the borg also has no security on thier ships, unless they start seeing them as assimilate or as a threat.
IIRC at least one ship-threatening holodeck malfunction was the result of enhancements made by the Binars during a system overhaul, which is like Google having unsuperviised contractors work on their live site. Apparently the Federation has no concept of dev/test/prod environments.
They do, tho. It’s just we usually see events through the lens of characters that have admin access. Or are badass enough to hack them when they don’t. Or both, like that episode where Data goes rogue and sets the longest lockout password ever.
And they use biometrics on everything, Data did have to speak in Picard’s voice as I recall.
The most unrealistic thing about Star Trek is that the engineering team are in charge of the computer. That’s why nothing never works, those guys hate the concept of passwords.
I like to think technology is so advanced that security features are impossible to implement because penetrating them is trivial.
No, it’s really so writers didn’t have to work too hard to come up with storylines that a late 20th century TV audience would be able to understand.
You mean like, cars with small engines have trouble on steep hills, so the writers had to make smaller hills - I get it now!
No, I dont like to think that because really something about writers?
They don’t think it be like it is but it do.
In the 24th century, all computers use prompts anyway.
The enterprise is a story vessel. Nothing makes sense in a practical sense but everything can be used as a setup for an interesting story. Every device is a plot device.
The transporter can beam down just the combination of characters needed for a story to a planet that’s ideal for the story and then it will fail to beam them up because of some weird radiation. The engineering department will need to punch random buttons to fix it exactly as long the story on the planet needs to conclude.
The holodeck is the most versatile plot device and Q the most versatile joker.
Yup. Star Trek is the Odyssey set in space. Everyone wants to pretend it’s science fiction, but it’s actually more fantasy than science.
The episode where Moriarty came about was because Geordi tried to vibe code an opponent for Data and the ships computer just made a sentient hologram.
Yup… Create an adversary for Data, not Create an adversary that beats Sherlock Holmes.
And threw the majority of ship’s resources at the task, taking the energy currency away from all other systems in order to achieve the goal.
“You are so right to push back against my over-utilization of resources…”
But he needs engine mommy to help him restart the warp core.
There’s also the episode where they find the guy who needs to check his stocks, and Picard explains that in the future people behave like adults.
I was looking for this.
It’s a post-scarcity society. The acquisition of wealth and the resulting theft are not a thing anymore.
The Ferengi computers probably have 2FA.
until they don’t?
like saying you dont need seatbelts
but i do like optimism in my trek, i just chalk it up to tv logic
This.
Ironically yet another one of those things NuTrek seems to have completely forgotten.
They did require admin logins, but they also implemented a bimonthly password change, so there were post-its on all the monitors.
Lol, my company has daily, there’s no way I can remember without writing it down. But hey, it’ll be invalid the next day so it’s all good
Holy poop that sounds horrible
That’s how you end up using password 001 thru password365 every year
You don’t get to choose it though, that’s why there’s no way in hell I’ll remember. Unless it happened to be easy that day and I used it multiple times
If you aren’t setting the password, how are they sending the password to you?
Seems like they may not have a very good concept of the point of a password.
There’re multiple layers, I don’t wanna give too much details lol. But basically things like, assigned computer, office network, phone or physical multifactor keys, etc.
I’m ok with everything except the generated password because it’s a hassle.
your description sounds like those authenticators that change every minute, but for every day instead.
don’t tell them about the authenticators that change every minute some idiot is going to get an idea
Sometimes they do. In the episodes where they de/activate the self-destruct sequence, the captain has to give their authorization code. The fact that they have to give it verbally in front of everyone isn’t ideal though.
It’s a voice print, so it doesn’t matter who else knows it. Unless it’s Data.
Speaking of Data, his existence anywhere near that ship’s bridge is a humongous breach of all sorts of security to begin with. He’s a not-very-well-understood piece of tech that’s been proven to have at least one hidden backdoor into his brains that can let others assume direct control over him and use him to do some exteremely dangerous things. Letting him into the bridge of such an important ship and giving him such high clearance is just insane.
But of course why worry about Data given the captain himself and his history with the Borg. In other words it’s Star Trek, so whatever. The show must go on.
It’s not exclusively a voice print. The Computer also has a verified identity chain for the person speaking — it is aware of where everyone on the ship is and who they are, against a manifest, at all times.
Then how can Data assume control of the ship just by using other people’s voices and codes?
Data has no biometrics and is therefore exempt?
But wouldn’t the computer then a) never recognize any command given by Data (as Data)?, and 2) not recognize any command from Data pretending to be someone else because that someone else is elsewhere in the ship?
Data quietly says “sudo” before most stuff he does?
Then what does he say prior to sudo?
Data is fully functional so he must have a biosign emulator up his ass
As an android he could in theory fake the biometrics the computer looks for, his design is organically inspired, hence why he breathes for temperature control and has a blood analog flowing through his “veins”
Or unless it’s anyone with a tape recorder
Well they didn’t discover DNA in the trek verse for quite a while so they got really really good at voiceprint analysis instead
I could see DNA and all genetic technology becoming vorboten for a while after the Eugenics Wars.
I mean the fact that la’ans family still has the surname is some pretty dark storytelling in a watsonian sense. Normally they’d change that shit in a heartbeat. The fact they haven’t suggests a preventative mechanism, probably for monitoring purposes. There’s also the bigotry exhibited during Una’s trial right down even to Bashir’s. Humanity has some deep fuckin’ trauma there
Authorization Cyril Figgis
Cyril would end up on a Cerritos grade ship or a garbage scow. And Pam would be head of security
There’s also apparently some manner of voice print analysis as well. Because in whatever episode that was when Data goes rogue, he has to mimic Picard’s voice to do command stuff and set up the self destruct.
Yes, easily foiled with recording equipment (See: Archer), but recording equipment has a weird almost Schroedinger’s Cat-like status in Trek…
Jake gets pissed off at Nog because for some reason they don’t have headphones anymore.
To be fair, wasn’t he attempting some kind of acoustic calibration that required the music to be played out loud?
Very hard to get headphones that fit Ferengi on a station run by hew-mons.
I had a thought a while ago on why everything goes wrong for starfleet. All their officers are vibe coding. The warp core is vibe coded. The weapons are vibe coded. The holodeck is vibe coded. It’s why the safety protocols are always getting turned off.
It’s made obvious when they design the Runabout in Voyager.
Honestly been thinking about this. Everytime someone talks about “programming the holodeck” and they do it in like… 20 minutes, I have to assume that the “programming” was
“Make me a Sherlock Holmes larp. Make no mistakes”
Geordi’s literal prompt that one-shotted Moriarty: “Computer, in the Holmesian style, create a mystery to confound Data with an opponent who has the ability to defeat him.”
Maybe all of their computers were compromised by the government on purpose like ours.
It’s a federation spaceship. They work for the government.
They thought NOBUS (no one but us) rules applied just like our government does now.
You may be surprised how many companies fuck up implementing basic IT security measures.
So in this regard it is very realistic.
Turns out the FBI as well.
In some versions of Star Trek, I’m sure they’ve said that the first few presses somebody makes on a console is them logging in.
The systems were designed similar to military installations contemporary to when they were written, with the expectation that unauthorized people were not supposed to have access to certain areas in the first place.
Of course, now it seems stupid. My car has more security just using my phone as the key. They could easily have used their badges as credentials at the very least. Realistically, with their tech, the computer should just know everybody’s identities and everybody’s locations at all times, even without badges, and should be able to control access using that information.
But just imagine if they used that sort of tech. Every time somebody was in a prison cell, the computer would be analyzing what they were doing, and alert security the moment they started trying to break out, for example. So many episodes would end before they started.
