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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Spoof

Posted by: Thanee Feb 21 2007, 12:38 AM

Alright, here's another question about drones...

A security rigger is 'jumped into' a Doberman drone.
He sends the drone out to fight some intruders.

Another rigger spots the drone and wants to spoof it.
She rolls for intercepting the wireless signal (Electronic Warfare+Sniffer(3))... success.
Next action, she analyzes the ID (Computer+Analyze(1))... success.
Now she can send false orders with the Spoof program (Hacking+Spoof vs. Pilot+Firewall)...

And here are the questions:

How does the rigger who is actively controlling the drone affect this?
Is there some kind of opposed test, wrestling for the control of the drone?
Is it even possible to send false commands to an actively controlled drone?
Can the intruding rigger somehow prevent the security rigger from controlling his drone?
What does the drone do, and when?
How would you resolve this?

Bye
Thanee

Posted by: Sir_Psycho Feb 21 2007, 01:17 AM

Well if this was Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, you would just remove yourself from the drones sensors, and then get it to shoot itself in the foot.

Posted by: Jaid Feb 21 2007, 01:29 AM

i would add another step in the process of spoofing yourself into control of the drone's actions. you would have to switch the drone to accept orders from remote control or to receive orders. while the drone is set to be rigged, it wouldn't accept orders that would normally be rigged (movement, basically). you could still do it, you'd just basically have to boot the rigger off first, and then you could control the actual drone remotely.

as far as it goes, though, right now the hacking rules are so wide open that you could get any number of answers and they would all be equally valid

Posted by: Thanee Feb 21 2007, 02:08 AM

QUOTE (Jaid @ Feb 21 2007, 02:29 AM)

as far as it goes, though, right now the hacking rules are so wide open that you could get any number of answers and they would all be equally valid

Yeah, I'm aware of this.

I'm interested in hearing how others would resolve this situation.
So, multiple equally valid yet different answers are fine.

QUOTE

So, engage in cybercombat with the rigger?
Are riggers actually vulnerable to cybercombat while they are 'jumped into' their drones?

Bye
Thanee

Posted by: cetiah Feb 21 2007, 02:35 AM

QUOTE

How does the rigger who is actively controlling the drone affect this?

I would say that a jumped in rigger overrides those instructions in much the same way that he overrides the Pilot and the drone's standard functions. You can spoof his signal and send the command and the Pilot will obey; but the Pilot isn't the one in charge at the moment and its not gonna be until the rigger leaves. Further, it's just a stray thought for the rigger to say "disregard that instruction".

QUOTE

Can the intruding rigger somehow prevent the security rigger from controlling his drone?

Maybe if he can crash the node before the rigger jumps in. Alternatively, he can encrypt the node forcing the rigger to descrypt it. Also he might be able to jam the rigger's transmission with a jamming device.

Posted by: Ranneko Feb 21 2007, 02:43 AM

QUOTE (Sir_Psycho)

Well if this was Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, you would just remove yourself from the drones sensors, and then get it to shoot itself in the foot.

That would be hacking the drone and using edit with respect to sensors.

Personally, I think that while a rigger is jumped into a drone, all that would happen is that he would get suspicious, because someone else is trying to give orders to the drone...

Posted by: kerbarian Feb 21 2007, 04:44 AM

QUOTE (Thanee)

Is it even possible to send false commands to an actively controlled drone?

Consider the case when a rigger is commanding his own drone. If he's jumped into a drone and orders that drone to take an action different than what he's doing while jumped in, what happens?

My interpretation would be that the jumped-in rigger is effectively issuing a continuous command stream. Any external command would be immediately overridden with fresh commands from the rigger, but spoofed commands that can have instantaneous effects (e.g. fire a weapon, turn off a sensor, kill the engine) could still work.

Particularly dangerous would be the "disconnect the current rigger" command, and then you can order the drone to do whatever you want next. Except... can you actually spoof further commands if there's no legitimate, logged-in user to spoof?

Also, that particular command would probably be disabled by the owner, per the FAQ entry that "You can tell a Pilot to ignore certain commands or to only follow pre-specified commands, but this is only going to be a protection from spoofing attacks, and it will, of course, prevent you from using your own agent/drone in certain ways."

Of course, you need to make sure you're not logged into your drone as admin, or spoofed commands can override even that:

"If the agent/drone is hacked, however, any commands coming from admin privileges will be acknowledged."

"Spoof can be used to issue falsified commands to any node. Spoofed commands will seem to come from the authorized user you are spoofing, and so will be treated as having the same access privileges (personal, security, or admin) as that impersonated user."

Blah... this kindof ended up as a ramble about various spoofing issues rather than an answer to your question, but hopefully there was a useful idea in there somewhere.

Would the game meaningfully change with the house rule "There is no such thing as Spoof"? You can accomplish all the same stuff with hacking...

Posted by: The Jopp Feb 21 2007, 08:46 AM

Since spoofing can only be done against drone/agents I dont think that you could spoof a ”jumped-in” drone as it essentially becomes the rigger – That means that you try to spoof the rigger not the drone.

For simplicity I have the following house rule for Rigger commands and spoofing.

Spoof (User Access)
-All Free Actions
-Issue Command / Observe In Detail
-Jam Signal
-Fire Weapon System

Spoof (Security Access) [-3D6 Dicepool]
-All User Access Commands
-Jump Into / Leave Drone

Spoof (Admin Access) [-6D6 Dicepool]
-All Of The Above
-Actively Subscribe A Drone

Subscribing the drone is the same as Admin access since out of a game balance viewpoint it is far to simple to steal drones and vehicles (depending on the GM of course.)

Posted by: Wasabi Feb 21 2007, 10:58 AM

I use drones and technomancers a lot. Here are some ways I can think of to ramp up difficulty:

A) Encrypt communications between your commlink and the drone and have the commands/monitoring between the agents and pilot (detailed below) be encrypted seperately. This makes it take longer to affect the drone and ties up the opposing hacker giving you more time to detect them and either neutralize them or power off wireless as you set the drone to wireless-offline-but-still-shooting mode. There is currently no disadvantage to having a seperate encryption key for each and every link between two programs so a seperate decrypt is necessary to affect each and every thing operating within a node.

B) Play the numbers by getting more rolls with the drone to detect and intruder than the intruder has to detect/affect them in return. Remember that if the commlink onboard the drone has a response or system of 4 the opposing hacker's utlities cap at 4 so the opposing hacker/rigger will have a maximum of 8 dice to spoof or stealth. With a threshold of 3 that means on average it will take 2 passes to succeed if they don't spend edge. In the case of a heavy electronic warfare scenario if you aware of it you could try turning off wireless long enough to load response 3. This will lose 1 point off Pilots and agents guarding the pilot but the opposing hacker/rigger will lose 2 dice from spoofing and exploiting in. While this would seem to be a double edged sword your ability to fire a smartgun and use a sensor lock for bonus firearms dice will still allow a weapon system to be effective.

C) Have agents and IC loaded with analyze, stealth, black hammer, armor, and attack onboard the Doberman monitoring the actions of the pilot program as well as looking for intruders. Instruct the agents to powerdown the drone if they are not instructed with a change of orders at the same time as the pilot program is instructed with the same change of orders. With 1 pilot and 2 agents you get three rolls to detect an intruder and they all have to be spoofed or the unspoofed one powers down the drone making it ineffective but also unhacked. Alternatelt have a spoofed agent get the crap kicked out of it by the other agents. The latter option is better with sprites you can command and monitor via resonance link.

D) Tell the drone what to do then reduce signal to 0 or even off using a timer so it 'surfaces' electronically like a submarine seeking radio contact at an interval. The opposing rigger/hacker will need to Exploit in which often will take more than one phase so if it is only exposed for 1 action every other combat turn you will frustrate your opponent. Set an agent in your own commlink to tell the drone what to do and when it surfaces its automatic. Of course, have your commlink ironclad as much as possible because spoofing the agent would be as good as spoofing the drone...

E) Set a skinlink on the drone with a biometric sensor (palm reader) and if a friendly authorized to do so wishes to change its orders they have to slap it and give it the change of command(s). Only really viable for semi-stationary drones since they can travel so fast a human cant run as quickly.

F) Have IC loaded on the drone who only exists to monitor for logins. If someone logs in via Exploit it should still be logged albeit as a legit entry. If a new user logs in and isn't on the IC's 'nice list' then have the IC attack them and notify the agents of an intruder. 1 pass later have the signal reduced to zero and any long distance hackers are ejected.