Cloud future

Introduction and Disclaimer

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

All characters and organizations are fictitious, 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.

***

People chilled shyly under strong gusts of wind in anticipation of transport. For as long as a year and a half or two decades, there were no buses, trolleybuses 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 did they go to the more comfortable UTMoks working exclusively on energy cells and moving faster than any, even private, city transport. As far as the manufacturer was good in terms of technical solutions, so everything was unimportant with the design and the people aptly called this transport loaves. However, there were routes along which the new generation UTMK walked, having an amazing futuristic design. The city government promised to renew the entire transport fleet, either by the end of the previous one,

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

***

Major quickly entered the apartment, nodding to the security at the entrance. Carefully circumventing a small half-empty two-room apartment, trying to grasp every detail from the first, still fresh look, he went to the only table in the apartment.

The countertop was old, with traces of numerous scratches worn by time. A small fifteen-inch monitor in a cracked case was leaning against the wall. There was obviously no stand in front, to prevent a fall, the monitor was supported by small fragments of facing bricks. In the left corner of the table was a power supply, tightly clinging to the table with tape. Wires ran from the power supply to a nearby motherboard and three hard drives. The cooler on the motherboard quietly howled, slightly ruffling a half-torn sticker on one of the two memory slats. The monitor was connected to the system through a video card inserted in the motherboard. Three red SATA cables were leaving the motherboard, but only one was connected to the hard drive. In the center of the table is a sloppy mechanical keyboard with almost erased letters on the keys and a lit Num Lock indicator, as well as an overly oblong mouse. The wires from them snakes stretched to the round green and purple connectors at the end of the motherboard. A flash drive stuck out from the USB port of the motherboard, occasionally flashing a blue indicator inside itself. A blue box was connected with a short cable to the neighboring connector, from which a snake twisted a cable interwoven with thin twisted pairs of wires, leaving for the black pyramid on the window. The black screen of the monitor was displayed only by a blinking cursor, above which the inscription flaunted: "Emergency shutdown ..." The wires from them snakes stretched to the round green and purple connectors at the end of the motherboard. A flash drive stuck out from the USB port of the motherboard, occasionally flashing a blue indicator inside itself. A blue box was connected with a short cable to the neighboring connector, from which a snake twisted a cable interwoven with thin twisted pairs of wires, leaving for the black pyramid on the window. The black screen of the monitor was displayed only by a blinking cursor, above which the inscription flaunted: "Emergency shutdown ..." The wires from them snakes stretched to the round green and purple connectors at the end of the motherboard. A flash drive stuck out from the USB port of the motherboard, occasionally flashing a blue indicator inside itself. A blue box was connected with a short cable to the neighboring connector, from which a snake twisted a cable interwoven with thin twisted pairs of wires, leaving for the black pyramid on the window. The black screen of the monitor was displayed only by a blinking cursor, above which the inscription flaunted: "Emergency shutdown ..."

Without removing his gloves, Major thoughtfully ran a 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. He has already seen the main thing.

“Was the hacker called?”

- Immediately. With the technical group in about fifteen minutes will be.

The major nodded. It’s good to work with a well-coordinated team.

***

The hacker just sat down to write an official report as he received a call on internal communications. They called in for interrogation. Cursing, the young man sent to the internal server a dry technical list, which he composed more for himself, quickly got up and left the room. Passing a series of rooms, the shoals of which palely flashed green, confirming that a person with an authorized access level passed through them, he went out into the corridor and, after calling the elevator, rose from the technical floor to level -2.

Entering the control room of interrogation room No. 3, the Hacker immediately saw Major and two more people in civilian clothes. They greeted each other, but Major did not consider it necessary to introduce them and turned to the full-wall panoramic display on which, behind a large metal table, was detained, whose hands were handcuffed.

“Did you deal with his iron?”

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

“Say what you already have,” the Major sighed for some reason. - What about the classification?

The hacker took the tablet lying on the table, put a finger on the scanner with the identification ring on and confirmed it with a password. Calling the file from the personal store on the screen, he coughed and started talking.

- The autonomous computing system is based on the platform of the ATX standard. Power supply 450 watts. As a platform, a motherboard based on the iH55 chipset is used, plus three gigahertz processor Intel Core i3-540, plus two DDR3 memory slots with a total capacity of two gigabytes. Despite the fact that the motherboard is equipped with the ability to output images, and the processor used contains the external video card based on the nVidia GT220 chip with a memory capacity of one gigabyte. The disk subsystem is represented by a three-gigabyte SATA 2.0 standard hard drive, three-terabyte and twelve-terabyte SATA 3.0 drives. Components were produced in the period from 2010 to 2011 inclusive. The power supply unit was manufactured in 2008. Twelve terabytes - in 2019. I omitted the brands and models, everything will be in the full report.

- What did the external inspection give?

- The power supply is clearly understood. Most likely for replaced capacitors or fans. This is nothing special, the power supply is very old. The video card also soldered electrolytic capacitors. The processor casing is dented from one corner. Like a blow. The memory chips on one of the memory slots are dirty dirty. Either soldered, or rearranged from donors. Replaced all capacitors on the motherboard. Even solid ones. There is no regular Realtek RTL8112L microcircuit, and it’s slid out badly, the tracks are badly damaged. Precisely because of this, apparently, an external network card connected via USB was used.

- Not much. Did you break through the bases?

- A run through serial numbers on our database did not give anything, iron until this time was nowhere to be seen, it was not registered with amateurs, antique dealers or collectors, it was not included in the database of legal or illegal equipment. A ghost from the past. Which either pulled out of some attic, or cherished deliberately. Three hundred gigabytes, as it were, hints.

- Here and twelve terabytes hints no worse. Large capacities have long been seized from the population.

- With twelve terabytes it will be difficult. He is helium. What and what is inside is unknown. In a good way, before use, it must be refilled, but this ... after the event in the month before last ... now it is somewhat beyond our capabilities.

- Well, they’ll probably help us with this. The major looked into the opposite corner of the room and one of the two people answered with a nod. - Well thank you. You can come back. Take images. Get the virtual of this platform. The level of network neutrality is maximum. If there is something extraordinary - tell me directly.

The hacker came out. The major stood for a moment, thinking about his own, and snapped his fingers.

“Well, it's time to meet our guest.” My guest. No one intervenes in the investigative process. And these rules of the game will not change further. Right?

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

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

The major nodded and left the meeting room.

***

The door opened and a lean man entered with stubble three days ago. He walked up to the table with a sprightly springy gait that did not correspond to his already middle-aged age. A tablet in a leather case loudly slammed onto the table. With a nasty sound, Major pushed back his chair and sat down. The detainee raised his head and met the piercing gaze of amber eyes. They looked into each other's eyes for a long time.

“Do you know who I am?”

- Lawyer.

The major grunted and interrupted the duel of looks, taking the tablet from the table.

“So,” the Major waved his unopened tablet in the air and, this time carefully, 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 online activities, and, as a result, causal relationships in your whole life. A bunch of text and video information. The reasons for your deviant behavior can be calculated with sufficient accuracy by simply feeding this data to a neurocomputer. Detailed statistics even allow you to identify thoughts that you never voiced, did not write on the network, did not mention in search queries.

The detainee, of strong physique and short stature, already an elderly man with disheveled hair, smiled.

“Well,” he paused, “this is hardly the last.”

- But in vain you doubt it. Where did you get so much prohibited equipment?

The detainee lowered his head.

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

The detainee clenched his teeth tightly and his cheekbones tensed a little, Major clearly noticed this.

- Found already enough to isolate you for a long time. We removed the equipment and are now working with it. Refusal to cooperate will simply lengthen our time, but it will not fundamentally change anything. Nothing. Now we are sitting in this room only in order for me to decide whether to deal with you personally or to hand over to a regular investigator. For example, - the Major paused, - Landmine.

The detainee flinched. The major noted to himself that he was too knowledgeable. Such awareness is characteristic of those who constantly revolve in the criminal world, making money on illegal equipment or ideologically struggling with the system, but understanding where and which facets can be crossed and which ones are better not to try. But the dossiers were collected on such people almost automatically. The neurocomputer did not at all give out any suspicious correlation to this person, as if he were pure as a baby's tear. And that was interesting. The major waited patiently. The detainee, judging by his undisguised reactions, was clearly not a pro, so it was worth putting pressure on him gently and, most importantly, not to pass on.

“Nothing will work out for you.” Neither with me nor without me.

- Here is how? And where does such confidence come from?

The detainee looked confidently and even somehow brazenly at Major.

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

- Do you know how much it shines for you 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, but a direct representative of the ILV.

The detainee’s confidence instantly disappeared from his face.

“And what's the difference where to be, if there’s what’s here,” the man nodded frowning at the tablet on the table, “are you actually in a strictly controlled prison without the right to take steps to the side?”

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

The detainee looked at Major for a long time, examining his face and as if determining his next steps. The major did not look away from his cold and tenacious gaze.

“Let's just say this,” the detainee licked his lips, “I can only say what I was told.” The computer worked as a shadow hypernode supernode. The system was loaded from a flash drive. On a small hard disk, an actual piece of heyra is stored for primary synchronization and network connection. It is encrypted, decrypted automatically at system startup. A three-terabyte drive contains dumps of Wikimedia databases for 2017. The dumps are complete, uncensored even at that time.

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

. All this becomes clear after the first turn on of the system. What can you say really valuable?

The detainee's gaze became impudent again.

- Considering that after an emergency shutdown the system just doesn’t rise, I already helped you a bit, just saying that it was on a three-terabyte medium. I faithfully told everything that I knew, without concealing anything from the investigation. Please note this specifically.

- And on twelve terabyte?

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

The major stared at the detainee for a minute and decided to change tactics. He relaxed back in his chair.

- So it turns out you are against the system?

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

- For instance?

- Lack of autonomous computer systems.

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

The detainee grinned wryly.

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

- And how long have you heard about the loss of personal data? And after a series of high-profile and revealing trials, something especially is not heard about the blackmail of access to personal information. Have you heard anything in the last five years? And about anonymity ... In exchange for refusing it, citizens receive almost endless computing power, reliable storage of information 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 crumpled.

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

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

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

The major looked at the detainee. He had already held many similar conversations. Conversations have always been helpful. Both for the purpose of obtaining material for the investigation, and for a better understanding of the psyche and the worldview of those under investigation. 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 a principle and manifestation of elementary humanity in relation to those under investigation, the criminal world respected him and often made contact. The major knew that every similar story always had a beginning. Each person under investigation always kept in memory some events of the distant or recent past, which pushed him to a series of offenses.

“And how did it all begin?” What is the starting point in your life?

The detainee stared blankly at Major.

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

The detainee leaned back in his chair and thought. A minute passed. The second one. Major did not interfere. Finally, the detainee woke up.

- Hard to tell. I always thought so. I do not interfere with society, I do not climb into it, I do not dictate to others my understanding of the world order. I do not do anything bad 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 a youth, I set up Nextcloud server for myself. At that time there was still complete freedom; iron could be bought without any problems in any store. But it was at that time that it all began. So, after a couple of years, I discovered that my server logs were incredibly swollen. I got to understand the reasons. The logs rained the same error. Then I tried to open the Nextcloud website, but nothing worked. It turned out that access to the resource was limited at the request of the prosecutor general. At that time, it struck me.

They were silent for a moment.

- You know, but I would like to return that time. Maybe try to change something. The problems of the past seem so, - the detainee chewed his lips, - naive or something. From the standpoint of modernity. Although it was then that all this began. Imperceptibly and unconsciously, the society was losing battle after battle for the right to inviolability of their personal data. Lost everywhere. In some countries, 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 qualities 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 achievements is stupid. Do you agree? So why then think and reason about all this? After all, at least it didn’t get any worse.

- Why think? - The detainee grinned sadly. “Why are we breathing?” How can you not breathe?

***

The major went down in the elevator to the technical floor and different thoughts prevailed along the way. The hard drive was twelve terabytes. Such volumes at the hands of the population were very rare. Those with whom they had passed them a long time ago, because the state did not stint to “buy out” these media for non-standard cloud service packages. But what if, on a large medium, is the dating site database really? In the process of social digitalization, society 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 already thought what to write, with whom and how to communicate, and in general once again preferred not to even form suspicious search queries. Of course, there was a category of citizens whose life merged with the network. Initially, this category was large, but its share was constantly decreasing and this caused a certain concern of the authorities. A dating site of the past time is a storehouse of information about its members. Signs, type of psyche, character, communication style, interests, medical parameters, open thoughts. It is unlikely that the base of some famous site is there, since these bases were resold a hundred times in the markets - what's the point of hammering hypermix with them? But even better! Unique material from the past, and even more so from the present, time has now become rare. This is a truly valuable find. But you can postpone it for later, do it later. Now, in the hands of the rocket launcher, for once, an actual full-fledged piece of an incomprehensibly self-organizing Jew came into contact. And if to the channel-transport level of hyper-mix with a bit of luck, but ILV could still connect, then with the protocol level it was much more hopeless. In the era of super-fast network, data from an illegal and uncontrolled network, hiding in information flows, albeit at ridiculous speeds, but still leaked all over the Internet. Out of mercenary motives, the governments of all countries supported the hyper-mix infrastructure in other countries as best they could. And, at the same time, they united for the sake of trying to control the rebellious network, which was still used by a narrow part of the population, despite any prohibitions and punishments.

The elevator stopped, meowed and opened the door. The major went out and headed to the lab. He walked directly, as he liked to put it, “into the rooms” of the Hacker. Usually, the Hacker could be found behind a large terminal, consisting of a hefty, wall-mounted display, which the Hacker divided into one or two dozen zones. The table was littered with some drawings and diagrams, pencils lay here and there. There were three more exits from this room, behind the doors of which there was a chain of laboratory-technical premises, in one of which, apparently, the Hacker disappeared.

The major decided to wait. He sat down at the terminal, gently spread the papers on the table and called up the touch panel on its surface, at the same time the display was activated. A good half of the wall lit up. The display was divided into zones separated by white borders. To the left and right of the zone were large black rectangles, inside of which either the text of some commands or some code was displayed. In the area right in front of the major, the Astra Linux star burned brightly. In the taskbar, Major recognized the “ART” browser icon. He opened the browser, opened a new tab, and entered the word “nextcloud” into the search. Having received the results of search results, he switched to the first site issued. 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 premises and was dumbfounded when he saw the Lawyer behind the terminal. The major, having heard the hersing of the hermetic door, 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 detained today is not just an ideological one; he is still an intellectual and a romantic. He says that he once made himself a server on this thing. And you know what he says?

The hacker, seeing that they expected a reaction from him, shook his head negatively, peering intensely at either the website displayed on the display or the Major.

- He says that this resource has been blocked for a long time. It may be so. But in our country, the state simply didn’t do anything even at that time. And if there were errors, they were promptly corrected.

The major looked at the site on the display and grinned.

- Now there’s no sense in blocking all this: personal clouds not only cannot compete in reliability and services - they simply have nothing to deploy on. Of course, there are people with autonomous license, but these people are usually under very good supervision and control. And to deploy and maintain a personal cloud with certified and time-tested solutions is simply stupid.

The major thought.

- That's how stories are born, because of which people make stupid mistakes, completely breaking their lives. Anyway. While I was waiting for you, I already essentially clarified all the questions. The detainee here registered for a long time, I will talk with him more than once and not two. From the first conversation you have this kind of information: the system itself on a bootable flash drive, three hundred gigabytes contains synchronization for hebrews, on three terabytes of the Wikimedia database from 2017. With twelve terabytes it is not yet clear. Now the most important thing is a fresh piece of hebrews. As you deploy the system, you need to try to synchronize with the chains of hebrews. For now, I will look for legal opportunities to illegally connect to hyper-mix. Hmm, of course, if you deploy it more or less quickly, and not like last time - in a year and a half, when nobody needs anything. But ... I think it's worth a try. The entrance to the hebrew is worth it.

Hacker had completely different plans for this week, but specifically now he didn’t care whether he worked or not. To quickly get Major off, he began to nod his head confidently, trying to make a knowingly preoccupied face and hoping that he could do it convincingly.

“Well, that's fine,” the Major said quite enough, getting up, “your hard work will not go unnoticed in the report.”

On leaving the room, Major looked around.

- Does your ART work not in bypass mode?

- Not. For a workaround, you need to draw up a memo.

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

The major left the room. The hacker stood in one place all this time, then went to the terminal and sat in a chair. Riding on it, he decided that so far not everything was so bad. “If you make a local copy of the site ... tweak the routing to it ... and do it a long time ... fix the file dates, logs ... so long ago that I forgot it myself ...” - snatches of thoughts flashed quickly through his head. - Yeah! We must take our safety more seriously. Relaxed you see. Why - now I am the elite of society, I work in one of the major ILV centers. Moron! It’s good that I had enough brains on the topic of firefox to push ART. ” The hacker pressed a key combination and the add-ons panel appeared on the right of the browser. For a long time, he looked thoughtfully at the colored icon of the SmartProxy add-on.