Hacking the Naked Princess
by Andy Kaiser
Chapter 0x10
I waited impatiently as the screen in front of me began to draw a picture. I remembered ancient tales of dial-up modems, where text and graphics would painstakingly unroll from the top of the screen, teasing out one row at a time. Similar here, it looked like the image was being slowly rendered as I watched.
The last time this happened was with the Naked Princess's last picture, a nasty piece of work. What would happen this time?
The picture appeared.
A green cube.
It was attached to another green cube. And a yellow one. A blue one. A red one. The cubes were adjacent to other cubes, and together they all formed a larger, multi-colored cube, with - I counted - twenty cubes on a side.
Recognition (if not understanding) struck in a quick flash of nostalgia. I knew the what, but not the why.
It was a giant version of a Rubik's Cube. A puzzle game from the 1980s, still popular today with those with fast minds and faster fingers. This one looked just like that, only far more complicated with many more sides, and with more puzzle combinations than there were atoms in the known universe.
The rendering finished. This was my own "Naked Princess" picture. Really? A giant unsolved Rubik's Cube was supposed to strike fear and revulsion into anyone who viewed it? Maybe only with really selective OCD.
While I certainly wasn't a blockhead, or a speedcuber, or whatever a Rubik's aficionado calls himself, I'd never been particularly scared of a Rubik's Cube either. Like sports, it was one of those things in life I had zero opinions on. It existed. Some people liked it. That was all I knew.
Something was off. Or I'd misunderstood the Naked Princess. Maybe I'd used the program wrong.
That was a possibility. The Naked Princess had just gone through what seemed like a setup sequence. It had asked for my social media information, the logins to the accounts I'd set up when I was trying to find P@nic.
I'd given it information. It had used that input to learn about me. It had made certain assumptions that led it to draw a 20-sided Rubik's Cube, as it assumed this ultracube would be enough to send me into babbling madness.
To use an extremely recent and appropriate example, my thoughts became like a Rubik's Cube, clacking and sliding combinations into place, jumbled parts merging and aligning to form solid-color sides. Babbling madness became method.
I thought back on the data I'd fed the info-hungry Naked Princess. It had wanted my FriendyFace account. What profile info had I used there? Pretty much your standard stuff: My name was Dev Manny, I was an Information Technology Private Investigator, my religion was Cthulhu Cultist.
What about my SyncedIn account? There I'd said I was Dev Manny, ITPI. My hobbies were puzzles, favorite movie was The Big Lebowski, favorite music video was Land of Confusion by Genesis. Fluffy stuff that probably matched millions of others.
Each social media account wanted slightly different information so they could sell my demographics to their financial BFFs. Taken all together, these accounts painted a picture of me, of Dev Manny... if I'd given them the right information.
Sure, there were plenty of movies and songs I could list. Rocketing to Nerd Level Ten, I even had a favorite type of Linux editor (the answer is of course "vi"). But the point is that those things didn't define me.
Or did they?
Maybe they did. Not with the small amount of data I'd offered, but what if I pushed everything in my life through that electronic evaluator? All my friends, desires, dreams and failures, all my photos and documents and messages, my emotional development and evolution, and every bit linked and cross-referenced to all my other online accounts...
Maybe with enough information, the Naked Princess could build a theoretical mental profile of someone, and then build a literal picture out of that. Combined with every Like/Dislike and Upvote/Downvote, it learns you. It would know your deepest fears and your mental weaknesses, even if you didn't know them yourself.
With a freely-given psychological profile of loves and hates, family and friends, conversations and arguments, politics, religion and philosophy, the user would never know what hit them. These unfiltered truths would be cataloged and indexed to form a whole bigger than the parts. The victim's present was a custom high-resolution representation of all that they hate, fear and are terrified by.
That was the Naked Princess: A sadistic psychiatrist powered by supercomputing and big data. It learns you and it hurts you.
My brilliant theory aside, it hadn't worked on me. Instead I'd seen a picture that wavered between boring and "meh." Maybe the data I'd fed my dummy social media accounts referenced one or more Rubik's Cubes? I didn't know, and right now I didn't have time to start streaming my favorite media to find out.
With the little it had to go on, the Naked Princess thought my deepest fear was a never-ending, possibly unsolvable puzzle. That was actually pretty perceptive, but it still wasn't anything I'd lose sleep over.
Lucky me. Social media laziness made me immune to the Naked Princess's charms. I resolved to continue my lack of a life for the foreseeable future.
Chapter 0x11
With the Naked Princess riddled out, I still had two problems. First, the Naked Princess had an impact. Pictures were making the rounds. Was the program still dangerous? Second, I'd been hired by Oober to track down P@nic. While I had made contact with her, I still didn't know where she was. While she was pretty clear about wanting to end the conversation last time we spoke, I knew I could reach her: IRC was a wonderful gift from the TCP gods.
I could also get in touch with Oober. The last time I'd talked to him was in a virtual world, and during that conversation he'd disappeared on me with no warning. I could try him again and bring him up to speed.
Like any modern human, he had roughly a million ways for people to contact him. Option #17 was one of his many IM accounts. He responded in seconds.
I gave Oober the IRC information I had on P@nic. That way he could at least say hi. It would be up to her if she wanted to meet with him.
We both logged off the chat and I went to get the most important meal of my day: An affordable one. Tacos it would be.
One drive-through pass later, I went back\ to my office, where I swallowed my mixture of protein, fat and chili powder. Life was good.
It took me another two minutes before I started feeling weird. I tensed, thinking I might have to sprint for the bathroom. Maybe my definition of "processed meat-flavored product" didn't match that of Rocko Taco.
A moment passed, and I realized it wasn't something wrong with my body. It was my brain. My synapses had been churning through the chat I'd just had with Oober, and something wasn't right.
Relieved in stomach but worried in mind, I pulled up the chat log and read the conversation we'd just had.
There it was: "i'm dropping off. gonna greet p@nic and her princess-"
I'd never told Oober about P@nic's connection with the Naked Princess.
I'd never even told him about the Naked Princess at all. I read the chat log a second time. The relationship with his parents: His mom I'd met, yet she was "never around?" He saw his dad? That didn't match what he said when we first met.
Rocko Taco was off the hook. Something was really, really wrong. Oober was lying to me.
And I, so proud and noble in my success, had just generously aimed him right at P@nic.
I scrambled to flick on my tablet and frantically logged on to IRC, looking for P@nic. Luckily, she was there.
P@nic: hey mr. smart private eye. Me: No time. I have to warn you: Oober's not who he seems. P@nic: what? no. more detail. Me: He knows you wrote the Naked Princess. I never told him that. He lied to me about other things. Something's very wrong. I'm sorry, but I told him how to contact you before I realized this. If he talks to you, do *not* tell him how to reach you. Do *not* give him any information. P@nic: well well, what are ya gonna do. Me: Okaaay... So yeah: I don't know what kind of trick he pulled, but I've been conned. Hard. You're in more danger than before. Don't trust him, okay? P@nic: lol Me: ...? P@nic: it's me, dude. we're both here. this is oober. i'm gonna talk to p@nic for a while. Bye.