They hail you.. across space to tell you to come to DS9 in person.. to listen to recordings that they could just send you over subspace. The whole idea is just silly, it's nothing but an unnecessary task to get you to visit DS9 for whatever reason.
It's even more ridiculous than you think. They're sending you a communiqué, to go read a communiqué somewhere else. It's like sending you an email, telling you there's an email waiting for you. Doh.
Well, in theory, it's a message they don't want to send over subspace for security reasons. Not a good reason to make the mission unskippable, but a good reason to make you go to DS9 to read the message.
They've sent plenty of encrypted messages over subspace (ST:TNG/DS9).
Besides, an encrypted P2P subspace message is always much more secure, as anyone who'se ever worked with computers can tell you, that anyone with physical access to a computer, accessible by many, makes said system notoriously unsafe.
How is that LESS safe than broadcasting it? Encrypted file stored in a computer: you need physical access at bare minimum to access the file. Broadcasted encrypted file: everyone in the path of the transmission has a copy of the file delivered straight to them. In both cases the third party still needs to figure out decryption. This MIGHT be somewhat easier if you have access to the physical computer, but realistically it'd not be much help. IE only an idiot would store the key to decrypt the file with the file. A transmitted file would probably be encrypted using a key that the receiving party already has, thus the decryption key would never be transmitted.
Fictional computer security is almost always the work of idiots. Or rather, people who don't know jack about computer security, ie writers.
If the encryption is solid, it doesn't matter who has a copy of the ciphertext.
Physical access to the system used to decrypt a file trumps all encryption. It doesn't matter where the key is stored, because it has to be combined with the file to use it. If an adversary access to the hardware this takes place on, they can simply monitor the computer and wait for the player to enter the decryption key. A risk that would not exist if the player was sent the file to open in private (if the adversary had compromized the player's own computers, they would already have the key).
^^ Precisely!
I actually did some FreeBSD System Administration, in my first year of college, LOL, and one of the first things we were taught, is that any system which the public has physical access to, should be considered potentially compromized/unsafe. It's simply because you can do so much more when you have that physical access to it. (Like something simple as 'boot -s' at the loader prompt, to mount extra file systems, kernels, etc.) I'm sure something similar would work for Windoze too. You can shield a computer from the outside pretty well, via the network, but someone having physical access to it, simply kills your security.
If the encryption is solid, it doesn't matter who has a copy of the ciphertext.
Really? because the first thing I learned about this subject is that If someone REALLY wants to know what you sent they will decrypt it eventually. It might take years, but they will.
Physical access to the system used to decrypt a file trumps all encryption. It doesn't matter where the key is stored, because it has to be combined with the file to use it. If an adversary access to the hardware this takes place on, they can simply monitor the computer and wait for the player to enter the decryption key. A risk that would not exist if the player was sent the file to open in private (if the adversary had compromized the player's own computers, they would already have the key).
Technically true, but if your adversary has the ability to keylog anything you type on a console they probably have the ability to intercept all data transmitted from that console over subspace.... and well, EVERYTHING ELSE. The point I was making is that getting the ciphertext is WAY easier if it's broadcast. Physically hacking a secure server is nowhere near as easy as recording a signal burst.
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^^ Precisely!
I actually did some FreeBSD System Administration, in my first year of college, LOL, and one of the first things we were taught, is that any system which the public has physical access to, should be considered potentially compromized/unsafe. It's simply because you can do so much more when you have that physical access to it. (Like something simple as 'boot -s' at the loader prompt, to mount extra file systems, kernels, etc.) I'm sure something similar would work for Windoze too. You can shield a computer from the outside pretty well, via the network, but someone having physical access to it, simply kills your security.
My character Tsin'xing