Command Navigation Program

The CNP managed the avionics of Viper Mark VIIs and almost all battlestars before the few fighters that survived were retrofitted after the attack.

Developed by Dr. Gaius Baltar, the Command Navigation Program (CNP) is a operating system^[1] utilized by the Colonial Fleet and some civilian spaceships in the Twelve Colonies.^[2] Installed in the central computers of Vipers and Raptors and in the navigation computers of almost all battlestars, the CNP was more than two years in the making.

Unbeknownst to Dr. Baltar, his lover and a cowriter of the CNP turned out to be a version of the Humanoid Cylon known as Number Six. She programmed backdoors into the program so that the Cylon attack force could break through the Colonial firewalls. Vipers with the CNP that received a command from attacking Cylon ships would be shut down "as if a switch were flipped." Communications officer Dualla describes reports of "system failures" throughout the Fleet and how at least one battlestar lost power when the attack began, which indicate the Cylons used the CNP to damage and, in at least one case, disable capital ships as well (Miniseries).

The CNP was previously received by battlestar Galactica, but the program was never loaded into the primary memory of the ship's navigation computer ^[3], although her last squadron of Mark VII Vipers received the upgrade. As a result, the squadron is massacred by two Raiders on their way back to Caprica.

Lieutenant Felix Gaeta has the program code purged from the mainframe on Baltar's suggestion, and the program is also retrograded on the flight systems of surviving Mark VII Vipers, Raptors, and civilian ships (Miniseries).

Notes

The CNP is not a virus, nor is it a worm or Trojan Horse. The Cylon's use of the CNP is an example of backdoor exploiting of an secured computer system through a secreted password or other hidden access in order to gain command privileges. This electronic warfare tactic differs from the Cylons' older method used in the first Cylon War of using their computers to seek exploits within and forcibly enter ("crack") a Colonial computer, whereby the attacked computer is infected with a virus that causes havoc on the Colonial computer.

References

↑ The Command Navigation Program was an actual operating system (similar, after a fashion, to the Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems on today's personal computers) that worked as designed. However, the work of Number Six added the compromises that allowed the Cylons to later control it.
↑ Aaron Doral provides a requested report to Gaius Baltar in CIC: "You asked for a report on how many civilian ships had your CNP program?" (Miniseries).
↑ Galactica herself is spared from Cylon computer attacks for two reasons: The CNP is not loaded on any of her computers to allow the backdoor attempt, nor were her computers networked in the Cylon Attack to allow a virus cracking attempt.

[1] The Command Navigation Program was an actual operating system (similar, after a fashion, to the Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems on today's personal computers) that worked as designed. However, the work of Number Six added the compromises that allowed the Cylons to later control it.

[2] Aaron Doral provides a requested report to Gaius Baltar in CIC: "You asked for a report on how many civilian ships had your CNP program?" (Miniseries).

[3] Galactica herself is spared from Cylon computer attacks for two reasons: The CNP is not loaded on any of her computers to allow the backdoor attempt, nor were her computers networked in the Cylon Attack to allow a virus cracking attempt.

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