The team needs a backup hacker for when the party gets split, and Mr.Sam has stepped up to the plate. He's not going to be taking on Ultraviolet systems, but wants to be able to get into reasonable systems, pop locks, hit cameras, and maybe provide a distraction when the techno is battling it out.

He's already purchased rating 3 skillsofts in required skills (and is owed two Activesofts at Rating 4 with Personalized) with about 75,000 nuyen left to spend on the rest of the project. A previous victim thoughtfully dontained a rating 5 commlink, also he's got a datajack, and is pretty fast in meatspace with 4 IPs. Attributes: LOG and WIL are 3s, CHA is 2.

The PC is good at pulling the trigger (and the player is looking to try something new), but they're both looking for some advice on how to proceed as a Hacker:

• I'm thinking at 4 IPs, a VR hacker is the way to go.
• Should he bump up the commlink and get a few programs at rating 6, or quite a few at lower levels?
• What programs are the most important? And which of the Unwired options are the most useful?
• What else should I consider, and how best to expand.

Do you mean AR hacker?

Upgrade the commlink to 6/6, and buy all programs at 6, pirated - at 10% street price pirated
programs are the way to go, and you can't use legal software anyway for hacking because of the data trail. The TM should be able to get you the programs and updates easily.

Get an agent or two, to have asistants.

Ergonomic seems a good option to run more programs on a node. Viral resistance depends on how often the GM uses viruses.

with 4 IPs he should probably AR hack; he'd get a two die advantage going VR hot sim but unless he goes all out on the 'ware he won't get more IPs than he would in AR and in the meantime he's subject to more dangerous IC.

if he can afford, consider clustering, will let you run more programs without response degradation.

get -every- program at 6 (pirated as noted), malware is optional at first but useful. make sure you have Electronic Warfare and Cybercombat too and not just Hacking, Computer and Datasearch. - try to get it setup so that you have all 5 at least at 4 rating (which means learning at least two of them in the meat in the long run, I think.) wasting actions to change what you have slotted will cost lives, maybe your own someday.

No, upgrade the Response to 6 and get a Satellite Link for a Signal of 8. 500 < 3,000, and 8 > 6.

Other than that, what rating Skillwires is he running on? That looks like over 10 skillwire slots used for hacking.

Your meat attributes mean little as a hacker.

Assuming you have Skillwires or MBW, just get pirated skillsofts or groups Electronics and Cracking at the highest rating you can and buy the best program you can.

- J.

Because nothing says 'good idea' like giving control of your body over to pirated software brought to you by hackers (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

But really, does unwired really present any sort of disadvantages to compensate for the fact that you're only spending a fraction of what you should on your programs? Seems to me it should give you a gremlins 4 quality or something when using it.

The disadvantage is that the programs degrade.

Yeah. They Degrade. Legit programs don't. They might be subject to Availability rules, unless piracy has their own rules for getting them. Degredation starts to add up when there's twenty-something programs, and you get day-long tests to try to find em.

You get a single days long test to find a VPN. Then you spend a few complex actions per program to get them from said VPN. It really is "Tank, I need a blank program", and waiting a dramatically appropriate few seconds.

Monthly degradation doesn't seem like much of a punishment. At worse you refresh them every month and it takes almost a year to even out. *shrug* I guess that is an appropriate punishment in a really long term game. Ah well. Go for it then, grab the pirated stuff and matrix the matrix.

.. Unless your hacking via AR.

Also, it should be noted that any DM in their right mind is going to apply bugs to the pirated software. DMs who don't are in their left mind.

Also also, don't forget to get a R4 Agent program and have him set to find and download all the pirated softs you need every month, right before his program degrades. Let the mook do everything for you, and reap the benefits.

OK, just trying to figure out where all the players are finding these warez sites? And why are the GMs letting them get some of this crap? Go and reread the section on "Finding Pirate Networks" Unwired pg. 94


(Emphasis is mine)

Most people tend to just use the section below it.


So people spend a day looking for a pirate network on the CU so they can get a good Edit program. They find one, but this one has cracked copies of games, movies and some comercial software (like I expect many would). The GM decides that this group of crackers are mostly highschool kids and limits the ratings of everything to 3. They do the search for a rating 5 Edit and succed, but are told the best one they have is the lvl 3 Edit.

A few days later they need a copy of blackhammer and check out the site. No amount of hits will get you that software, because they kids just don't have that type of stuff. The team spends another day looking for another network (but they still know where this one is).

A few months later they need an Analyze program and go to check on the network, but their principle found it hidden on the school network and shut them down. It is now crossed off the list of networks that they know about.

Just my 2cents on how Cracker Networks work.

Folks, you have to use pirated programs for hacking, or the datatrail will ruin you.

or self-programmed!

Why? There is no way to tell Program_Attack_1029833451 from Program_Attack_231513423934 so no one can track you based on your program and only a total moron would use a hacking program that reports to the parent company what you've been hacking and when.

if I were selling legal hacking tools...

Unwired:
In game terms. legal software does not degrade in the way
as pirated software (see p. 109), but leaves a datatrail when used
illegally for hacking (see Registration, p. 115).

Since the software is registered, however, it leaves a datatrail
that allows its usage to be more easily tracked. As a result, hackers
have to be more careful about “cleaning up” behind them.
In game terms, decrease the threshold of any attempts to track
a user who has used a registered program by 1 for each registered
program used. Likewise, increase the threshold of any attempt to
Edit the access log (p. 65) or otherwise eliminate traces of the datatrail
by 1 for every registered program used while hacking a node

And if you write your own program they degrade as well.

Pirated programs are the only viable option for hackers. There is no need to punish them for using them.

All legal programs are issued with Registration and Copy Protection; when you remove those, the monthly updates also stop coming.


I think Unwired tried very hard to do good things, but in their attempt to cram in more features they made the system rather buggy and unwieldy. Ironically, given the subject. A while back someone described Unwired as the result of computer geeks trying to inject realism into the previously rather abstract and stylized matrix systems. ("Ooooh, and we should have pirated and open source software. And viruses, and botnets, and SOTA, and...")

I find that we've had to use some houseruling to reduce the complexity of Unwired to something manageable.
- We cut out Program Options. The only ones I really liked were Addictive, Psychotropic, Black IC for Simsense, Registration and Copy Protection...
- We silently ignore software piracy as a cheap alternative. Any hacking tool you can download for cheap was also bought by the security industry, and ceases to be SOTA in a matter of hours.
- Software degradation applies only to security-related programs. Those are in an arms race; everything else stays viable.

When I compare Unwired and Street Magic, it makes me want to play a mage; the system is so much cleaner. You don't have to choose between a hundred different options and combinations.

These are the sorts of reasons that I never liked unwired much.

This was changed in the errata to Unwired; self-written programs do not degrade (at any defined pace). It seems that planned obsolescence was the bad guy after all, and it applies to pirated ware (strangely enough.)

Or perhaps something along the lines of the idea that it would be very easy for someone who wrote the program themselves to keep it up to date, but if they just downloaded a program from some site, then they have no idea how it was coded, and the effort of learning how would be equivalent to writing a program of your own.

I think it has more to do with the amount of it being used and the availability. If you post your self-written software to a warez board then it will degrade. If less then 10 people have it then it won't. It has to do with the how the program exploits or does damage. They need the code base or the records of a bunch of attacks to be able to write counter code to protect the loop holes that the program exploits. If you don't let people see your secret sauce then it shouldn't degrade (or at least not as fast).

Not sure if that means that some programs like edit or browse would ever degrade then, but who knows. Maybe the nature of code in the future gets corrupted easily.

Hmm, that is a very good way of looking at it actually.

And I don't think common use programs should degrade at such a rapid rate. Maybe every year or so it might to represent new versions coming out, making the old ones 'obsolete' but that is kinda odd that a new version of MS word coming out would make the old versions less effective (Which is far from the truth, I use notepad all the time and it is only slightly less powerful than word AFAIC)

Most people forget that players can degrade enemy software too using exploits.

Unwired pg 96



So if you take into account software makers are basically doing the same thing to patch up their programs to keep them from degrading as well. I had a hacker once who spent a lot of spare time just looking for exploits in common pirate warez just so he would have an edge against other hackers.