[IC] [SR4] What I want to do when I grow up, High School builds character Options

[Koekepan]

So far Liara's intrusions go apparently unremarked. No sirens, no klaxons, no manifestations of all-encompassing dread or power.

[ShadowDragon8685]

[ Spoiler ]

Alpha: IC
System 2 / Firewall 2 / Signal ? / Response ?
Analyze 2

Bravo: IC
System 2 / Firewall 2 / Signal ? / Response ?
Analyze 2

Charlie: IC
System 3 / Firewall 3 / Signal ? / Response ?
Analyze 2

Delta: IC
System 3 / Firewall 3 / Signal ? / Response ?
Analyze 3

Echo: IC
System 3 / Firewall 3 / Signal ? / Response ?
Analyze 3

Foxtrot: IC
System 4 / Firewall 4 / Signal ? / Response ?
Analyze 4

So far, so good. Liara decides, for the sake of thoroughness, to poke the eyes out of Alpha and Bravo, despite the likelihood of those low-budget hall-monitors successfully detecting her being very low - after all, "very low" is not the same as "impossible," and she prefers "impossible."

The drones that Alpha and Bravo have manifest as are very small, too small to balance upon. Fortunately, she won't have to: she simply raises her left arm, pointing a golden targeting laser at the two drones, and activates her Disarm program, pulsing through them and sabotaging their Analyze programs. She goes for Alpha first.

[ Spoiler ]

IP 1: 1 Hit
IP 2: 1 Hit
IP 3: 1 Hit
IP 4: 2 Hits

4 IP

Are you fucking kidding me? Zoé finds herself quite irate at the length of time it takes to disarm the first IC's Analyze program, twice what it ought to have. Taking it almost as a challenge, she goes back for another shot at Bravo, an IC identical to Alpha in power.

[ Spoiler ]

IP 1: 2 hits
IP 2: CRITICAL GLITCH [Edge Reroll declared]
IP 2 Reroll: 2 hits

Fuck my life, Zoé thinks to herself. For some reason, her commlink glitched out when she was disarming Bravo's Analyze program, and her Nuke program loaded itself and attempted to trigger instead. Launching a Nuke would unquestionably have garnered a lot of attention. Fortunately, the slowdown instigated by the Nuke's loading over her processor limit allowed her time to switch back to Disarm.

The tall, beautiful alien avatar stands at the top of the roof, simulated wind whipping over the crests on the top of her head, looking harried; the least of the two IC in the node had given her the most trouble, respectively.

After checking for alarms/traces, she takes a moment to enjoy a breather, and then begins the drudgery work of sifting the node for stealth icons. She finds it a little incredulous that security spiders for a public school system or IC of same would be operating in hidden mode, using a restricted hacking tool to hide from schoolchildren, but the unnervingness of this day has convinced her it's better safe than sorry.

She brings up her Analyze program as a window above her left forearm, and starts peering through it, scanning the node; sculpture, metaphor, icon and all the rest dissolve in the window into a hail of green symbols and matrix data, while anything detected as operating in stealth mode is highlighted in red symbols; and even after the window passes, their icons become visible to her and begin dripping red icanographic rain, and red trail-lines leading from her to their location point them out.

She makes several sweeps, until she is satisfied she has likely detected everything.

[ Spoiler ]

IP 1: 3 hits
IP 2: 1 hit
IP 3: 3 hits
IP 4: 2 hits
IP 5: 2 hits
IP 6: 2 hits
IP 7: 6 hits
IP 8: 2 hits
IP 9: 5 hits
IP 10: 5 hits

Satisfied that after ten passes of the whole node, she's either detected it or it isn't there, Liara pauses, sitting on a rooftop pipe to take stock of the icons she discovered, and begin analyzing them in depth.

[Koekepan]

Interesting .... there's something which looks ....

Wait a moment.

Its presentation is midway between a huge dirigible, and a whale, making it look like a blimp with a novelty shape, in Liara's view of her virtual world. It seems to inhale, and exhale. Streams of data move in, and are filtered, sifted, recording and monitoring. Gradually it exhales, and irrelevant garbage is spewed out.

It appears to be an agent of some substantial power which monitors all substantial activities, but does so from a hidden position. Where does the data go which it records? This isn't obvious.

On the other hand, it doesn't look like IC at all. It just sits around and feeds on the data streams.

[ShadowDragon8685]

What the fuck is that thing, Zoé thinks to herself. And how deep does this fucking rabbit hole go?

She'd been looking for security spiders or cloaked IC, and had expected to find some stealthed students. She just found some kind of unholy skywhale instead.

She's afraid to know... But on the other hand, she has to know. She begins by slowly and carefully Disarming its Stealth program, so it won't be able to resist her efforts to analyze it, pausing between each Disarm roll to buy two hits on Analyze to see if its stealth has been defeated.

IP 1: 1 hit
IP 2: 5 hits
IP 3: 5 hits
IP 4: 2 hits
IP 5: 0 hits (no glitch)

When its Stealth program has been disarmed, Zoé buys Analyze hits to determine the Agent's rating, what programs it has loaded and their ratings, the time it logged on, and its access rating on this node.

[Koekepan]

It only takes a few seconds before the skywhale, as she thinks of it, comes shimmering into full view. She sees now, clearly, that the eye patterning on the blimp's side has markings around it which suggest the sign of the Panopticon, and even as that realisation dawns on her so does another:

The firewall of the administrative system has vanished.

No, not in the sense that Liara looks upon a naked vista of administrative nodes and nexi, with agents and teachers hurrying hither and yon. Instead, it vanishes, as if that Matrix connection no longer exists.

That, and various buildings scroll marquees along their upper edges, declaring that they are rebooting.

[ShadowDragon8685]

F. M. L. Zoé feels a little nervous - but she hasn't been spotted yet. Those IC are literally incapable of seeing her now, and if there were any security spiders on the system, her scans would have found them.

She does, however, pause, to analyze the nexus, to determine if there's an alert or trace running.

[Koekepan]

There is no trace, she determines, as the buildings seem to collapse one by one as the nodes reboot.

No, neither is there any alert, as tiny steelworking robots work frenetically to build the nodes back up as they come back online. The city is reconstructing itself as things reboot.

Meanwhile, the great skywhale's mouth now opens wide, and its eye glows an eerie red. Smoky bits of data flow into it at an accelerating rate - it is clearly scanning the environment, and its tail thrashes up and down in slow motion. The firewall itself comes back, but now it seems much smoother, and while it has a black form, it seems to glow a deep red.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Better nip this in the bud before it finds me.

She quickly starts to disarm the Skywhale's Analyze program, so it can't analyze her; meanwhile, she sets her own Analyze program to alert her upon the entry of new icons.

IP 1: 3 hits
IP 2: 3 hits
IP 3: 2 hits
IP 4: 3 hits
IP 5: 2 hits

This motherhumper... She then carefully analyzes the Shywhale, to determine the Agent's rating, what programs it has loaded and their ratings, the time it logged on, and its access rating on this node.

[Koekepan]

Better nip this in the bud before it finds me.

She quickly starts to disarm the Skywhale's Analyze program, so it can't analyze her; meanwhile, she sets her own Analyze program to alert her upon the entry of new icons.

IP 1: 3 hits
IP 2: 3 hits
IP 3: 2 hits
IP 4: 3 hits
IP 5: 2 hits

Beating on the skywhale is tiring, and it takes punishment very well. While engaged in this diverting pursuit, Liara's analysis notifications warn her of multiple IC elements coming online, and her vision of her virtual world lights up as searchlights sweep across the dark cityscape.

This motherhumper... She then carefully analyzes the Shywhale, to determine the Agent's rating, what programs it has loaded and their ratings, the time it logged on, and its access rating on this node.

The skywhale is rating 5. It's quite a beast. However, all it has loaded is Analysis - nothing else. At rating 5. It logged on at 12:01AM, and its access rating is a strictly read-only one. It has no power in this node, save that of auditing all activity.

[ShadowDragon8685]

This just gets better and better.

It takes Zoé several panic-inducing Matrix-moments to work out what happened; the Skywhale noticed her initially, then interpreted her vanishing from its logs when she Disarmed it as a reason to panic-shit itself. Having realized this, she skips into high gear. First thing's first; she opens up a commline to Rio, her avatar's head appear in an AR window over Rio's World of Wonderland game, speaking with a smooth, adult, womanly voice, but still labeled as her.

@Rio [Liara]: "Rio, hell's breaking loose in here. I just discovered a motherfucking Orwellian sky-whale, and if it saw me, it definitely saw you. No offense, my 'link's better. I've ducked the Skywhale now, but it re-launched the other IC. We need to make an omlette out of wherever it's dumping its logs to before someone driven by meat sees it."

Along with that, comes a transmission: authorization codes for a drone and many hacked rating 6 programs: Attack, Corrupt, Data Bomb, Decrypt, Defuse, Disarm, Exploit, Medic, Nuke, Sniffer, Spoof, Stealth, Track, ECCM, and Blackout. The drone is a micro-tapper bug.

@Rio [Liara]: "I sent you the codes to my micro-tapper. I'm going to try to get in here, but it's gonna be tricky. If you can get a physical access to the fiber trunks near the admin servers and open up a link, you could save a lot of trouble. The tapper's in a plastic Pokéball toy in my backpack's left top pocket, along with five meters of fiber cable. I'll tell Daiyu."

@Daiyu [Liara]: I'm giving Rio command codes for a drone. She may or may not be about to take a plastic ball and five meters of fiber-cable from my backpack. Don't give her hassle, but if there's anything you can do to give her or me good luck, now's the time.

She re-registers the incoming drones as targets Alpha through Foxtrot as before, and goes after them, attempting to disarm the Analyze programs of Delta through Foxtrot, in reverse order.

IP 1: 3
IP 2: 7

Foxtrot goes down quickly this time, thankfully, its searchlights unable to so much as catch a glimpse of Liara as she ducks and weaves through the suddenly-darkened city, free-running over pipes and beams and ducking behind huge HVAC units, aiming her disarmament beam. She pauses to determine if there's been any alerts/traces issued, and continues on.

IP 1: 4 hits
IP 2: 2 hits

So far, so good. With two of the three biggest lights in the sky now moot, Liara breaks cover, leaping up on a crane and dashing over it; she remote-disabled the last two, but this time she closes for a spiking. As the drone passes by underneath, she drops from the crane's boom to its payload, and from the payload she hangs down, dropping smoothly onto the top of Delta.

IP 1: 5 hits
IP 2: 4 hits

Peachy keen, Zoé thinks, going after the next target on her menu, well ahead of her schedule from last time, and pushes on, disarming Charlie.

IP 1: 5 hits
IP 2: 2 hits

Pressing on, Zoé feels she has the IC on the ropes, and double-checks to be sure that the education node is neither on alert, nor that there is a trace running. Then, assuming that neither is the case, she buys hits to Analyze the admin-sector node/nexus, looking for:

System, Firewall, Response, Signal, running programs, the number of subscribed icons, its alert status.

[Koekepan]

Pressing on, Zoé feels she has the IC on the ropes, and double-checks to be sure that the education node is neither on alert, nor that there is a trace running. Then, assuming that neither is the case, she buys hits to Analyze the admin-sector node/nexus, looking for:

System, Firewall, Response, Signal, running programs, the number of subscribed icons, its alert status.

• System: 4
• Firewall: 4
• Response: 3
• Signal: 3
• Running Programs: 57 (Note: this is a Nexus, with much higher capacity than your typical commlink.)
• Subscribed icons: 322
• Alert status: elevated monitoring, but no active alert.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Liara comes to a stop in the 'trix, frowning. How is Rio going to find the admin node?

She Analyzes the admin node for its AID, and also to determine a full list of the programs it's running, which presumably will condense down into a simple "Program (rating) x (number)" list. Then she unloads her Purge 6 (Ergonomic, Mute) program and loads Scan 6 (Ergonomic, Mute), and swaps Armor 6 for Sniffer 6.

The armor cladding her alien avatar's body vanishes, leaving her in a cutoff tank-top and short hotpants, both pale red. She brings up her Scan program, searching the wireless activity in the school for the admin nexus's signature, to see if it's transmitting at all.

[Koekepan]

There are a couple of nexi in question.

The admin access nexus, which was the one in which Liara has been blinding IC, is one thing and obviously is transmitting. The administrative management nexus on the other hand, is behind the access nexus (which acts as a chokepoint) and is certainly not transmitting wirelessly. Doubtless it relies upon the access nexus for security and remote access authentication.

From what Liara can spot, the nexus is running many programs dedicated to dealing with various pupil databases, a rating 5 analyse, and a rating 5 browse, and a rating 5 scan programs.

[Twitch_]

Rio sets her Wonderland toon back to autopilot, intrigued. The Blinkies crack the school's more obvious nodes open constantly; after all this time, she wouldn't have thought they could miss something significant. Hard to believe that anyone would actually care about catching them at it, but today's been unusual already. Rio's natural twitchiness sets in. The thought of someone having data on her, any data, makes her skin crawl.

She shoots a reply off to Zoé. Top left pocket. I'm on it. Some people would ask why Zoé brought a tapper drone to school in the first place, or why she's borrowing her hot older sister's iconography. Rio, used to the oddities of the Blinkies, has accepted stranger things. She makes for the corner and retrieves the drone, avoiding making eye contact with anyone. Looking at the clever little crawler bug, she feels the familiar urge to start altering the registration. She could have so much fun with this. Squashing the urge with some difficulty, she shuffles out the door of the classroom and down the hall.

(Composure roll to resist Compulsion: 2 hits.)

It stands to reason that the admin servers are in the admin wing of the building, and they'll need air intake. Rio circles the building, staying close to the walls and looking behind herself constantly. If body language can scream, she's shouting 'I Am Guilty'. Hopefully no one notices. She comes to the vent she's looking for and, still glancing around guiltily, retrieves the little tapper drone from where it's been hiding inside her sleeve. She calls up her Command program and attaches the leash to the bug in AR, placing it carefully in the vent. Go, she tells it.

(Maneuver roll to pilot the drone through the vent: 3 hits.)

Rio watches through the drone's sensors as it crawls through the vent. Once inside, she orders it to look around, searching for the correct cable to tap. If it finds this, it has orders to initiate the tap.

(Drone perception roll to find the trunk: 3 hits, 4 hits.)

[Koekepan]

The correct cable isn't that hard, in some senses. The machine room of the school's administrative systems is neat, all by the book, and all the components are clearly marked according to standard label protocols.

A number of units have clearly been amalgamated to make up the multi-component, distributed nexus which is the main administrative system. It doesn't take long before the drone's tapper feasts hungrily on the cable, and the AR signal turns green: protocol activity established and verified. Right on the backbone.

[Twitch_]

Rio grins in satisfaction and opens a new AR window, inspecting her find. She shares the window with Zoé. @Liara [Rio]: I'm in. You wanted some kind of log dump? Calling up the paper hat of Stealth again and a simple origami tube of Analyze, she takes a look around the new node, searching for anything that might get the drop on her.

(Matrix Perception to Analyze Node: 4 hits, 3 hits, 1 hit.)

[Koekepan]

The internal admin nexus, which contains the data for the school's pupils, is a hefty rating 5 system. It is big, it is the newer of the two nexi in construction, and it has all those massive programs dealing with pupil activity, performance and management. It is also the one with those rating 5 analyse, browse and scan programs, which flutter and glance like talismanic papers against Rio's origami hat. She can feel the scan in particular pressing her hard.

[ShadowDragon8685]

@Rio [Liara]: "Oh, wow. That's... Quite a system there."

She logs on to the Admin Data Nexus, connecting through the connection to the Access Nexus. We need to find out where that skywhale is dumping its data to, she sends to Rio. And figure out why they singled us out to be fucked over. We need to go unseen to do that! Need to look for IC, and disarm the node's Analyze program.

She immediately begins Disarming the Node's own Analyze program.

IP 1: 3 hits
IP 2: 2 hits
IP 3: 6 hits

That went smoothly. Now convinced the node itself can't see her, Liara checks again for alerts or running traces, and if there are none, she checks for IC and unmasked security spiders.

[Twitch_]

Rio sets to work Disarming the Analyze program as well.

(Disarm rolls: 5 hits, 2 hits, 1 hit.)

[Koekepan]

The Analyze program is soon as blind as a bat to the two intruders, although the Scan is hunting back and forth like a shark, glancing off the stealth programs.

The nexus contains a vast amount of data, but of course a lot of it is old ,out of date, or incomplete because of stuff sloppily maintained on staff members' commlinks. Still, it is at least well arranged in databases on the nexus.

[ShadowDragon8685]

@Rio [Liara]: "We need to find that stupid skywhale's dump. There's so much data in here... Let's see."

Step 1: Disarm that Scanner while she's at it.

IP 1: 7 hits
IP 2: 4 hits

With the Scanner disabled, and feeling as if she had dodged a bullet somehow, Zoé bites her lip, and sets about analyzing the Skywhale's outgoing data stream and the node, to see if this is where is the Skywhale's data ends up, buying hits.

[Koekepan]

No problem on the log analysis, there's a great big data dump called LOGS, neatly divided into DAILY, LAST WEEK, ARCHIVE.

There are also lots of other bits and bobs. PERMANENT RECORDS, DISCIPLINARY RECORDS, MEDICAL RECORDS and so on are only a few of the many records on file.

[ShadowDragon8685]

No encryption whatsoever?

Zoé finds that a little curious, as she walks around the massive archive building that represents the data archives. She analyzes each of the logs to determine whether or not they have been sabotaged with data bombs or Corruption Bombs, scanning thoroughly; first pass buying two hits, then two scan passes.

DAILY SKYWHALE LOGS
Pass 1: 4
Pass 2: 4

LAST WEEK'S SKYWHALE LOGS
Pass 1: 1
Pass 2: 2

SKYWHALE ARCHIVES
Pass 1: 3
Pass 2: 3

PERMANENT RECORDS
Pass 1: 1
Pass 2: 2

DISCIPLINARY RECORDS
Pass 1: 2
Pass 2: 6

MEDICAL RECORDS
Pass 1: 4
Pass 2: 3

ACADEMIC RECORDS
Pass 1: 5
Pass 2: 2

[Koekepan]

All the records are squeaky clean.

Apparently the local administrative IT staff believe in candyball security: crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside. No data bombs, nothing in fact of any particular interest in security terms beyond the already disarmed programs.

[ShadowDragon8685]

[ Spoiler ]

Running programs
Analyze 6 (Ergonomic, Mute); Browse 6 (Ergonomic, Mute); Command 6 (Ergonomic, Mute); Edit 6 (Ergonomic, Mute); Scan 6 (Ergonomic, Mute); Reality Filter 6 (Ergonomic); Stealth 6; Decrypt 6; Defuse 6; Disarm; Spoof 6; Sniffer 6. [Response does not degrade: 6 programs running + 6 Ergonomic Programs running.)

All that on the outside and nothing on the inside? That's incredible, Zoé thinks to herself. Having ascertained the log files to be clean, she sends a message to Rio. This is unreal. The security on the outer nexus is like a fucking prison, and in here it's basically nonexistent. Should we teach them a lesson and burn the motherfucker to the ground, or install a backdoor for ourselves for later? Either way, give me a bit and I'll get access for us both.

She analyzes the ADMIN DATA node to determine if this is the node the Skywhale is running on (even if it's not active in here,) and to determine when data writes happen between the DAILY, WEEKLY and ARCHIVE logs, and when (or if) they're written to offnode backups of any sort. She also checks to see if there's any inactive (non-running, IE backup,) copies of the Skywhale agent on this node, or any other agents. Meanwhile, she begins the process of disarming the Firewall, now that the Analyze program has been disarmed.

After she spends a pass poking at it, she pauses to analyze the node's alert and trace status, and the status of the firewall's progress towards triggering an alarm for her disarmament versus how far she's gone to disarming it.

IP 1: 6 hits for Liara versus 1 for the node.

Finding that to be exceptionally in her favor to the point that it literally can't detect her, and as long as it hasn't started any restricted alerts issued on her or any unusual activity, she makes another poke at it.

IP 3: 3 hits for Liara versus 2 for the node.

Liara pauses again to ascertain her alert/trace status, and then ascertains the firewall's status. While it could theoretically still trigger an alert if things went very, very poorly for her and very well for it, she's almost got it disarmed, and once it's disarmed it's literally incapable of sounding an alarm on her.

@Rio [Liara]: Almost got this in the bag. By the way, why a stick figure?

IP 3: 2 hits for Liara versus 3 for the node.

Gleeful, Liara takes a moment to bask in her success. Now it's a mere formality for her to forcibly hack a flying admin account, as the node is literally incapable of noticing or taking action against her. She knows now the caliber of the security in here, and swaps her Defuse 6 program with Exploit 6, and Sniffer 6 for Track 6. Then she begins hacking.

[ Spoiler ]

Running programs
Analyze 6 (Ergonomic, Mute); Browse 6 (Ergonomic, Mute); Command 6 (Ergonomic, Mute); Edit 6 (Ergonomic, Mute); Scan 6 (Ergonomic, Mute); Reality Filter 6 (Ergonomic); Stealth 6; Decrypt 6; Exploit 6; Disarm; Spoof 6; Track 6. [Response does not degrade: 6 programs running + 6 Ergonomic Programs running.)

IP 1: 4 hits
IP 2: 1 hit
IP 3: 4 hits
IP 4: 2 hits

Now that she has a brand-new Badmin account, Liara is the ADMIN DATA node A giddy rush runs through her as she cracks the toughest nut she's ever cracked. The first order of business: More scanning for stealthed icons.

IP 1: 3 hits
IP 2: 5 hits
IP 3: 3 hits
IP 4: 3 hits
IP 5: 2 hits
IP 6: 3 hits
IP 7: 3 hits
IP 8: 3 hits
IP 9: 1 hit
IP 10: 4 hits