would get flagged as a threat and quarantined."
Sivath nodded, pinching the bridge of his nose. "What about immunizing systems against its influence?"
"Going to be tough for the same reason," Yohamdi cautioned, "but I like a challenge. I'm thinking of looking into the request spam first. It at least has the ring of a comprehensive solution. But listen, any patch we come up with, we're gonna need a way to test. The worm's functionally inert on our systems."
"Leave that to me. I will require a progress report in six hours."
"Sure. Not like I got anything better to do."
"Deep Space Thirteen out." Sivath closed the connection.
He sat for a moment, thinking. Then he wrote a quick dispatch summarizing the team's findings to Ops. It would at least give them a more efficient means of detecting infected systems than packet inspection. That finished, he admonished the programmers around him to get back to work and left.
=/\=
TWO HOURS LATER, Sivath had convened a small team of the engineering department's sharpest minds. They had the high-res scans taken of the wrecked scavenger vessel and the system schematics retrieved from the Kilur database. And they were going to build a prototype.
(( OOC: any engineers interested in being part of this little dream team, feel free to jump in here. Sivath's keeping a bunch of plates spinning so feel free to take initiative and drive the project forward without him present (unless you need him to be). The idea here is that we've got diagrams to work from, so we now need to build a working Kilur vessel mockup. Now this isn't going to be anything large or even space-worthy, it just needs to be a reasonable cross-section of systems you would find in a Kilur-inspired vessel with a comm system attached that can get infected. It will be minimally powered and should be made as disposable as possible, because we're going to blow it up and probably several more like it. ))
4 Likes
ON DAY SIX, Sivath was standing with his skunkworks team on a catwalk in docking bay 227. Suspended in the air by tractor beam at the center of the bay, and enclosed in the shimmering glow of a level three containment field, was the prototype Kilur hardware mockup the team had constructed. It was running on a small sample of FERG, just enough to bring its systems online. Its comm array was listening only to the dedicated subspace band Sivath had reserved for the project. And they were about to blow it up.
The assembled engineers put their goggles on. Sivath gave a nod to the lieutenant at the control panel. With the press of a button, a hail was sent to the mockup. An automated acknowledgment returned. They waited.
After several seconds, Sivath asked, "How long is it supposed to--"
The mockup exploded, crushing the end of his query under a wave of sound. The containment field danced excitedly, but held up. Inside, the bloom of flame quickly consumed the available oxygen, leaving only a floating sphere of smoke, a layer of foam and a pile of scorched debris at the bottom.
"Shut it off," Sivath said. The field disappeared, allowing the contents to fall into the awaiting garbage bin below or, in the case of the smoke, crawl upward to spread across the ceiling. As the cleanup crew standing by went to work, Sivath turned to the other engineers and removed his goggles. "Good work. Now build another five."
WHEN SIVATH RETURNED to computer services, he found a hive of activity uncharacteristic of programmers. People were clustering around desks or running back and forth to relay bug reports and discoveries between different groups; the noise level was frankly unbecoming of a Starfleet workplace, but Sivath was beyond caring about decorum. He found Ophalesh and Hallen arguing animatedly at the "command center", a table piled high with old language reference manuals.
"It's a dead end!" Hallen was saying. "There's no way to catch all the requests, there's too many of them!"
"She thinks he was on the right track," Ophalesh countered. "So do I."
"Report," Sivath interrupted.
Hallen stewed. Ophalesh said, "We've reverse-engineered Jani's counter-worm, but it doesn't work. Simulations show it trying to compete with the worm for processor cycles. It's trying to intercept the power increase calls, but the highest success rate we've seen is twenty percent. Any attempt to renice either process gets us flagged as a threat."
"What does Yohamdi say?"
"That maybe we can make the counter-worm spawn enough interceptor processes that they'll have the advantage."
Hallen cut in, "But the spawn rate is the problem. Too many too fast, we get flagged anyway. Not enough and we get overwhelmed."
Sivath looked to Ophalesh. She nodded curtly. Sivath looked back to Hallen. "What else do you have?"
"A signed system patch could install a regulator on the power control module and throttle how many requests it lets in per cycle."
"We can not deploy a signed system patch to scavenger vessels," Sivath stated the obvious.
"We'd have to give it to them to distribute," Hallen admitted. It was clear from his expression that he knew this was an unrealistic suggestion.
"Relations are strained at the moment," Sivath said patiently, "but it is worth starting work on this patch in anticipation of the day when they are not. Just do not let it distract from the immediate crisis." He turned his attention back to Ophalesh. "It seems that there is nothing we can do that does not implicate our counter-worm as a threat."
Ophalesh sighed. "That was the genius of Jani's approach. It doesn't trigger an immune response until too late. But all the things we'd need to do to stop it would. If only we could share some of that suspic--oh shit."
Sivath raised an eyebrow. "Go on."
"Guilt by association!" Ophalesh blurted out. "I can . . . I need to . . ." She hunted around for a PADD and started keying rapidly. Hallen crowded close to watch over her shoulder. Sivath waited as long as he could stand for someone to explain, which was 94 seconds.
"What are you going to do?" Sivath demanded.
Ophalesh looked up suddenly, like she had forgotten he was there. "We're gonna talk to the worm."
The assembled engineers put their goggles on. Sivath gave a nod to the lieutenant at the control panel. With the press of a button, a hail was sent to the mockup. An automated acknowledgment returned. They waited.
After several seconds, Sivath asked, "How long is it supposed to--"
The mockup exploded, crushing the end of his query under a wave of sound. The containment field danced excitedly, but held up. Inside, the bloom of flame quickly consumed the available oxygen, leaving only a floating sphere of smoke, a layer of foam and a pile of scorched debris at the bottom.
"Shut it off," Sivath said. The field disappeared, allowing the contents to fall into the awaiting garbage bin below or, in the case of the smoke, crawl upward to spread across the ceiling. As the cleanup crew standing by went to work, Sivath turned to the other engineers and removed his goggles. "Good work. Now build another five."
=/\=
WHEN SIVATH RETURNED to computer services, he found a hive of activity uncharacteristic of programmers. People were clustering around desks or running back and forth to relay bug reports and discoveries between different groups; the noise level was frankly unbecoming of a Starfleet workplace, but Sivath was beyond caring about decorum. He found Ophalesh and Hallen arguing animatedly at the "command center", a table piled high with old language reference manuals.
"It's a dead end!" Hallen was saying. "There's no way to catch all the requests, there's too many of them!"
"She thinks he was on the right track," Ophalesh countered. "So do I."
"Report," Sivath interrupted.
Hallen stewed. Ophalesh said, "We've reverse-engineered Jani's counter-worm, but it doesn't work. Simulations show it trying to compete with the worm for processor cycles. It's trying to intercept the power increase calls, but the highest success rate we've seen is twenty percent. Any attempt to renice either process gets us flagged as a threat."
"What does Yohamdi say?"
"That maybe we can make the counter-worm spawn enough interceptor processes that they'll have the advantage."
Hallen cut in, "But the spawn rate is the problem. Too many too fast, we get flagged anyway. Not enough and we get overwhelmed."
Sivath looked to Ophalesh. She nodded curtly. Sivath looked back to Hallen. "What else do you have?"
"A signed system patch could install a regulator on the power control module and throttle how many requests it lets in per cycle."
"We can not deploy a signed system patch to scavenger vessels," Sivath stated the obvious.
"We'd have to give it to them to distribute," Hallen admitted. It was clear from his expression that he knew this was an unrealistic suggestion.
"Relations are strained at the moment," Sivath said patiently, "but it is worth starting work on this patch in anticipation of the day when they are not. Just do not let it distract from the immediate crisis." He turned his attention back to Ophalesh. "It seems that there is nothing we can do that does not implicate our counter-worm as a threat."
Ophalesh sighed. "That was the genius of Jani's approach. It doesn't trigger an immune response until too late. But all the things we'd need to do to stop it would. If only we could share some of that suspic--oh shit."
Sivath raised an eyebrow. "Go on."
"Guilt by association!" Ophalesh blurted out. "I can . . . I need to . . ." She hunted around for a PADD and started keying rapidly. Hallen crowded close to watch over her shoulder. Sivath waited as long as he could stand for someone to explain, which was 94 seconds.
"What are you going to do?" Sivath demanded.
Ophalesh looked up suddenly, like she had forgotten he was there. "We're gonna talk to the worm."
3 Likes
(( OOC: This thread has reached its culmination in the meeting with Admiral Ashkeph. ))