 Hacking questions, infinite agents and link vulnerability |
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 Dec 6 2006, 04:43 AM
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#1
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Moving Target  Group: Members Posts: 179 Joined: 15-November 06 Member No.: 9,866  |
So I have 2 questions regarding hacking. It says in the book that if you can overcome the copy protection on a program, then you can copy it indefinately. So does that mean if a hacker breaks the copy protection on a agent, or if they wrote the agent themselves, then could they copy the agent indefinite number of times and have an infinitely large army of agents at their beck and call? And couldn't megacorps do the same thing, assuming they write their own IC?
Second question is, is the hacker considered vulnerable on his own commlink? Or a better way of asking is, if someone hacks into your hackers commlink, can he use an attack/black hammer/blackout program against said hacker, even if the hacker is in another node (remember, hackers can be in mulitiple nodes at the same time, and is vulnerable in each one)? If so, it seems like a nice way to blindside the hacker, since he is focusing on whatever node he is trying to hack and not realizing that he himself has been hacked. Also, makes it important for the hacker to put a guarding agent/IC on his own commlink for defense (or, put an indefinate number of agents on it). |
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Dec 6 2006, 04:48 AM
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#2
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 906 Joined: 16-October 06 Member No.: 9,630 |
You can only have a limited number of agents subcribed to your comlink at one time. The same would be true on a node.
The second problem is that if all your agents are plain clones if a hacker finds a security flaw via exploit on one agent. He has access to them all as they all share the same security flaw. The comlink would be vulnerable but the hacker is currently in another node. So I don't actually know if the hacker could be attacked by that direction. A smart foe would attack the comlink its self while the hacker's attention is else where. |
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Dec 6 2006, 04:48 AM
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#3
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 179 Joined: 15-November 06 Member No.: 9,866 |
And also, if you hack into someone elses commlink, can you steal the programs that they are running? seems much cheaper than going to your fixer and buying that black-hammer 6 program.
If you were to do that, would you first have to break the copy protection to make a copy of it, or would they try to use their program and find that it had gone missing? I could just see the following: H1 has hacked into H2's commlink, and H2 spots him H2: Ah ha, I see you, now prepare to face the wrath of my black hammer-6 H2: ... H2: Where the hell did it go... H1: What, you mean this one? H1 kills H2 with his own black hammer-6 |
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Dec 6 2006, 04:53 AM
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#4
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 906 Joined: 16-October 06 Member No.: 9,630 |
You'd have to break the copy protection, which might take some time. You'd also have to hack the comlink to allow the data transfer.
I doubt you could steal it while the program is running. Generally you can't copy a program while its in use and even if you can its usually not a good idea. |
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Dec 6 2006, 04:56 AM
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#5
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 179 Joined: 15-November 06 Member No.: 9,866 |
What if he wasn't running it at the time, didn't want to slow down his response.
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Dec 6 2006, 05:03 AM
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#6
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 179 Joined: 15-November 06 Member No.: 9,866 |
a further question. it says that system is limited by response, you can only have system x 2 programs running at a time, and every (system rating) programs you have running reduces your response by 1.
So, if you have response 5,system 5, and you run 10 programs (max for system 5), then your response drops by 2, to 3. but your system is limited by your response, so your system drops to 3. With the a system of 3, you can only run 6 programs, so you have to unload 4 of them. But then, with fewer programs running, your response increases to 4. So your system increases to 4 as well. So you can run 2 more programs, giving you a total of 8 programs. Following this logic, it seems that with a system with response 5, system 5, you can actually only run a total of 8 programs. Is there something wrong with my logic? Is the decrease in response not supposed to cause a decrease in the system? |
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Dec 6 2006, 05:11 AM
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#7
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 179 Joined: 15-November 06 Member No.: 9,866 |
There is a flaw in my logic, you can run more than system x 2 programs, just not more than system x 2 subscriptions. Let me change my logical flow.
from the point where response is at 3 and system is at 3 at have 10 programs running. with 10 programs running and a system of 3, response will be decreased again to 2. So system gets decreased to 2. So with 10 programs running and a system of 2 and a base response of 5, response gets decreased to 0. So, if you have 10 programs running on your system, your system crashes. following logic with the following format response/system/programs with 9 programs 5/5/9 4/5/9 4/4/9 3/4/9 3/3/9 2/3/9 2/2/9 1/2/9 1/1/9 0/1/9 0/0/9 So with 9 programs, the system crashes again try with 8 5/5/8 4/5/8 4/4/8 3/4/8 3/3/8 at that point it works fine, but you are left with a response and system of 3 each 5/5/7 4/5/7 4/4/7 at that point it is fine as well, so with 7 programs, you have response/system of 4 same goes with 6 and 5. 4 and fewer programs gives you response/system of 5 |
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Dec 6 2006, 05:13 AM
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#8
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 179 Joined: 15-November 06 Member No.: 9,866 |
I am hoping that the reduction in response doesn't cause a reduction in system, but no such mention is made in the rules
aren't circular dependencies great :) |
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Dec 6 2006, 06:29 AM
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#9
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 870 Joined: 2-October 06 From: Athens Ga Member No.: 9,517 |
Well I just house ruled it to say that you can have one agent on your commlink but past that each one drops your response by 1 because they are so complex.
One of the problems the base system has is that it treats all programs of the same rating as the same size. A rating 4 paint program wouldn't be as big as a rating 1 agent. |
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Dec 6 2006, 06:38 AM
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#10
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,086 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 364 |
Spoken like someone who's never had to devote a gig of partitioned hard drive space to be a "scratch disk" for Photoshop to store it's temp data on. Seriously though, that would have been a nice feature for the rules to have had: hits on response tied not just to program rating, but also program "complexity". Maybe in Unwired. |
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Dec 6 2006, 08:08 AM
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#11
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 870 Joined: 2-October 06 From: Athens Ga Member No.: 9,517 |
Maybe instead of complexity it could have a reponse modifier. Maybe take your rating and add or subtract something to reflect how much it impacts the response.
Maybe take response x 10. Then system rating +5, paint rating -3, firewall +1, Agent +6, etc. Then you could have a better idea of how much space things are taking. Each 10 points lowers the effective reponse by 1. |
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Dec 6 2006, 08:54 AM
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#12
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,925 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 948 |
The commlink rules are not a spiral of death. The correct calculation is the following.
Response 5 Commlink: 4 Programs = Response 5 5 Programs = Response 4 10 Programs =Response 3 15 Programs = Response 2 20 Programs = Response 1 25 Programs = OS Crash at Response 0 So you can safely run 9 programs at a Response 5 commlink but it EFFECTIVE response is cut to 4 for calculating maximum program rating ans system rating. |
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Dec 6 2006, 10:50 AM
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#13
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 147 Joined: 4-December 06 From: Chicago, IL Member No.: 10,193 |
Hmm, so a hacker vs. hacker tactic might be to try to force your opponent to open several programs, just to slow him down. |
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Dec 6 2006, 11:50 AM
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#14
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,925 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 948 |
Well, an attacked hacker might be forced to load some defensive program in a hurry and temporarely drop his effective response by one by loading to many programs. |
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Dec 6 2006, 11:56 AM
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#15
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 147 Joined: 4-December 06 From: Chicago, IL Member No.: 10,193 |
Well, I was talking about launching his programs FOR him if you successfully penetrated his defenses, rather than a straight forward attack.
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Dec 6 2006, 12:45 PM
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#16
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,925 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 948 |
After a successful exploit test with enought access (admin) there would be no stopping you from launching a program, if you know where it is stored. First you must succeed in a browse test to find the location of a program and then you can launch it. Still, I do believe that the hacker could just shut it down as soon as it is up. Otherwise just launch an agent with Browse, Stealth and Command and order it to launch every possible program it can find on the commlink… |
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Dec 6 2006, 12:46 PM
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#17
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 179 Joined: 15-November 06 Member No.: 9,866 |
Why bother, just use a tar-baby program, at least when unwired comes out... |
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Dec 6 2006, 03:38 PM
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#18
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 147 Joined: 4-December 06 From: Chicago, IL Member No.: 10,193 |
Well, what I'm thinking is that, since there is a rigger on my hacker's team, when we're faced with an enemy hacker, we work as a team. Now more than likely, I'm the beefier threat in matrix combat, but if the rigger started a bunch of programs on the enemy hacker's comm, he'd be slowing the enemy hacker's response down, making him easier pickings for me rather than getting himself (the rigger) involved in the combat and keeping him (the rigger) available to continue with our actual mission. |
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Dec 6 2006, 03:39 PM
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#19
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 147 Joined: 4-December 06 From: Chicago, IL Member No.: 10,193 |
*drools* I'd love a book full of naughtiness that my hacker could do. Is there any information I can get on said book? |
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Dec 6 2006, 04:40 PM
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#20
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 271 Joined: 18-April 06 Member No.: 8,481 |
It requires a simple action to issue a command to a commlink right? So you can't just hack in and open "a bunch" of programs. You have to open them one at a time... And the enemy hacker could open them as you close them, or instead of messing around with silly tricks he could just attack your icon while you open his progs one at a time...
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Dec 6 2006, 04:50 PM
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#21
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
I wouldn't allow it, because programs are much more than just their executable. Just going by today's installation settings you'd have to also find all the registry keys, convert them to something that works on your PC, and find all the file dependencies that are located in other folders. A 6th world program that's vastly more complex then what we have today would probably be even harder to nail down, especially with hackers out there trying this to save money. The more convoluted and indecipherable you make your installation procedure the safer it will be. |
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Dec 6 2006, 05:04 PM
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#22
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 147 Joined: 4-December 06 From: Chicago, IL Member No.: 10,193 |
Right, what I'm saying is that, while I fight him, my team-mate opens his programs. He can either close them or fight me. If he ignores them, there's a chance that he's going to end up slowed down by them. If he closes them, he's wasting actions while I wail on him. I'm trying to develop effective team-work hacking tactics utilizing one of us who is built for cybercombat and one who is built for drone combat. |
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Dec 6 2006, 05:08 PM
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#23
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 147 Joined: 4-December 06 From: Chicago, IL Member No.: 10,193 |
It would be a complex process going by the rules in place right now. You'd have to locate the program, remove any copy protections on it, copy it, delete it and probably decrypt it. Doing that during active combat would be impossible. Doing it beforehand would be hilarious, but the hacker you could do that to wouldn't be worth stealing from. |
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