Arsenal Kills Agent Smith, Ding Dong the Exploit is Dead... Options

[mfb]

i'm aware that untraceableness can't be achieved in SR4 the way it can in SR3. s'why i made it clear that all my examples were SR3-related.

as far as there being 'something' that stops botnets from being created... there really isn't, and there really can't be. as long as the things that SR (any edition) says are possible remain possible, botnets remain possible. it's like saying that logs exist, and nails exist, but houses can't possibly exist. if the devs are handing out logs and nails, they cannot reasonably deny the existence of houses. they can unreasonably deny it, which is what's happened. what ought to be done is to take measures to ensure that such things aren't overly powerful. since the devs are, at this point, pretty much committed to pretending houses don't exist, you've got two options: houserule it, or simply ignore it.

i've chosen the (in my opinion much wiser) option of not using the SR4 ruleset at all. but as this problem exists in both SR3 and SR4, it's interesting to discuss it.

[Kyoto Kid]

i've chosen the (in my opinion much wiser) option of not using the SR4 ruleset at all.

...I agree, but as I mentioned to Dashifen in a PM, I'd then find myself sitting all alone at the gaming table.

[Nightwalker450]

Ok, looks like we all know of Agent Smith, but almost none of us as GM's have had to deal with Agent Smith. So as a GM (You are the world after all), what do you do when Agent Smith rears his head?

You say your runners have 6 months of downtime, before their next run. You're not going to check every little detail on them, as long as its "by the book" they can do it. They will get no additional income during this time, but they have all the time necessary for training, repairing, building, etc... And your hacker comes to the tables saying he has Infinite + 1 rating 6 agents, loaded with every program. It's by the book, how do you handle it?

(This is kind of the runners creating the scenario and the GM having to react, reversal to how things usually go)

[Moon-Hawk]

Ok, looks like we all know of Agent Smith, but almost none of us as GM's have had to deal with Agent Smith. So as a GM (You are the world after all), what do you do when Agent Smith rears his head?

You say your runners have 6 months of downtime, before their next run. You're not going to check every little detail on them, as long as its "by the book" they can do it. They will get no additional income during this time, but they have all the time necessary for training, repairing, building, etc... And your hacker comes to the tables saying he has Infinite + 1 rating 6 agents, loaded with every program. It's by the book, how do you handle it?

(This is kind of the runners creating the scenario and the GM having to react, reversal to how things usually go)

As I mentioned, redundant agents don't help. They're not creative. They can't help each other with teamwork tests. If two identical agents try to do the same thing, they do the exact same thing, so only one roll is made. Post-crash, the Matrix was designed from the most fundamental level to prohibit self-replicating code. Maybe two copies of the agent can't exist in the same place, they effectively merge.
Yes, this is a lot of handwavy semi-BS ways to just say "no", but in my mind that makes all the difference between having a consistent, successful game world, and just being an asshat.

I have no problem with them cracking an Agent. They can put a copy onto every team members' commlink. They can send them off on more tasks. But none of that it is particularly problematic. As long as you don't let multiple copies of the same agent contribute to one task there really isn't a problem. (This isn't against the rules, it's one of those things that's never explicitly forbidden or allowed, so I'm choosing to interpret it in such a way that my game works) Now if the hacker wanted to buy/code multiple agents, then I'd assume they're different and could work together like any other matrix entity. Agents are still cheaper than hackers, and powerful people could get large groups of them. But now they're no different from drones, which are also cheaper than samurai and easier to get. If there's something else that makes agents different than drones, then that difference can be addressed, otherwise one isn't more broken than the other.

[mfb]

i dunno, Moon-Hawk. i'm pretty sure i could cause some serious problems with infinite agents, even without teamwork tests. SR3 didn't have teamwork tests, after all, and infinite agents could still screw things up pretty badly there.

[Ryu]

Hey is - if I get his meaning - not just talking teamwork tests. Multiple, identical agents doing the same thing in the same scene don´t help. You are never better off than with one agent (except you have multiple "lives" in cybercombat, which could still be a problem).

[mfb]

i'm not talking about identical agents doing the same thing in the same scene. i'm talking about having a gigantic network of agents across the Matrix helping me keep on top of any number of different activities.

[martindv]

I'd like an infinite number of helper agents to take care of trivial busy work for me.

I bet a lot of people would. Like... Everyone.

[Moon-Hawk]

I'd like an infinite number of helper agents to take care of trivial busy work for me.

I bet a lot of people would. Like... Everyone.

Sure they would. But no one's 1337 trivial busy work skillz are breaking the game, so who cares if everyone has agents taking care of their trivial busy work? The entire point of having computers is taking care of trivial busy work. And in the future a lot more trivial busy work will be handled by them. I don't see how this is a problem.

If a player wants to behave like a cyber-terrorist and send millions of agents out into the world causing mischief, then they can expect to be dealt with as a terrorist by the megacorps and governments. If those agents have a way of reporting back to the hacker, then there is a way for them to be traced. Maybe not with a conventional Trace program, but if information is getting back to the hacker somehow then that information can be followed. And if their task is just to go somewhere and do something, then it can't be anything all that bad, because one agent against an important system is going to get beat down. So if a player really wants to spray virtua-graffiti on a billion low-rated hosts, then he'll probably make the evening news and things will be straightened out by morning. If he keeps it up, he'll get the GOD on his ass.

[Kanada Ten]

i'm not talking about identical agents doing the same thing in the same scene. i'm talking about having a gigantic network of agents across the Matrix helping me keep on top of any number of different activities.

I'd like an infinite number of helper agents to take care of trivial busy work for me.

I bet a lot of people would. Like... Everyone.

Everyone would, wouldn't they? IC running on your comm, Agents monitoring your apartment, Agents sorting news for tidbits you'd enjoy, and they wouldn't be a problem until they started to hack, because they'd all have passcodes and be low rated to keep system load down.

Actually, I'm starting to think the problem is only that it'd be time consuming to deal with an Agent Smith, not actually difficult. Shutting down a node in a distributed system isn't very destructive, and shutting down multiple nodes would cause a back-up network to activate, like a cascade system which would either have a much higher firewall and so on, or just have hardwired limited functionality.

[mfb]

If those agents have a way of reporting back to the hacker, then there is a way for them to be traced. Maybe not with a conventional Trace program, but if information is getting back to the hacker somehow then that information can be followed.

theoretically true, but in reality, it's a lot easier to hide a datatrail than it is to uncover it. and when you've got a million datatrails to follow, any one of which could be false...

[hobgoblin]

I'd like an infinite number of helper agents to take care of trivial busy work for me.

I bet a lot of people would. Like... Everyone.

and from the fluff i get the impression that in SR, google will hire out the use of agents...

so why run them all yourself when you an rent, or spoof them?

[Moon-Hawk]

theoretically true, but in reality, it's a lot easier to hide a datatrail than it is to uncover it. and when you've got a million datatrails to follow, any one of which could be false...

When you've got a million datatrails to follow, you use your million copies of your own agent to track each and every one of them. If we're allowing multiple copies to do different tasks, then each of those different datatrails is a unique task. And if a single one succeeds in finding the offending hacker and reporting back then he get's the anti-terrorist-freedom-force-of-liberty-and-doom.
High-profile shenanigans will get traced back to you, sooner or later.

Like I said, I don't see a problem with this. From time to time, hackers will do exactly what's described. Like I said, they'll probably cause minor to moderate mischief, and they'll be tracked down and arrested after the first or second time they do it. There is a pretty solid upper-bound on the amount of trouble a single lone agent can cause in a highly secure host. True, by the law of large numbers, occasionally one out of the million agents WILL succeed in cracking a single important host and cause some real trouble for someone somewhere, but those other 999,999 who fail are still going to be causing a ruckus and getting traced back to the hacker.

This really isn't any more achievable than a team of runners scoring lots of nerve gas and letting it loose on Seattle. They could do it, and it would be bad. But it would also be stupid and game-ending. The threat of cyber-terrorism exist in the world of SR: good. It happens occasionally: good. I still don't see the motivation for runners to do it in a normal game of Shadowrun, though.

[Dashifen]

Ok, looks like we all know of Agent Smith, but almost none of us as GM's have had to deal with Agent Smith. So as a GM (You are the world after all), what do you do when Agent Smith rears his head?

I'd let them do it. They drop major systems throughout the world causing massive panic and destruction. Then, when people go back to analyze the situation, they'll find the agents that weren't able shut themselves down and erase their logs, etc. and one bright guy or gal will say "Hey, these are all the same Agent. Let's see if we can locate its owner." So they go around trying to determine who purchased it. They eventually track down a (fake) SIN from which the purchase was made or they find the online fixer that provided the code to someone else, but either way they will eventually find the hacker whose botnet brought down the world. I may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but they will find the source.

Plus, it's a losing scenario in my games anyway. If an agent is crashed then the program code could be destroyed. If an agent is on a host which is dropped due to a DDOS or even just a full-on viral assault, if that's how you perceive agents working, then it's likely that as the security dudes try to get things back online, they're going to be restoring from previous backups and or reinstalling operating systems on wiped (or new) drives, etc. Thus, your massive botnet probably suffers catastrophic casualties in your first go around. Granted, only a moron would give up the source code for the original agent, so you can copy yourself another botnet given the time to do so, but if you try it again, I'm probably going to shorten the time it takes for the appropriate authorities to track you down based on the new information they have.

If nothing else, as your botnet storms (pun intended) out through the matrix, forensic analysis of the response of the various nodes should lead authorities toward finding a general point of nodal origin for the botnet. Now they've potentially got a physical location for the hacker that started it all or (more likely) they've got a location or a matrix address that they can analyze more heavily.

Regardless, I think, as others have said above, it's not that this isn't possible in the game world, it's that doing so is not subtle and is liable to get you caught and tried. The biggest problem is going to be rotting in a jail cell while the various jurisdictions determine who gets to put you on trial, assuming you last that long.

[mfb]

When you've got a million datatrails to follow, you use your million copies of your own agent to track each and every one of them. If we're allowing multiple copies to do different tasks, then each of those different datatrails is a unique task. And if a single one succeeds in finding the offending hacker and reporting back then he get's the anti-terrorist-freedom-force-of-liberty-and-doom.
High-profile shenanigans will get traced back to you, sooner or later.

well, here's the thing--you keep talking about high-profile shenanigans as if that's the worst thing that could happen. it's not, and none of the successful high-end deckers (or otaku) i've played/seen played have gone in for that sort of thing. it's not about being able to invade high-end hosts with your agent army and wreaking havoc--it's about using your agent army to infiltrate your target's lower-end hosts and then waiting and watching for the security flaw that will let you slip into the high-end hosts unnoticed. it's about knowing the exact location of your every enemy because you've got hordes of snaky bots watching through every traffic camera they can get into. yes, if a hacker uses his millions of agents to do big, loud things, then he'll have the wrath of G.O.D. called down on him. but if he plays it smart, he'll be able to pull off big things very quietly with no risk and no exposure. no one will ever come after him because no one will ever think to look for him.

now, personally, i think that kind of game can be fun. but i don't think that sort of power should be accessible to anyone with a few points in cracking.

[Moon-Hawk]

it's about using your agent army to infiltrate your target's lower-end hosts and then waiting and watching for the security flaw that will let you slip into the high-end hosts unnoticed. it's about knowing the exact location of your every enemy because you've got hordes of snaky bots watching through every traffic camera they can get into.

Okay, I think I see where you're going. Taking your first example: You can send your many agents out into weak hosts to gather intel on you to help you crack a high-end host. This takes some time, and there is non-zero risk of discovery, but we'll say the risk is small enough not to worry about. In return, I'd say you get a bonus to your Probing the Target roll, or maybe a reduced threshold to get yourself admin access. Hell, maybe your GM is nice and just gives you the admin passcode. But the rules for probing the target are so generous anyway that if you're halfway decent you could've gotten in anyway, and if you're really that incompetent and are just getting by with your agents, then the inevitable security hackers are going to, ahem, pwn joo.

The hordes of bots watching through every traffic camera is a pretty interesting idea. Of course, if it's this easy, then lots of people will do it, and if it gets done a lot, then occasionally the GOD will swoop down and track down a few of these Hackers just to make an example of them, so I've got to think that doing this ALL the time is a bad idea. But as an occasional strategy to track someone down, it's actually a really good idea. Of course it won't work if they're not on the street. Or disguised. But occasionally this could be used to track someone in a relatively low-security area down, sure. I think it's a clever idea, but I don't think it's a good example of breaking the game. I'd call this a use of agents, not an abuse.

I see your examples as clever uses of agents, not as big abuses.

[ixombie]

i'm aware that untraceableness can't be achieved in SR4 the way it can in SR3. s'why i made it clear that all my examples were SR3-related.

as far as there being 'something' that stops botnets from being created... there really isn't, and there really can't be. as long as the things that SR (any edition) says are possible remain possible, botnets remain possible. it's like saying that logs exist, and nails exist, but houses can't possibly exist. if the devs are handing out logs and nails, they cannot reasonably deny the existence of houses. they can unreasonably deny it, which is what's happened. what ought to be done is to take measures to ensure that such things aren't overly powerful. since the devs are, at this point, pretty much committed to pretending houses don't exist, you've got two options: houserule it, or simply ignore it.

i've chosen the (in my opinion much wiser) option of not using the SR4 ruleset at all. but as this problem exists in both SR3 and SR4, it's interesting to discuss it.

Your argument is that the game designers don't have authority to interpret their own rules and design their own universe based on them. To an extent, that's valid. It's your game, you play it how you want to. But you don't have a basis for saying that your interpretation of what the rules must allow is the only valid one. There are a number of ways that a GM, interpreting relatively vague rules, can put the lid on botnets. First, you can go with the RaW that limits you to system x2 subscribers, and says that agents acting independently of you each count towards that limit. Second, you can rule that agents are not independent enough to form an effective botnet. Third, you could decide that matrix sercurity is tuned precisely towards ferreting out agents acting independently, and their lack of smarts makes them relatively easy to catch on the grand scale, so botnets get erradicated quickly. Fourth, you could simply decide "not in my sandbox," and tell your players that, for whatever reason, you'd rather play ShadowRun than AgentRun.

Those are all options, and each one is as valid as your decision that botnets should exist. The last one might not be too popular with players, but w/e. How the matrix ends up working in a campagin is up to the GM, not up to someone who declares unilaterally that there is Only One Way to read RAW. And the worst part of your argument about the One Way is that it's a really bad way. According to almost everyone who thinks that Agent Smith is mandated by the RAW also thinks that Agent Smith is stupid. They are interpreting the RAW in the least favorable way to "prove" that it's broken and "prove" that their total rewrites of the Matrix rules are "necessary." They haven't proved a thing, and it's very easy to fix percieved flaws in the rules with minor fixes. I don't begrudge you your way of doing things, just don't try to "prove" that it's the only correct way, because you can't.

P.S.
I'm aware that I may have seemed to be trying to prove that you were wrong druing this thread. To that, my answer is "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[hobgoblin]

did anyone call my name? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)

[mfb]

I see your examples as clever uses of agents, not as big abuses.

clever use times infinity can quickly and easily become big, unstoppable abuses. that's the entire premise behind botnets, after all.

Your argument is that the game designers don't have authority to interpret their own rules and design their own universe based on them. To an extent, that's valid. It's your game, you play it how you want to. But you don't have a basis for saying that your interpretation of what the rules must allow is the only valid one. There are a number of ways that a GM, interpreting relatively vague rules, can put the lid on botnets. First, you can go with the RaW that limits you to system x2 subscribers, and says that agents acting independently of you each count towards that limit. Second, you can rule that agents are not independent enough to form an effective botnet. Third, you could decide that matrix sercurity is tuned precisely towards ferreting out agents acting independently, and their lack of smarts makes them relatively easy to catch on the grand scale, so botnets get erradicated quickly. Fourth, you could simply decide "not in my sandbox," and tell your players that, for whatever reason, you'd rather play ShadowRun than AgentRun.

these are not interpretations, these are additions and houserules. you can't 'interpret' the rules to state that any agents subscribed to a commlink that is subscribed to your commlink magically count against the subscription limit on your commlink--that's an entirely new rule that doesn't exist in RAW. the rules as written work pretty much the way i've described. if a given gaming group doesn't want their game to work like that, additions and houserules are perfectly valid way of ensuring that their game remains enjoyable for them. but it doesn't change the way the RAW works.

[ixombie]

these are not interpretations, these are additions and houserules. you can't 'interpret' the rules to state that any agents subscribed to a commlink that is subscribed to your commlink magically count against the subscription limit on your commlink--that's an entirely new rule that doesn't exist in RAW.

You might want to double check the BBB before you make statements about what it does or does not say. I quote p.228:

If you wish for your agent to operate in the Matrix independently,
you must load it on a particular node separate from your
persona. The agent will continue to operate in the Matrix even if
your persona goes offline. In this case, 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.

I think that's some pretty clear RAW right there. You can have 12 agents running independently of you in the matrix, assuming you have a maxed out system of 6. It's not a house rule. It IS pretty arbitrary, and it doesn't make a lot of sense, except as a way of balancing agents. But I sure as hell didn't make it up (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Cthulhudreams]

That doesn't stop anything. You can just buy *another commlink* Sure that adds an incremental unit cost, but its not exactly very high.

[Fortune]

It only takes up one subscription slot on each additional commlink to link a chain together capable of running an Agent army.

[mfb]

I think that's some pretty clear RAW right there. You can have 12 agents running independently of you in the matrix, assuming you have a maxed out system of 6. It's not a house rule. It IS pretty arbitrary, and it doesn't make a lot of sense, except as a way of balancing agents. But I sure as hell didn't make it up

you didn't make it up, but you have misinterpreted it. a subscription is an association with a specific device, according to SR4 page 212. so, like i said--you subscribe a bunch of agents to commlink A. max out the subscription list. then, subscribe commlink A to commlink B, which is your personal commlink. plant an agent on commlink A, give it an admin account on that commlink. you are now able to disseminate orders to your burgeoning agent army.

[masterofm]

There are agents better then rating 6 and response chips better then 6 as well. An agent 6 is not the win and trying to take over the world with one of them will get you seriously insta-kacked. I mean it took teams of the elite of the elite shadowrunners. Teams. There were agent smiths running around on the internet destroying everything in its wake. I don't think the agent 6 program is comparable to the super virus that caused the second crash. I mean there are delta clinics that basically are almost impossible to find, and it's not as if a GM can never make up some fluff of his or her own from time to time.

[ixombie]

you didn't make it up, but you have misinterpreted it. a subscription is an association with a specific device, according to SR4 page 212. so, like i said--you subscribe a bunch of agents to commlink A. max out the subscription list. then, subscribe commlink A to commlink B, which is your personal commlink. plant an agent on commlink A, give it an admin account on that commlink. you are now able to disseminate orders to your burgeoning agent army.

Now who's house ruling? There are no rules about daisy chaining commlinks together. I have as much basis in saying you can't do that as you have in saying that I can. I get the feeling that Uniwred will answer the question in the negative. After all, I don't see the devs acting to encourage something which definitely destroys the cyberpunk one-on-one netdive feeling of the Shadowrun matrix.