Army of agents, why aren't they overrunning the Matrix? Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[kerbarian]

Is there anything in the rules that prevents the following tactic?

A starting character buys the following software and cracks the copy protection: System 4, Agent 4, Firewall 6, Exploit 4, Attack 4, Armor 4 (total cost 27,000¥). He then buys 10 Meta Link commlinks and upgrades the Response of each to 4 (total cost 21,000). He sets up the agent software to run independently on each commlink (and provides copies of all the other software).

Now whenever the hacker wants to break into a system, he brings along his 10 buddies. The agents load Exploit, Attack, and Armor, and everyone hacks into the target system at once. Once inside, the agents attack any IC or security hackers present, and the hacker is then free to go about his business with 10 guards at his back.

Sure, the system will detect all this and be on alert, but is there anything it can do about it besides try to shut down? Tracking might be a problem, except that any IC/hacker trying to run a trace would probably have its icon destroyed before it got very far.

Similarly, why couldn't corps just do the same thing? Buy 1,000,000¥ worth of commlinks and load them with IC. Then, whenever any node on any of their networks has an alert triggered, they send in 100 instances of the IC to beat them down.

One potential limit is that when loading an agent on an independent node, "the agent doesn't count toward your persona's active program limits like running programs do, but it does count as a subscriber toward your subscription limit". That could be taken to mean that agents can't operate unless they're subscribed to a (metahuman?) persona. Even then, you'd have a ratio of 10 agents for every system-5 hacker. That limitation also doesn't make much sense to me, given that agents "will continue to operate in the Matrix even if your persona goes offline."

Finally, hackers probably wouldn't even need to buy the commlinks to run the agents on. Just go around hacking into random people's commlinks and installing your agent. Or even program the agents to hack in and install copies of themselves on any node they can find. It would be like modern botnets.