Enclosure is coming this year, in late 2114. Are you and your loved ones prepared? PSTU 3 has all the latest news and coverage on pre-Enclosure events. Stay tuned here for important news as it happens. [more info]
March 23, 2114
(Seattle) Year after year, one result is certain at the annual test of the world's greatest programmers and hackers: no one will beat IronShield. Until Saturday, that is. A 19-year-old Portland mathematics student took just 3 hours and 14 minutes to work through three layers of security to reveal a numerical sequence hidden deep in the code. His name is Dinesh Gupta, a student of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying at his home in Mt. Tabor.
Looking drained, he removed his headgear and slowly read out the numbers. The HackFest judges conferred and announced that the code had been broken. Gupta smiled and gave the thumbs-up sign.
IronShield is the world's only "unhackable" security software. The manufacturer, Montague Cyberworks, has long refused to offer any details of how the program works. The company makes a special version of the software just for HackFest and was quick to point out that the commercial version still proudly holds the title of "unhackable." According to the company, the tournament version was designed to be hackable--in theory, though no one has really come close. Each year, Montague technicians run diagnostics after the tournament and tune up the program to improve its performance. In 2107, one hacker got through the first two layers of security, but after an epic battle of over seven hours, conceded defeat.
Late last night, Gupta appeared in a press conference to answer questions about his victory, which comes with a $1 million prize. Getting through the security, he said, was like "wrestling a bear." He got lucky, he said, getting though the first layer of security. "There are a finite number of tricks coders can use to fool hackers, but it's still a lot of tricks. In a competition setting, you have to start working your way through the possibilities and hope you don't spend too long guessing wrong. I started with a linear prime-number vector and then tweaked that to do an oscillation vector."
The second and third layers were much harder. "It's incredibly sophisticated math," Gupta said. "The weird thing was, I went into a kind of flow state where I wasn't trying to crack the code intellectually. It was almost like finding the rhythm of a song--once you do, you can anticipate what comes next." And that, he said, was when things really got strange. "It was like the code came alive. I felt like I was physically wrestling it--it was warm and fleshy. The last layer though, that one was icy and almost electrical. The closer I got to breaking it, the more it felt like it was trying to cut and strangle me. I could almost see a form, like a giant shark that would circle around and come take a big bite out of me. At the end, it was like it had me in its jaws, biting."
The lead engineer on the project, Serena Javits, said she didn't understand how anyone could break it, or how it could come to feel "alive." "He was doing something no human has ever done before. I don't know how he did it, but I'll tell you this right now: he's got a job in my lab any time he wants it."
When Gupta heard Javits' response, he reportedly joked, "I don't know if she can afford me."
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