Re: [HOE] Decryption

[Darrin Bright <darrin@neobright.net>]

toadpooka@juno.com wrote:
> My question is: does anyone have any ideas about how to do this in-game?
> Would the decryption equipment be hardware (junker-built AI or Brains
> machine) or software (data slugs).

Modern encryption uses very large prime numbers as encryption keys to
encode the data, adding or subtracting multiples of that key to each
value according to the code algorithm. Cracking the encryption key
requires basically only one element: time. Given enough of that, *any*
code can be broken... but what determines the time would probably be how
many operations your computer can do during a given time period. So the
PCs would ideally be looking for some extremely fast hardware, hopefully
something on the scale of a supercomputer. But if it's military-grade
encryption, they'll probably need a military-grade supercomputer. I'm
not sure if the Junkyard would have anything like that. There's a lot of
things you can do with this, though:

1) The junkers tell the PCs, sure, we can crack it, we've got an AI we
cobbled together out of old laptops and office servers, but it isn't
really built for military-grade cracking. Come back in... oh, about 120
years and we'll have it totally cracked!

2) The junkers tell the PCs, whoa, this is some heavy encryption, we
don't have anything that can touch this. But hey, I heard a rumor that
some supercomputers might have survived out at the NASA White Sands Test
Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Why don't you head out that way and
check it out? Oh, and, uh... if you see any other working computer-type
stuff out there, couldya bring it back to us?

3) The junkers come back and say, well... unfortunately there's just no
way in Hell we can crack this thing without the encryption key. However,
my browser spirit took a look at the data structure in the Hunting
Grounds and found some interesting information... some clues about who
encrypted the data and where he was at the time. Maybe you can track
down this guy and ask him what the encryption key was?

4) A junker explains that the data on the slug is a physical
manifestation of something that was done to it on a conceptual level.
This same data also manifests itself in the spiritual world that browser
and tech spirits can see. Somewhere inside the data is the encryption
key that will open it, and he says if he can convince his browser spirit
to lead them to the right portal, they could find the data trail in the
Hunting Grounds and follow it back to the key. Once they've found the
key, they can unlock the data stream and untangle it. (In other words,
you take the party on a visionquest into the Hunting Grounds, but with a
Cyberpunk/Shadowrun Decking bent to it.)