Cloudy future

Introduction and Disclaimer

This story is dedicated to one small IT problem and one big problem of humanity.

All characters and organizations are fictional, and any coincidence with real-life or living people, or real-life or existing organizations by chance.

Attention! The story uses IT terminology, abbreviations and established concepts, as well as the scene of a computer without a case. Please treat with understanding.
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***

People chilly shivered under strong gusts of wind in anticipation of transport. Already as a half or two decades, there were no buses, trolley buses or trams. All this replaced the universal transport module from the United Transport Company. The old generation, however, still called the modules buses, but where are they up to more comfortable UTMok working exclusively on energy cells and moving faster than any, even private, urban transport. As far as the manufacturer was good in terms of technical solutions, everything was so unimportant with the design and the people aptly called this transport loaves. However, there were routes that UTMki walked a new generation, which had a striking futuristic design. The city government promised to update the entire fleet of vehicles either by the end of the previous or the next five-year plan.

Suddenly, a semicircle quickly formed at the bus stop, in the center of which there was an inconspicuous man in a gray coat with a highly raised collar. The eyes of a person radiated a light bluish color, the brightness of which was continuously changing. Not everyone could afford eye implants of this level. Ordinary citizens tried to instinctively stay away from such lucky ones. These never expected public transport at bus stops. Only if they were not special employees of the RKN.

***

The major quickly entered the apartment, nodding to the guard at the entrance. Having carefully avoided a small half-empty two-room apartment, trying to grab every detail from the first, still fresh look, he approached the only table in the apartment.

The tabletop was old, with traces of numerous scratches scratched with time. A small, fifteen-inch monitor in a cracked case was leaning against a wall. The stand was obviously not in front, to prevent falling, the monitor was propped up by small fragments of facing brick. In the left corner of the table was a power supply, tightly attached to the table with scotch tape. From the power supply wired to the adjacent motherboard and three hard drives. On the motherboard, a cooler quietly whined, slightly ploping a half-hitting sticker on one of the two memory bars. The monitor was connected to the system through a video card inserted into the motherboard. Three red SATA cables left the motherboard, but only one was connected to the hard drive. In the center of the table there is a stained mechanical keyboard with practically erased letters on the keys and a burning Num Lock indicator, as well as an overly elongated mouse. Wires from them snake pulled to the round green and purple connectors at the end of the motherboard. A USB flash drive stuck out of the USB connector on the motherboard, occasionally blinking a blue indicator inside it. A blue box was connected to the adjacent connector with a short cable, from which a cable twisted in thin twisted pairs of wires twisted like a snake, leaving to the black pyramid on the window. The black screen of the monitor displayed only a blinking cursor, above which there was an inscription: “Emergency shutdown ...”

Without taking off his gloves, the Major thoughtfully ran his finger along the table next to the hard drive, the sticker of which contained large letters “12.0TV”, and headed for the exit from the apartment. The main thing he had already seen.

- Hacker called?

- At once. With a group of about fifteen minutes will be.

The major nodded. Work well with a well-coordinated team.

***

The hacker just sat down to write the official report of how he received the call from the intercom. Caused in the interrogation. Cursing, the young man sent a dry technical list to the internal server, which he made up more for himself, quickly got up and left the room. Passing a series of rooms, the shoals of which were flashing green in color, confirming that a person with an authorized access level was passing through them, he went out into the corridor and, calling the elevator, climbed from the technical floor to level -2.

Going into the control room of the interrogation number 3 Hacker immediately saw the Major and two other people in civilian clothes. They greeted each other, but the Major did not consider it necessary to represent them and turned away to the panoramic display in full wall, on which, at the large metal table, the Detained sat, whose hands were handcuffed.

“Have you figured out his iron?”

“Not really yet,” Hacker admitted. - Long packed there, long unpacked here. The glands were still kept for three hours after transportation. But in compliance with all procedures.

“Say what you already have,” the Major sighed for some reason. - What's up with the classification?

The hacker picked up the tablet lying on the table, put a finger to the scanner with the identification ring on and confirmed the password identification. Calling the file from the personal vault on the screen, he coughed and began to speak.

- Autonomous computing system built on the basis of the ATX standard platform. Power supply 450 watts. The platform uses a motherboard based on the iH55 chipset, plus a three GHz Intel Core i3-540 processor, plus two DDR3 memory bars with a total volume of two gigabytes. Despite the fact that the motherboard is equipped with the possibility of displaying the image, and the processor used contains a video core an external video card based on the nVidia GT220 chip with a memory capacity of one gigabyte is involved. The disk subsystem is represented by a hard disk of three hundred gigabytes of standard SATA 2.0, three-byte and twelve-terabyte SATA 3.0 drives. Components produced from 2010 to 2011 inclusive. The power unit was produced in 2008. Twelve terabybnik - in 2019. I dropped the stamps and models, everything will be in the full report.

- What gave an external inspection?

- The power supply is clearly understood. Most likely, for replaced capacitors or fan. This is nothing special, the power supply is very old. The video card also soldered electrolytic capacitors. The processor case from one corner is slightly pressed in. As if from a blow. Memory chips on one of the memory bars are dirty soldered. Either they were lost or they were transferred from donors. Replaced all capacitors on the motherboard. Even solid-state. There is no standard chip Realtek RTL8112L, and it is not properly tipped, the tracks are badly damaged. It is because of this, apparently, used an external network card connected via USB.

- Not much. Punched the bases?

- Run on serials on our database did not give anything, the iron has never been lit up before this time, it has not been registered with antiquarian fans or collectors, it has not been entered into the database of legal or illegal equipment. Ghost from the past. Which was either dragged out of an attic, or carefully targeted. Three-GB, as it were, hints.

- Here and twelve terabytes hints no worse. Large containers have long been withdrawn from the public.

- With twelve terabytes will be difficult. He's helium. What and how there inside is unknown. In an amicable way, before use, it needs to be refilled, but this is ... after the event the month before last ... now it is somewhat beyond our capabilities.

- Well, this will probably help us. - The Major looked at the opposite corner of the room and one of the two people answered with a nod. - Well thank you. You can come back. Take off the images. Prepare the Wirth of this platform. The level of net neutrality is maximum. If there is something extraordinary - tell me directly.

Hacker out. The major stood a little while thinking about his, and snapped his fingers.

- Well, it's time to meet our guest. My guest. In the investigation process, no one intervenes. And these rules of the game will not be changed further. Right?

The major turned to a pair of men in strict blue suits.

“No problem,” the taller man lazily waved his right hand, exposing the cuff of his bright white shirt, “if no one forgets to stream any contact with the Detainee.”

The major nodded and left the meeting room.

***

The door opened and a thin man with bristles three days old entered. With a bouncy springy gait, inappropriate to his already middle-aged age, he walked to the table. A tablet in a leather case hit the table loudly. With a nasty sound, the Major pulled back the chair and sat down. The detainee raised his head and met the piercing gaze of the amber eyes. They looked at each other for a long time.

- Do you know who I am?

- Lawyer.

The major grunted and stopped the duel of views, taking the tablet from the table.

“So,” the Major waved the unopened tablet in the air and, this time neatly, laid it on the table, “here is your whole life.” Where you live, who you work, where you go, why you go, what you buy, who your friends and acquaintances are, the whole history of your activities in the network, and, as a result, cause-and-effect relationships in your whole life. A bunch of text and video. The reasons for your deviant behavior can be calculated with sufficient accuracy by simply feeding this data to the neurocalculator. Detailed statistics even allows you to identify thoughts that you have never voiced, have not written on the net, or mentioned in search queries.

The arrested, strong build and short stature, a middle-aged man with disheveled hair, smiled.

“Well,” he paused, “the latter is unlikely.”

- And in vain doubt. Where did you get so much forbidden equipment?

The detainee lowered his head.

- What worked on this platform? What type of hypermix node did you provide?

The detainee clenched his teeth tightly and his cheekbones tensed slightly, the Major noticed this well.

- Found already enough to permanently isolate you. We have withdrawn the equipment and are now working with it. Refusal to cooperate will simply lengthen our time, but will not fundamentally change anything. Nothing. Now we are sitting in this room only in order for me to decide whether it is worth engaging in you personally or handing over to an ordinary investigator. For example, - the Major made a pause, - to the landmine.

The detainee flinched. The major noted to himself that he was too knowledgeable. Such awareness is typical for those who constantly spin in the criminal world, earning money from illegal equipment or ideologically fighting with the system, but understanding where and what facets you can go, and which ones you shouldn’t even try. But on such people the dossier was collected almost automatically. On this same man, the neurocalculator did not at all betray any suspicious correlation, as if he were as pure as a tear of a baby. And it was interesting. The major waited patiently. The detainee, judging by his undisguised reactions, was clearly not a pro, so it was necessary to put pressure on him carefully and, most importantly, not to transfer.

- Nothing you can do. Neither with me nor without me.

- Is that so? And where does such confidence come from?

The detainee confidently and even somehow brazenly looked at the Major.

- I was tricked. They said that he just sat and looked at the work of the equipment. They assured that it is legal. I am guilty only that I was too trusting and did not think about the risk of fraud. It was just interesting.

- Do you know how much you shine for such an interest? And where? The court will not be particularly interested in the reasons for your interest. After all, the prosecutor will not be the prosecutor's office, but the direct representative of the RKN.

Confidence detainee instantly vanished from his face.

“And what difference does it make if you are there, or what is there,” the man nodded glumly at the tablet lying on the table, “you are essentially in a strictly controlled prison without the right to take steps to the side?”

“Here,” the Major singled out the word with intonation, “there are much more steps.” But it's not that. To mess with you personally, obviously, I have no reason?

The detainee looked at the Major for a long time, studying his face and as if deciding on his further steps. The major did not look away from his cold and tenacious gaze.

“Let's just say,” the detainee licked his lips, “I can only say what I was told.” The computer worked as a hypermix shadow supernode. The system was loaded from a flash drive. On a small hard drive, an up-to-date piece of heights is stored for initial synchronization and network connection. It is encrypted, automatically decrypted at system startup. The three-byte drive contains dumps of Wikimedia databases for 2017. Full dump, uncensored even that time.

“He quickly surrendered,” thought the Major, and decided to try to put pressure on the Detained

- All this turns out after the first start of the system. What can you say really valuable?

The gaze of the Detainee became cheeky again.

“Considering that after an emergency completion, the system just won't rise, I already helped you a little, saying exactly what is on a three-byte drive.” I honestly told everything I knew, hiding nothing from the investigation. Please note this in particular.

- And on twelve terabyte?

“But who knows?” - The detainee shrugged. - There may be some kind of film library, a warehouse of family photos and something else like that. Or maybe, - the detainee made a theatrical pause and smiled, - a database of some underground dating site.

The major gazeted at the Detained One for a minute and decided to change tactics. He relaxed back in his chair.

- So you get against the system?

- Not. But some of its aspects disappoint me greatly.

- For example?

- Lack of autonomous computer systems.

- Hmm. Society itself got rid of them. Bans were imposed only three years ago. Remind how many lives claimed the largest man-made man-made disaster in the history of mankind? It was determined that all the botnet's host networks worked on unregistered equipment. But these bans did not affect the life of 99.9 percent of society. And I want to note that the population itself with joy over the past twenty years has abandoned autonomous systems. The citizens who passed them received favorable conditions under which the state provided them with increased computing cloud capacities and several petabytes for storing data, access to which was allowed to be inherited. For some reason, someone is in one tenth percent of society and may well claim to protect the rights of minorities. But only if this does not concern the security of the whole society. In this case, as a conscious citizen, you must understand the absurdity of such a requirement.

The detained crooked grin.

- Of course, on this side everything is always logical. But if I do not want to use the clouds? Why this excessive cloudiness in life? Good old computers have degenerated into expandable displays and communication modules. Everything is stored in the cloud. Generally everything. Any failure, any whim of interested people and I simply do not have this data. They are selected and they disappear. In addition ... there is no anonymity of personal data.

- How long have you heard about the loss of personal data? And after a series of high-profile and demonstrative lawsuits, something special is not heard about the blackmail of access to personal information. In the past five years, have you ever heard anything? And about anonymity ... In exchange for refusing it, citizens get almost infinite computing power, reliable information storage and attention, - the Major raised his index finger to the top, - stability and security. What exactly is bad? If you are a law abiding citizen, then you have nothing to hide. What will you do with your anonymity?

The detainee hesitated.

- If I just do not want someone to constantly and vigilantly follow me, if I want to hide something, this does not mean that I represent a threat to society.

- Yes it is. But the desire to hide something already looks suspicious. Such a time.

- Like I have a psychological disorder? But after all, the desire to suspect without factual reasons seems just as unhealthy! The levels of citizens' trust in their state and the state in their citizens should ideally be equal. Or roughly equal. Or at least somehow equal. But with us they are not equal. Strongly not equal! The state knows everything about me, but, for example, I know practically nothing about you or about this organization. And if I, using my legal right to receive public information, try every morning to record the flow of people entering this building on video, the result will be a bit predictable. And you, by the way, are shooting me wherever possible. Why such an imbalance?

The Major looked at the detainee. He has had quite a few such conversations. Conversations have always been helpful. Both with the purpose of obtaining material for the investigation, and for a better understanding of the psyche and worldview of the suspects. The major never used dirty methods, strictly observing the law and investigative procedures, as a result of which he earned the nickname Lawyer. For such principles and the manifestation of elementary humanity in relation to those under investigation, the criminal world respected him and often went to contact. The major knew that each such story always had its beginning.Each defendant has always kept in his memory some events of the distant or recent past, which pushed him to a series of offenses.

- And how did it all start? What is the starting point in your life?

The detainee looked blankly at the Major.

- When and, most importantly, why did such thoughts appear? Not for the record.

The detainee sat back in his chair and thought. A minute has passed. The second.Major did not interfere. Finally, the Detainee awoke.

- It is hard to say. I always thought so. I do not interfere with society, do not climb into it, do not dictate to others my understanding of the world order. I do not do bad things to anyone and do not pretend to evaluate someone else’s personal life. And I think that I have the right to the same attitude towards me.

The detainee thought again.

- Once upon a time, when I was still young, I set up a Nextcloud server for myself. At that time there was still complete freedom, iron could be bought without any problems at any store. But it was at that time that all this began. So, after a couple of years, I discovered that my server logs were incredibly swollen. I got to understand the reasons. The same error fell in the logs. Then I tried to open the site Nextcloud, but I did not succeed. It turned out that access to the resource is limited at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office. At that time, it struck me.

They were silent.

- You know, I would like to return that time. Maybe try to change something. The problems of the past seem so, - The detainee chewed his lips, - something naive. From the standpoint of modernity. Although it was then that all began. Unnoticed and unconsciously, society lost the battle after the battle for the right to inviolability of their personal data. Lost everywhere. In some country a little more, in some - a little less. But in general - lost all over the planet. And somehow everything always seemed logical, useful and true. But now, in our time, for some reason, the feeling of some kind of irregularity is intuitively felt.

- But if you compare the quality of that and the current society? What about efficiency and competence, corruption and criminality, humanity and quality of life of citizens? All citizens. Yes, there is something to strive for. But to deny the achievements is stupid. Do you agree? So why then think and talk about all this? After all, at least it did not become worse.

- Why think? - The detainee sadly grinned. - Why do we breathe? Is it possible not to breathe?

***

The major went down in the elevator to the technical floor and along the way he was overcome by various thoughts. Peace did not give the hard drive to twelve terabytes. Such volumes on the hands of the population were very rare. Those who had them, they passed them long ago, since the state did not stupidly "buy out" these carriers for non-standard cloud service packages. And what if on a large media is really a dating site database? In the process of social digitalization, society has also gradually adapted to the new information environment. Now the network did not have such a vivid expression of feelings and thoughts as 30-40 years ago. Users have already thought what to write, with whom and how to communicate and generally once again preferred not to even form suspicious search queries. Of course, there was a category of citizens whose lives merged with the network. Initially this category was numerousbut its share was constantly decreasing and this caused some concern of the authorities. A past dating site is a storehouse of information about its members. Signs, type of psyche, character, communication style, interests, medical parameters, undisguised thoughts. It is unlikely that there is a base of some well-known site, since these bases were resold a hundred times in the markets - what's the point of scoring hyper-mix with them? But so much the better! Unique material from the past, and even more so from the present, time has become rare now. This is a really valuable find. But you can postpone it for later, do it later. Now, in the hands of the RKN, for some time, the actual full-fledged piece of incomprehensible self-organizing Jew has hit. And if to the channel-transport level of hyper-mix with a share of luck, but the RKN could still be connected, then with the protocol level everything was much more hopeless.In the era of a super-fast network, the data of an illegal and uncontrolled network, hiding in information flows, albeit at ridiculous speeds, but still leaked across the Internet. Out of mercenary motives, the governments of all countries supported the hyper-mix infrastructure on the territory of other countries as best they could. And, at the same time, they united for the sake of attempts to control the recalcitrant network, which was still used by a narrow part of the population, in spite of any prohibitions and punishments.united for the sake of attempts to control the recalcitrant network, which nevertheless enjoyed a narrow part of the population, despite all prohibitions and punishments.united for the sake of attempts to control the recalcitrant network, which nevertheless enjoyed a narrow part of the population, despite all prohibitions and punishments.

The elevator stopped, meowed and opened the doors. The major left and went to the laboratory. He went straight, as he liked to express, “to the quarters” of Hacker. Usually Hacker could be found behind a large terminal consisting of a hefty wall mounted display that Hacker divided into one to two dozen zones. The table was littered with some drawings and diagrams, pencils were lying here and there. There were three more exits from this room, behind the doors of which there was a chain of laboratory and technical rooms, in one of which Hacker apparently disappeared.

The major decided to wait. He sat down at the terminal, neatly spread the papers on the table and called up a touch panel on its surface, along with which the display was activated. A good half of the wall lit up. The display was divided into zones separated by white borders. On the left and right of the zone were large black rectangles, within which either the text of some commands or some code were displayed. The star Astra Linux burned brightly on the zone right in front of the major. In the taskbar Major recognized icon browser "ART". He opened the browser, opened a new tab and entered the word "nextcloud" in the search. Having received the results of the search results, he moved to the first issued site. A text appeared on a blue background which, in English, described solutions based on this service.

The hacker appeared on the threshold of one of the rooms and was dumbfounded when he saw Lawyer behind the terminal. The major, having heard the characteristic hissing of the armored doors, turned around.

- Yeah.I have a question for you. Do you know what it is? - Major poked to the screen.

The hacker nodded and for some reason involuntarily swallowed.

“The type arrested today is not just an ideological one, it’s still an intellectual and romantic. He says that he once did a server for himself on this thing. And you know what he says?

The hacker, seeing that a reaction was expected from him, shook his head negatively, peering intensely at the site displayed on the display, then at the Major.

- Says that this resource was blocked for a long time. It may be so. But in our country, the state just did nothing even at that time. And if there were mistakes, they were promptly corrected.

The major looked at the site on display and grinned.

“Now there’s no point in blocking all this: personal clouds not only cannot compete in terms of reliability and services - they simply have nothing to deploy. There are, of course, people with licenses for autonomy, but these people are usually under very good supervision and control. And to deploy and maintain a personal cloud in the presence of certified and time-tested solutions is just silly.

Major thought.

- This is how the bikes are born, because of which people make stupid mistakes, completely breaking their lives. Anyway.While I was waiting for you, I have already clarified all the issues. The detainee registered here for a long time, I will talk with him more than once or twice. From the first conversation you have this information: the system itself on the bootable flash drive, three hundred gigabytes contains synchronization for the Jews, on three terabytes of the wikimedia database from 2017. With twelve terabytes is not yet clear. Now the most important thing is a fresh piece of evrey. As you deploy the system, you need to try to synchronize with the chains of Hebrews. For the time being I will be looking for legal opportunities to illegally connect to hyper-mix. Hmm, of course, if you deploy more or less quickly, and not like the last time - in a year and a half, when nobody needs anything anymore. But ... I think it's worth a try. The entrance to Europe is worth it. Ready to work hard for a week?

Hacker had completely different plans for this week, but right now he didn’t care whether he worked or not. To get rid of the Major as quickly as possible, he began to nod confidently, trying to make an understanding-anxious person and hoping that he can do it convincingly.

“Well, that's fine,” he said rather, rising up, “your hard work will not go unnoticed in the report.”

At the exit of the room the Major looked back.

- Does your ART work in non-blocking mode?

- Not.To bypass the same need to draw up a memo.

“Well, yes,” muttered the Major, “the permission is still issued through me.”

Major left the room. Hacker all this time stood in one place, then went to the terminal and sat in the chair. Having rocked him, he decided that everything was not so bad yet. “If you make a local copy of the site ... tweak the routing to it ... and do it a long time ago ... correct the file dates, wipe the logs ... so long ago that I forgot myself already ... - fragments of thoughts quickly rushed into his head. - Yeah! We must be more serious about our security. Relaxed see you. How, I am now the elite of society, I work in one of the large centers of the RKN. Moron! It’s good that there was enough brain on ART to get the topic. ” The hacker pressed a combination of keys and a panel of add-ons appeared on the right of the browser. He studied the color icon of the SmartProxy add-on for a long time and thoughtfully.