Tekna

The Tekna is an organized crime syndicate originating in Malaszec involved in a wide variety of criminal activities, including protection racketeering, smuggling, and extortion. It originated as a syndicate of smuggling rings in the colonial era of the former Malaszec Empire, smuggling people and goods to and from Malaszec’s colonies, and continues to operate to this day. The Tekna became prolific during communist Malaszec, where the flow of goods and people were significantly restricted and a black market thrived. The transition from communist to capitalist Malaszec led to the legitimization of some of its operations; the most well known example is Ilasrom, a municipal services corporation that split off from the Tekna’s black market operations in Astlod. While based primarily in Malaszec, the Tekna has substantial operations in foreign countries, such as Erothena and Bangsalaya. The Tekna is organized into various chapters, which together form the crime syndicate.

Etymology

“Tekna” is a Malaszec word which can mean “walker” or “mover,” itself derived by converting “tec” (meaning “to walk”) to a noun and adding the first person suffix “-na”. The name likely refers to its origins as a collective of smuggling rings during Imperial Malaszec, moving people and goods to and from Malaszec illegally.

Notable incidents

Quiet Proj and Operation Loud Money

In 2038 the Tekna created a cryptocurrency called the Quiet Proj in order to dodge export duties and provide anonymity for Tekna transactions. The Quiet Proj was thought to have been used for up to 30% of transactions between the Tekna’s chapters operating internationally. After a drug bust in a Tekna facility in 2046, the Malaszecije Veklajzdravosposz (MVD, the Malaszec Federal Police) recovered a Quiet Proj server node and launched Operation Loud Money, which exploited flaws in the cryptographic coprocessors installed on servers running the system. By doing this, the MVD were able to forge Quiet Proj, causing the first known case of hyperinflation in a cryptocurrency and rendering the Quiet Proj useless.

Execution and aftermath of Operation Loud Money

In early 2046, MVD operatives raided a Tekna facility during a drug bust and discovered a Quiet Proj server node. With physical access, the MVD learned the frequency of Quiet Proj usage and relative values of transactions conducted in Quiet Proj, but not the actual value or who was using it. Inspecting some of the server’s logs, a few of the user-set resource strings of exchanged Quiet Proj explicitly stated that it was being spent on moving drugs, and Quiet Proj became a higher priority.

Operation Loud Money was an MVD initiative to render the Quiet Proj unusable. The MVD crashed the Quiet Proj economy by exploiting weaknesses in the cryptographic coprocessors used by its RPoW servers, the most important part of the RPoW system. The servers used Dovreija Systems PG1064-1 cryptographic coprocessors, which were commonly found in decommissioned ATMs after the release of the newer PG1064-2. The PG1064 series contains a variety of security measures including cutting power to itself if it detects tampering, thereby purging its memory to prevent leaking sensitive data. However, the PG1064-1’s temperature sensor had a flaw, and could be disabled. Then, by subjecting the coprocessor’s memory chips to temperatures well below freezing, the data remained for several minutes even when powered off and device’s private key could be extracted.

Dovreija Systems manufactured another PG1064-1 with the given private key, and with this, the MVD could create a fake RPoW server with a compromised version of the RPoW server software that could issue forged Quiet Proj. In effect, printing more money. The MVD deliberately produced so many forged Quiet Proj that the ensuing hyperinflation caused it to become worthless.

Implementation of the Quiet Proj

Unlike a blockchain, it relied on a Reusable Proof of Work (RPoW) algorithm, which were first described in a paper from the University of Serszec in 2032. The paper described an application for the RPoW algorithm for use in a digital currency system, with RPoW tokens as currency. It revolved around the fact that a regular Proof of Work (PoW) token is computationally expensive to generate, but trivial to verify the integrity of. Just as gold is valuable due to its rarity labour required to extract, a PoW token is valuable due to the time and computational power it takes to create. An RPoW server exchanges PoW tokens for RPoW tokens of equivalent value. An RPoW token is embedded with a resource string, typically a transaction ID that is kept by the recipient. An RPoW token can be exchanged by an RPoW server for either another token of equivalent value or several tokens adding up to the same value with different resource strings.

The RPoW system was designed to be impervious to tampering even by the owner of the system, and is supposed to be run on cryptographic hardware supporting remote attestation, which allows the hardware to prove it was running software that was not tampered with or altered in any way. Interested parties could verify that an RPoW token was produced by the correct version of the RPoW server software, and this proof was digitally signed by the hardware with a private key that never leaves the hardware. Given sufficiently secure cryptographic hardware, this system is hypothetically impervious to forgery.