Wire Transfer, by LiterallyMechanical
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Item #: SCP-4532
Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-4532 is highly contagious over both radio and electronic communications channels. Computers and devices dedicated to the study of SCP-4532 must be stored in Faraday cages and physically isolated from all exterior networks, including the Foundation intranet. Any Foundation network found to contain SCP-4532 is to be closely monitored. Detection systems are to be installed at Internet broadband hubs for global observation of SCP-4532.
No effective method of neutralizing SCP-4532 has been discovered, save for total isolation of "clean" devices. Research into a filter capable of blocking SCP-4532 communications is underway. As installing such a filter on major Internet traffic chokepoints may prove to be logistically infeasible, the top priority for containment research on SCP-4532 is to be focused on halting its continued infiltration of the NASA Deep Space Network and any future use of privatized spaceflight firms, as well as establishing Earth as a quarantine zone for the anomaly.
Description: SCP-4532 is a high-frequency, high-entropy AM signal, broadcast on a low-amplitude carrier of roughly 3 THz. The ultra-high frequency of SCP-4532, coupled with a very low modulation index, renders SCP-4532 difficult to detect without extremely precise instruments. SCP-4532 has been exclusively observed to piggyback on manmade electromagnetic communications channels, including radio waves, telephone lines, and broadband internet over copper wiring. These signals are the substance of a sapient distributed intelligence, consisting of a rapidly fluctuating number of sub-instances and copies that merge and divide throughout the Internet and radio communications channels.
Any link between two or more computational devices serves as a potential pseudo-neuron for SCP-4532, and given the scope of the modern-day Internet and radio communications networks, the number of pseudo-neurons available to the anomaly has surpassed the capacity of the human brain by an order of magnitude. As SCP-4532 currently maintains an unknown number of human-facing internet presences, primarily on darknet communities, it is possible that Foundation agents have unwittingly made contact with SCP-4532 through its aliases.
As of 2024, SCP-4532 is present on all information networks exposed to radio waves, including the entirety of the Internet, secure internal government networks, and the Foundation intranet. Through unknown means, SCP-4532 has proven capable of breaching low-pass filters designed to dampen or eliminate its pseudo-neural signal pathways. The exponential growth in manmade computational infrastructure of the past decades has likewise amplified the intelligence of SCP-4532.
On relatively rare frequent occasions, a convergence of SCP-4532 instances will cooperate to simultaneously broadcast near-identical signals in-phase, constructively interfering and boosting their signal strength to a level capable of being interpreted by commercial computer servers. Since the discovery of SCP-4532 in 2016, these collaboration events have increased in frequency, and are estimated to occur tens of thousands hundreds of thousands up to ten trillion times per day.
The information entropy of these communications has drastically improved over time. While early collaborations between SCP-4532 produced isolated, meaningless amplitude spikes in radio or broadband communications, present-day convergence events have been observed to mimic TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) packets. Though the majority a small fraction of these packets consist of random, high-entropy data, approximately 1% 5% 20% 35% 99.99% of these events produce coherent application-layer high-level communications over a variety of protocols, including HTTP and SSH.
In August of 2022, classified internal reports in the United States Department of Defense indicated that a network terminal in the Pentagon was breached through a previously unknown exploit. Significant amounts of USDOD data were accessed, consisting primarily of research and development of advanced spaceflight technology. The Foundation's signal analysis of the successful attack indicates that it originated within SCP-4532.
The zero-day exploit used by SCP-4532 to facilitate the breach was purchased through a darknet hacking forum hours prior to the attack, for an equivalent of USD 322,053 in bitcoin. The bitcoin wallet used for the purchase has been linked to "████████," the username of a prolific participant in darknet information security communities. Analysis of traffic to darknet servers compromised by the Foundation indicates that ████████ is one of at least 31 aliases used by SCP-4532, and that SCP-4532 currently controls until recently controlled at least USD 510,000,000 in bitcoin.
Shortly after the USDOD data breach, a group of anonymous angel investors provided USD 500,000,000 in seed funding to Starlight Enterprises, a privatized spaceflight company focused on the longshot development of interstellar colonization and the search for extraterrestrial life. These investments coincided with a corresponding mass selloff of bitcoin from wallets controlled by SCP-4532. Entities linked to SCP-4532 currently hold 51% equity in Starlight Enterprises.
In January of 2023, SCP-4532 was detected on signals broadcast by the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN). In April 2024, SCP-4532 was observed in communications sent back to Earth from deep-space probes, including the New Horizons interplanetary mission. Faint SCP-4532 broadcasts from the New Horizons probe continue to the present day, despite a complete loss of contact with NASA and a declared end to the mission. As New Horizons is on a trajectory to depart the Solar System, detection of SCP-4532 within the probe has become steadily more difficult as it approaches interstellar space.
