VR Saboteurs

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VR Saboteurs are a notorious type of electronic vandals that specifically targets VR films and VR individual beings. Unlike holovision films, VR films are not prerendered as they are designed to adapt and change depending on the user watching. However, this makes them vulnerable to having their behaviors overwritten via injection programs that alter the behavior of objects within the VR landscape. While normally not an issue in home use, these sabotages can occur as harmless pranks in public spaces - often, they make a VR character do something uncharacteristic such as acting outside the bounds of their normal personality. Serious films are sometimes hacked to have characters say nonsensical toilet humor or engage in bodily functions in inappropriate situations. In other cases, VR's made to entertain children are occasionally hacked to spout profanity and adult humor. At best, the audience viewing the film takes it a joke, but at worst, some take serious offense and threaten to sue the filmmaker for failing to protect their movie against external attacks.

VR Saboteurs, however, are on many occasions very malicious. There have been numerous instances of therapy VR's being hacked to insult and provoke the victim leading to instances of murder and suicide among the populace. Some VR's have also been hacked to make statements. Pleasure VR centers have often been targets as a means of threatening blackmail to patrons. And during the war between the Union of Eteno Socialist States and the Karalian Empire, hacktivist groups in Greenwater often used their talents to modify recruitment ads to instead support the UESS.

One of the most dangerous varieties of VR Sabotage are the hacking of hardlight VR's. Because these VR's have the capacity to physically harm a person, these forms of cyberattack are classified as weapons because of their occasional use in war. There have been instances of police VR's being hacked as a means of assassinating others.

In the criminal underground, hacking programs that allow the modification of VR's are in high circulation. They are traded through the dark extranet with prices varying depending on the complexity. They are also widespread and popular to use among criminals due to how easy they are to obtain over high grade military weapons. Script kiddies are usually the primary users of these tools, while only a select few actually create them.

The laws regarding VR modification are fairly lax as they are handled similarly to vandalism of physical objects. Depending on the severity of the action results in fines. More serious cases often force the use of in-person police officers in place of the usual hardlight police to avoid any further damages.

In virtual cities, VR Saboteurs are very problematic. Because of their potential to harm the livelihoods of citizens in a more obvious way, punishment for vandalizing a virtual city is far more severe than it is in the real world.

Sashelma virus

One of the worst instances of VR sabotage took place during the end of the Buyuk Wars when VR technology was still in its infancy. Created by a single Vaikan, the infamous Sashelma virus affected 10% of all VR operating systems in the Karalian Empire. It targeted the Sashelma therapy VR character - originally designed to help users overcome stress and loneliness, sometimes forming a highly intimate relationship. The virus modified Sashelma to become increasingly cynical until it began to insult and bully the user. The virus spread further on the servers the Sashelma VR used to receive updates from its creators, disguising itself as a critical bug fix. It is thought that this virus is responsible for causing approximately 90 million suicides and 10 million murders in the Karalian Empire.

The creator of the virus was never caught. It is thought that their motivation was to make a statement regarding what they believed to be a negative aspect of society about Vaikan choosing virtual personalities over real Vaikan in forming relationships. His program has been redownloaded and modified by script kiddies to use for other purposes. Since the incident, however, anti-virus standards have drastically increased to prevent something like this from happening at such a massive scale again.