Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Silent Threat: Reborn => FreeSpace Conversion => Phoenix => Topic started by: Aadarsh on October 30, 1926, 06:18:24 pm
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Somebody is reading these things. I was beginning to think I was talking to myself, but no; these messages are being received by person or persons unknown. I've been getting a number of hits on those orders I uploaded on the 15th, and the traceback shows that the origin is outside the GTI network.
Problem is, that's as far as I can get. Just when it looks like I can identify the access point, I hit a dead end. It doesn't make sense. On the one hand, the access trace shows no encryption whatsoever, not even basic packet encoding. On the other hand, all the traces I run are only supplying the least significant four bytes of the node addresses. No matter what I do, I can't find the rest.
I think I'd know if the GTI was on to me, so for the time being I'm going to assume that whoever is receiving this is just really skilled at covering their tracks. We've had an increase in unauthorized attempts to access the restricted zone recently, and the GTI has come up empty-handed there too. Maybe they haven't locked down the net as tightly as they thought.
I haven't been able to dig up any dirt recently; we all have our hands full trying to figure out how the hell the Shivans can track things through subspace. Pretty much the only thing I can say at this point is that the GTI doesn't share the same enthusiasm for rooting out the HOL as the GTA does. I think as far as the GTI is concerned, the Vasudans can fight it out themselves; that way they're kept occupied and divided while the GTA can stay focused on the Shivans.
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:bump:
Well, that's why we're here. :bump:
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Yay, something I didn't arrive too late for! :)
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Node address...
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3814.8.7361 seems to be the public node for the Holonet. I guess he has the the last four numbers (where 7361 is in the public number) for the restricted area.
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I was kind of under the impression that the people he was talking about but wasn't able to track down were...us. We're the ones receiving his messages, although he seemingly can't communicate directly back to us, and we're the ones who keep trying to access those restricted areas of the site that go nowhere at the moment. It's like we're communicating through some bizarre subspace communications warp that's hooking up the Holonet with our Internets...if that makes any sense. :p
Yay for staying in-character!
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Nope. He's using a long-range comm from Delta Serpentis. :drevil:
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Somebody is reading these things. I was beginning to think I was talking to myself, but no; these messages are being received by person or persons unknown. I've been getting a number of hits on those orders I uploaded on the 15th, and the traceback shows that the origin is outside the GTI network.
Aww, man. I wish I had a time- and space-transcending internet connection. Or whatever the hell they call the internet in the 24th century.
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whatever the hell they call the internet in the 24th century.
Holonet :P
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WARNING: Long Post, almost entirely hypothetical.
Somebody is reading these things. I was beginning to think I was talking to myself, but no; these messages are being received by person or persons unknown. I've been getting a number of hits on those orders I uploaded on the 15th, and the traceback shows that the origin is outside the GTI network.
Problem is, that's as far as I can get. Just when it looks like I can identify the access point, I hit a dead end. It doesn't make sense. On the one hand, the access trace shows no encryption whatsoever, not even basic packet encoding. On the other hand, all the traces I run are only supplying the least significant four bytes of the node addresses. No matter what I do, I can't find the rest.
He's totally talking about us. IPv4 addresses are 4 bytes (for example, 74.125.19.147 is 0x4A.0x7D.0x13.0x93, and two hex digits represent one byte). The reason he can't find any more is because no more exists.
This means that whatever protocol the Holonet uses, its addresses are at the very least 29 bits (12 + 4 + 13), and if all of the address parts have integer multiple sizes in bytes, this jumps to 40 bits (5 bytes, 2+1+2). Furthermore, if all the address parts are of equal size (a reasonable assumption), this jumps to 48 bits (6 bytes, 2+2+2).
No wonder he thinks we're expert hackers. If you only have the last 4 bytes of 6 for an address, the number of possible origins for that partial address comes to 65536. There's almost no way to pick out a single hacker among 65 thousand people.
--HYPOTHETICAL STUFF BEGINS HERE--
This also reveals a bit more about the Holonet itself. Assuming that Node Addresses on the Holonet are 6 bytes in size, the maximum number of computers connected to the Holonet at any one time (ignoring the possibility of NAT) is 2^48, or 281,474,976,710,656. This places it between IPv4 (4,294,967,296 (2^32)) and IPv6 (340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 (2^128)). Assuming that there is at least one computer per person, that all computers are connected to the Holonet, and that NAT is not being used, this puts the maximum number of people in the GTVA at 2^48 as well, roughly 281 trillion.
However, there's no way you'd wait until you filled the address space before making a switch. As of Oct 2008, IANA holds roughly 39 unallocated address blocks (each address block holds 16,777,216 addresses.) This means roughly 15% of the IPv4 address space is being held in reserve. Assuming that 15% is the cut-off before you start switching to another addressing method (such as IPv6), this means that the organization that controls the Holonet Address space should have at least 15% of the address space in reserve, or roughly 42,221,246,506,598 addresses. Assuming a similar percentage of reserved addresses, this means that there are at most 200,025,354,348,265 addresses allocated by the Holonet Address Space Governing Body.
The current population of Earth is roughly 6.7 billion, which means that our population to allocated address space ratio is roughly 2.195177713. This means that for every two people on Earth, there is roughly one address allocated for them. In a more technologically advanced society, this number goes down. If we assume that the GTVA ratio is 1 allocated address per person, this puts the theoretical upper limit of the GTVA population at the time of ST:R somewhere around 200 trillion people.
Of course, this number is nowhere near the actual GTVA population. We know that the Lucifer's bombing of Vasuda Prime killed 4 billion Vasudans. Even assuming that it only killed half of those who lived on Vasuda when the Great War started, that puts the total population of Vasuda Prime during its peak at 8 billion. Assuming this was average for a planet (not the best assumption), The GTVA would still need over twenty five thousand inhabited planets to reach the 200 trillion mark.
In short, this was a fun post to write, but it's not very useful. :)
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(regarding Mongoose's gold star)
This is exactly like the Adjutant Reflex thing, another Halo viral marketing ploy.
Adjutant Reflex was supposedly a Forerunner AI which entered the Bungie forums and began posting some random messages on the Halo board which were similar Aandarsh's. It said stuff about how humanity was intriguing and that he was highlighting them as an interesting race. Eventually he got hacked by another Forerunner AI and stopped posting. Apparently, a prominent member of the Bungie forums was then started receiving PMs from Adjutant Reflex.
I see a lot of parallels here between the Adjutant Reflex viral marketing scheme and this thingy. I believe Mongoose may be receiving personal messages from this Aadarsh fellah, which is why he has that gold star, if Goober really is copying Microsoft's viral marketing plans so exactly.
But I doubt it. Mongoose could tell us why he has the gold star and I'm sure it's got something to do with being a good moderator...
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Traditionally it's a reward for good work. Maybe he finished something first :drevil:
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Trust me, I'd love to be on the inside of this thing looking out...but the star is just for being a good little moderator (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,57222.msg1156134.html#msg1156134). :p
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I wish I moderated a board that actually required moderation. :(
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So... anyone knows if there's something remotely looking like a puzzle this time?
I would like to think so, but it appears to be just a casual post and a bit of him talking about us reading stuff from the long past :lol:
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I thought someone said that the next puzzle would be up on the 25th, so I'm not sure. It's interesting, nonetheless.
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Yeah, this seems like an in-between post, just Aadarsh letting us know that he sees what we're doing. The Holonet news feed and Vasudan word of the day keep getting updated, but the latter's archive is still broken...I wonder if that's of any significance.
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Means that holonet webmasters are total nabs /me gets shot down
Probably we are just not ready yet for those areas of the holonet or they simply don't exist :rolleyes:
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Can Anyone Hear Me? was also a chat post.
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Oh, by the way, I think we already have those last 4 digits--look at Aardash's post very carefully. There's something kind of odd about it.
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If You mean how his post is dated "1926"? I noticed that...Does that mean that he's doing the time warp?...
Or does it mean that the number "1926" have some significance to our problem?
Hmmm...This reminds me of that game on the Bonus disc of the X-Files Season DVD boxset...
If anyone here has played that game they'll notice the similarities...I enjoy games like that
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Trust me, I'd love to be on the inside of this thing looking out...but the star is just for being a good little moderator (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,57222.msg1156134.html#msg1156134). :p
that's just a cover I bet. He has too many "sources". I think he is sending him PMs.
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...wait, what? I've never had any access to anything that wasn't available to anyone in here. The few PMs I did receive from Goober were in response to asking specific questions or making specific comments, which anyone else could have done as well, and I shared any relevant information that was in them. As people in the HLP IRC channel found out, Goober was very willing to share information (or at least small tidbits of it) if he was asked the right questions.
And no offense to you personally, but considering how late in the game we are, I think it would have done you a whole lot of good to skim through the entire folder backlog to see exactly what we've done and how much we've learned. It's not as though there are a whole lot of threads in here; it wouldn't take you that long to get through all of them.
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justkiddin.