The DataKrash

Military: War

Following Rache Bartmoss death, two weeks later the deadly computer virus DataKrash get released through a dead man switch, takes over and dismantles the NET from the inside.   Though, aware of the virus' potential, Saburo Arasaka sets out to create a secure database of uninfected knowledge in the new Arasaka Towers facility in Night City.

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It started out subtly, with only a few minor changes in databases, lost files, changed lines of machine code. But soon it exploded into wildfire, randomly shifting, erasing, or rewriting data, and destroying or altering everything it touched. "It" was the DataKrash, a deadly computer viral plague that literally tore the heart out of the worldwide information network. Created by brilliantly insane Netrunner and master hacker, Rache Bartmoss; overnight, the DataKrash invalidated the entire structure of information that made Megacorps and governments viable. With no way to keep secure records, no way to organize over long distances, no way to even track economies and money (the United States government went from solvent to bankrupt in a matter of minutes), the very foundations of the Information Age collapsed into the ruins of an already shattering world war.    

"Then the IGTAs (Ihara-Grubb Transformation Algorithms) were downloaded, and after about ten hours, the NET was fully transformed, and everyone sheepishly pplugged back in. Me, I just stayed jacked in for the whole show. It waas really incredible to watch the entire NET get redesigned..."   Rache Bartmoss

  What Rache Bartmoss didn't include in this little soliloquy is that he was doing more than just watching. Bartmoss was also working: infiltrating his DataKrash code right into the I-G Transformations that would run the NET, using a backdoor he'd set up months earlier on Manny Ihara's computer (knowing something of Ihara's proclivities, Bartmoss had made it look like a hentai anime porn file). In short, whereas most viruses must infect a computer system, the DataKrash was automatically loaded into every single computer that ever ran the NET. Period. The result is that there was never any chance to stop the "spread" of the DataKrash; it was as if every copy of Windows (an ancient and long obsolete operating system of the 1990s) had been coded with a virus built in. By the time Magnificent Curtis, head of the worldwide cybercop org known as Netwatch, realized the awful truth about the DataKrash it was too late: the process of the Krash was well underway; to stop it would have required stripping the operating system out of practically every computer and cyberdeck on earth.   And Rache Bartmoss was dead, killed by an assassination team early in the War, with an Arasaka-based "ortillery" strike totally obliterating the conapt block in which he lived moments afterward.   At first, Netwatch was able to monitor and repair the damage as it occurred. But as the chaos mounted, Netwatch's leader and top Netrunner, Magnificent Curtis, realized that the crafty Bartmoss had outgamed everyone. There was no way to get rid of the DataKrash virus without literally re-writing the entire structure of the NET itself. To make the disaster even worse, the nature of the DataKrash also allowed both computer-generated Artificial Intelligences (AI) and Soulkilled Pseudo Intellects (SPI) to travel through what remained of the NET unimpeded (possibly a favor from Bartmoss to his old friend and fellow programmer, Alt Cunningham).   Even more disastrous, Bartmoss left yet another surprise lurking in the bowels of the NET: a self-replicating virus that strongly resembled himself, based on a twisted version of the Soulkiller program, and later dubbed R.A.B.I.D.s (Roving Autonomous Bartmoss Interface Drones). R.A.B.I.D.s were AI "killer" programs designed to resemble the late Bartmoss, created as a last thumb in the eye to his Corporate enemies. Powerful, homicidal, and ubiquitous, they infested the besieged NET in ever greater numbers. At first, they attacked only known Bartmoss targets like Arasaka and EBM. But as time went on and Rache (now dead) wasn't around to rein them in, the R.A.B.I.D.s evolved a murderous hatred of anyone they encountered. They also reproduced like—well—rabbits, creating a deadly pack of killer programs numbering in the hundreds of thousands, roving the NET looking for something to annihilate.