Oops

Much as I like the option of having the State Sec ships shoot each other, leaving such plans around where tac officers might actually look at the targeting sounds risky.

You can very much bet, that whatever Foraker did is well known in all of the higher social circles. Peep and Manticoran.

My question is whether someone of Foraker's caliber, could have pulled a copycat maneuver with RMN ships?

Good thing it took Shannon three months to set up her booby trap, or the time she spent as prisoner aboard Honor's ship was dangerous. As I'm sure Honor herself has reflected on when the gossip of Shannon's Folly came to her. After she smiled, of course.

Being a woman, Shannon gives a new meaning to booby trap.

I wonder if that term was first used to describe weddings?

cthia wrote:Being a woman, Shannon gives a new meaning to booby trap.

I wonder if that term was first used to describe weddings?

Wikipedia traces 'booby' back to 1590 in English for a stupid person or slow bird, from the Spanish 'bobo' and derivative 'bubie'. Booby traps for those birds or fools probably got named so not long thereafter. Wiktionary traces 'boob' for breasts only to 1945, though it doesn't give details. It does look like 'boob' for breast does go back to 'boob' or 'booby' for stupid person or bird, as opposed to developing independently.

However, the Oxford English Dictionary traces 'boob' to 'booby' to 'bübbi', German for teat, sometime after 1690. It may have come into English with the House of Hanover in the early 1700's; I think German made some fresh vocabulary and pronunciation inroads into (especially British) English then.

I'd favor the OED etymology over the Wiktionary one there, which would make 'booby trap' and concerns about getting married to one of those mind-altering fiends with pronounced mammary glands just accidental convergence of terms.

JeffEngel wrote:

cthia wrote:Being a woman, Shannon gives a new meaning to booby trap.

I wonder if that term was first used to describe weddings?

Wikipedia traces 'booby' back to 1590 in English for a stupid person or slow bird, from the Spanish 'bobo' and derivative 'bubie'. Booby traps for those birds or fools probably got named so not long thereafter. Wiktionary traces 'boob' for breasts only to 1945, though it doesn't give details. It does look like 'boob' for breast does go back to 'boob' or 'booby' for stupid person or bird, as opposed to developing independently.

However, the Oxford English Dictionary traces 'boob' to 'booby' to 'bübbi', German for teat, sometime after 1690. It may have come into English with the House of Hanover in the early 1700's; I think German made some fresh vocabulary and pronunciation inroads into (especially British) English then.

I'd favor the OED etymology over the Wiktionary one there, which would make 'booby trap' and concerns about getting married to one of those mind-altering fiends with pronounced mammary glands just accidental convergence of terms.

I have an ominous feeling, that it all comes too very clear - when one finds himself so aptly trapped.

Or maybe that's just my cold feet.

Thanks for the references.

Perhaps proof positive that "language does indeed learn itself." -Dr. Barbara Mascali, PhD.
-Martin Heidegger, Philosopher

cthia wrote:The question is, exactly how did Miss Foraker exploit her bypassed security?

Imho there is no way in hell for anyone to access critical systems such as fusion reactor control logic over a link which is, essentially, space wifi.

That's not how it's done and it's not how anyone with a working brain would organize the software architecture of something as complex as a warship. There's gonna be lots of encapsulated sub systems, maybe with diagnosis links, but those will be physically separated from actual control circuits.

Contrary to popular believe, you can't hack the wifi of a car and then access the control units to make it accelerate or brake. There is no connection between these subsystems. Why should there?

Look at Horace Harkness when he freed Honor. He had to trick a pinnace into thinking that it was in space in order to destroy Tepes. Not to mention all the other "accidents" he arranged. Why should he do something as complicated as this if he could just access fusion bottles and drop containment?

Tl;dr:
She simply exploited something which was already there. Suicides charges planted by State Sec themselves. Which are, of course, triggerable by radio.

clancy688 wrote:

cthia wrote:The question is, exactly how did Miss Foraker exploit her bypassed security?

Imho there is no way in hell for anyone to access critical systems such as fusion reactor control logic over a link which is, essentially, space wifi.

That's not how it's done and it's not how anyone with a working brain would organize the software architecture of something as complex as a warship. There's gonna be lots of encapsulated sub systems, maybe with diagnosis links, but those will be physically separated from actual control circuits.

Contrary to popular believe, you can't hack the wifi of a car and then access the control units to make it accelerate or brake. There is no connection between these subsystems. Why should there?

Look at Horace Harkness when he freed Honor. He had to trick a pinnace into thinking that it was in space in order to destroy Tepes. Not to mention all the other "accidents" he arranged. Why should he do something as complicated as this if he could just access fusion bottles and drop containment?

Tl;dr:
She simply exploited something which was already there. Suicides charges planted by State Sec themselves. Which are, of course, triggerable by radio.

The recent exploit of BMW cars with open http-servers on the built in WiFi says otherwise.

Joat42 wrote:The recent exploit of BMW cars with open http-servers on the built in WiFi says otherwise.

Which is exactly my point. They could unlock the car. They could not lock the brakes. Or steer the car. Or whatever which is safety critical.

I stated that they couldn't hack the WiFi and lock the brakes. I didn't state that they couldn't hack the WiFi. Of course you can break into the cellular network of a car. But even if you can, you can't access driving systems, because these are (supposed to be) physically separated sub-systems with their own control units.

Which brings us back to Shannon Foraker: Maybe she can break into the SS's com network. But she surely can't access the ships' engine systems over that.

Of course this only holds true if the ships in question are not designed for being remote-controlled. I'm sure you remember this drone which Iran managed to bring down... ^^

clancy688 wrote:Contrary to popular believe, you can't hack the wifi of a car and then access the control units to make it accelerate or brake. There is no connection between these subsystems. Why should there?

Look at Horace Harkness when he freed Honor. He had to trick a pinnace into thinking that it was in space in order to destroy Tepes. Not to mention all the other "accidents" he arranged. Why should he do something as complicated as this if he could just access fusion bottles and drop containment?

Tl;dr:
She simply exploited something which was already there. Suicides charges planted by State Sec themselves. Which are, of course, triggerable by radio.

I was wondering if she may have in fact been inspired by what Harkness did to Tepes - she was, after all, an interested observer of the very event - and achieved the Oopacalypse by tricking onboard impeller wedges to come up. The tactical updates may plausibly have included canned attack profiles for the missiles, so the remaining problem may "just" be getting from the missiles' guidance systems into their "hey, don't raise your wedge here, okay?" ones.

Alternatively, the SS ships' small craft or recon drones may have been the suicide bombers there. The recon drones at least, like the missiles, may have had canned approach and observation profiles that would take updates from her. In either case, there would remain the issues of convincing them, entirely through the software, to raise wedges in a bad, bad place.

On the other hand... she had time and deviousness and cunning, and there's no reason it all had to go into programming. If she'd also put in a series of apparently innocent maintenance requests by electronic communications that disabled certain safety measures. Those were StateSec superdreadnoughts. SS must have scraped every barrel to crew them, and valued apparently loyalty over professional skill making their decisions. That's a recipe for crews who will obey apparently authentic orders without question, and will often enough not have a clue that they are helping someone kill them and all their shipmates. She could have even checked out procedures and some personnel files possibly to tailor the specific sabotage approach to particular ships and individuals, to make sure it worked in each case without a consistent, detectable pattern left to find.

clancy688 wrote:

Joat42 wrote:The recent exploit of BMW cars with open http-servers on the built in WiFi says otherwise.

Which is exactly my point. They could unlock the car. They could not lock the brakes. Or steer the car. Or whatever which is [b]safety critical[/b].

I stated that they couldn't hack the WiFi and lock the brakes. I didn't state that they couldn't hack the WiFi. Of course you can break into the cellular network of a car. But even if you can, you can't access driving systems, because these are (supposed to be) physically separated sub-systems with their own control units.

Which brings us back to Shannon Foraker: Maybe she can break into the SS's com network. But she surely can't access the ships' engine systems over that.

Of course this only holds true if the ships in question are not designed for being remote-controlled. I'm sure you remember this drone which Iran managed to bring down... ^^

The HTTP-exploit also allowed the attacker to upload new software if they wanted, which means they could have done anything they wanted with the car given enough knowledge and time.

I've played with cars systems myself although via the OBD-II jack, and in most cases every system is cross-connected. Locking the brakes is entirely possible since cars that have advanced ABS and anti-skid systems controls the brakes via software. You can even trash gearboxes on newer cars too if you wanted.

It is a moot point arguing if Shannon could break into system X since she obviously managed to destroyed the ships and to do that she had to gain control over critical systems.

clancy688 wrote:

Joat42 wrote:The recent exploit of BMW cars with open http-servers on the built in WiFi says otherwise.

Which is exactly my point. They could unlock the car. They could not lock the brakes. Or steer the car. Or whatever which is safety critical.

I stated that they couldn't hack the WiFi and lock the brakes. I didn't state that they couldn't hack the WiFi. Of course you can break into the cellular network of a car. But even if you can, you can't access driving systems, because these are (supposed to be) physically separated sub-systems with their own control units.

Which brings us back to Shannon Foraker: Maybe she can break into the SS's com network. But she surely can't access the ships' engine systems over that.

Of course this only holds true if the ships in question are not designed for being remote-controlled. I'm sure you remember this drone which Iran managed to bring down... ^^

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus

Everything in a modern, mid to high-end car is hooked to the CAN bus, right down to the interior lamp. This is partly because the CAN bus also serves as the power supply infrastructure and reduced wiring equals reduced weight equals reduced emissions. Anything that is operated by a wire - and that includes the throttle these days, at least on DERVs - could receive inserted signals.

There isn't direct textev of what types of computer networks operate on warships or how much separation or integration there is. The nearest I can think of which gives an indication are fleetwide damage displays, but those could be updated by manual transmissions between the CICs of various ships and the flagship.

Shannon had a high level of access to the networks on a fleet level and StateSec chose to grab warships built for the PN instead of designing their own. The hardware was identical and the differences in software limited to what SS technicians changed or added - which isn't very much, if they wanted their ships to still be able to coordinate with PN ships against any RMN opponents.

Her trick, whatever it was, also had the advantage of surprise. It hadn't been done before by anyone. You can bet the RMN, GSN, IAN, RHN and so on have made the necessary checks and changes to prevent any flag officer's ops officer(especially after becoming aware of nanotech) from being able to send immediate self-destruct commands.