STAY ON TARGET. (from Star wars). This is a communication radio for a vessel. No one will build in a structure in such a device where it can receive broadcasts, figure out the comm protocol for randomly sent code in binary (yes that has to be done BEFORE the next step can happen), store the code, compile the code, load the code INTO A DIFFERENT HIGHLY PROTECTED COMPUTER (the ships main computer in this case) with the right privileges, run the code. ALL without user permission and knowledge. NO ONE WOULD BUILD THAT for vessels to communicate with and be connected to the other computer. . . .
Not that I wish to get too deep into this fray (and I do not have any particular axe to grind one way or the other), but The Virus was not
designed to work thru the Communication Radio on a vessel.
Virus
TM was a prototype weaponized AI-malware custom-designed to attack another very specific custom-designed system: namely the starship transponder system which utilized its own specific interactive and independent communication/data-transfer network with other transponder systems that were always on and interacting with one-another. The transfer of data (and code) between transponders as a routine matter of course as part of standard operation would not be an unusual assumption. Those individual transponders themselves were likewise independently networked with their own individual ship's computer systems at a fundamental level in order to be able to transmit the appropriate sensor, identity, and other flight data upon query.
The Virus
TM that was released was at a top-secret Imperial (i.e. Emperor Lucan) military research facility and was not yet ready for deployment and was released
accidentally as a result of an assault on the facility by "the Enemy" (i.e. Dulinor-forces). The AI Malware (Virus
TM) mutated and modified itself as it learned in order to better accomplish its perceived mission. It eventually found other ways to infect other systems by other subtle avenues.
1. Virus infects both the Software & Hardware of a computer.
While the basis of Virus
TM is the Cymbeline Silicon Life-Form, though it is tempting to presume that the Cymbeline "Chip" and the computers it integrates with are using a more sophisticated chip technology similar to what we are familiar with at TL7-8, it may be that the architecture or operating principles of the TL12+ technology in the computers are actually something very different {*
insert handwave here *}. We cannot be entirely certain that elements of hardware and software have not intermingled at a fundamental level and in fact don't inter-modify, despite that being impossible today with our computer architecture.
As a different example, consider DNA, it is both hardware and software: the quaternary code is encoded on the DNA chemically in 3-unit codons (=bytes) which are grouped to form amino acids from which proteins are built. But the complete code is embedded in every piece of hardware for the entire system, and the hardware itself arises and is built up from the from the software encoded on its own "hardware" substructure.
2. Virus appears to be an unintentional uplift of an inorganic silicate lifeform, that due to it's weaponization and newfound intelligence, it weaponized any computer system it infected against it's users.
It was not unintentional. Cymbeline Life aside, Research Station Omicron (in Lucan's Imperium) was designing its uplift with a very specific goal. They had not reached the finished product at the time of release. What was unintentional was both its premature and uncontrolled release.
3. Virus might possibly be Psionic due to it's ability to infect a computers Hardware from it's Software. (this theory is considered way out there)
Possibly. That remains to be determined, as there is no data in evidence.
