Dr Forbidden held a media briefing at DDS Research yesterday where he warned of the growing threat of Bolitic info-weapons, especially what he called the "long-effect weapons". These are distinct from "immediate effect" weapons he said, which people already know about. These are viruses and other cyber attacks to disable ship defences and the like. But the long-effect weapons have recently come to light. These are viruses that are planted by the Bolitic and can take weeks or months to come into operation, often travelling from system to system until it reaches it's target.
Their existance was discovered by accident Dr Forbidden said. A subspace laser communications repeater on Proxima 7 was used for tests into new communications protocols recently, to facilitate the test all communications using the repeater was stopped but DDS engineers still detected data being transmitted by the repeater. They found that a virus in the DDS Medical Services mainframe array was sending medical records of DDS personnel via the repeater into the subspace communications network. A traceroute found the data was being sent to Pulsin in the Dino Republic and from there transmitted to the Bolitic piggybacking on commercial communications traffic.
The data stream was shut down but it is thought the virus had been in operation for some weeks. Data Forensic experts at DDS Research examined the virus and it is thought it entered via a DDS warship some months ago. The virus may have jumped between up to 7 different systems before it found the medical database. It then set up the data stream and began sending the medical records.
Dr Forbidden said DDS Research were now developing cyber-weapons to hunt out and destroy any other Bolitic viruses that may be in existance. All outgoing data streams were also being examined for any piggybacking unauthorised data. Recent upgrades to the communications firewalls and data security systems on DDS warships should preclude any further infections Dr Forbidden said though it is likely there are already viruses in the system, maybe waiting for a specific time to operate.
