FLIGHT DECK BSG TECH BLOG NUMBER 4 Networking for Success: The Galactica Way January 9th 2006 04:19pm | Posted by: Robert Falconer HNR Senior Editor By Dr. Kevin Grazier | Illustrations by Eric Chu Happy New Year, everybody... Before we start, let me share with you a fun article that was written for the IEEE Spectrum online magazine recently. They interviewed both myself and former Star Trek writer and science advisor Andre Bormanis about the role of science advisors in modern-day science fiction series. It's a short, and fun, read. Now initially the plan was to touch on several topics this month -- we had questions from our online boards that could have been answered fairly briefly. I do, however, read the bulletin boards from time to time, both HNR and otherwise. It seems to me that if there's any one technical aspect of Battlestar Galactica that has overwhelmingly gotten the most attention (read: gripes, bitching, derision, even pretention), it is the way that computer viruses (and, related, computer hacking) and computer networks have been portrayed in the series. Cylons hacked into Galactica's makeshift network in "Scattered," and the viruses that were emplanted in the subsystems caused havok again in "Flight of the Phoenix." The way all this was depicted onscreen has received a mind-boggling amount of attention. For example, on the HNR board Iskandra had several comments/questions: I was wondering about the whole networking thing - I can understand how you could break into a network, even through firewalls, but I always assumed that was because of some kind of wireless connection that the Colonials as well as the Cylons would use. But how could networking three computers by CABLE connection, just to crunch a few numbers, infect a whole ship? (and how could you then stop the Cylons just by pulling the cables?) Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy the show, but the whole computer network business seemed a bit...dodgy to me. Apparently Iskandra was not alone in questioning how Battlestar Galactica has envisioned Cylon espionage. Zinjo also asked: How is it possible for the Cylons to only be able to plant a virus in the Galactica when it had 3 computers networked? Since a system needs an outside source to be infected by any virus, why hasn't the Galactica's communications system, dradis system or even navigation systems (all have external access) already been infected and affected by Cylon viruses previous to the "Valley of Darkness" episode? All these systems, if affected by a virus, would put the Galactica in a very vulnerable position to attack, yet that has never happened. I've seen e-mail specific viruses, OS viruses, network connectivity specific viruses too. Why is the presence of a network, the only way a virus can attack the Galactica's systems? It has been established in the Mini that the Cylons needed to create a "back door" in Baltar's navigation program to gain access to the Colonial defense network. This would imply that the Colonial anti-virus and firewall software is well nigh impossible to break through, thus the necessity to bypass such protection was needed. It was also established in the mini that the Galactica would get regular software updates from Colonial Fleet Command (they had a copy of Baltar's Nav program on the ship's hard drive), and that if they had such powerful anti-hacking software, why would Gaeta have to program his own firewalls? Even Executive Producer Ron Moore had his feet held to the fire over these issues. In a recent article in SciFi Magazine, Ron was asked: Q: Will more research go into how computer networks "actually" work and how computers are susceptible to viruses? There were a few "questionable" instances in a couple of episodes regarding how viruses managed to get into the Galactica's computers, taking away from the "realism" of the show. To which Ron responded: Moore: We strive to keep things realistic without getting bogged down in too much technobabble or detail about it. We do have a very good, very knowledgeable technical advisor, who usually flags down errors of this sort, but in the end, it's my call when to stay with the dramatic beat or change things around to keep it scientifically accurate. It's a very subjective call and basically I listen to my own instincts as a writer, so if we're doing something that pulls you out of the show because you know better, it's probably a result of me taking the dramatic rather than the accurate path. Well, it has been said (by Socrates actually) that the unexamined life is not worth living. Perhaps there's a modern-day equivalent: "The unexamined TV show is not worth watching?" This column has always been about examining the TECH in Battlestar Galactica, so let's examine all these issues in detail. In the Sci Fi Magazine interview Ron said that he was ultimately to blame were there any technical flaws in the story, because often the dramatic dictates of a story trump the technical minutia. While it has been the case from time to time that technical descriptions of events on the show have been forsaken for dramatic flow -- and keep in mind that this is a charcter-driven drama -- I don't think you can make a good argument that this has been the case here. Restated, irrespective of what Ron said in that interview, I never flagged ANY network-related issues as TECH problems, and only one small virus-related issue. It's not because the writers or I hadn't thought of them -- I had several TECH-related discussions with Bradley Thompson and/or David Weddle during the writing of these episodes (they wrote both "Scattered" and "Flight of the Phoenix"). In fact, while preparing to address these topics for the TECH BLOG, I reviewed the technical notes I submitted to the writers/producers about these two episodes. I offered a few dialogue options... I delineated the difference between a virus and a worm... The plain and simple truth is that, upon reflection and examination, I have ZERO problems with how the TECH issues were ultimately addressed on the show with respect to computer networking and viruses. Hopefully, by the time we're done here, you, gentle reader, will be left feeling similarly. More importantly, I hope you're left with an impression of just how indepth we consider some of these problems -- even if that level of detail is never fully realized onscreen. Let's start with some background. In the episode "Scattered," Colonel Tigh ordered Galactica and the Rag Tag Fleet to perform an emergency FTL jump, believing a Cylon attack was impending. Unfortunately, Galactica and her fleetjumped to different coordinates. The crew of Galactica had to jump back to their previous coordinates in order to obtain new star fixes so they could, in turn, determine the final jump coordinates of the fleet. In order to preform these calculations more rapidly, knowing that the Cylons likely would be waiting, they networked the computers from several of Galactica's subsystems, creating, essentially, a parallel computer. (Why they would have done this, and why this would have speeded up the process would be worthy of another TECH BLOG entry in and of itself. In the interim, click here for a scientific paper in which up to 55 workstations were used simultaneously to solve a problem in celestial mechanics.) Galactica had to fend off both a Cylon military attack and electronic attack while the computers did their calculations. Although Lt. Gaeta had implemented a series of software firewalls to keep the Cylons from hacking their network, we're left with the impression that the Cylons got through just as the network was disconnected. Later, in "Flight of the Phoenix", we learn that the Cylons did, indeed, get through and emplant viruses in many of Galactica's subsystems. We have the following exchange: TIGH What's that? BALTAR It's a Cylon logic bomb. A hueristic computer virus... No doubt left behind when the Cylons infiltrated the network that Colonel Tigh set up the day you were shot, sir. People have questioned the accuracy/realism of how these issues were depicted onscreen in several venues, both online and otherwise, but on our own HNR board Iskandra and Zinjo touch upon the salient issues. Iskandra writes: I was wondering about the whole networking thing- I can understand how you could break into a network, even through firewalls, but I always assumed that was because of some kind of wireless connection that the Colonials as well as the Cylons would use. First off, a wireless network is the LAST thing a battlestar would use, for at least two obvious reasons. Despite the fact that speed is always increasing, wireless network communications still aren't as fast as the old Mk. I/Mod 0 wire (or, better, fiber optic cable) -- and that would be particularly true in the very [electronically] noisy environment of a warship in space. The solid state circuitry of today's spacecraft is protected from this environment by radiation hardening or simply rad hardening. Even then, solid state memory chips are subject to single-event-upsets or SEUs -- where a cosmic ray can literally "flip" a bit -- causing it to flip from 0 to 1 or vice-versa. All things being equal, even if a wireless nework were of comparable speed to a physical one, the time spent performing error correction in such an environment would cause the wireless network to run at a significantly reduced rate. More importantly, communications over a wire is far more resistant to electronic tampering than that sent via wireless connection. Case in point, there are weapons in today's military (for example the TOW missle, or the Mk. 48 torpedo) in which a weapon, once deployed, pays out a wire as it travels -- allowing jam-resistant control of the weapon until its terminal phase (read: "BOOM"). Remember that we are fighting a cybernetic foe who understands computer systems better than we ever will. A wireless network would provide the Cylons easy and unfettered access to Colonial data communications -- or, in militaryspeak, a cheap and easy source of SIGINT (signal intelligence). Iskandra continues: But how could networking three computers by CABLE connection... Zinjo similarly asked: How is it possible for the Cylons to only be able to plant a virus in the Galactica when it had 3 computers networked? We've already discussed the efficacy of physical connections as opposed to wireless, but the impression that only three computers were networked was obviously given when Col. Tigh gave the order to break the network, and Lt. Gatea pulled only three cables -- three very thick cables. Several items spring to mind here. First, how many of you out there have home networks? One... two... three... WOW, a bunch of you! Me too. How many cables would you have to pull to deactivate your network? Let's use my network as an example. I can pull the coaxial cable from the cable modem or the wall, or the power to the cable modem, or the power to the router, or the cable connecting the cable modem and router. For that matter, I can disconnect the Cat. 5 cable that connects my router upstairs to the network switch downstairs. My point is that there are at least five single-point failure modes in my network, where disconnecting a single line -- power or data -- can disable much, or even all, of the network. Not all, but most, networks have similar single-point weaknesses. It was never established what type of connection Lt. Gaeta was disconnecting when he broke the network, the three cables he pulled could have been power cables to the networking hardware. Let's assume, though, that they were, and that these were data cables. On a warship, one might expect systems to be redundant, but this was a hastily-assembled, makeshift network (that they knew they'd want to be able to disconnect quickly), so it's reasonable to say that this particular network was not highly, if at all, redundant. So the number of cables Lt. Gaeta disconnected was no direct reflection of how many computers were actually networked. I say "direct reflection" because, presumably, each connector had a maximum volume of cables it could support, and by knowing that maximum, and knowing that there were three cables, we could put an upper bound on how many computers were networked. I never discussed this technical detail with the writers beforehand -- it was more of a directoral decision -- but when I first saw "Scattered," I thought then, "Only 3 cables? Oh, but look how fat they are." (Interestingly, Ron, his entire writing staff, and myself, all watched from the back of the hall when "Scattered" was shown at San Diego Comic-Con) I gave it no more consideration. Seriously, watch the episode again and ask yourself, "How many Cat. 5 or fiber optic cables would fit into ONE of those?" With that in mind, it's not a stretch to imagine that up to a few dozen computers were networked. In fact, it was actually stated both explicitly and implicitly that more than three computers were networked. In "Scattered" Lt. Gaeta says: GAETA So we jump back to the last coordinates, but we network the FTL computer with the NAV, DC, and fire control computers. Once they're linked, we'll only need 10 minutes to complete the calculations. Also, we can read on the graphic that shows the Cylon hacking penetration where it says: FTL, NAVCON, Fire Control, DC. Further established, or at least strongly implied, in "Flight of the Phoenix" is that environmental and comm system computers were networked as well. A related note, the writers and I did decide beforehand that most of the computers were likely the same model of computer (government lowest bidder and all that), but with different controller cards and/or running different application software (though Lt. Gaeta did say that the Cylons were hacking their gateway, and by a strict defintion of gateway, that implies that there COULD be different types of computers). We'll return to this last point again. Iskandra, continues: ...just to crunch a few numbers... Well, I certainly take issue with this. The word "just" really doesn't belong in the same sentence/breath/thought as solving problems in celestial mechanics numerically. This can actually be quite an involved problem. In fact, over the course of this show, there will likely never be a topic on which I'm more comfortable addressing. See here or here or here or here for just a few examples. So, in this, part one of our two-part series on battlestar networks and cylon viruses who love them, we've established briefly why it was reasonable that Galactica would have to network her computers to solve a problem more quickly, we've established that there were definitely more than three computers involved in the calculations, and we've established that it's really quite reasonable that pulling three cables would terminate the network connection. Next up is the much more important, and subtle, issue of how the Cylons gained access. To be continued... 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