JOURNEY TO THE FUTURE /

Greetings, information security researchers!

We are the RuCTFE 2015 2048 team and we are happy to offer you a job you may find interesting. Several months ago we received a letter from a former astronomer Martin Gelio with a strange request. We don’t know if it’s true what he is talking about because no one could actually prove it. However, we have all the evidence indicating that this case is particularly exceptional. Go ahead and try it yourself!

MARTIN'S LETTER /

Hello, dear friends!

My name is Martin Gelio, I am a retired astronomer. Have never been able to get over it though. In the end, I dedicated my whole life to the space exploration so retirement is not... What have always kept me going is the question — are we alone in the universe? Mankind knows of plenty Earth-like planets but the question remains.

Once I had a strange dream, where I saw an alien world, grim, misty and dark. People in that place were weird in many ways and there was a man, who was staring at me in a fierce manner. When I woke up I could not believe it was just a dream because it felt too real. But surprisingly these dreams continued to appear in my mind, I had the same image for seven nights in a row, each night exactly the same plot. I started to suspect that it was more than a coincidence and there was more to it. All of a sudden it stopped and for the next three weeks I had no dreams, it even disappointed me a little. During those days I convinced myself that it was just my imagination in conjunction with an enormous coffee consumption.

Next time I had this dream I've decided to find out what's going on. Whether it’s just a dream or something else I intended to ask that man – the one who tried to blow my mind with a glare – what is going on. Turned out I was a fool because I didn't make it earlier, that has changed my whole life! Now I can say for certain that we are not alone in the universe! I bet you think I’m a nut, but actually I'm not. I’m fully conscious and I’m aware of what I’m saying. Now let me finish my story.

It turns out that I made a contact with the world outside our Solar System. It’s a planet called Turio. The civilization of socalled turions rose not so long ago, however, due to some mysterious reasons they are more advanced than we are. It's such a pity that our ancestors were too busy fighting with each other to make the same progress over the years. That person I dared to talk to bears the name Bud and he is the president of one little country on Turio.

Bud is extremely concerned with the situation on his planet and seeks help from us. He told me that despite the distance between our planets which is thousands of light years, our worlds are sibling and that shortcuts the communication. Well, sort of. One week of every month the boundaries between two worlds become thinner and some kind of a link appears. You may have noticed that sometimes an item disappears and you can't find it anywhere. But shortly after that here it is, lying just under your nose and leaving you wondering how you didn’t notice it earlier.

Long story short, turions harnessed that phenomenon to advance by studying our items and books and returning them afterwards. But no contacts were made so far. Bud and me, we’re the first ones to do it! He says I’m the Chosen One, I can sense the divergence in the matter like no other person on the Earth. Bud has always wanted to make a contact, but he didn’t want to push me too hard so he has been observing me without attempts to communicate.

There’s plenty of information about Earth stored in libraries on Turio, but access is very limited, only presidents and very few besides them can go there. That’s how Bud learned English and how he got that idea to ask for help on the Earth. Bud is the president of the country named Tords, it’s very similar to the ones back on the Earth, actually. Democracy is the only political regime on Turio. In each country president is trying hard to provide free and comfortable life for everyone. The instrument to achieve that is the number of services that are purposed to solve a particular problem.

There is the technology on Turio called IoP (Internet of People). It allows a person to be patched to the Internet through devices implanted in his brain. This is a great advancement for the Turions but it also brings new threats. Behaviour changes can be observed all around the world, people get antisocial, aggressive and unhappy.

Cyber-warfare broke loose which means that this is the end of 200 years of peace on Turio. Clearly none of this would be possible without IoP because this is the main battlefield up to date. Bud is extremely worried about the state services as they are being targeted. That could lead to the dangerous situation for people in his country!

Bud managed to pass all currently running services to me to investigate. I tried to make some sense of it, but I'm just an astronomer, you see. I attached everything I have to this message. Please! Help Bud to figure out how he should protect his state infrastructure if any problem arises. I really hope you can assist him with this, lifes of innocent Turions are at stake here!

Best regards,
Martin Gelio

And here is an attachment Martin mentioned: images

md5: c2422d05552caab668230bc6023a42c4