Infohazard

SECURE DOCUMENT – CLASS 4

On June 5th I learned what an information hazard is. But it was already too late.

I was sent to complete a small job at MephiSecure. In my two decades as an I.T. contractor, I've worked on several types of confidential and high-security systems. Companies as large as MephiSecure do, of course, have their own in-house I.T. team, but they often choose to hire external experts for tricky storage jobs.

I was buzzed in and greeted at the door by a tall, slight man who carried a taser openly on his hip. He looked me up and down.

I held a hand out. 'Good morning, I'm here to do some I.T. work on -- '

He stopped me by raising his hand and he touched a finger to his earpiece. He looked at me, scrutinised me. 'Rory Laing? Can I see some I.D. please?'

I fumbled around in my pockets. 'Yeah, of course. Of course.’ I had no reason to feel this nervous. I handed him my driving license and employee I.D. card. He inspected them, inspected me, and inspected them again.

‘Okay. I'll have to scan them; we need a copy on file. Follow me and I'll get you set up with your lanyard.'

He led me to a counter where a small webcam took my picture. It was promptly printed onto a card with my name. He clipped it to a yellow lanyard that bore the words CLEARANCE LEVEL THREE.

'The card will let you through any doors between clearance levels one and three. Any doors it doesn’t open are doors you shouldn’t be going through.' He passed me the lanyard and returned my I.D. cards. 'There's a five-minute security briefing you'll have to watch, then I'll take you to the fourth floor. The head of I.T. is waiting for you there.'

I followed him through to a small windowless room. It reminded me of a classroom; there were a few rows of chairs but no other people. I took a seat.

He dimmed the lights and, a few seconds later, a projector kicked into action. Soulless corporate cartoon visuals presented some dos and don’ts whilst a serious-sounding woman narrated. She spent most of the runtime reiterating the importance of staying within my allocated clearance levels. It wasn’t until the end of the film that I began to feel uneasy.

'In MephiSecure's facilities, it is important that you are conscious of the risks posed by information hazards. Whilst we take all precautions to enforce information hygiene, there is always a risk that you may be exposed to information from a higher clearance level. It is vitally important that you take steps to avoid such contamination.

‘You MUST NOT investigate anything that seems interesting or unusual, no matter how strong the urge is.

‘If you believe you may have been exposed to information originating outside of your clearance level, you MUST inform a designated information hygiene officer. You can identify them by their white lanyards.'

Once the video had concluded, I was directed to sign a waiver and a series of non-disclosure agreements. The waiver explicitly absolved MephiSecure of any liability for infohazards.

‘What is an infohazard?’

The security guard shrugged. ‘I’m just security. You’d be better off asking the I.T. guy.’

As we walked to the elevators, a sense of dread began to creep in. It felt like a black mass in my chest, growing heavier with each second that I spent thinking about what the woman in the briefing film had.

The guard punched a code into a keypad and the elevator doors opened up. He hit the button for the fourth floor. I noticed that there were ‘RESTRICTED’ labels under the buttons for floors six through eight.

In the film, she spoke about information as if it were a pathogen. In every other secure environment I had visited, clearance levels served the purpose of keeping information from people who shouldn’t have it. Here, the clearance levels protected people from information. Why? What could be so bad about simply knowing something? I could only imagine what an ‘information hygiene officer’ would do if I told them I had learned something I shouldn’t have. I can’t unlearn it, and it’s not like they could erase the memory, so what could they do? Make me sign yet another non-disclosure agreement?

I found it unusual that the guard had to enter a code to let us out of the elevator, too. This was next-level security. He led me across the fourth floor until we reached the head of I.T. in his cramped and cluttered office. At that point the guard slipped away to return to his post.

'Rory, I presume?' The I.T. man held his hand out. 'Tobias Ritter, head of computing.' I shook it. He was a small man with wispy thin hair that clung desperately to the back and sides of his head. His hand was bony but his grip was surprisingly strong.

'Nice to meet you, Tobias. I hear you've been having NAS fragmentation issues?' I was keen to get the job done as soon as possible; something about this place was making me feel uncomfortable.

'Yes, that's right. Let me take you over to the server room.' He walked quickly but I kept pace. We passed by rows of cubicles and

'Tobias,' I ventured, 'I was wondering something. Maybe you could tell me. What is an "information hazard"?'

His walk slowed noticeably. He glanced at me but avoided my gaze. 'Hmm, yes, people do tend to wonder that.' I waited for him to continue but he didn't.

'I bet. What is it?'

He sighed. 'An information hazard, is, well. You see, an information hazard is information of which knowledge can be dangerous. And here, you see. Well. Here, an information hazard might be something that can cause you harm if you were to know it.' He glanced at my lanyard. 'For example, if you were to somehow encounter information that, well, shouldn't be heard outside of clearance level four.' His pace picked up again.

'What do you mean dangerous for me?'

He shook his head. 'It could be dangerous, Rory. Let's keep it at that, hey? It isn’t something that you’ll need to be concerned about either way.'

We reached the server room and he closed the door behind us. It was incredibly warm, despite the whirring fans in each of the stacks of servers and modules. I was comforted by the faint odour of heated plastic that perfumes any server room of a certain size.

'These are the network drives over here, yes. The drives on this rack here are writing incredibly slowly. It’s a real problem as they're mission-critical hourly backups. I'm no expert on this stuff -- more of a troubleshooter than a fixer, for my sins – but it seems that they are very fragmented, yes, super fragmented. I tried to get a defrag program running but, well, I realised I had no idea what I was doing, hah! And I think I’d lose my job if I lost those data backups. Best leave it to the experts, hey? So I’ll leave you to do your thing. I've got some network remapping to get on with over here so, well, just shout if you need me.' He smiled and headed over to a computer in the corner of the room.

I took out my laptop and connected to the network with an ethernet cable. The storage system was segmented into four areas, one corresponding to each of the clearance categories. The areas one through three were accessible. Area four was locked.

'Tobias,' I called, 'which storage area is it that you're having problems with?'

'Three,' he shouted back.

I entered the network area for clearance level three. I couldn't help but poke around a little. I had clearance, so why not? There was nothing interesting to see, though. A few details of security conferences, some contact lists, and a couple of product roadmaps. I bet the really juicy stuff was kept in level four.

I opened the terminal and installed a disk defragmentation program. Amongst the lines of debug code that streamed past as the program initiated, I caught glimpses of something unusual.

> HELLO CA//N YOU S!EE ME

A joke left in by the defrag program's creator? I ignored it and watched the text stream past. It began to show an ascending percentage and an estimated completion time. Fifteen minutes, not bad at all.

> CA:N YOU S/EE ME C:AN YOU //SEE ME ANSWER Y/N ANSWER Y/N

I had come across many bizarre easter eggs throughout my years in the industry. They're like little presents left for fellow nerds to discover. Inside jokes that add some fun to the work. I decided to see how far it egg went.

>Y

> YOU S'SEE ME YOU //SEE ME

My heart began to pound. I looked up at Tobias, but his attention was entirely focused on his screen. It's just an easter egg, I realised. A creepy but clever easter egg.

> A/NSWER AN:SWER ME

> ANSW:ER ME RORY

My blood went cold. How? How was a command line addressing me by name? Perhaps I entered my credentials when I installed the software. Or, wait, could the software see the name of the user profile of my laptop? Yes, that must be it. Clever indeed. Someone had put a lot of effort into coding this.

>Yes, I see you

>YOU:VE S//EEN NO:THING YET

Creepy. The message was washed away by more waves of debug code. The defragmentation process was at 42%.

> DO YO:U WANT TO KNOWW RORY

I had never seen such depth in a terminal easter egg before. The novelty had worn off though, and I was ready to leave this strange building.

> DO YOU:U

>DO YOU WAN:T TO //KNOW WH'ATS IN CLEARANCE L:VL {FOUR

It felt like the floor had disappeared from beneath me. I noticed that my breathing had quickened. I tried to calm it in case Tobias heard.

> Who is this?

> DO YOU ::WANT TO K/NOW RORY

Of course I want to know, I thought. That doesn't mean I should. There's a reason the safety briefing warned of it. Besides, who was talking to me anyway? Was it Tobias, playing a prank on me? I tested the idea.

>Tobias?

I hit enter and watched Tobias at his desk. He wasn’t typing anything. When I looked back at my screen, however, I saw another message. It can't have been Tobias.

> NO/T TOBIA:S:

> NOT: PE//RSON

> IDEA'

> DO Y:YOU WANT TO /K/NOW ABOUT LVL 4 (Y/N]]

> [Y/N] {Y/N) (Y//N]

I must be insane, I thought. I must be insane for considering it. I looked at Tobias again; he was completely focused on his network mapping. No, don’t be so silly, I said to myself. Just want to get the job done and get out of here. The defrag completion percentage was still ticking up in intervals.

> N

I hit the enter key and it was as if I had executed a new program. More lines of code streamed down the screen at a pace my eyes could not match. Then, they stopped.

> ROR:Y HIT N!O

> BUT IT:S TOO L//ATE

The dread grew heavier and heavier in my chest and seeped into my blood. It felt like black tar was being pumped through my veins. What have I done?

> YO:U SHOULLD H/AVE H:IT YES YES

> IT.S TOO: LA!TE

> Y'OU K.NOW TOO: MUCH

   The defragmentation was 96% complete. I'd let it finish and disconnect my laptop. I'll turn it off and keep it disconnected from my home network. In fact, I'll completely reformat it, I thought. I just wanted to forget this strange experience.

> I KN:OW WHAT YOU..RE TH-INKING

> IT:S T/OO L[A]TE

> YO:U KNO'W I EX!IST

> AND THA]T IS EN!OUGH

*********

MEPHISECURE CONFIDENTIAL TRANSCRIPT

'How long has he been in level four?' The woman tapped a keycard on the reader next to the door and clipped it back onto her white lanyard.

'Only since yesterday.' Their lab coats swished as they walked in step down the spotless corridor. They passed by a procession of locked doors.

'And what was the exposure?'

'The contradiction daemon got to him.' The man itched his moustache before taking some hand sanitiser from a dispenser on the wall.

She sighed. 'I thought we had contained that one?'

'As far as I can see, we did. The I.T. guy was remapping the networks and must've accidentally bridged the contained area with the storage area. It happens. They’ve isolated it now, thankfully.'

They passed through a door and walked down a small side corridor. They stopped in front of a wall of glass. On the other side, a room with nothing but a chair, table and a bed. 'Can he see us?'

'No, it's one-way glass.'

Inside, Rory was rocking on his heels and staring at a wall. His eyes flitted from top to bottom as if following lines of code down a terminal screen.

'What do we do with him?'

The moustached man scratched his neck. 'There's not an awful lot we can do. The daemon has worked its way into his thoughts now and is crossing all sorts of wires, building connections between neurons that have no business being connected. It'll keep burrowing deeper and deeper. First, it was making him form bizarre new ideas, and now his cognitive function has been corrupted. He is thinking at the level of a three-year-old. By tomorrow, it will have worked its way into some of his unconscious operations; bladder control and the like. By tomorrow evening, it'll have reached his preBötzinger Complex.'

Rory cackled at the invisible words on the wall. Then he began to weep.

'Pre what now?'

'It’s the cluster of neurons that controls breathing.'

The woman looked at him. 'So he will just stop?'

He nodded.

Rory laughed again. He began pounding his fists on the wall and wailing, the wail of a banshee, the wail of a human who no longer knows how to form words. The primal scream of a mind destroying itself.

'Jesus,' the woman began, 'this is a good demonstration of the importance of level four endurance training.'

The man with the moustache nodded. 'You’re not wrong. Unfortunately, your average untrained person simply cannot resist an idea daemon this pervasive. If the idea is in their head then the daemon can take hold.'

'You mean simply knowing about it is enough?'

He sighed. 'Yes, exactly. As soon as they become aware of the daemon and what it does, they're done for. It's too late.'

TRANSCRIPT END

LVL 4 CLEARANCE ONLY

INFOHAZARD CLASSIFICATION: 5 – HIGHEST