(eng) Niall Teasdale - Fox Meridian 02 by Inescapable

Author:Inescapable [Inescapable]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

~~~

‘Well,’ Jackson Martins said, ‘it’s not really possible for an implant to force someone to commit murder.’

‘A lot of conspiracy memes would say you’re wrong, Jackson,’ Fox said. She was doing the talking because Kit had lost her nerve in the face of her creator’s father and Dillan was busy gawking at the view from the solarium.

‘And generally they would be wrong. There are some specifically designed devices which can subsume control of someone’s body, but they are distinctly different from a standard implant device and my understanding is that Peter Doran’s implant was thoroughly checked. Modifications to allow him to be puppeted would have been uncovered.’

Fox pursed her lips while Kit looked crestfallen. ‘So, you’re saying there’s nothing to it?’

‘I am not saying that at all. I’m saying that this “demon” is not directly forcing people to commit murder. There is another popular meme type associated with computer and virtual interface implants.’

‘Brainwashing,’ Kit said, suddenly getting back in the conversation.

‘Precisely, Kit. The commonest of the memes involves a virus which causes an implanted AI to go rogue. With the ability to manipulate its owner’s sensory environment at will, it’s a relatively trivial matter, uh, for a given value of “trivial,” for the corrupted AI to brainwash the human into… Well, transformation into a serial killer is, perhaps, the commonest myth. You understand that there are no verified cases of this ever happening.’

‘What would it need to make it work?’ Fox asked.

‘The main difficulty would be in gaining unrestricted access to the implant. There are other things which would help, like a target human predisposed to the kind of activity the brainwashing is meant to generate, but an outside agent getting full control of an implant is, or should be, impossible. There are very specific limitations built into the firmware of the device which are designed to block that access from anything which is loaded in from outside.’

‘Most virus downloads fail on that,’ Kit stated. ‘They are marked on entering memory and they can actually downgrade the access of the primary AI if they attempt to execute in that space.’ The kitsune looked at Jackson. ‘There have been instances of a virus bypassing that kind of control.’

‘Agreed,’ Jackson replied, ‘but those were in laboratory conditions using a multilayer payload. The complexity of the kind of hack we are talking about would mean an exceptionally large initial load and, in practice, implants monitor for that kind of unexpectedly large download and isolate them.’

‘So this would require a compromised system. A vulnerability in the LANVisor-Six could account for the ability of this “demon” to affect people and give a reason for the link between them.’

Jackson was silent, but Dillan got over her desire to stare out the window. ‘This would be great, but is there such a vulnerability, and if not, what do we think anyone’s going to think when MarTech suggests there is?’

‘You are quite correct, Detective Dillan,’ Jackson replied. ‘There are no known vulnerabilities in the LANVisor series. It will be suspected that I am making trouble for a competitor if I take this to NAPA.

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