Hacking a Handshake, Or: Hackers need SOME human contact Options

[Feshy]

From the people who brought you:

"Ouch! His oversized ring pinched me. Well, I'm sure it's an accident, no need to worry he's collecting blood for a ritual spell against me"

"Hmm, sticky hands. Surely, he's just nervous meeting such an important person, not swiping my fingerprints."

"Is that a nicotine patch on his hand? Wow, I sure feel sleepy..."

"His hands are dry. I sure hope it's not because of the RFID dust we use to track anyone who touches our priceless artifacts."

and lastly,
"Was that a needle pinprick from his cyberhand? I have HOW long to live unless I do exactly what he says now?"

comes yet ANOTHER reason to never, EVER shake anyone's hand:

"Was that a slight tingle? Like when my skinlink is transferring? Well, nothing to worry about, I'll just e-mail my corp's top-secret plans anyway."

Yes, that's right, skinlink might be mostly safe during combat situations, but it is vulnerable to social engineering. Picture the following scenario: Your face is socializing and living it up at the target's party. The hacker is surfing dwarf por... er, whatever it is hackers do when you aren't looking, passing the time in the van outside. A signal comes in over the coms, the hacker goes to full VR. The face shake's the targets hand. It's a good, firm handshake. A bit of eye contact and some distracting banter. The shake lasts for a combat round, maybe two. That gives your decker a good three to six rounds to hack in and turn his agent loose, using the face's skinlink equipped com as an access point. A submersed technomancer might have four to eight rounds to turn loose a sprite, plenty of time to get past the firewall a comlink is capable of supporting. A few seconds more, and the face is back to enjoying martinis, and the hacker is back to wondering how those dwarven women keep their beards so trim. A few hours after that, and the paydata arrives by mail, courtesy of your agent or sprite.

Need more time? Plant a skinlinked RFID on him.

Heck, I'm tempted to give my technomancer a gun loaded with RFID darts just for skinlink hacking in a combat situation. It's not garunteed, but even if it forces your opponent to choose between spending his round picking darts out of his skin, abandoning his coms and gear, or letting you hack his smartlink, it's a win.