Hacked Snacks
Posted on Mon Feb 27th, 2023 @ 11:39am by Ensign Davna & Rocoa Lotor
798 words; about a 4 minute read
Mission:
Roll With It
Location: Command Center, Ops Wing
Timeline: MD 02
It was not Helena, but Davna that decided upon obtaining the procyar’s snack request. The young Orion cared more for plying people with sugar and sweetness than with accusations and pointing fingers. From the little she had gleaned out of both Helena and Rocky, Davna figured the latter was simply doing his job.
Or, that was what it seemed. The mere thought of casting anger upon Rocky seemed downright wasteful of their time, especially since snacks were easy enough to obtain, and everyone had to nourish themselves at some point.
“It might not fulfill every request you had,” Davna began, looking about the sizable basket of goodies, “But I made sure to get you the most calorie-fueled items first, to keep your energy up.” She offered a smile, taking a seat next to Rocky in the Operations room they had found nearby. It was a civilian set-up, but Davna made sure to have a PaDD that acted as a Starfleet Ops terminal on standby, just in case. “Do you think something of this magnitude will be difficult to fix? I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a holographic program borking nearly this badly before.”
Rocky smiled at the sight of the goodie basket - now this was more like it! Clearly the Ops officer had some understanding of what was required for a serious hacking session. "Thank you," he said, plucking a sugar-coated jelly donut from the offerings. "It's nice to know some members of Starfleet understand that contractors are colleagues, not slaves to be ordered about."
Popping the treat in his mouth, he proceeded to chew while tapping at a console with opposite hand and one foot. "Having never run into this before I don't know how hard it will be to fix, but..." he paused to wash the donut down with poor man's mocha latte - coffee mixed with a packet of instant hot cocoa he'd scrounged while bringing up what he could access (officially; no need to leverage unofficial means when Ops would supply permissions), "...Let's see...duotronic packet corruption here...Progressive corruption there...Ahh...spoofing the address geometry and a security helix as well...very nice, very clever..." the engineer muttered to himself, almost absently snagging another donut and swapping to working on the console with toes while sucking jelly out of donut, eyes moving rapidly over the display. "But not clever enough. Never thought there'd be anyone here with my kind of expertise, did you? You're pretending to be Ferengi, but I see you my little crawfish..." Finishing off the de-jellied donut, Rocky wiped sugar from whiskers and with a tap of his toes opened up several new windows on his console and a pair of complex geometric constructs in a holographic display. "There! You see here..." small dodecahedrons illuminate within each solid, "Whoever installed this malware in my program thought it was just a Ferengi knock-off of a popular RPG, but buried under the Ferengi code are these - clearly Ktarian!" he announced and leaned backing licking fingers with a triumphal flourish.
Davna's eyes lit up as Rocky explained. She had seen malwares and corruptions aplenty in the Academy, but all of those had easily solvable answers. None of them were Ktarian, and obvious oversight in this moment, where the Orion was shocked to find any sort of Ktarian action within a program so close to a Starfleet base. But then again, it could have been meant for any number of colonies or holorooms. Rocky just happened to be the unfortunate representative who toted it around with him. Certainly the idea of spiking a program with malicious software would detract from business, so Davna didn't find Rocky at fault. Hopefully, others would see the same.
"I'm glad you're here, I don't think I would have thought to look for Ktarian programming. Easy enough to fix, I hope?" she asked, offering Rocky her most eager, wide-eyed smile.
Rocky smiled. It was nice to be appreciated for change. "Should be fixable. Just need to work out how it spread and the extent..." he explained, both feet and one hand working the keyboard while the other held his mocha coffee, until after a few moments of sugar and caffeine fueled labor a solid grid network popped up above the polygons with a red line twisting rapidly through the array. "Aha! See the route that it followed? Had those penny-pinchers gone with my recommendation of the newer Argus Seventeen instead of the more vulnerable Mark FIFTEEN, this would not have occurred. They used a known exploit in an un-patched positronic router," he huffed, frowning indignantly. "I can fix it, but I'm going to need administrator access." He plucked another donut from the basket. "And more of these too."
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