Author's Notes
This chapter may be a bit boring, but it's an attempt to build some background for the plot. It's a combo of how I understand honeypots to work and how patches really do work, at least in the corporate culture I'm in. Hopefully a little bit of amusement to the techies out there. The movie, to me, felt like they tried to rip the hacking bits straight out of today's concept of what hackers are (concept of what they are, not what they are, if that makes any sense). If there are any thoughts to the contrary, feel free to share 'em - my addy's posted in my bio here. "Futurism" amuses me - I can make all the guesses I want as to how my field will work in the future (yes, Mike & Tobias are marysues in that they're a combination of everybody I work with, run through a blender, and whacked onto silly putty to be stretched), but it's still gonna be way off base. Read Heinlen's "For Us, the Living" and you'll grok what I mean. Anyways, I'm rambling, on with the story.
// \\
Monday quickly dawned on the moored Nadesico. Even Mike was on duty early for the frenzy of activity that would precede the honeypot. By noon everything was in place, with Omoikane comletely isolated from the rest of the ship and all of his normal inputs routed to the dummy box, which, it had finally been decided, was painted Ryoko Red. Seiya and Mike hovered around the disconnects, watching in paranoia.
Tobias sat on the bridge, having commandered Saburouta's station for the day. Not that Saburouta was absent. He was, in fact, leaning over the back of his chair watching with interest everything Tobias did. "Oi, Tober," Saburouta finally asked. "Are you actually reading everything on those screens?"
Tobias glanced over his shoulder at the Jovian. "Huh? You mean these?" he asked, pointing at the half-dozen screens of scrolling text in front of him.
Saburouta nodded. "Kanchou and Hari do the same thing, a complete window sphere."
"Truth is, I'm reading none of it."
"Nani?" Hari chimed in, his visage materializing beside the pair. "What do you mean you don't read any of your screens?"
Ruri only partly paid attention to the banter behind her, just enough to referee if she had to. Another part of her was randomly trying to get to the outside world without going through the bait, looking for any door they might not have shut and so far finding none. The rest of her mind was wandering. It seemed that everyone close to herself and McLaren were trying to get them to unite into a couple. Omoikane had even gotten in on it. Omoikane, at least, appeared to have innocent intentions. He had merely seen that McLaren contained personality traits close to her own, and thus intended only to force them into interaction. His objective had been to make them aware of each other on a personal level and not just a professional, and in this Omoikane had succeeded. How close she would grow to him and vice versa still remained to be seen, just so long as her personal life on this ship wasn't the... Ruri paused in her train of thought, unsure of how one could verbalize how every female on a ship chased after Tenkawa Akito and the chaos that went with it. Still, she wasn't sure that she had any desire to pursue with Tobias what Yurika had successfully pursued with Akito. She had sensed that Tobias was open to such a relationship with her, but like her had no desire to rush the matter, either.
She leaned her head back against her chair's headrest, aware of the still-ongoing screen debate and stared at the main viewer's image of still harbor beyond the ship's hull. There were other aspects fo the problem which she really didn't care to delve into at the moment, which Ruri dumped into the rough category of "dating practices." Ruri was well aware from her studies with Omoikane that at some point she would have to realize and define her concept of dating and those kinds of relationships. What she had seen on the first Nadesico told her that she would be forced to do so but had not yet seen the need to do such until, apparently, now. Even if there was no romantic involvement with Tobias, it would at some point have to be done, and she knew not even Omoikane could decide for her on it.
Ruri's mind strayed further from her screens as her train of thought led her to remember the first time Yurika and Akito... Ruri forced her mind to halt as a blush claimed her cheeks. With the three living under the same roof, she knew what would happen at some point between Yurika and Akito, she just hadn't expected to be so... acoustically aware of it. She shook her head slightly to clear it, deciding that when, if, that time ever came that the wall between herself and Hari would be at least soundproof and at best Hari would flat-out be elsewhere.
"Kanchou!" Hari called, suddently materializing on a screen beside her.
"Ne, Kanchou!" Saburouta echoed, appearing on a screen with a McLaren who appeared to be surrendering to some unknown Deity. "Settle the debate. Do you read everything on your screens?"
"I generally only care about them when something changes. I know what most of them say in their normal state, except for the times they require my attention."
"So they're like car gauges, then?" Saburouta asked.
"I suppose that would be correct."
Hari's screen sighed. "I guess you win, Tobias-san."
"Thank you," he replied from behind Saburouta's shoulder. "Now, can we get on with this test?"
"Haaai," Hari answered, sounding slightly in pain and reminding Ruri of when Yurika would react the same way when faced with something she didn't really want to do.
Ruri nodded, "Open a channel to the control tower."
"Channel open, Kanchou," Hari replied.
A new screen blinked into existence. "Nadesico, this is the tower, what can we do for you?"
"Omoikane's engineering team would like to run through a secure channel test."
"Lieutenant Commander Hoshino, I believe the procedure is well documented. There is no need for a dry run."
"I believe they ran into some internal issues on the ship. I would be more comfortable if these issues were resolved before the bulk of firmware updates are scheduled."
The tower's operator sighed, "Very well. Nadesico, prepare to receive zero-point-five terabyte comm sys update."
"Arigato," Hoshino replied. "I will transfer you to one of Omoikane's engineers to complete the process."
Seiya's face appeared before Hari, Tobias and the Kanchou on a secured line as Ruri dumped the tower on Tobias. "Ready here!"
"Thanks," TJ replied quickly as the irritated control operator appeared beore him. The two quickly exchanged technobabble and began the transfer fo the small patch. Tobias muted his connection with the tower and centered his focus on Mike and Seiya. "How're things going on your end?"
Mike smiled in the screen, "You obviously didn't set a monitor on disk space, did you?"
"Nope, just bandwidth metrics, where everything looks normal. They're still following the algo, but they don't seem to be doing much. Why?"
Mike's grin widened. "'Cause they're good, that's way. We're at sixty-five percent of the patch but the cache directory's increased by fifteen terabytes."
"I'm trying trace routes but I'm not really getting anything," Hari chimed in. "I guess that makes sense, though, if they're able to hide their transfer in the first place."
"Transfer's almost finished, anything else we want to try?" Tobias interrupted.
"Hari-kun," Ruri said quickly, "Take control from Tobi-san. Hack Nergal and modify the port algorithm."
"Hai," Hari resonded, working as quickly as he could. "Demo... naze?"
"It's simple," Mike replied, his screen floating into Hari's line of vision, with Seiya in the background. "If the transfer from source unknown stops when we change the algo, we're where we think we are-"
"But if it follows the change, then the source is somehow inside Nergal," Seiya finished.
Hari nodded in agreement as he completed the changes. "Last ten percent of file is on modified algorithm."
"Looks like they're still scanning and sending to the old algo," Tobias said, relief growing on his face.
"I've got code execution!" Mike called from his posistion several decks below.
"Commence logging," Ruri said, her urgency clear.
"File's done!" Hari called.
Tobias shifted focus to the control tower operator, who appeared even less pleased than earlier. "That was a half-terabyte," the operator snapped. "What'd you numbskulls do to that ship to slow down the transfer so much?"
"Gomen! Gomen!" Tobias chanted. "It seems someone was, ah, hogging bandwidth."
"That explains why it picked up at the end. Alright," came the gruff reply, "one condition."
"S-sir?" Tobias replied, confused.
"Only one type of download hogs that much bandwidth, and I ain't talkin' fansubs. I'll let this slide if you get me a copy. Tower out, and I'll be looking for those files," he finished, winking out of existence.
A second later the rest of Tobias' screens disappeared as well. "Mike!"
"Sorry 'bout that, buddy," Mike said, appearing in front of McLaren. "We got nervous and pulled everything out of the test box but the power cable. We'll scan then bring Omoikane out of solitary. The pot's still running and I'm burning all of the data as I get it."
"Afraid it'll realize it's cut off and start nuking the system?" Saburouta asked.
"Yep," Mike replied. "We'll wrap up here then give you bridge bunnies all the gore."
// \\
Saburouta's and Prospector's eyes had long since glazed over, and Seiya and Hari were even starting to show signs of staring off into space. As could have been guessed Ruri and Omoikane were better able to grasp what had happened just by looking at the raw data than Omoikane's minions had been able to do with queries and filters.
None were sure exactly how it had been pulled off, but what it had done was pianfully evident. The machine's final seconds were a complete loss, but the timeline that they had been able to construct revealed the horror. As soon as the download had started, whomever was ping flooding easily overcame all of the encryption to gain full access to the open ports.
Once the rogue code had its foot in the door, it began executing, opening other ports to allow itself in while simultaneouslly faking how much bandwidth everything was using. It also throttled back the real download to allow itself more time for entry. It had continued its download on its self-opened ports after the real one had completed, and continued to bring data in on those ports until the moment Seiya physically disconnected it. Once it realized everything was cut off from the outside world, the program systematically destroyed every sector of its host system's drives, wiping the machine clean before forcing a reset and flash dump to destroy all evidence of its existence.
"We could send the machine to MIT or Edinburgh if you like, Kanchou. We both know people at our campuses who might be able to get something out of that box we can use, but Mike's already tried every recovery technique I know of," Tobias stated.
"Plus a few inventive ones, I see," Ruri replied in praise.
"It'd certainly be cost effective to do it that way," Prospector mused absently. "But I suppose the more important question, Kanchou, is what do we do next?"
Ruri nodded her head. "Suggestions?" she asked of the table.
"Changing the algorithm seemed to work. I could have Omoikane modify it after every few port changes," Hari suggested.
"That'd buy us some time, but I'm not sure it's enough," Mike objected. "We're looking at around 500 terabytes of patches and updates, and for all we know there may be a leak within Nergal. We didn't have that much time to see if they could adapt to the modified alogrithm. Plus as soon as we changed the algorithm to close off ports on it, it started wiping things, and I kinda doubt we want any part of Omoikane wiped."
"Well, I don't have anything technical to add," Saburouta stated, leaning back and propping his feet on the table, "but they know we know. They're bound to have figured out by now that they didn't get into Omoikane, that it was a dummy box they hit."
"This is true," Ruri agreed. "we must assume the worst with this. Tobias-san, Mike-san, do you have a list of the updates Omoikane is to receive?"
Tobias passed a window to Ruri. "Grouped by critical, important, optional. Sorry, Kanchou."
Ruri quickly read through the list and was forced to agree. "We can't afford to go without most of these. Not updating at all is therefore out of the question."
Mike stared at the far corner of the room as the table lapsed into silence. "Drive swap," he suddenly said before his brain entirely caught up.
Tobias jerked his head up from staring at his laptop, accidently locking gazes with Ruri, as Hari naze nani'd, "New array, one drive, set offline, pull drive, dump data to it..."
"And run updates at our leisure," Tobias finished. "Kanchou?"
"Agreed. Tobias-san, prepare a drive. Hari-kun, contact Akatsuki-san for proper permissions for this, and try to explain it to him in terms he'll be able to understand."
"Namely, money," Saburouta mused.
Ruri continued, "Mike-san, take possession of the drive and getting the firmware updates onto it once Tobias-san has prepared it. We will run the updates once in orbit, on the original timeline. Any questions?" Upon seeing none, Ruri dismissed the meeting.
// \\