Minerva Augmentation Scare

"'Overriden servos severing muscle and tendon from attachment points; fear and anxiety-inducing images overrunning InfoLink systems to the point of forcing suicides; overloaded batteries resulting in lethal explosions...' — SIN file on the Minerva Augmentation Scare" The Minerva Augmentation Scare was a horrific event that occurred on the 3rd of June, 2684 and was resolved nearly a month later on the 29th of June, 2684. Affecting all Minerva Corporation products through the instance of a well-concealed trojan hidden within augmentation firmware and update packages, the results of such infections induced mass injuries and even fatalities from incidents such as InfoLink-induced optical and auditory traumas, overloaded augmentation batteries and explosions, and the destruction of organic matter from the overworking of limb augmentations.

Killing over ten thousand people and severely injuring over one million across the Coalition of Congressional Republics in a virtual rampage spanning 26 days, such a tragedy destroyed the stock value and corporate credibility of MinervaCorp. The founder of MinervaCorp, Maxence Batteux, implicated in his suicide note the possibility of the Stapleford Group as the origin of this trojan, noting their increased interest in buying MinervaCorp outright as a means of absorbing competitor corporations and his steadfast denial against the idea being bought by such a mega-conglomerate. However, investigations conducted by the Coalition's Security Intelligence Network instead suspected either disgruntled employee involvement or the possibility of hackers from the Front for the Liberation of Human Purity having brute forced trojans into update packages in MinervaCorp servers prior to wireless dissemination.

The aftershocks of the Minerva Augmentation Scare lead to the General Congress of the Coalition passing the General Congress Resolution 522-105. This resolution enforced strict augmentation firmware protection and software encryption for all update packages and algorithms prior to the dispersion of augmentations to the commercial markets, and placed a vice grip on black market augmentations that had no relation to MinervaCorp or the Augmentation Scare.