Stealing Drones, Hackers Keepers Options

[Raij]

What is the process a hacker would need to go through to permanently steal a drone? I see in the FAQ where a hacker can spoof commands to the drone as if coming from the owner, but what if he wants to keep the drone after he's done? I wouldn't think he would spoof it forever.

[Adarael]

Hack the drone's subscription list, have him subscribe to it and have it subscribe to him, erase all other subscribers.

I'm at work and don't have my books, but that's basically the process. You have to hack into the node it's on, rather than just spoof solitary commands.

[Orient]

That seems easier than my answer, which is to try to install a new Pilot program. Not that this solution is particularly rules-supported..

[Riley37]

It should not be necessary, but if you only have User access from your spoofed account, it might help to spoof a command "come to my location", physically disconnect the drone from other input, and go from there; if it has some equivalent of a SIM chip that records its owner (who has root/admin access), then you could remove and replace that chip.

Hmm, come to think of it, I should have my PC program his drones so that if they detect spoofed commands, they *pretend* to accept the new user, but also secretly send the PC an alert. Double agent drones!

[Eurotroll]

Off the bat I'd say get Admin level access ASAP, unsubscribe all other users, restrict access, and clear the "registry" that lists owner (whether corp or private citizen), acquisition date and so on. Then take the drone offline when you have the luxury of some downtime and file off the registration number equivalent. ;)

[Adarael]

[Orient]

[Tarantula]

Basically, hack in succesfully. Browse for access list. Decrypt it (if encrypted). Disarm it (if databombed). Edit to remove previous owner and add you as owner. Reboot to load new access list.

[Fortune]

Is there any difference if you are trying to steal a car ... or bike ... or tank ... or jet fighter?

[Adarael]

Usually you can also steal those by bashing in a window/canopy/what have you and hotwiring them. And those also tend to have people in them, though not always. Drones tend not to.

And the drones I tend to steal are notorious for being in the sky.

[Arashi]

Mainbook, P216 : "Note that standard electronic devices only have admin accounts, as there is no need for other accounts for their software."

Even though we don't have rules for an actual host-node, i.e. what kind of hardware you need to run a "server" of sorts... this is how I run devices in my game. Personal commlinks, drones, devices, etc. - don't have more than 1 level of access, and that is at admin (per above).

As for stealing drones, IMHO it depends on how the owner of the drone is controlling it. If the original drone owner is a rigger and "jumped into" the drone/vehicle, it *cannot* be spoofed, and the intruding hacker must defeat the rigger in cybercombat. Only if the controller is in "captain's chair mode" or is just the dogbrain Pilot - can the spoof program work. Temporary commands like "land near my teammates for immediate dissasembly and transport..." hehe can work, but if caught by the ownen, it won't.

I like that idea about the subscription lists at that point - Hacking + Edit kind of tests I would suppose, with perhaps the hits becoming a threshold for the Computer + Analyze test if the old owner wanted to hack back in and find out what happened and try to stop it.

[DireRadiant]

[Adarael]

I dispute that. If you're jumped into the drone, you're rigging it directly with your brain. You have become the drone. Spoofing a command to a drone would be overriden by the rigger's control automatically and possibly without him even thinking about it. Just my gut instinct on it, though.

Otherwise, I wonder about the possibility of spoofing a decker's datastream to log him off without actually defeating him in cybercombat.

[Cheops]

Simple:

Spoof Command to fly away from current controller. Keep spoofing until somewhere you can recover it.

Once there Spoof it to shut down and turn off all wireless access.

Done.

[DireRadiant]

[Arashi]

The reason I don't allow spoofing a "jumped-in" drone is because of the level of connection.

According to RAW p218, you can use Edit to change a couple words in a text on the fly, etc., but that "More extensive changes require longer periods and/or an Extended Test."

By that reasoning, trying to use a simple spoof to "go here" when the drone is engaged in a Full Hot-Sim level connection with a rigger - well, you try and just spoof that level of connection with a program and you get very little result. I would not even consider allowing it unless the hacking intruder was also a rigger with the hardware - then he could mentally send the appropriate depth of a rigger level connection, but there is going to be a full-on VR battle to take the driver's seat.

Also, on RAW p224, Spoof Command action is used to "transmit forged instructions to an agent or drone controlled by another user. In order to spoof orders, you must first complete a successful Matrix Perception Test on the persona you are impersonating in order to gain its access ID."

How many times have we allowed someone who simply beat a drone with Exploit to change subscriber lists, spoof, etc on a drone (i.e. take it outright) - all without seeing the original Matrix persona?

Have we made taking a drone too easy then??

The drone hardware/software is NOT going to want to let you make any changes w/o getting an authorized Access ID. Sure you get an access ID (faked) from exploit, but what does that mean? If the drone is rigged - you are in the car door but OOPS, sorry the drivers seat is occupied (rigging control only having space for one full-sim level connection) and you have to fight to put your own butt in that seat.

This begs the question that if you hack an access ID with Exploit, why would you need to Spoof? Well, if you AND the original vehicle owner are both still accessed, both of you can still issue commands. That's a problem, now the drone is in a tennis match being batted around back and forth. Physical jamming could take care of the original owner, but that isn't hacking. Wired communications are changeable on the fly, per RAW p224, but Wireless are not - so you would have to hold action and Spoof the incoming commands of the original owner of the drone as they came in...

BUT you need to see him (matrix persona) first, so do you need to access the drone, then exploit hack down the line to the controlling persona's commlink to see him (matrix perception check), then be able to spoof him?

Seems like it's somewhere in that area. YMMV on the usefulness of that kind of play though.

[Cheops]

Spoofing a drone works exactly like Spoofing any other remote device. If someone is jumped in then it isn't a remote device and therefore isn't spoofed like that. GM has to decide how to handle that situation. It should be handled similarily to how you'd handle two people in physical space fighting for control.

I just make it an opposed test Reaction + Vehicle skill of jumped in use v. roll for method that the intruder is using. Whoever rolls higher has taken control of the vehicle for that Initiative Pass.

[Tarantula]

You could perceive the controlling riggers persona by observing it via its connection to the drone. His persona is present in the drone while he is controlling it via VR.

[DireRadiant]

Arashi, you make it sound like all the VR Jumped in computing power is occuring at the the Drone, when in fact it's all happening at the Rigger. It's the hot sim module that's creating the "jumped in" effect at the rigger brain, not the riggers brain out wandering in the Drone VR space. Given that the effect VR is locally generated at the Rigger, I dont' necassarily believe the connection itself changes into one that can't be spoofed.

[Raij]

Guys, thanks a lot for the various comments and suggestions. Let's see what I'm lookin at here..

(assuming dog-brain or at best monitored, but not currently rigged)
1.) Exploit test to hack the drone; as mentioned are all drones considered devices and as such require admin access? if so this test is at +6 every time you want to hack any drone?
2.) Matrix Perception test to identify the controlling persona to prepare for Spoof
3.) Spoof subscription list to add new owner and remove existing owner (which would obviously alert owner if monitored)?
5.) Command as your own

[Adarael]

In a nutshell, yes.

[Orient]

Just to check ... you're talking about using the drone to find the controlling persona, and hacking the controlling persona in order to modify the subscription list, right? Because I'm pretty sure subscription list modification has to be done at the upper level of the subscription hierarchy.

And, as already mentioned, you could just Spoof fake commands to the drone directly - less effort, but has to be done command-by-command.

Yes?

(Apologies - don't have my books on me, here..)

[Arashi]

Orient - you can't spoof w/o first viewing the controlling persona to see it's Access ID with a Matrix Perception Check.


Raij - I think that devices only have 1 level of access which is Admin, so it does NOT require an additional +6... That is only for full server hardware nodes that can maintain processing power for such seperations.


DireRadiant - Re: the VR computing at the drone or rigger issue. I'm going off of legacy canon material which said something like vid/audio transmission was 1 Megapulse of memory per minute, and full sim was like 1 per second. IMHO - A rigged connection, to give the rigger the bonus it does, has to carry higher bandwidth so that the drone can juke left when the rigger lurches - it's much deeper than just the virtual remote controls of the Captain's Chair mode. It's like trying to hack someone's hot sim connection and feed them data when you are in AR using a keyboard. You can't type fast enough to simulate the emotive track. Remember in the previous Rigger books - Remote Control gear was different than Rigger gear - the rigger gear was in *addition* to the RC gear on a vehicle/drone.

To me this makes an actual skilled Rigger a bit more valid than just buying autopilots and cross-subscribing them for an 'Agent Smith - Drone' army.

[Fortune]

[DireRadiant]