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Why you can't hack Gaia

PostPosted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 4:06 pm
by Rob Lang
Onix isn't convinced. I understand that. So, here is the justification of why you cannot hack Gaia. I'm going to draw parallels with today's technology and point out where they are very different.

What Gaia is
Gaia is three things. It is a load of energy patterns washing around around in the third medium. It is a piece of hardware that can access the third medium (Gaia terminal) and it is a language to interpret the energy patterns in the third medium (Gaia II). Together, they make Gaia. In C21, the third medium is 'the internet', your hardware is your computer and the language is Assembler (what your PC/Mac/whatever runs on).

Data retrieval
In Gaia, everything you see - the walls, the floor, the sun, the planets, the stars, the people moving around, the news articles, the messages sent between lovers, everything - is represented by an energy pattern. That data is swilling around inside the third medium and is plucked out by the Gaia terminal. The Gaia terminal is written by Star Sci. It cannot be changed - it is a hardcoded piece of hardware. In C21 terms, that is the processor inside your computer having the operating system embedded on it. You can't uninstall, you can't change. Can't upgrade. The terminal reads and writes to the third medium, it can't be changed.

I can make my own terminal?
You can but you won't be able to access Gaia. Inside every terminal is an encryption system (which is a volatile energy pattern) that encodes the messages going into the third medium and decodes them coming out. The encryption pattern is constantly changing. If you made your own terminal, you would need to get hold of this energy pattern to do it.

I can steal the energy pattern from a Star Sci made terminal
Energy patterns can be volatile, the encryption pattern is not 'observable'. This means that as soon as you try and touch it, sense it, read it, copy it, move it or do anything with it, you change it. You force it into a state. Even for a moment. As soon as you do that, it will lose time synchronicity with all the encryption patterns and it will no longer be able to encrypt or decrypt the data floating around in the third medium. The only way to create this pattern is to do so from its source, which is closely guarded.

I can steal the thing that makes the energy patterns
You can try. You won't survive. You'll have the Fleet Elite after you - they have powered armour that Light Jumps and can cloak.

I can create a hacking probe that sits between the terminal and the third medium
You can't, the third medium is superimposed on top of reality, you are moving through the third medium all the time. The insides of the terminal contact Gaia without any signals leaving its very core.

I can hack Gaia II, the language that interprets Gaia on my terminal
Nope, that is hardcoded too. It hasn't changed in 1000 years.

So, what about the Undergaia?
The Gaia II language that builds the virtual world isn't perfect. It has some foibles, which allows the intelligent hacker to break into areas that should be secure. Using similar techniques, you can hide places where you shouldn't be able to - creating the Undergaia. But that is all in the virtual world of Gaia, not within the terminal. In C21 parlance, you can make programs running on your computer do horrible things but you still can't hack the hardcoded OS on your processor.

Star Sci aren't so bothered about the little flaws in Gaia II - they had to rush it out to give humanity a communication mechanism the Droids couldn't use.

I hope that clears it up.

Re: Why you can't hack Gaia

PostPosted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 4:40 pm
by Onix
I understand that you cannot write to the terminal's instruction set, that would make things harder, but not impossible. For instance, without writing to a website, I can inject data (SQL) into it's logic that causes it to give a result that it's not supposed to do (like dump the database tables). Okay, maybe a data injection wouldn't give a lethal result (or maybe it could it would depend on the code) but you could make it do bad or unwanted things. Another example of using software to attack hardware is the worm that was designed to destroy or degrade nuclear centrifuges. Lastly I give you the humble door lock. There's no software there. It is a security mechanism but if you give it just the right input it's security can be disabled. You can't change it's "program" in any way but it can be circumvented.

So to be honest I can't easily think of a way to make a door lock kill someone (other than stabbing them with the key?) but I'm just saying after thousands of years of locks and keys no one can make a lock that cannot be circumvented.

Re: Why you can't hack Gaia

PostPosted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 7:14 pm
by Onix
I'm not saying this stuff to be difficult or annoying so, sorry if I'm coming off that way.

I'm trying to imagine a system that just cannot be hacked and having a hard time of it. As I'm thinking of it one thought is if StarSci set up a series of master AIs that write the operating logic for the hardware. Each AI is far better than billions of humans writing code all at once. There are several of them to further randomize their logic. Every time a new terminal is made, one of these AI's write a custom codebase for that terminal and only that terminal. This would make it very, very hard to tease out the logic that the hardware is using. But still not impossible, another master AI that is better than billions of humans trying to crack the terminal's logic could find a flaw and exploit it. Once the flaw is found, since the terminals never change, that terminal would have to be disposed of.

That would put hacking the terminal beyond the reach of players but not droids.

Just another example of a system that you cannot write to (directly) has significant safeguards and is based on (sorta) hardware is the human brain. Not exactly a great comparison but just another example.

The only way I can imagine an unhackable system is if it were somehow based on a natural law. I would say like the speed of light but that's not a good example for Icar. I really don't know how you would base a system on a natural law that no one has figured out a way to circumvent, it's the only system that could be unbreakable for a long period of time. Again, what that would look like I have no idea.

Re: Why you can't hack Gaia

PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 3:28 am
by Rob Lang
Can you hack the instruction set of the processor from inside Windows? Sure you can mess about with the software - even break Windows but what about the instruction set on the CPU? Take away the BIOS (because there isn't one in Gaia) - is there any damage you can do to the hardware from inside Windows?

That's where Gaia is, hardcoded in the actual chip. It's not malleable. You can no more hack the Gaia terminal than you can hack a 'NOT' logic gate.

Injecting SQL will not damage the hardware on which it is running. The OS might reset but the hardware will survive. You can't inject code into the chip's instruction set. It's fixed. In modern computers, it's fixed in both ROM and the very design of the chip. In Icar, it is fixed in the quantum structure of the terminal.

Worms attack OSes that are malleable. Gaia isn't mutable - you can't change it. If you can't change it, you can't make it do something it wasn't supposed to.

Still not convinced?

Re: Why you can't hack Gaia

PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 6:00 am
by Onix
Maybe we're thinking different things. I'm not talking about re-writing the processor or terminal. The goal of a hacker is to get the device to do something that it wasn't intended to do. What unintended behavior you can get something like a processor to do? It depends on the structure of the processor.

Some generic processor exploits These are then used to alter data (in this case an energy pattern), damage the system, shut it down. You give the processor input that is designed so that the system cannot handle it and in some manner or fashion fails.

To that end I could not say that there must be a way to circumvent the safety protocols in a terminal. Only that there could be. It is possible that no known exploit has ever been found that would impair the security protocols.

A NOT gate isn't a good example by itself, It's not handling information by itself, it has to be part of a larger system to handle information, even if it's just part of a digital counter. If I have physical access to a digital counter I can hack it easily.

If a hardware instruction set was the way to prevent hacking it would be in use today for high security systems. The reason why you don't have hardware only instruction sets is because it leaves a system unable to be patched if an exploit is found. An example of a hardware only system would be the telephone network up until the 60's or 70's In the 80's there were some computer switches in use but it was mostly hardware. It was in this environment that phone phreaking started (almost by accident). There was no way to write data to the phone system but it was still possible to exploit the system to get it to do things it wasn't supposed to do.

This is 90000 years in the future. I might be able to suspend disbelief if you were to say that the engineering of systems had become so refined that it makes hacking impossible but there is hacking on other things. To me, there can't be both. I could even believe it if it was hinted that StarSci can make things unhackable and on the surface maintain that Gaia is unhackable but those that are in the know realize that for some reason they didn't on purpose. In which case the undergaia is there for a reason because StarSci put it there. Hackers may be using it in a way StarSci didn't intend though. Still that would be the limit of a hacker's abilities. You would not be able to alter anything else in a way you were not supposed to. I would have a measure of disbelief to that and it would make Gaia less interesting.

Re: Why you can't hack Gaia

PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 6:43 am
by misterecho
even if a hacker has to decompile machine code and manufacture a chip. Someone would do it, just to see if its possible. But you are effectively the god of the Icar universe, in a very literal sense. If you say it isn't possible, then it's not.

Re: Why you can't hack Gaia

PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 7:16 am
by Rob Lang

Re: Why you can't hack Gaia

PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 7:51 am
by misterecho
if you've created your own gaia hardware platform from decompiled hardware machine code. You can then run any software on the system you want. As long as it sticks to the communication protocols that the gaia system uses. All you need would be the encryption.

very strong encryption is relatively easy to implement, even for the layman. But in the end encryptions still rely on algorithms written by academics. The Germans were convinced enigma was unbreakable.

Re: Why you can't hack Gaia

PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 8:25 am
by viziel
Any system of rules..can be broken. Thats a fact. To suggest that something is 'uncrackable' isn't realistic..never has been.

There is always a way to circumvent a system no matter how 'complex' it may seem. Those who think outside-the-box will can would find a way, no matter how impractical it may be.

You could just stand on the grounds that the system is entrenched in security that in order to begin tapping into the system and messing around is no longer within the reach of a few people, and the resources required to spoof or break the system would be quite large indeed (aka a small army).

That would make more sense to me, but to say its simply "unhackable" to me (fankly) sounds like nonsense.

Re: Why you can't hack Gaia

PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 8:50 am
by Rob Lang