“File:Typing computer screen reflection.jpg” by Almonroth is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
It was a normal day for Zayne. He woke up, went to the gym, came back home, and got ready for work. As he was leaving for work, he hoped to himself that something interesting would happen today. Zayne, unlike most people, had to work every weekday. He had decided to pursue a career that looked over all others and the function of the robots. You may ask “Robots? What robots?”. Well to answer your question, it is 3000 A.D. and in the past 50 years, iTech started programming robots to allow them to carry out everyday jobs and tasks, allowing people to work less and do whatever they want. There are some people however, that decided to pursue a career in technology. These are the brightest and most hard-working people in the workforce. Ever since Zayne was little, he loved computers and was interested in all of the functions of technology. As soon as the robots started coming out, he became interested in how they work and decided that he would work as hard as he could to acquire an important role in their everyday functions. He worked harder than everyone he knew and made it to an interview, he landed the job and got the job that he wanted, or so he thought. He never thought something that he loved could be so disinteresting, but he was good at his job so therefore he was forced to stay. He goes to work every day to do the same thing. He monitors the program for the robots of a specific category and makes sure that everything is running smoothly and that there is not anything wrong with the coding for their functions. However, today, something would happen that he would remember for the rest of his life.
When he got to the office, everything was normal. He went to his desk and started watching the programs and errors for a specific sector of robots. Today was a Tuesday, so he was monitoring the medical programs and, specifically, he was watching surgery programs. Whenever something went wrong, he would look into it and, if necessary, file a case with his manager. All of a sudden, a few problems flashed on his screen. He looked through them and took care of them, but then a few more popped up. He thought to himself “today is going to be a boring but busy day.” He continued with his work until lunch, when he took a break and then got right back to it. With a fresh mind, he got back into a rhythm and kept going through the problems. As he kept going, he noticed that he was getting more backed up as he kept working. With each error he fixed, it seemed like there were two more that would take its place. He decided to go get someone to help him go through all of the previous changes he made to see if there was anything that was reoccurring.
At this point, it is the end of the day and he is ready to go home. He hoped that whatever the problem was would stop and that if it did not stop that someone would solve it before he has to monitor that sector again. The rest of the week seemed normal and eventually, after his weekend, the next week started. Monday was normal and as he got ready for bed and hoped that tomorrow would be okay. He started his Tuesday morning normal and got ready for work. When Zayne got to work, he realized that it was his day to monitor the same sector as last week. He logs in and finds that there are hundreds of unsolved cases. He freaks out and contacts his supervisors telling them about the problem. They say there is nothing that can be done because they can’t spare anyone and that he will just have to do the best that he can. Zayne angrily starts his impossible workload. As he continues to solve the errors, more and more pile up. He also starts to notice that the problems that he is solving are very similar, if not identical. He creates a case with all of the cases that he has worked on and submits it for investigation by the supervisors. He goes home and tells his family about what happened. They are all concerned because they do not want anything to happen to him because it does not sound safe to be working on.
As the week goes by, he is working on other sectors; suddenly, he gets an email from his supervisor. They were thanking him for submitting his report and telling him that they added a patch to the system. He goes through the week wondering how they fixed it and hopes that it stays that way. It is Tuesday, he wakes up and goes through the daily motions until he gets to work and again realizes that something is wrong. There are thousands of problems, so he looks into them again and compares them all together and again notices how similar they are. He also starts to realize that the number is increasing and that the problems are becoming more and more severe. Zayne gets all of the previous problems together and sends an email to some of his fellow coworkers. He asks them to stay and late and tells them he has something very important that they all need to see. After he sends the email, not giving too much information, he starts to work on all of the work that he has and compiles everything so far to give to his coworkers to look at. As it gets closer to the end of the day, Zayne gets more and more anxious. He hopes that this problem gets fixed because the number of errors is still increasing and is continuously getting faster.
After regular work hours, Zayne and some of his coworkers got together and Zayne gave an impromptu speech and presentation on what he noticed while working on the specific sector he works on during Tuesday. He told them about the first time that he noticed it, about the patch that the supervisors made, and that he thinks that if the patch did anything, it made the problem worse. While he was doing this, one of his coworkers named Alex, recognized the problem from her work too and told everyone that she vouched for him and noticed the sector was becoming very busy as well. She said that she looked into it too and she talked to the group, explaining some of the things that she realized. Zayne and Alex agreed that the problems were increasing, and they started off being minor things now but were now increasingly becoming more concerning. Zayne and Alex continued to talk about the problem and Alex mentioned that there must be a pattern that they could find. After Alex said this, Zayne and Alex helped set everyone else up so that they could try to find what is going wrong that is causing these problems to happen.
While they are all looking, it keeps getting later and later. They all start to get texts and phone calls from home asking where they are and why they are not home yet. Zayne decides to call it a night and asks them if they can stay a little later tomorrow, since he collected most of the data from the previous times he was working. They all agree and head home, but Zayne and Alex decide to stay and continue to analyze the data. Before they begin working again, they call home and tell everyone that they are just going to stay and sleep at work. After they finish their phone calls, they start working again. They keep working and eventually both fall asleep while looking at their screens. They wake up and go through their day like normal and do not say anything to anyone else until the end of the day. The entire group meets up and starts to work on the project again.
While working, some of the coworkers come up to Zayne and tell him that they think that they found the portion of coding that is causing the errors. They bring everyone together and show everyone where it is coming from. When they are all together, the compare the problems and confirm that it is where the problem is coming from. When Zayne confirms this, they all come together and work together to trouble shoot and figure out how this change in code is the reason behind all of these errors. They become stuck and most of them leave again for the night. Alex and Zayne are the two that stay again and try to edit the system to stop this from being inserted into the system to cause these errors. They both get mad and leave for the night. When Zayne got home, he got ready for bed and could not stop thinking about why it kept switching back to the code that caused the error. It kept him up for most of the night and even made him dream about the problem at hand.
He woke up and went to work like normal until after when everyone got together to work again. They talk about the discovery and how Zayne was having trouble trying to solve the problem and they take a minute to think. They all come back together and work together to try and change the code in the program. Every time that they change it, within a short amount of time, it is changed back to the coding that causes all of the errors. At this point they are all concerned as to the number of errors that are showing up in real time. All of the other co-workers agree with Zayne that the number of errors that are popping up, look like they are increasing at an exponential rate. The number of errors scared them because they also were continuously getting more serious and some of these problems, if not solved soon, could cause death. They become stuck and decide they need to take another break to talk come up with ideas as to why it keeps changing back.
They came back together and all talk about their ideas with the group. The one that everyone thought was the best idea or the one that could be closest to being right was Alex’s idea. She proposed the idea that it was someone uploaded a virus into the program that kept inserting the bad sequence into the original code. They all agreed and said that her proposition does not sound impossible like some of the other ideas from the other people on the team.
They all start to focus on trying to find anything that could point to who installed the virus. At this point they have been at it for hours and are still continuing and pushing through. They all are not getting through to anything until Alex shouts claiming that she found it. She found an IP address that can be traced to someone in the office. They all fly over to her computer, except Zayne. He also thinks he is making progress. All of a sudden one of the people in the group’s name pops up and all of their information. They all freak out and start to detain him when Zayne figures out the actual IP address. When Zayne announces who he thinks it is, they do not believe him. He says that it is Alex. They come over and they all are freaking about trying to figure out who it is. Alex, Zayne, and the other coworker are waiting for everyone to verify one of the accusations that were made.
They all verify Zayne’s accusation, and they lock Alex in a room and call the number for the police robots and ask why she did it. She said they needed to pay for what happened to her mother. She started crying and said, “if only the error that killed my mom was solved”, while the robots drug her away. All shaken up, the supervisor’s commended Zayne and all of the coworkers that helped him solve this problem. They promoted him and everyone else and asked if he could give them any ideas on how to increase security. He got funds from his job to come up with a program that would help in detecting and scanning through the errors so that this would never happen ever again.
Annotated Bibliography:
Lu-Xing, Yang, and Xiaofan Yang. “The Impact of Nonlinear Infection Rate on the Spread of Computer Virus.” Nonlinear Dynamics, vol. 82, no. 1-2, 2015, pp. 85-95. ProQuest, https://wilkes.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/impact-nonlinear-infection-rate-on-spread/docview/2259387982/se-2?accountid=62703, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11071-015-2140-z.
I chose this article because I wanted to research how fast a computer viruses work. I used it to talk about how rapidly the errors were happening because of the virus that I talked about being put into the program.
Murugan, S., and K. Kuppusamy. “Malware Attack by using IMPS.” I-Manager’s Journal on Computer Science, vol. 3, no. 1, 2015, pp. 5-14. ProQuest, https://wilkes.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/malware-attack-using-iimdps/docview/1761089663/se-2?accountid=62703.
I used this article because it talked about ways to increase security. It talked about a way to increase security by describing a program that would detect a virus or an error that would cause something to go wrong.
Rennie, Lara, and Malcolm Shore. “An Advanced Model of Hacking.” Security Journal, vol. 20, no. 4, 2007, pp. 236-251. ProQuest, https://wilkes.idm.oclc.org/login?url =https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/advanced-modelhacking/docview/230350389/se-2?accountid=62703, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.sj.8350019.
I used this article because it talked about the different reasons why people would hack a website or upload a virus. I used the reason for revenge because Alex was angry about her mom’s death and she knew nothing was done about it.