When Merlin leads the Charge into Zion....

Bluestrike2 wrote:
The Temple was built well after the last of the Fallen were murdered. To the surviving command staff, they won. Their enemies were gone after they were carefully hunted down to the last man and their plan for Safehold was back on track. Given how damaged their psyches were, it's a safe bet that their paranoia shifted from the threat of any surviving Fallen (since they knew there were none left) to eventual violations of the Proscriptions. Human memory and cognitive biases would take care of the rest. Aside from the basic security settings (firewalls, access permissions, etc.), most of their efforts would focus on protecting against a low-tech opponent rather than a high-tech one. And even that would probably be a bit iffy, since they were supremely confident that nothing could derail their plan (refer to the administrative council meeting at the beginning of OAR when Bédard and Shan-wei argue about Egypt).

Even paranoiacs have biases and mental blindspots.

Just a comment on the situation on Pardal mentioned in a previous post... Sean was able to access the computer because Mother had put the passwords and security codes in his implants when he was recognized as heir to the throne. No such advantage on Safehold....

Now on to Bluestrike2's post. I doubt that the angels were overly worried about low tech armies. For one thing after the WaF there were no more opponents. An attack on Zion became unthinkable and remained so for almost 1,000 years. That remained true even after Safehold divided down into rival political entities, entities over which the church retained significant control.

They may have gotten all of the fallen angels, although they couldn't be completely sure of that. But the possibility of Adams and Eves with access to forbidden TF tech was still there.

I would suspect that the Temple's ability to manage its security protocols declined as the angels numbers diminished. By the time they were gone, the place would have been running on rote with default being the last time they were changed.

Don

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TBird50 wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Merlin, who knows what the OBS could do, is concerned about an autonomous reaction from the OBS.

The OBS has some capabilities because Merlin had OWL send a SNARC to probe for more information ...

Which is precisely why Merlin is concerned about a possible autonomous response mode. If the OBS had died of old age or lack of resources, there would be no "Sword of Damocles" to be concerned about. Since the OBS is still awake enough to defend itself against SNARCs, Merlin has to worry about all of the features that COULD HAVE BEEN built into it or its programming. The consequences of guessing wrong are too horrific to take risks on an assumption of rationality in the OBS's creators.

Weird Harold wrote:
Which is precisely why Merlin is concerned about a possible autonomous response mode. If the OBS had died of old age or lack of resources, there would be no "Sword of Damocles" to be concerned about. Since the OBS is still awake enough to defend itself against SNARCs, Merlin has to worry about all of the features that COULD HAVE BEEN built into it or its programming. The consequences of guessing wrong are too horrific to take risks on an assumption of rationality in the OBS's creators.

Yeah, quite right. Right now, though, the only thing we have close to a plan is haking the computer system to get the thing turned off. What a plan b would look like if that one flunks out, I haven't the foggiest.

Don

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n7axw wrote:Yeah, quite right. Right now, though, the only thing we have close to a plan is hacking the computer system to get the thing turned off. What a plan b would look like if that one flunks out, I haven't the foggiest.

Actually, I don't recall any plan in textev. Doesn't mean there isn't one, just that MWW hasn't shown us one.

Weird Harold wrote:

n7axw wrote:Yeah, quite right. Right now, though, the only thing we have close to a plan is hacking the computer system to get the thing turned off. What a plan b would look like if that one flunks out, I haven't the foggiest.

Actually, I don't recall any plan in textev. Doesn't mean there isn't one, just that MWW hasn't shown us one.

Right. I'm talking about conjecture on the forums.

Don

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Well, one might consider the strike on Armageddon Reef as being over the use of technology forbidden by the proscriptions. To be sure, the proscriptions had not been formalized yet, but the message was that whoever commits Shan-wei's sin will experience Shan-wei's fate. The proscriptions merely lay out in legalised form what that sin was that it might be avoided.

Don

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When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.

Well, Don...
One might consider the strike as response to a violation of prescriptions however, Shan-wei pointed out the energy usage to maintain the library was so low as to be below the ability to detect.

I read this as your signature line... an instantly corrupted group that could not abide any one who would not bow down to everything they though was best.

Also the destruction of the Convent of Saint Kodhy had nothing to do with tech so back to my earlier post.

As I recall, Merlin theorized that the OBS would knock out any high tech but, I don't recall why he came to that conclusion.

I will have to reread OAR and perhaps one or two others to fix that.

I also will be looking for evidence that the Temple was built "long after the war of the fallen" as someone else posted and to clarify what was said about the key of Schuler and the room below the Temple. It has been a year and half to two years since I read these scenes.

I find that some of the details are lost in the background.

Weird Harold wrote:A spy would not necessarily need to look for access codes. The first step would be to narrow down the possibilities; is the Temple Windows or Mac? Maybe a Linux server?

Congrats. You have a view screen, a keyboard or other manual input device, and a login interface that will only let you try to login three to five times unsuccessfully before going into lock down and not letting anyone login at all (and probably setting off alarms).

Good luck trying to hack that when that's ALL you can access.

The problem is that even once the Temple is in friendly hands, Merlin, Nimue, OWL, SNARCs, and any TF technology won't be able to enter the Temple until they're reasonably certain that there are no auto-defense systems active. That means they MUST train a Safehold native to investigate for them. That does NOT mean walk into the Temple and hack into the computers immediately, it means start with a visual inspection and report back.

If the Allies are that much in control of the Temple, they don't NEED to hack the computers. They can just physically unplug them (either from the power and/or the comm equipment that connects them with the OBS).

Assuming of course they can actually physically get into the secure areas to do so without setting off the very autonomous reactions they're trying to prevent.

Which brings us back to the "login screen" problem. Hacking requires knowing something compromising about the system, like having a valid login. Or that there's a backdoor. Knowing how the guts of the system works does you no good if you can't get to those guts to begin with.

I SUSPECT that the Key will actually get the good guys that access. Randomly seaching for unsecure security info almost certainly wouldn't because unless some "Angel" or other deliberately left it out (like the Key), any security info is going to be INSIDE the secure part that the allies want to get into.

I would start with copying login tokens from Temple personnel enjoying Nynian's business's hospitality.

Plan B would be temporarily stealing one of the Temple's Roombas, a device authorized to access the network, and doing the equivalent of reflashing its firmware with a remote access Trojan. The important servers will have their own security, so taking over the LAN would be for reconnaissance and the option of a DoS. A smart network designer would segment things so that the building maintenance LAN couldn't reach anything interesting. Judging from Target and my own clients, nothing that intelligent has ever been done in human history and will never begin to happen.

You could do a lot with control of the building maintenance LAN, come to think of it. Broadsheet goes up all over town reading "Tomorrow, Clyntahn's corruption will exhaust the patience of the Archangels's servitors, who will rise up and expel the evil from the holy Temple". The next day, the air supply turns off or the vacuum cleaners attack anyone wearing purple.

Random thoughts on bits of this thread

Lots of you guys are assuming helpful stuff that is not in evidence at all. The data input device and screen that probably don't really help anyway for instance. No textev anywhere for any human interface to the Temple computers beyond the level of door openers. You would expect the Archangels to avoid them; all this stuff is divine power, automagically is good, people thinking they can control it is bad. It makes it hard to imagine what a human eyeball recce is going to spot that will be useful.

Expert Snuggler, what makes you think any temple personnel have login tokens to be stolen? And what's a "Temple Roomba"? It has to be something portable for your idea to work (Lets assume its one of the lock over-ride devices the Temple Guard have, for the sake of argument.) There is no legitimate need for any of them to be taken out of the Temple, so anyone even moderately paranoid would have arranged that any which left the Temple would be detected and would never work again, or would set off an alarm or something. For reprogramming it within the Temple see next paragraph.

As for all the bright ideas about getting into the system through the domestic/maintenance architecture, just how is that to be done without taking some TF technology device into the Temple? What are you going to use to interface with the Temple computers in order to analyse them? If Merlin feels he can't even risk a remote with military level stealth in the Temple how could anyone plug a signal analyser far less an all up computer into the system? They couldn't even take such things into the Temple.

The main argument against the Military over-ride solution as on Pardal is just exactly that it was used on Pardal. RFC is not so intellectually lazy as to simply use it again.

Don the comment about an infiltrator having to be 'somebody who grew up around computers' certainly isn't mine. I've worked with far too many computer whizzy people who grew up before computers were widely available to imagine any such thing. It used to be said young people thought their generation invented sex, seems the same now applies to computers.

Obviously, there is some way to deal with the Temple computers and the OBS. (RFC posted long ago that he had 2 or 3 good ideas for the latter.) I just don't see that we are getting near them yet. Probably because it is going to hinge on something our heros don't know yet either. Either that, or it is really and we are going to be surprised, in Honor's famous sense of the word.

Randomiser wrote:It makes it hard to imagine what a human eyeball recce is going to spot that will be useful.

That's pretty much why a "human eyeball" needs to look at the hidden corners and basements for whatever can be found -- or not found, as the case may be.

Currently, the people who know enough to deal with the Temple computer don't know if they're up against AIVAS, Watson, or a Commodore 64. Anything a reconn can tell them will be more than they know now.