"Rise of Disco": Somebody at Cryptic did their research

starswordc

My friend was complaining about the Klingons in Rise of Discovery getting one of their own guys captured and using his DNA as a vector for malware. Said it was nonsense science.

Well... https://www.wired.com/story/malware-dna-hack/

Pretty much to see if they could, some researchers at the University of Washington successfully h@cked a DNA sequencing machine by writing malware into a DNA strand that was executed when the machine read it. This article was from August 2017.

Kudos to Cryptic for doing their research.

EDIT: stupid profanity filter is stupid

legendarylycan

i seem to remember i pointed out this was possible back when the mission was released by referencing Bones, where fractal code containing malware was carved into bones that infected the jeffersonian computer system when they were scanned​​

leemwatson

starswordc wrote: »

My friend was complaining about the Klingons in Rise of Discovery getting one of their own guys captured and using his DNA as a vector for malware. Said it was nonsense science.

Well... https://www.wired.com/story/malware-dna-hack/

Pretty much to see if they could, some researchers at the University of Washington successfully TRIBBLE a DNA sequencing machine by writing malware into a DNA strand that was executed when the machine read it. This article was from August 2017.

Kudos to Cryptic for doing their research.

This has also been a staple of numerous sci-fi shows and comics for decades. I'd point out to your friend, this is pretty much what cancer does.

jonsills

Not really, Lee. Cancer is a corruption of the DNA itself, but analyzing the genome of a cancer cell won't corrupt the software of the computer system doing the analysis. What they did at UW was the first step toward the moment described - hiding computer malware in a biological system.

And I've been reading SF for longer than most of the people around here have been alive - when I was young, the ol' double helix was still a new idea. Trust me, this combination of software and meat hasn't been "a staple"; the closest would be working it the other way with what Gibson called "black ICE", or lethal biofeedback software hidden in computer security systems to catch the unwary hackers in VR cyberspace.