Rise of the Termite Virus.

[Gus Givens]

Hello folks, Gus Givens here with the latest on the issues that have been afflicting many of the captains of the sphere and beyond.

I’m afraid there’s not much good news here, the patch that was hoped would slow the issue has apparently had no effect whatsoever, more and more captains daily are reporting their operating systems slowly disintegrating before their eyes.

The programmers at Galaxy Software Inc however believe they have managed to find the source of the problem, all the affected ships were reported to have travelled through systems where AI invaders where present within 24 hours of getting infected with what is now being called the Termite virus due to the way it burrows into and destroys computer code. As of yet ship to ship transmission of the virus has yet to be observed however experts are concerned that alterations could be made to make it more contagious amongst human ships.

More troubling is that the Termite virus is also apparently the cause of the issues befalling the Galactic Planetary Database, also known as the Galaxy Universe Locator Service by some, software engineers have been erecting firewalls and partitioning data off but so far reports as that they have only managed to slow the virus’s progress, not halt it, and without an effective countermeasure they may soon have to completely reboot the entire system, which could take days to weeks and endanger tens of thousands of ships that require navigational assistance.

So far the only ship operating system that has shown any resistance to the Termite Virus is the prototype of the Galaxy 3 OS which uses a new form of adaptive anti-virus software, almost like a human immune system it develops a resistance to hostile programs it’s exposed to. The Gal-Fed have been diverting funds and resources to galaxy Inc in the hopes of speeding up its production so that it can perhaps be used as a countermeasure to this emerging threat.

The situation is rather grim and our war analysts at ISN predict this may be the first stage of a major AI invasion, weakening the Coalition through cyber warfare before moving in with military forces to strike while we’re impaired. For now, Captains are advised to minimise their use of the Galaxy Net when in the vicinity of AI vessels and run regular anti-virus scans, as well as keeping all weapons on standby.

We will bring you any further updates as the situation develops.