Cyber Major

I never hide the fact that I am a geek. I almost feel this is something to be proud of and Star Wars (the original Trilogy) was one of the movies that helped shape me and my geeky interests as a child. I watched and rewatched the movies from Blockbuster (Yes Yes I know…. old school….) and could pretty much recite them by heart.

Growing up and becoming a cyber expert meant however that I sat with other fellow geeks and asked some very important questions. For example – What is the security posture of the empire? no one ever talks of a CISO in that infrastructure and god knows they need one. I mean they have a whole star that is basically one big hive full of systems and computers and programs right? do they have an EDR? do they even have a proper Network Access Control? Do they???? (please read the latter with a dramatic tone)

Since there are so many things cyber related about Starwars and since I can put into question just about anything and ruin everybody’s day I rather we concentrate on one subject for this article – I am not quite ready to become the Starwars universe nemesis QUITE yet….

Lets talk about R2D2. What a fantastic robot. Both him and C3PO are unusual in their ‘behaviour’ as robots aren’t they? one would say they are almost human right? In today’s terms would we consider them as AI Technology? They have loyalty towards their masters and they seem to very easily discern right from wrong although they are in fact – robots. So what was their programming like? My closest guess is, in fact, some form of very advanced AI.
Now let us concentrate on R2D2’s capabilities. When Luke rescues Princess Leia, R2D2 connects himself to the Deathstar physical access system, nothing stops him (seriously, don’t you have an EDR? or a security device connection management?) from coding the system into opening doors, or stopping the trash disposal that almost crushed our heroes – right?
So I can’t help thinking… what else could have he done? We already know we have access to the physical security control system as well as the trash shoot systems. On the second movie we are exposed to more of R2D2’s capacities such as navigation in unknown space territory – which will suggest a database of charts. We also know R2D2 could Alert Luke about incoming attacks whilst in flight which means some sort of radar system identifying foreign objects and possible threats. Finally, we know R2D2 has a memeory capacity and encryption capacity allowing him to carry unnoticed files of information, which is how He took a message from the brave princess Leia, moments before she was taken prisoner by Darth Vader, and made sure the message reached ONE person and one person alone – Obi One Kenobi.

Taking what we know about R2D2’s capacities I can’t help but think…. What if… the rebels created some sort of remote control malware, saved it on R2D2 an sent him to connect to the empire’s physical access systems – wouldn’t that mean full access on entrance and exit? both people and spaceships? perhaps thus entering all kind of places unnoticed? Does that physical access control also manage the tractor beam which trapped the Millennium Falcon? And what if we took it further? Lets just assume the rebels developed a real badass Virus. (Think like Stuxnet but on Steroids, 100 cups of espresso and a dozen shots of EpiPen) – wouldn’t that mean that the Deathstar command will be provided with data indicating they destroyed planets when actually their systems provide false information? Think how the weapon system can malfunction and shoot duds or shoot to the wrong destination or not shoot at all… but provide data that target was destroyed? I am taking into account they have little view screens but I am also considering the possibility those be manipulated as well.
Now if those seem too much then what about a very simple script to delete. delete everything. EVERYTHING!!! think how beautiful that could be. A soldier walks into his station, sees an email ‘from his boss’ with a link to a ‘system update’ and installs it. For now – it seems nothing has happend and all is normal. But whilst our unsuspecting empire soldiers are going about their day, the scripts dashes through the system to find databases and hard delete them all. Now our soldier friend goes home at the end of the day, he logs off his computer as everyone else and they all go to sleep after another great day of destroying the universe. He wakes up in the morning, goes back to his station, opens his user, connects to his personal space and….. nothing. This is the moment he is sure there is some mistake or glitch in the system nd tries to look for anything indicating where the data is. That’s until someone else shouts ‘where the hell is all the data???’ No maps, no navigation systems, no charts, no connections, no communication, no identification systems, no applications… hell… no way to manage water, trash, food. What do they have left? Just some scary floating metal boxes in space.

It would be very hard to control the galaxy this way. spaceships will have to surrender just to avoid people choking to death from losing the Oxygen generators.

And now I’ve ruined Star wars for everyone including myself I strongly urge you to watch the original Trilogy once more, especially if you haven’t before.

May the Force be with you,

Yours Truely,

The Green Hat