You know… You could always pump a high concentration of helium into the bay.
Good for a laugh when they start making demands.
I mean… IF they’re actually there.
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Well, that would kill them. Human’s don’t breathe helium.
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A high concentration. Not the total quantity of breathable air, hon. Ever hear what happens to the voice of someone in an archaic deep sea diving rig with a helium-oxygen mix? ^ ^
I wonder, how much more scum are in there, who don’t trust word of a Caldari Officer?
Especially even when owner herself confirmed they’re in there.
And for all of those, who will be offering more silly ideas about harming Caldari State Military Personnel at duty or preventing them from doing such duty - we’ll get you, damn enemies of the State!
This is all becoming rather silly in Semiki.
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Such hostility for an investigation.
I am looking forward to what the investigation finds.
In my experience, if you put a bunch of Marines into a box without supervision, you’ll come back to find that, somehow, half of them have become drunk, a quarter of them have lost various parts of their uniform gambling, a quarter of them have become engaged to exotic dancers, one third of them have purchased an expensive sports vehicle on a complicated finance deal, and one of them is off duty due to injuring themselves by inserting a wax crayon in their nose.
Yes. I know that adds up to more than 100%.
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Um. Ms. Kim? One of the useful/frustrating qualities of a citadel is the built-in pervasive security, which seems to have been kind of a core idea behind their technology and construction from the start. They’re not at all like the old stations. A citadel’ll be especially resistant to boarding tactics; isolating any given entity within the structure is just a matter of dropping some forcefields.
You may have dropped troops and given them extensive orders, but, if IKAME doesn’t want people who answer to you wandering around the Astrahus, then, well, they won’t be.
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Of course, I am not going to give you all details of the operation. But I can only tell you, that they went there just as all other baseliners. I hope you don’t imagine them walking as one group around the station, yes? How it would look like, a thousand man will approach you and proclaim in unison: “Your papers, please, ma’am!”
And yes, I am pretty aware the IKAME can block them with force fields, but that will just mean they will have to block all baseline sections and paralyze whole Astrahus. Yes, it’s quite possible, and it will only mean that she definitely have something in there to hide from the Caldari Navy and State Protectorate. After all, it’s not an industrial espionage, nor these soldiers follow any private interests. They are just doing their job for the State. They are not even my crewmembers. They wear State uniform, they wear State insignia and have State issued documents. It’s not like I would send a team of gurista in there, right? Them walking around station definitely could lead to paralyzing it for a moment to catch them all. But would Priano do that to attack official Caldari State personnel, who might even not answer to me?
Oh, and yes, I never said indeed they answer to me. I only said I helped them to get inside, and that they will operate under State Protectorate command. After all, I am just a pilot, not a head of a counter-intelligence division (yet…), right?
And my part - as a pilot - in the operation went successful. The rest is up to them.
Namas Tayam.
The ILF counts both IKAME and I-RED as long standing allies, and we have worked together on numerous occasions in the past.
Therefore, when both groups announced that additional support would be appreciated, in particular with regards to working alongside the Aliastra corporation, I made it clear to members of the ILF that they were free to participate in either investigation, should they choose to do so.
Upon invitation, I have since spoken with Ms. Priano and confirmed that I would be happy to personally build upon my own experience of working alongside the ARC delegation during the Kyonoke Inquest, almost two years ago, and would immediately assign a small team to support IKAME’s efforts.
A modest base of operations has now been established in the Semiki system, in close proximity to the IKAME Zainou Liason Centre, and the team stand ready to act as a conduit between the IKAME investigation, and Aliastra personnel.
While IKAME and I-RED have chosen different approaches to their respective efforts, pilots of the ILF are flexible enough to work alongside both. I am confident that others in the ILF will choose to work with the I-RED/HECON deployment.
Bataav
Suresha | Intaki Liberation Front
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Thank you for your support and your vote of confidence, Suresha Bataav! Given the nature of the situation, I’m planning to second a contingent of response personnel to your command aboard the Aliastra station, along with some materials suitable for the medical work likely needed.
It’ll be a pleasure to work alongside you again. The calm you maintained through the pressure cooker of the Inquest remains a mark in your favor, and surely a valuable asset as we address this crisis.
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The following constitutes a general disclosure of operating protocol in the disaster area. Please understand that while protocol is being disclosed, teams in exposure areas are given wide latitude to execute protocol as they see fit, and specific operational matters will not be compromised. With aggressive malware in play, and the risk of other exposure due to potential failures in containment systems, disaster response teams are expected to be able to operate in isolation to reduce the spread of contaminants.
Currently, efforts by IKAME and our partners are being siloed into three general operational areas.
The first operational silo is security and containment, currently headed by our Director of Operations Parious Mehoff. At this time, his work is focused primarily on progressive repair and decontamination work. Response teams are deployed as needed to affected areas first to secure a perimeter, to ensure safe operation within the zone, to contain and then eliminate contaminants barring any necessary and suitably-contained samples, and to repair affected station systems to provide for normal function. As a given contaminated zone is cleared, a new team leapfrogs to the next zone to continue the operation.
Observation of the area will continue well past initial clearance, and restoration of standard traffic will only occur after approval by Zainou and Watch authorities.
Depending on personnel availability, fatigue, and other factors, the response team may then be provided a recovery cycle, or assigned a new zone. Naturally, teams will be themselves be isolated until verification that they are not themselves carrying contaminants, though a comprehensive plan to prevent contamination is already in place.
The second operational silo is triage and medical response, currently headed by our Director of Analytics Jaret Victorian. While most cybernetics-induced injuries were reported aboard the Aliastra facility, and much of our medical response has been seconded to Suresha Bataav for work aboard that facility, we are also attempting to address casualties aboard the Zainou facility. Many of those we’ve encountered so far result from systems failures and malfunctions, such as artificial gravity fluctuations, transit mishaps, and so on. However, there have been some reported cases of cybernetics-induced injury aboard the Zainou station. We are also staging to prevent potential outbreaks if biohazard containment fails on a biological pathogen, which we have not yet seen verifiable evidence of.
In any case, triage is being managed near the zone by appropriate personnel, though I’ll admit our primary background is research and so our trauma and surgical experience is limited. Much of the medical treatment is essentially at a first responder level, being accomplished by our security personnel in keeping with their disaster training. Use of AIMeds or other aids is currently out of the question, until we can be certain that AIMeds will not be compromised by inadvertent exposure to malware. We will be relying heavily on Zainou for assistance in emergent medical situations.
At the same time, some of our areas of research interest dovetail well with operational needs, given extensive study of Jovian cadavers, Drifter- and Sleeper-derived implant technology, and their medical intervention to restore functionality in compromised biological matter. In cases of neurological damage, our first course is to use an induced coma to prevent further damage, alongside ‘sleeping’ any affected implants if possible without risk of exacerbating the injury. Cryostasis remains another viable option, though we hesitate to use it as an option of first resort in a malware-compromised environment; it may be a second stage intervention once a patient can be safely transported from triage. Development of a personalized treatment plan is necessary in these cases, with elements including restoration of firmware to verified clean versions, hardware replacement in case of physical damage, synapse modeling and restoration, and so on. Needless to say, the credo, ‘first, to do no harm,’ remains an important one. Our effort is to prevent further injury or death, and then to provide therapeutic work in keeping with the needs and desires of the patient, the patient’s designated interlocutor, and Zainou Biotech or the Watch. We expect that this work will have a significant tail, and may carry on for some time.
The third operational silo is that of the investigation itself. For obvious reasons, operational security remains essential. As an active criminal or terrorist incident, we are not yet at liberty to discuss specifics. Suffice it to say that IKAME seeks to provide its expertise and any information, samples, or so on to Zainou Biotech and the Watch
Please note that while I posit these as operational silos, the evolving situation and cellular nature of our team deployment allows for a significant degree of interoperability. This, combined with a mission-oriented approach, should enable flexible responses to emerging situations.
Also, appended is an initial treatment by Trii Seo on the malware. Please note that this analysis is, uh, colorful, and is based on a limited sample. At the same time, I do have faith in Ms. Seo’s abilities, however colorful she tends to be in her presentations.
Trii Seo report, "Poking it with a stick"
Worm:ZA:Chatty.A
Until established as a variant of a known worm, this instance has been codenamed “Chatty” and given the designation A as its first variant.
While its analysis is still pending, Chatty has, so far, revealed a few interesting clues. Firstly, significant effort went into its creation. The worm spreads by exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability within the discovery function of a short-range chat and coordination implant. So far, the implementation has been noted only in Zainou implants.
As this is effectively a zero-day attack, we are not going to disclose any further details of this vulnerability until a patch is released.
What makes Chatty.A a remarkable worm is its rather sophisticated method of targeting victims. Rather than spread across all vulnerable entities it encounters, it operates using a predetermined model of infection. Each propagated copy gains a new instruction set according to which it will behave.
As an example, the copy carried onboard the transport would have aimed to target the receiving warehouse staff. The affected personnel would carry a copy that would target, for instance, a specific set of external implant identifier addresses.
With a Zero-Day hit, fancy targeting code and a lot of polish – a lot of RnD went into this thing, so either Guristas or a megacorp.
Virus:ZA:Surma.AE
With actual physical symptoms like that, what else could it be. Of course, it was a Surma.
I will put it straight to you people: This does not implicate Lai Dai. While they totally did not develop the Surma virus some decade or so back, they also totally do not update it on a regular basis.
For those not in the know, the Surma or “Sudden demise” got its name from a case of a cybered up corporate security guard who suddenly pulled a gun on some brilliant aeronautics engineer and riddled him full of holes. As her body was falling to the ground from an excessive dosage of lead applied by other security personnel, her brain quite literally exploded into a slushie.
Since then, this thing has been flung around in various variants and mutations across the universe. The virus is fairly simple, it contains a set of instructions that the victim will carry out.
Here I’m leaning against Guristas as they totally don’t have the Whitebunny which is totally a myth. That said, if you want to frame Lai Dai you drop some variant of Surma on people and call it a day, hope the big media with their knowledge of malware picks up on this.
This is the interesting part. The infrastructure part acts like a SysHobo variant and is nicely obfuscated. Fair warning, this is one of the nasties, riddled with a metric ton of safeguards – so whomever dropped it wanted to engage local ops.
Conclusion? System sabotage with a hobo meant to attract attention of local ops, possibly a new worm in play with a rather nice targeting system and someone who had the guts not to include a kill-yourself order in a Surma routine. It’s a big boys league play, but jury still out on the whom.
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This investigation is intriguing; while we can guess at motives, there’s no clear or certain motivation for the attack. The basic techniques of investigation are quite simple; “In seeking our “indicators of suspicion” in investigations, investigation will usually attempt to “establish which individuals had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the crime” and to establish the relationships between the victim and any known offenders.” In this case Steine Vailakkel is the prime suspect, according to reports; “apprehended under a false identity by an officer in the Wiyrkomi Peace Corps. Vailakkel is believed to have been attempting to leave the station via a shuttle facility maintained by Wiyrkomi to facilitate transfers of hazardous waste materials from its nearby testing facilities.” From the reports a form of malware capable of targeting cybernetic implants was then detected as having originated at the Zainou Biohazard Containment Facility. It has to be connected to the attack, almost a decade previously, on his spouse.
Holene Vailakkei uploaded an update to her cybernetic subprocessor implant which then sent her into a coma. A prototype using custom software developed inhouse. So the only people with access to that software would have been Lai Dai developers, possibly other Lai Dai employees and, almost certainly, Ms Vailakkei herself. It is highly likely that if she was going to act as a guinea pig then she discussed it with her husband and that they both had access to the software and device specifications prior to its implantation. Ms Vailakkei led a number of research teams within Lai Dai, her speciality fields seem to be storage devices and possibly warp disruption, but it is not clear. It could be that someone within her corporate group was jealous of her position, or that some outside agency instigated the attack to limit Lai Dai’s research capacity. both seem unlikely, she had been with the company for a number of years but her fields do not really seem to be in anything ground breaking. Steine does appear to be the obvious suspect, although I am having difficulties finding any real information on him. Perhaps the couple were having relationship problems, or he was having financial ones. Spouse dies at work due to protype device she was testing for the company could well result in a massive payout. The malware in that case was specific to her implant configuration, requiring intimate knowledge of them.
We know Lai Dai are working on Ms. Vailakkel, we do not know if Stein was getting any kind of payments from them as compensation for his wife’s condition. It could be that her condition is finally improving, which might mean those payments, if any, coming to an end, or that she would make some kind of claim against him if she recovered. If he did develop the original malware then he has had 10 years to develop a version which is capable of attacking anyone’s implants. At present we do not know if the malware is that general, or whether it is designed to subvert Zainou implants only. Either someone paid him, or blackmailed him, to carry out the new attack.
I am speculating, but it is possible that Lai Dai discovered he had been the cause of his wife’s coma and, not only compensated him for her condition, but paid him to develop a weaponised version. One alternative is that he acted on his own, which makes no sense unless he had evidence that Zainou were behind the attack. Which is a vague possibility if someone within Zainou found out about the protoype program and wanted to nullify a competitior. In that case the malware could be one designed by Zainou as ‘proof of concept’, given that Steine had assistance from people within Zainou, perhaps the same ones that informed him they were behind the attack. It is difficult to determine why Steine is involved in this attack without either the previous possiblity, or him having developed the original malware. In the latter case must have sought employment, or been leveraged by someone. The suspects are Lai Dai or one of the other 3 main implant manufacturers trying to damage their competition. The others being Eifyr and Co, Inherent Implants or Poteque Pharmaceuticals. Lai Dai’s motivation is dubious, unless its political and perhaps something to do with their Amarrian or Khanid interests.
Those are my current thoughts, I am currently operating in, and around, Semiki, trying to ferret out more information.
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A small update.
Additional personnel and supplies arrived in system today, and have been distributed between our operations aboard the Aliastra station, the Zainou station, and the IKAME Astrahus off the Zainou undock. This includes a significant buttressing of security aboard the IKAME Astrahus. While we all know that Upwell security procedures are sound enough to essentially eliminate the risk from certain quarters, I can’t help but enjoy the increased likelihood that personnel associated with an organization bearing the ‘Templis’ name and the ‘Dragonaur Forever!’ recruiting line may be detained and turned over to Ishukone Watch personnel for processing.
Otherwise, operations continue apace.
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Yesterday evening, I accepted the formal transfer of the IKAME contingent, and their medical supplies, aboard the Aliastra station above Semiki V.
Additionally, following yesterday’s advisory from I-RED regarding an increase in Gurista activity in the system, the small structure that my own team were working from, suffered superficial damage.
I’m pleased to confirm that no one was hurt, no materials were lost, and no critical systems aboard the structure were damaged. However, as a precautionary measure, my team and their supplies have been relocated to the Aliastra station, and are are liaising with the IKAME response team.
Aliastra personnel have been provided with a full manifest of the staff and supplies which are available to them, upon request.
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Glad you’ve received them in good order, Suresha Bataav.
Please note that we do have additional personnel and resources on hand. If there are any signs of an emergent, uncontained situation aboard the Aliastra warehouse, we’ll be able to assist at first word.
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Pilots:
At this time, Officer Kauntora Itkaku of the Ishukone Watch has requested research materials for the crisis in Semiki, namely rogue drone nexus chips, artificial intelligences, and materials, as well as trinary datastreams.
If anyone has artifacts that they wish to transfer to Ishukone Watch, but are unable to, IKAME has set up clean rooms in the Zainou Investigation Liaison Center in Semiki, as well as the ARC Artifact Analysis Center in Isseras for the cataloguing and safe packaging of materials for transfer to Ishukone Watch and Zaniou. You can also contract materials to Itsukame-Zainou Hyperspatial Inquiries Ltd. at a major trade hub, and IKAME will transfer the materials to Ishukone Watch. IKAME has authorized appropriate bounties for relevant materials. If you wish to donate, we always track those who offer assistance to give due recognition to those concerned in the name of research.
Please avoid bringing the materials directly to the Zainou Biohazard Containment Facility or Aliastra Warehouse in Semiki without the permission of Ishukone Watch.
Parious MeHoff
Director of Operations, IKAME
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With possible involvement of Triglavian-related influences here, I’ve definitely begun to take a keener interest in these events - as a preliminary attempt to assist in efforts, I’ve contributed 729 trinary datastream samples and an unaccessed cache vault, collected through Abyssal research, as research materials - and I’ve moved a clone out to the system.
If there’s anything to be learned of the Triglavian race, likely through the connections to Rogue Drones we see here, it’s my goal to be in the best position possible to glean new insight through any discoveries.
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Many thanks, Uriel!
Pilots, I’m going to reiterate what Director Mehoff said:
The crisis evidently involves adaptive, potentially emergent infowarfare constructs. We can’t necessarily tell if any one individual sample will be the key, but it’s also possible any one individual sample will be critical in resolving this.
To that end, we’re soliciting all available assistance, via whatever channels are available.
It is entirely possible that while this is currently contained to Aliastra and Zainou facilities and personnel, that it might escape those confines. Even within those confines, thousands if not millions of lives hang in the balance.
They deserve our most dedicated effort.
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Ms. Priano
Sorn Interstellar Industries will be arriving with materials within tomorrow I only ask to whom it needs contracting, and of course, if we may have docking rights in the IKAME station in the system. The shipment will mostly consist of drone parts as well as a few Triglavian items from my personal labs.
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