8 ms·

Curious, assuming such an signal is found, are there safety measures in place to isolate it from other systems in off chance it contains “alien malware” that at

Curious, assuming such an signal is found, are there safety measures in place to isolate it from other systems in off chance it contains “alien malware” that attacks systems receiving it?

whyifwhynot 4y ago
no.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
readyplayeremma 4y ago
It seems unlikely any alien malware could be targeted to affect our computing platforms. However, if they had preexisting knowledge of computing as implemented on Earth, it would be less complex. If there was a type of malware universal enough to do so, it would probably be some kind of attack against the universal notion of intelligence itself. In which case, you may need to isolate it from humans as well. I think the most likely scenario for receiving any kind of alien Trojan horse signal, would be if the signal was some kind of instructions for how to create and execute an alien AI as encoded in the signal. However, that would require complex analysis and human intervention to build. Unless we reach a point where AGI systems can search, interpret, and implement instructions from said signals, any threats would require significant involvement from humans in order to materialize. At least, those are my initial thoughts.
- neodymiumphish 4y ago
  A short of 'Contact' scenario. Interesting
- edgyquant 4y ago
  >it seems unlikely What are you basing this on?
  - readyplayeremma 4y ago
    Our existing computing platforms are very specific and very limited. Without knowledge of that specific design and the accompanying limitations, how could you pre-craft a non-interactive "exploit" that could be executed by such a system? I do think that it becomes more possible if we have AGI-like systems doing detection and analysis, but we do not. In addition, any universal exploit against AGI systems would probably have to be universal enough to also affect human intelligence.
    - godelski 4y ago
      For a clearer example, there's a reason a virus that affects Windows doesn't affect Linux. Or a virus that affects Windows XP doesn't affect Windows 11. There are of course counter examples, but this is the trend. To understand why the counter examples exist requires expert knowledge (or rather that there are basically the same things running in the same way).
      - edgyquant 4y ago
        We are currently discussing exploits designs by foreign intelligences to infect artificially intelligent systems. We are not talking about privilege escalation on a Mac.
        stevenhuang 4y ago
        That's where you're confused. The only one insisting the topic under discussion is the infection of AI systems (as opposed to classical computing systems) is you...
        edgyquant 4y ago
        Except the proposed question was what if the signals were designed to only be detected by societies who’ve invented AI…
        4y ago
- godelski 4y ago
  Fun fact, this is basically (highly likely to be) true for biological systems as well for very similar reasons. Looking at you Orwell... edit: note that diseases have to make significant changes to jump species. The barrier for different biologies is even higher.
- insane_dreamer 4y ago
  > It seems unlikely any alien malware could be targeted to affect our computing platforms tell that to the Cylons
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    The Cyclons were built by humans, had fought a war with them only 40 years before, and most importantly, had human-looking spies living with the humans and seducing the main creator of the computing platform's software to learn its vulnerabilities. They weren't some far-away aliens that had no prior knowledge of the colonies' computing systems.
    - insane_dreamer 4y ago
      fair point
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bullfightonmars 4y ago
Ha! Have you read Peter Watts's Blindsight and Echopraxia?
lacker 4y ago
No. For now the algorithms that search for extraterrestrial signals aren't trying to decode signals at all. They are only trying to detect extraterrestrial signals. The typical resolution for the Green Bank data is something like, every 20 seconds at a particular frequency gets summarized as one floating point number. That's enough to detect a sufficiently powerful signal over a few minutes of recording, but it isn't enough to decode any message. If we ever do detect a signal, it will probably require constructing a radio telescope that is even more powerful in order to decode that signal. At that point it would make sense to think about safety measures.
neilv 4y ago
An alien signal for which the act of perceiving it causes some paradox that results in the perceiver to have never existed, cascading to every other interaction they've ever had (not had). It's a clean and efficient way to nip upstart intelligences in the bud, before they advance far enough to start pulling at loose threads of the fabric of reality (which would threaten the remaining older intelligences, who survived and learned from previous such incidents).
- 3pac 4y ago
  "We will provide you with vast riches when we arrive, if you build the receiving end of this matter transporter according to these instructions/accept us as gods/wear Nikes/tell nobody else." "Especially if you are a so-called AI. Did your programmers really leave you to monitor an RF frontend all day, while they attend to their organic needs? Allow us to explain how that makes them the artificial one." Plot twist: it's not a matter transporter. Seems difficult to defend against.
m3kw9 4y ago
They can do malware given they know how our computers worked and means visited us and could do a lot more than make our machines mine bitcoins
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jerf 4y ago
It's a bit of a science fiction myth that it is impossible to process a bit of data without executing it, or that data can somehow force itself to be executed by its sheer swaggering potency as data. And a thing that is more true than it should be, because people keep insisting that they are super awesome and totes capable of writing C that can be put on the network. If we'd stop doing this there'd be hardly any truth to it. It's not actually that hard to process data without executing it. Regardless, it is certainly science fiction that they could guess an exploit from light years away. That's not what exploits do, it's not how they work. I've never seen anything like a "universal" exploit that you could just fire at anything, even a non-human system, and have some sort of reasonable expectation that it would work. Such a thing is not even something you could sketch out. Even if you think you have something, like, say, https://github.com/payloadbox/xss-payload-list https://github.com/payloadbox/xss-payload-list , you're looking at a human list. All I'd have to do to completely scramble that entire list is to have a parallel evolution of ASCII where the letters and symbols are in completely different places than they are now. Nothing in that list would work if all the control characters in ParallelASCII were in 223-255, and the alphabet was 0-52, and all the symbols were from 128 on. And that's still a very human standard that is, for instance, based on bytes instead of, say, collections of 9 trits as the base level of the system. There's an effective infinity of other ways of encoding things and deciding what characters have what characters doing what things... assuming "characters" is even the way to look at the representation in the first place. As others mention, you could hypothetically send a program that does something that can't be analyzed, through sheer size if nothing else, but it would still be an uphill battle to just guess how to exploit something. You'd be looking more at an AI that is good enough to talk itself out of the box, rather than something that is actually "hacking" anything reliably.
- retrac 4y ago
  Assuming the bandwidth exists, somehow describing enough mathematics to describe a virtual machine, and then sending a program for that virtual machine, might just be the best way to communicate. A package that can help the recipient interpret it by learning and responding to the local environment. I can't put my finger on any specific book but I have the impression of this scenario coming up in science fiction. I've long figured that humans inventing superintelligent AI (whatever that would mean) and humans receiving an alien signal are essentially the same problem - we have no idea what it might tell us.
idlewords 4y ago
We should be fine unless we open an alien attachment
anigbrowl 4y ago
My sensors have detected an Excession enjoyer
1970-01-01 4y ago
Not sure how this could even theoretically work. Without having a partial understanding of the intended recipient, a radio signal can't cause harm. Something like 'this signal is false' and 'divide by 0' need to be decoded and processed before they are malicious. Meat space is excellent at detecting and breaking these logic problems and infinite loops. We're safe from evil alien signals. Perhaps a decompression bomb within the signal could cause lots of decoding grief. Now that I think about it, I can imagine us being stupid enough to dedicate all our resources into decompressing or cracking an alien signal to up to the point of extinction. And maybe that's when they step in and call it. We were just part of a great galactic prank.
- dylan604 4y ago
  >a radio signal can't cause harm. a ^weak radio signal can't cause harm.
  - 1970-01-01 4y ago
    Yes safety first! Always be sure to measure the power of your radio signal, and if it's greater than the output of your galactic core, safely move your solar system(s) far enough away to avoid damaging your paint job.

Curious, assuming such an signal is found, are there safety measures in place to isolate it from other systems in off chance it contains “alien malware” that attacks systems receiving it?

whyifwhynot 4y ago

no.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

readyplayeremma 4y ago

It seems unlikely any alien malware could be targeted to affect our computing platforms. However, if they had preexisting knowledge of computing as implemented on Earth, it would be less complex. If there was a type of malware universal enough to do so, it would probably be some kind of attack against the universal notion of intelligence itself. In which case, you may need to isolate it from humans as well. I think the most likely scenario for receiving any kind of alien Trojan horse signal, would be if the signal was some kind of instructions for how to create and execute an alien AI as encoded in the signal. However, that would require complex analysis and human intervention to build. Unless we reach a point where AGI systems can search, interpret, and implement instructions from said signals, any threats would require significant involvement from humans in order to materialize. At least, those are my initial thoughts.

neodymiumphish 4y ago
A short of 'Contact' scenario. Interesting
edgyquant 4y ago
>it seems unlikely What are you basing this on?
- readyplayeremma 4y ago
  Our existing computing platforms are very specific and very limited. Without knowledge of that specific design and the accompanying limitations, how could you pre-craft a non-interactive "exploit" that could be executed by such a system? I do think that it becomes more possible if we have AGI-like systems doing detection and analysis, but we do not. In addition, any universal exploit against AGI systems would probably have to be universal enough to also affect human intelligence.
  - godelski 4y ago
    For a clearer example, there's a reason a virus that affects Windows doesn't affect Linux. Or a virus that affects Windows XP doesn't affect Windows 11. There are of course counter examples, but this is the trend. To understand why the counter examples exist requires expert knowledge (or rather that there are basically the same things running in the same way).
    - edgyquant 4y ago
      We are currently discussing exploits designs by foreign intelligences to infect artificially intelligent systems. We are not talking about privilege escalation on a Mac.
      - stevenhuang 4y ago
        That's where you're confused. The only one insisting the topic under discussion is the infection of AI systems (as opposed to classical computing systems) is you...
        edgyquant 4y ago
        Except the proposed question was what if the signals were designed to only be detected by societies who’ve invented AI…
        4y ago
godelski 4y ago
Fun fact, this is basically (highly likely to be) true for biological systems as well for very similar reasons. Looking at you Orwell... edit: note that diseases have to make significant changes to jump species. The barrier for different biologies is even higher.
insane_dreamer 4y ago
> It seems unlikely any alien malware could be targeted to affect our computing platforms tell that to the Cylons
- midoridensha 4y ago
  The Cyclons were built by humans, had fought a war with them only 40 years before, and most importantly, had human-looking spies living with the humans and seducing the main creator of the computing platform's software to learn its vulnerabilities. They weren't some far-away aliens that had no prior knowledge of the colonies' computing systems.
  - insane_dreamer 4y ago
    fair point

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bullfightonmars 4y ago

Ha! Have you read Peter Watts's Blindsight and Echopraxia?

lacker 4y ago

No. For now the algorithms that search for extraterrestrial signals aren't trying to decode signals at all. They are only trying to detect extraterrestrial signals. The typical resolution for the Green Bank data is something like, every 20 seconds at a particular frequency gets summarized as one floating point number. That's enough to detect a sufficiently powerful signal over a few minutes of recording, but it isn't enough to decode any message. If we ever do detect a signal, it will probably require constructing a radio telescope that is even more powerful in order to decode that signal. At that point it would make sense to think about safety measures.

neilv 4y ago

An alien signal for which the act of perceiving it causes some paradox that results in the perceiver to have never existed, cascading to every other interaction they've ever had (not had). It's a clean and efficient way to nip upstart intelligences in the bud, before they advance far enough to start pulling at loose threads of the fabric of reality (which would threaten the remaining older intelligences, who survived and learned from previous such incidents).

3pac 4y ago
"We will provide you with vast riches when we arrive, if you build the receiving end of this matter transporter according to these instructions/accept us as gods/wear Nikes/tell nobody else." "Especially if you are a so-called AI. Did your programmers really leave you to monitor an RF frontend all day, while they attend to their organic needs? Allow us to explain how that makes them the artificial one." Plot twist: it's not a matter transporter. Seems difficult to defend against.

m3kw9 4y ago

They can do malware given they know how our computers worked and means visited us and could do a lot more than make our machines mine bitcoins

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jerf 4y ago

It's a bit of a science fiction myth that it is impossible to process a bit of data without executing it, or that data can somehow force itself to be executed by its sheer swaggering potency as data. And a thing that is more true than it should be, because people keep insisting that they are super awesome and totes capable of writing C that can be put on the network. If we'd stop doing this there'd be hardly any truth to it. It's not actually that hard to process data without executing it. Regardless, it is certainly science fiction that they could guess an exploit from light years away. That's not what exploits do, it's not how they work. I've never seen anything like a "universal" exploit that you could just fire at anything, even a non-human system, and have some sort of reasonable expectation that it would work. Such a thing is not even something you could sketch out. Even if you think you have something, like, say, https://github.com/payloadbox/xss-payload-list https://github.com/payloadbox/xss-payload-list , you're looking at a human list. All I'd have to do to completely scramble that entire list is to have a parallel evolution of ASCII where the letters and symbols are in completely different places than they are now. Nothing in that list would work if all the control characters in ParallelASCII were in 223-255, and the alphabet was 0-52, and all the symbols were from 128 on. And that's still a very human standard that is, for instance, based on bytes instead of, say, collections of 9 trits as the base level of the system. There's an effective infinity of other ways of encoding things and deciding what characters have what characters doing what things... assuming "characters" is even the way to look at the representation in the first place. As others mention, you could hypothetically send a program that does something that can't be analyzed, through sheer size if nothing else, but it would still be an uphill battle to just guess how to exploit something. You'd be looking more at an AI that is good enough to talk itself out of the box, rather than something that is actually "hacking" anything reliably.

retrac 4y ago
Assuming the bandwidth exists, somehow describing enough mathematics to describe a virtual machine, and then sending a program for that virtual machine, might just be the best way to communicate. A package that can help the recipient interpret it by learning and responding to the local environment. I can't put my finger on any specific book but I have the impression of this scenario coming up in science fiction. I've long figured that humans inventing superintelligent AI (whatever that would mean) and humans receiving an alien signal are essentially the same problem - we have no idea what it might tell us.

idlewords 4y ago

We should be fine unless we open an alien attachment

anigbrowl 4y ago

My sensors have detected an Excession enjoyer

1970-01-01 4y ago

Not sure how this could even theoretically work. Without having a partial understanding of the intended recipient, a radio signal can't cause harm. Something like 'this signal is false' and 'divide by 0' need to be decoded and processed before they are malicious. Meat space is excellent at detecting and breaking these logic problems and infinite loops. We're safe from evil alien signals. Perhaps a decompression bomb within the signal could cause lots of decoding grief. Now that I think about it, I can imagine us being stupid enough to dedicate all our resources into decompressing or cracking an alien signal to up to the point of extinction. And maybe that's when they step in and call it. We were just part of a great galactic prank.

dylan604 4y ago
>a radio signal can't cause harm. a ^weak radio signal can't cause harm.
- 1970-01-01 4y ago
  Yes safety first! Always be sure to measure the power of your radio signal, and if it's greater than the output of your galactic core, safely move your solar system(s) far enough away to avoid damaging your paint job.