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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: General/Updates
[UPDATE] The Path of Least Time-10 October 06- Search Agent
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PMAvers
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 		[UPDATE] The Path of Least Time-10 October 06- Search Agent
Perma-link: http://www.thepathofleasttime.com/archives/2006/10/search_agent.html

Kurt wrote:
It's been a busy few weeks, during which time I've been doing two jobs and reporting to two bosses (three, if you count Violet). The work on securing the data link between Earth and Perplex City has nearly finished now, following a series of hellishly ferocious simulated attacks. It's so secure now that I'm convinced there's nothing anyone could do to disrupt the flow of information between our two worlds, short of a full physical assault, and the last time I looked, the Third Power didn't have an army.

Partly as a result of this, Garnet's been in a rather good mood. He can often be seen striding around the corridors purposefully, like a man who solved a particularly troubling mechanical puzzle where the parts weren't moving quite right - and now they're all in motion, all in unison. The other reason, it's rumoured, is Camryn Scott's struggles in the election. Garnet's never made a secret of his preference for Earlywine (something which I respect - at least he says it aloud) and it's hard to believe that an Earlywine victory wouldn't benefit him or his ideals.

Garnet's good mood, thankfully, has meant that he's missed my frequent moonlighting as backup for Violet and Scarlett in Lancewood, which was mostly boring, and sometimes terrifying.

Most people are lucky enough not to know what real terror is. Drowning in Silburn-Griggs, seconds away from death, with no way out; that was terror. But when I was sitting safely at my desk in the Academy, watching the Kiteways in Lancewood while someone systematically destroyed the facility... that was worse. And that's to say nothing of the state Caine was in.

Scarlett appeared to cope well with what she had to do to Major Jake Maine in the Quiet Room, but then it can be easy to cover up your feelings. Violet's not the sort of person who likes publicly empathising with, well, anyone, so I assumed that she hadn't talked things through with her sister. I'm not the best counsellor either, but then again, I have relevant experience. When I told Scarlett that she could talk to me about it, she seemed a little unsure but at least she knows that I'm here.

I still think about Miranda occasionally, in the abstract. I think about who she was when she was younger, and how she became part of the Third Power. I don't let thoughts wander too closely to anything else.

Between the more pressing demands of my real job and Lancewood, I had to break off my investigation into Special Project 487 (which sounds suspiciously like Major Jake's '487th'). It's an odd string of characters. Whenever I look for it, there seems to be less and less information available, as if there's something monitoring the term. I mulled this over a little while, and realised the behaviour bore more than a passing resemblance to the Djinn virus, which managed to hide itself from discovery by monitoring and changing information on the network intelligently.

But it's not quite the Djinn virus. It's better than that, because when I tried to decompile it, it wiped my key. Back to the drawing board, I suppose.


PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 1:16 pm
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hobyrne
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 		Re: [UPDATE] The Path of Least Time-10 October 06- Search Ag
PMAvers wrote:
Perma-link: http://www.thepathofleasttime.com/archives/2006/10/search_agent.html

Kurt wrote:
...

But it's not quite the Djinn virus. It's better than that, because when I tried to decompile it, it wiped my key. Back to the drawing board, I suppose.


Great. (checks the status of infamous Card 243) And we still don't know who made the Djinn worm/virus. (I assume they're the same thing, many people use all sorts of malware terms interchangably.)

PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 2:41 pm
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ixalon
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 		What instantly stood out when I read it was "It's an odd string of characters" when referring to Special Project 487.

Wonder if there are any good anagrams of "Special Project Four Eight Seven" or "Special Project Four Hundred and Eighty Seven", or is he referring to Axiom?
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:29 pm
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rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
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 		comments about Kurt's latest post
Quote:
because when I tried to decompile it, it wiped my key.


Could 487 have something to do with keying the deck? Just throwing this out there.

I don't suppose that could be a hint about keying the deck for the Solitaire cipher? At this point any straw worth grasping seems like progress on that card. I'm seriously considering talking some cryptographer people from a tech group here in the city into trying to solve this for us.

And I just realized this is totally off topic.

So it seems someone wrote a program to monitor the searches for Project 487 and axiom that Kurt was doing. Could it be our friend CT? The two best non-Academy programmers we know are Claire Castille and CT (at least if we assume Claire was telling the truth about her involvement in the theft.)

Other than that - there are the commercial security people that Henrik allows to access the Academy system for test and things.

I'm just thinking that maybe we need to look outside the Academy for the author of this particular virus.

I'm still baffled at the lack of concern Kurt seems to have about covering up his tracks. It only makes sense that the person or program monitoring the searches he is doing is watching him. After Anna's death and Caine's departure and return, you think they would at least talk about it. They just aren't that careful about what they are doing.

And - does anyone think Garnet's happiness is related to something about Project 487? Maybe they solved something with it? I am certain Garnet knows all about it, but I haven't thought of a convincing reason to email him and try to discuss it.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:32 pm
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Flabyo
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 		Garnet is both military and crypto department, so it's quite likely him that worte whatever is perplexing Kurt.

PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 3:14 am
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Scribe
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 		Re: [UPDATE] The Path of Least Time-10 October 06- Search Ag
Kurt wrote:

But it's not quite the Djinn virus. It's better than that, because when I tried to decompile it, it wiped my key. Back to the drawing board, I suppose.


I guess Earth systems and PXC systems are quite different, but still - what exactly is Kurt trying to decompile here? IIRC, he's running searches in the system, and something else in the system is modifying the results. Does this mean he's found something in particular, or that he's decompiling the whole search engine? Shocked
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 3:52 am
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rose
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 		I didn't understand the word "decompile" used in that context either. But I thought it was just my ignorance. Maybe we need to decompile something? Not that I know how. Smile
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 12:41 pm
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TheDarkMoomin
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 		Again, have no expert knowledge in this area, but if decompiling it wiped his key, does that not imply that this 'thing' which is monitoring the network for Project 487 activity and hiding things has actually transferred itself to Kurt's key? Much as a virus would do? SO maybe he found the 'thing' but was unable to find out anything about it...?

PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 2:16 pm
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Sh1ft
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 		It almost sounds like Kurt was able to find the executable (super son of djinn) that was interpreting the searches that deleted references to Project 487. Once he found the executable, he attempted to reverse-engineer the executable back to code and it was smart enough to wipe all data (including itself) from his key.

PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 12:23 am
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Sh1ft wrote:
It almost sounds like Kurt was able to find the executable (super son of djinn) that was interpreting the searches that deleted references to Project 487. Once he found the executable, he attempted to reverse-engineer the executable back to code and it was smart enough to wipe all data (including itself) from his key.


Thats what I meant!

PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 4:52 am
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TheDarkMoomin
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 		DOH! ^^^^ Was me... forgot to log in!

PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 5:09 am
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