Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Unknown Target on December 28, 2005, 08:57:43 pm
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Hey guys, I just got the season one DVDs of BSG for xmas (woot! :D) and I think I found the cause as to why Galactica's computers being "networked" automatically makes them controllable by Cylons - if you watch around 2:12-2:14 on Episode one, it explains how Baltar's nav program had been used to let the Cylons into the ship's systems. On the other Battlestars and Colonial ships, the nav system was networked to the other systems, such as fire control, weapons, etc. I think when they say "networked" they may just mean that the entire system is basically one giant computer, rather than a bunch of seperate computers each running off their own CPU systems. So, basically, when Galactica was infected, the infection DID work, but, since the nav computer wasn't connected to any other systems, the infection never spread. It could have shut down the nav system, but that would not have had any difference - after all, Galactica's FTL jumps were plotted by hand (also seen in the first episode). So, that's my explanation as to why the mysterious "networking" problem occurred - Galactica's nav system did have the bad code, but since it wasn't linked to any other systems, it never caused any harm.
EDIT: BTW, Omni, are you never going to get back to me on the table thing? :)
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That horse has been dead for a lllloooooonnnnnggggg time man.
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Hey guys, I just got the season one DVDs of BSG for xmas (woot! :D) and I think I found the cause as to why Galactica's computers being "networked" automatically makes them controllable by Cylons - if you watch around 2:12-2:14 on Episode one, it explains how Baltar's nav program had been used to let the Cylons into the ship's systems. On the other Battlestars and Colonial ships, the nav system was networked to the other systems, such as fire control, weapons, etc. I think when they say "networked" they may just mean that the entire system is basically one giant computer, rather than a bunch of seperate computers each running off their own CPU systems. So, basically, when Galactica was infected, the infection DID work, but, since the nav computer wasn't connected to any other systems, the infection never spread. It could have shut down the nav system, but that would not have had any difference - after all, Galactica's FTL jumps were plotted by hand (also seen in the first episode). So, that's my explanation as to why the mysterious "networking" problem occurred - Galactica's nav system did have the bad code, but since it wasn't linked to any other systems, it never caused any harm.
EDIT: BTW, Omni, are you never going to get back to me on the table thing? :)
duh?
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Last I saw it, there was a big debate as to what it was, and most of it ended up in calling the producers stupid because they didn't know how networks worked :p
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Ahh, but in another episode they mentioned that even though they had Baltar's program, it'd never been loaded into the computer banks. (One of the first ones, I think - possibly the miniseries).
My own explanation is that the computers on Galactica had two modes; standalone and networked. In standalone mode, the computers reject any kind of outside connection. In networked mode, however, they first query the connection.
Since networked computers are rarely used on Galactica, it's possible that they weren't as hack-proof as they could've been. So maybe someone had an unsecured wireless line here or there in the ship, that wouldn't usually matter because the computers would reject all connections, but in this case it would. Plus, Galactica had its Dradis and Comm systems running, possibly exchanging data with the Vipers, creating another point of vulnerability. (Buffer overflow errors and the like)
Galactica was sort of like a Windows XP computer without any service packs and only a simple firewall, whose prime form of defense against cracking was that people used the phone instead of going online to IM.
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Making a hack-proof computer is easy-- just hardwire it so that it can ONLY execute code from ROM. That would still allowing tampering with RAM though, so set up quadruple-redundant RAM with a memory controller that continuously compares the banks against each other, and if any discrepancies are found, the suspect bits are reset by a simple "majority rules" scheme. Each RAM bank would, of course, be individually encrypted and scrambled with unique seeds-- both to obfuscate the data and to destroy any direct correspondence between bit locations in each bank.
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...to obfuscate...
Is that a word?
EDIT: And it was in the pilot; they said that the systems weren't networked, so it was never loaded into primary...RAM, I think it was.
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It wasn't RAM, that's too technical. It would've been something like "memory" or "databanks".
Yes, obfuscate is a word (http://www.ioccc.org/) :p
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Basically the Cylons loaded up a trojan horse. Or whats what the put in Baltars nav computer code. Then they went through the backdoor on all the security software and shut battlestars and vipers down without a second thought.
The reason that the newer Vipers (the oh so lovely Mark VII!) still work is if they get the code removed and their computer networks dismantled.
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...the newer Vipers (the oh so lovely Mark VII!)...
I don't think they're all that beautiful TBH... *shrugs*
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They both look pretty good, IMHO. ;)
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The Mk. 7's are so 1337........
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They're ok looking. Could've done away the with the pod thing on the top though :doubt: