I see your Wikipedia link, and I point you farther down the page to http://en.wikipedia....me_pad#Exploits. If it can be exploited, it cannot be perfect. This system apparently relies on something to be perfect. Humans are inherently imperfect beings with no chance of reaching perfection, so therefore cannot produce perfection. Someone will make a mistake and it will compromise your "perfect" security. Not to mention, all someone would have to do flood the thing with random sequences fitting in whatever limited range the pad uses until one works and the lock click opens. By modern technologies, this would take so long, saying it is not feasible is a pretty massive understatement. However, as processing power and speed increases over the span of hundreds or even thousands of years, and considering both increase at an exponential rate, eventually you'll be able to generate a countless number of sequences in mere seconds, one of which will eventually work. It might be lucky and happen almost instantly. It may take the intruder a very long time.
And that assumes a spy doesn't infiltrate the systems at a base or somewhere prior to the battle, accesses the system, and screw things up and/or steal sensitive security information giving the battle hackers an unprecedented edge. This also assumes that the would-be hackers don't salvage one or more of your computers from a disabled ship, pick apart your operating system, the hardware, the software, the security, methods it uses for connection, etc, and then modify their own systems and software so, come next battle, the hackers are able to use software capable of spoofing the systems, using replicas of your hardware and software, or just using the stuff they pilfered from your wrecked ships. The only way you can stop that latter from being a possibility is to never suffer losses in any battle. Ever. And we all know that's not going to happen.
And this also assumes someone doesn't discover some way to simply bypass and ignore some or all of your security systems. Why knock down the brick wall when you can climb over it? That can come in all sorts of manners. Say if in Nova the Federation discovers that they can use Vell-os slaves' telepathic abilities to access a computer in an unorthodox manner that the target system wouldn't even recognize as a connection, or even register. Or if someone invents some sort of new signal (such as a sort of Blue Tooth or Wifi x.0) that can interface with older machines, but the older machines don't acknowledge, let alone recognize?
And this is still assuming you didn't do something like fire a pod containing hacker nanobots at your opponent so they could directly infiltrate the enemy systems and either do the hacker there or give the human or A.I. hackers a stable, secure connection that bypasses the target's defenses, as if they put in the administrator password correctly. Or a boarding party intent on commandeering the ship attempts to break into the systems from the command ship itself? After all, you're going to want some techies to handle the computers on a ship you want to capture, since your typical grunt isn't likely to be trained in that capacity.
This is probably how a digital warefare in space scenario would go down.
Group A and Group B meet in battle. Hackers attack each other, whether through wireless connections, hacker nanobots infiltrated into the enemy ship, or whatever. Both sides gain some understanding of of each others hacking capabilities and security systems, but odds of anything successful are pretty low.
Group B looses, Group A manages to salvage still working computer systems from Group B ships.
Group A sends the machines to their techies to study the machines and their contents with great detail.
Espionage can substitute above steps as well.
Group A's hackers receive information from the techie's findings relevant to them. They study this information and either use these captured systems, copies of these systems, or make modifications to their own to deal with the configurations, perhaps writing some new software in the process.
Group A and Group B meet in battle again some time later. Group A uses their knowledge of Group B's systems to defeat or bypass security and break into the systems at alarming rates, causing much damage and serious disruption in the battle.
Group B diligently collects data on the failures and sends it to their techies. They look at it, make changes to the software code and advise what changes need to be made to security protocol yet again. Also, relevant information, likely much less but still useful, is send to their hackers.
They meet in battle yet again. Group A's methods are quickly thwarted and likely accomplishes little, while Group B makes much more progress, perhaps even successfully completing several hacks since they have the edge. Especially if Group A is using their hardware and software or replicas.
And so it goes. Not every scenario would go like this, as every successful espionage mission or recovery of an enemy mainframe will be such a big hit.
And Vast brings up some interesting points (though white hat hackers are those who break in with no intent to cause damage, and black hats being the crackers. Cracking is also often a part of hacking, but can also be a separate thing). The enemy isn't going to be like "Oh, we're being hacked. Our firewall should stop them." It's going to be digital warefare, with the hackers and A.I.s on both sides attacking, defending, and using various strategies to thwart each other. While the fighting outside is going on, there'll also be one over the computers that'll be just as fierce.
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This is why I love these boards and this game. Where else could you have a debate about the feasibility of hacking into hypothetical computer systems on non-existent ships in an imaginary universe within a game?
:laugh: Indeed! I'm not proposing anything here that's any less feasible than space combat.
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