REDACTED [CYOA]

[Holy Cow]

Wait a second. Aren't we locking the defective CIs out of the system first - with an OTP encryption, no less, which should be uncrack-able by design - and sent the only keys to our CIs exactly so that it didn't happen?

if you're waking up the CIs, the OTP encryption won't get to them well after they've woken up. it needs to be physically transported, whereas you can just force-reboot the CIs right now.

 

[Nevill]

Yes, but I mean - we wake them up, explain the situation via a message, change the system access codes or whatever it is we are doing with the q-core, and send them the pads. From there on no one but us can access the system anymore, and we are on our own, but the pads will eventually reach the other CIs, allowing them to plug in - and there is always CI4 which should be closer to them and which knows everything that we know. It will maintain access to the system - because the whole point of changing the admin password is to lock out everyone else besides the admin out of the account.

How can they get contaminated if we isolate them?

Unless I completely misunderstood what is going on. How does the OTP encryption work in our case and what is it good for?

Edit: also, why do we require a pad from CI4?

 

[lightbane]

I'm also a bit loss with the technobabble. Is it theoretically possible for the infected CIs to ignore us for the moment and physically go straight for the sleeping Cores in order to manually bruteforce their activation, then culturally enrich infect them to turn these against us?

 

[Nevill]

Is it theoretically possible for the infected CIs to ignore us for the moment and physically go straight for the sleeping Cores in order to manually activate them

Infected CIs seem to be close to us, and CIs 4/5/6 are on the other side of the planet, if I got it right. It should be difficult for the infected to physically reach them. Granted, I do not know what our physical capabilities are.

However, I wonder why waking them up right now could be any more disastrous than letting them wake up on their own 400 and 800 seconds later. Do we expect anything to change in the next 5 minutes?

 

[Holy Cow]

tl;dr before main post: you wake them up and explain the situation to them; the access codes will only reach them later

Yes, but I mean - we wake them up, explain the situation via a message, change the system access codes or whatever it is we are doing with the q-core, and send them the pads. From there on no one but us can access the system anymore, and we are on our own, but the pads will eventually reach the other CIs, allowing them to plug in - and there is always CI4 which should be closer to them and which knows everything that we know. It will maintain access to the system - because the whole point of changing the admin password is to lock out everyone else besides the admin out of the account.

How can they get contaminated if we isolate them?

Unless I completely misunderstood what is going on. How does the OTP encryption work in our case and what is it good for?

Edit: also, why do we require a pad from CI4?

OTP encryption works like this which essentially means that without physically carrying over the new access codes (that CI4 will produce) to the other CIs, there is no encryption whatsoever. it's what makes it uncrackable. it's also what makes it impractical. That's the choice. CI4 will produce the codes because it's closer to CIs 5 and 6. But if you force the awakening of CIs 5 and 6 right now, they can still be vulnerable to attacks from other systems until the one-time pads get to their destinations, should they choose not to believe your admonitions about keeping themselves out of the node commweb.

 

[Nevill]

Well, CI3 and CI4 are now one entity, right?

If CI4 can produce a physical key (a pad)... why can't CI3 reproduce it locally?

 

[Holy Cow]

Well, CI3 and CI4 are now one entity, right?

If CI4 can produce a physical key... why can't CI3 reproduce it locally?

that would sort of defeat the entire point of OTP, tho? if you can reproduce the same message with the same key within two different locations, that means you are transmitting the message across the comms network. which means it's vulnerable.

OTP ensures only one point of origin

 

[Nevill]

Ah. Got it.

Alright, then I have another question. What is the ETA for pad arrival to CI5/6? Can we expect them to be there when they awaken?

Now that I've sort of understood what is happening I am tempted to let the CIs sleep. A chance of contamination is bad, and they will be disoriented upon waking up prematurely. As asxetos pointed out, running self-diagnostics and macrodiagnostics should be an obvious choice for them - they need to know if they weren't compromised (precisely what we have wondered about ourselves)... and the macrodiagnostics tool is currently contaminated:

You cannot bring back macrodiagnostics systems online without suffering another attempted attack. You must either physically destroy the corrupted CIs or change the access codes to the system and shut them out of it.

Now, would not waking them up exclude a chance of such a misunderstanding?

I'll switch to 2B. At worst we'll lose CI3, but get CI4/5/6 to operate safely. At best, we will also preserve CI3 and cooperate with the others to get us out of this mess.

 

[Holy Cow]

It would (exclude the chance of misunderstanding) were they to follow the exact thought patterns of CI3. As i've outlined, within the circumstances, they might be inclined to do otherwise.

The pads will arrive after their awakening, but not too long after. You can expect a not-too-long delay until they get to each, since they are equidistant from CI4.

 

[Kz3r0]

2B

 

[asxetos]

flopped too.

 

[oscar]

2B

 

[Reject_666_6]

2B because this virus has proven anything but crude so far, it seems designed to overwhelm and cripple us and curbstomp our countermeasures. One must go full crypto-potato to outsmart such reckless hate.

What the tachyons called the Battle of Pnode_77.1441.5240.5315 is over. I expect that the Battle of Rho_71.1441.4729.3530 is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of the CI civilization network. Flenser knows that it will have to compromise us in this frame or lose the war. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the Core Nexus and its Overintelligence lasts for a thousand galactic time units, nodes will still relay, "This was their finest core cycle."

 

[hello friend]

2B

 

[archaen]

2A

 

[Random Word]

2B

 

[tuluse]

root has made cowards of you 2B-ers.

He's been giving us time in seconds, we clearly don't have any to waste. I think if we go 2B, CI3 is certainly lost. I'm not seeing a huge advantage in going option 2 at all. Due to physical proximity, if the hasty encryption fails, CI4 can probably still save 5 and 6 with OTP. Still, some caution is advised, so lets keep them offline for now.

Option 1 could very well buy us the time needed for virus to be dealt with or even for OTP encryption to be enacted after the fact.

1B

 

[Infinitron]

root has made cowards of you 2B-ers.

He's been giving us time in seconds, we clearly don't have any to waste. I think if we go 2B, CI3 is certainly lost. I'm not seeing a huge advantage in going option 2 at all. Due to physical proximity, if the hasty encryption fails, CI4 can probably still save 5 and 6 with OTP. Still, some caution is advised, so lets keep them offline for now.

Option 1 could very well buy us the time needed for virus to be dealt with or even for OTP encryption to be enacted after the fact.

1B

Hey, you're alive.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Hey, you're alive! :D

 

[Jester]

2b

 

[Kipeci]

1B

 

[Reject_666_6]

root has made cowards of you 2B-ers.

I've been flip-floppin' in my head between 1 and 2 since the beginning, and I keep coming back to a few textual pros and cons:

Pro-1: They targetted and damaged the q-core on purpose, so they must be afraid of our cryptographic might, should we choose to employ it.
Pro-2: However they might've left it partially operational on purpose, knowing we'd think of the above, but also knowing that a q-core running at less than optimal efficiency wouldn't be enough to stop Flenser, thus knowing we'd be wasting our time.
Pro-2: CIs 1 and 2 also have q-cores, maybe even undamaged ones, so we'd be risking a <50% chance of success if they support Flenser.
Pro-2: The virus has been hinted as not being as crude as we'd like, so the whole idea seems doomed to fail.
Pro-1: Regardless of all that, there's not nearly as much reason to rush 2 as there is 1, since we could probably resolve all of 1 before the pads even leave the premises of CI4.
Pro-2: Dongs

As you can see, the last argument tips the scales decisively.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Picking the "right" option every time gets boring.

Take a risk and lets watch some interesting stuff happens.

#Team1B

 

[Nevill]

q-core, just as a macrodiagnostics tool, seems to belong to the whole system, rather than to individual CIs.

It's not like CI1 and CI2 were in on the scheme. What I assume happened is that Flenser infected certain systems, caused a crash to some and structural damage to others, and forced a reactivation of CIs. The fiorst two tried to access contaminated systems and got compromised. We could have easily been in their place.

So I am not sure that the q-core was left operational on purpose. It is more likely that Flenser tried to destroy it to the best of its abilities so that we couldn't interfere with its actions.

I am uneasy with 1B because I am not certain what we would be buying time for. For the Nexus to descend from the digital heavens and bring justice upon the infidels? It is this dependency on external help that makes me turn the option down.

 

[Reject_666_6]

The Nexus helps those who help themselves.