Raziel
Dark Jedi Spymaster
Intent: To expand on techniques used by ACA to secure their droid armies
Development Thread:
Manufacturer: InnoTeQ
Model: Abrion Platform Trust Chip
Affiliation: Private Market
Modularity: No
Production: Mass-produced
Material: Components used for SW equivalent to chipsets
Description: The Abrion Corporate Alliance relies on droid soldiers for the vast majority of its warfighting ability. As such the alliance has devoted vast resources over the years to securing the network of communication to prevent slicing of its forces. Whilst these communications are inherently secure, with multiple authentication methods in use, and specific waveforms used in a hierarchical manner to prevent any breach of a whole battlegroup, there is still a residual threat.
Any regular soldier can have his communications systems sliced, however he generally has the intelligence to check the orders he is being given. Whilst droids can do the same with their limited intelligence, they themselves are capable of being sliced and re-programmed if the communications sub network they are on is sliced. Whilst there is a vast amount of security around this program layer, independent of network security, there is again a threat of droids having their firmware replaced or modified, so that the droid could accept commands to attack blue forces.
As such, InnoTeQ were contracted to come up with a further layer of redundancy to provide protection. They have come up with an additional method that runs at a secure hardware layer to do this. Each droid has a single PTC installed.
Each chip will create a secure and incredibly difficult to forge, hash that represents that hardware and software state of the droid. If it detects a significant configuration change to the programming of the droid it may take a variety of actions. In the worst case the chip is hard wire to shutdown the droid. It will then purge the droid’s current programming and decrypt and load a new lightweight firmware*. This will restore the droid to a simple config, where it will only respond to verbal commands to reduce the risk of further slicing.
On the downside the rebooted droid will run at ~20% reduced combat effectiveness from the new, lighter but hardened programming. It will also lose the ability to quickly interface with command systems, instead relying on verbal communication only.
As well as this, significant battle damage that destroys computing components, or EM attacks that happen to corrupt signals sent around the droid may trigger a “false positive” effect that sends the droid into a secure reboot. The secure reboot takes around twenty seconds, leaving it vulnerable.
*Similar to rebooting windows in safe mode
Primary Source: Based on TPM chips. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module
Development Thread:
Manufacturer: InnoTeQ
Model: Abrion Platform Trust Chip
Affiliation: Private Market
Modularity: No
Production: Mass-produced
Material: Components used for SW equivalent to chipsets
Description: The Abrion Corporate Alliance relies on droid soldiers for the vast majority of its warfighting ability. As such the alliance has devoted vast resources over the years to securing the network of communication to prevent slicing of its forces. Whilst these communications are inherently secure, with multiple authentication methods in use, and specific waveforms used in a hierarchical manner to prevent any breach of a whole battlegroup, there is still a residual threat.
Any regular soldier can have his communications systems sliced, however he generally has the intelligence to check the orders he is being given. Whilst droids can do the same with their limited intelligence, they themselves are capable of being sliced and re-programmed if the communications sub network they are on is sliced. Whilst there is a vast amount of security around this program layer, independent of network security, there is again a threat of droids having their firmware replaced or modified, so that the droid could accept commands to attack blue forces.
As such, InnoTeQ were contracted to come up with a further layer of redundancy to provide protection. They have come up with an additional method that runs at a secure hardware layer to do this. Each droid has a single PTC installed.
Each chip will create a secure and incredibly difficult to forge, hash that represents that hardware and software state of the droid. If it detects a significant configuration change to the programming of the droid it may take a variety of actions. In the worst case the chip is hard wire to shutdown the droid. It will then purge the droid’s current programming and decrypt and load a new lightweight firmware*. This will restore the droid to a simple config, where it will only respond to verbal commands to reduce the risk of further slicing.
On the downside the rebooted droid will run at ~20% reduced combat effectiveness from the new, lighter but hardened programming. It will also lose the ability to quickly interface with command systems, instead relying on verbal communication only.
As well as this, significant battle damage that destroys computing components, or EM attacks that happen to corrupt signals sent around the droid may trigger a “false positive” effect that sends the droid into a secure reboot. The secure reboot takes around twenty seconds, leaving it vulnerable.
*Similar to rebooting windows in safe mode
Primary Source: Based on TPM chips. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module
