Cybereyes vrs Optical Devices Options

[SpellBinder]

Looks like more stuff that should've been in the SR5 book but wasn't. Great ultimate security, wire everything into a cheap Meta Link and the only thing that can be wirelessly hacked is a ¥300 commlink that you can throw away if it happens to be bricked.

Of course, this cuts both ways. Where does it say that your wired connections like this are able to pass the same way on the way out?

[Epicedion]

Looks like more stuff that should've been in the SR5 book but wasn't. Great ultimate security, wire everything into a cheap Meta Link and the only thing that can be wirelessly hacked is a ¥300 commlink that you can throw away if it happens to be bricked.

Of course, this cuts both ways. Where does it say that your wired connections like this are able to pass the same way on the way out?

Again, no. Devices have to have their wireless enabled to get their individual wireless bonuses, but the optical device and eyeware smartlink upgrades have no wireless bonus. There's no way to plug "everything you own" into a throwaway commlink and use the commlink as a bottleneck to keep the matrix demons out. If you try this, you'll still have a bunch of offline devices providing no wireless bonuses.

[SpellBinder]

Heh, forget wireless and just make it so the decker's gotta find a jackpoint in order to do any real work other than bricking random devices in a gunfight. Sounds like where SR5 might be heading to at this rate.

[Jaid]

It really looks like you're not reading anything, because I've responded to your points and all you've done is restate them.

Find something in the book that says you can hack X offline device if it's plugged into Y online device. Otherwise refer to page 421 where it says that if a device's wireless is off it can't be wirelessly hacked.

if it's directly connected to the online device, communicating with it, taking the data from the matrix, how the hell is it not online?

if the data can reach from the matrix, through your smartgun, to your cybereyes, then they must have a connection to the matrix.

there is no such thing as a bottleneck. what you are claiming happens is an extremely obvious bottleneck, and if it existed, then every bloody thing in the entire freaking world would be using it, and there would be no such thing as a decker because the only way to hack anything would be to physically manipulate the wires.

if you can get something online (which your eyes MUST be if they are getting that matrix-provided smartlink data), then it is accessible online. someone just feeds their hack through the exact same route that you get your matrix-provided targeting data to your eyes, which you must do if you want to get your bonus to hit.

if your eyes are not connected to the device, receiving the matrix feed of information, they cannot see the extra information, and therefore you cannot benefit from the information (barring the use of some other optical device).

this is not rocket science. you seem to think that you can magically make everything unhackable, yet still retain 100% of it's matrix functionality. if that was the case, then nothing would be hackable.

it doesn't matter if you use a different device in between you and the matrix. the entire damned matrix consists of millions of devices passing data through each other, sending it every which way. there is nothing magical about a smartlink that makes it any different.

the only way for the data to get *from* the matrix to be projected *to* your cybereyes is if there is a connection running *from* the matrix *to* your cybereyes. the fact that there is a smartgun in the middle is completely irrelevant, as is the fact that there is probably a stuffer shack in the middle, and the RFIDs from a chocolate bar that someone ate, and a whole bunch of cars, and a whole bunch of commlinks, and clothes, and buildings, and all sorts of other devices that have matrix attributes.

it doesn't matter what's in the middle. what matters is what's at the end. if your smartgun is the end of the line, then the matrix can submit the information to your gun... which can't communicate that information to you, therefore making it completely and utterly useless.

you have provided a connection to your cybereyes. that connection can be exploited. if it couldn't, then hacking anything that anyone cares about would be impossible, because what kind of dumbass would ever not use the completely impenetrable firewall that you're claiming exists if they care even the slightest bit about the possibility of getting hacked?

[Umidori]

Regarding wireless issues:

If you have one item which is wireless enabled, and it is connected via wire to one that is not, you can hack both, you just have to hack the wireless enabled one first, then hack through it to the device wired to it.

~Umi

[craftomega]

Regarding wireless issues:

If you have one item which is wireless enabled, and it is connected via wire to one that is not, you can hack both, you just have to hack the wireless enabled one first, then hack through it to the device wired to it.

~Umi

Ok this makes the most sense, but now I have another question, why does a smartlink need to be wireless to gain the +1/+2? To me a smartlink is simply a way to gain information from the weapon to your optics, how is the matrix relavent to this?

[Sendaz]

Ok this makes the most sense, but now I have another question, why does a smartlink need to be wireless to gain the +1/+2? To me a smartlink is simply a way to gain information from the weapon to your optics, how is the matrix relavent to this?

the concept is supposed to be that it accesses further information from the matrix, like wind speeds at your location and targets, etcc...

The whole wireless bonus topic has been hotly conjectured/argued/debated about as some of the wireless bonuses for some devices have been.... unique.

I would call for the 'Bourbon of 130 Proof' in this case and suggest take 2 fingers worth neat (ice is for barbarians) and just accept the bonus at this point. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

You will have less headaches and a warm feeling, be it from the bourbon or lack of ulcers this has caused many of us already.

[BlackJaw]

EDIT: My argument looks invalid. Page 433 directly says the Smartlink (AKA: your Eyes) needs to be on wireless to get the bonus, despite it being the description for Smartgun system's wireless functions. It might be an editing error, but by RAW my whole argument below is wrong.

if it's directly connected to the online device, communicating with it, taking the data from the matrix, how the hell is it not online?

The Smartgun is online and gaining information from the matrix. It has an Icon on the Matrix because of this. The Smartlink in your eyes is simply getting telemetry data from the gun and projecting it into your field of vision. It's not directly getting anything form the internet/matrix. It is linked, via direct connection (Datajack) to the gun, but 5th edition does not currently have any matrix rules for "nodes" and hacking devices through them.

Mind you, this setup only works with a hardline from gun to the cybereyes... which is to say a Datajack. Without a jack to link the cybereyes to the gun, the eyes would need the wireless turned on to connect to the gun, which would make it a valid target for hacking because they would have an Icon on the matrix. It's that simple.

if the data can reach from the matrix, through your smartgun, to your cybereyes, then they must have a connection to the matrix.

The matrix data is reaching the Smartgun, which is making use of the data to aid in aiming. The gun is then passing along it's target info and data on weapon status to the smartlink via datacable and jack, and the smartlink is providing that information into the user's field of view. The smartlink is not requesting any more or less data than if the smartgun had it's wireless off too, it's just that the targeting data is better. In order to hack the smartlink/eyes you would need to have the eyes accepting network protocols and communications beyond targeting info... but for that you'd need it's wireless on.

you seem to think that you can magically make everything unhackable, yet still retain 100% of it's matrix functionality. if that was the case, then nothing would be hackable.

It isn't 100% unhackable by a long-shot. The Smartgun is still very much hackable, brick-able, etc. It's not circumventing the rules those rules.

Moreover, you aren't getting all the wireless bonuses in this setup either.
The bonus for having the wireless on for your smartgun is a dicepool bonus.
The bonus for having the wireless on for you smartink is that you don't have to run a hardline from the gun to the smartlink, which includes such tricks as firing the gun when you aren't even holding it, or disabling the gun if someone else has it. That's a lot tougher to do if you are using a datajack and cable.

the concept is supposed to be that it accesses further information from the matrix, like wind speeds at your location and targets, etcc...

That's the smartgun getting that a information. The smartlink is just heads up display info for the user. They aren't the same thing, and if both devices have their wireless on, they each have their own icon. Hacking the smartgun only messes up the gun, not the eyes, and similarly hacking the eyes messes with the eyes not the gun.

If you're smart enough to invest in a datajack and have the time to run the cable to your gun before using them, then congratulations, you've managed to protect your eyes. This setup does not magically give the eyes a safe matrix connection. Your vision enhancement, for example, is not getting it's bonus unless the eyes have their wireless on too.

To extend the rules to "if any hardline linked device, including such as implanted devices, are online, then all of them are online" means that if you have any wireless enabled implants turned on, then all of them are online, which will really cause a lot of trouble for street samurai: either everything on or everything off. Instead the rules are designed so that you can pick and choose which devices you want to risk for the reward. The reward for the smartlink is not the same as the reward for the smartgun. You can risk them separately.

Edit:

Great ultimate security, wire everything into a cheap Meta Link and the only thing that can be wirelessly hacked is a ¥300 commlink that you can throw away if it happens to be bricked.

If you wire everything into a commlink, and only have the wireless on for the commlink, then none of your other devices get their wireless bonuses or features. For a device to get it's wireless bonuses or functions, it must be on the matrix and therefore has an icon that can be hacked. At issue here is that in order to get the functions of the smartgun, it must be linked to a smartlink via cable or matrix. The functions of the smartgun, on the other hand, are different depending on if IT has a matrix connection.

Of course, this cuts both ways. Where does it say that your wired connections like this are able to pass the same way on the way out?

The Core rules don't actually define what happens if you hardline link devices to each other for the purpose of sharing a matrix connection. This is actually a bit of an issue when it comes to things like Datajacks and Noise (IE: jamming). by RAW, all of your gear and implants have their own device ratings and can be jammed if the local noise is higher than those ratings. In theory connecting a wireless enabled datajack to the device provides 1 point of noise reduction, but there are no rules for linking devices via hardline to use a strong device rating to handle noise.
I've proposed a house rule that covers connecting devices through hardline to allow matrix connections via other devices. In that setup, the connected devices use the highest Device rating (likely a commlink) for the purposes of overcoming noise, but they each still have their own icon if they are on the matrix (IE: Getting their wireless functionality and bonuses) so it doesn't alter how hacking works.

[craftomega]

-Snip-

"If you’re using a smartlink, the smartgun system increases the gun’s Accuracy by 2. The smartgun features are accessed either by universal access port cable to an imaging device (like glasses, goggles, or a datajack for someone with cybereyes) or by a wireless connection working in concert with direct neural interface." p433

"Datajack: A datajack gives you a direct neural interface (p. 222), which can be handy in a lot of situations. It also comes with a retractable spool of micro-cable (about a meter long) that lets you directly interface with any electronic device via a universal access cable." p452

So what these are saying is that if you connect your smartgun to your optics via cable you gain the +2 accuracy but not the +1/+2 extra dice rolls. For the dice roles you must have your smartgun enabled.

"Wireless: A wireless smartgun provides a dice pool bonus to all attacks with the weapon: +1 if you’re using gear with a smartlink or +2 if you’re using an augmentation for which you paid Essence." p433

No where does it say that the Smartgun needs to be wireless for it to work. P444

See essencialy If you connect your Smartgun to your Smartlink via cable you are unhackable as long as you dont turn on the wireless fucntion for your Smartlink.

[BlackJaw]

"Wireless: A wireless smartlink provides a dice pool bonus to all attacks with the weapon: +1 if you’re using gear with a smartlink or +2 if you’re using an augmentation for which you paid Essence." p433

Oh. It looks like I'm wrong. The dicepool bonus is listed under the wireless bonus for the Smartgun, but it directly says Smartlink in the text, which means by RAW you do need the smartlink (AKA: Your eyes) on wireless to get the bonus, and therefore you do need to risk your eyes.

That kind of sucks, and hope it gets errated to say Smartgun instead of smartlink.

[Jaid]

ok, why do people have this thing in their head where a cable magically prevents all unwanted signals from getting through? it's a piece of cable, not a bloody impenetrable firewall beyond which no hacker can ever pass.

it's bloody stupid. if the megas could protect their entire network from hackers by simply purchasing hundreds of cheap commlinks and running their matrix connection through them, and from that point on being completely impervious to matrix attacks, they would bloody well do it. for a few thousand nuyen, they could completely secure any of their facilities from hackers, and that is so obviously not how the setting works that it is extemely obvious that it's not how the rules work.

devices in SR5 are designed, from the ground up, to be part of the matrix. that means that they are designed, from the ground up, to pass on transmissions. there are no nodes in the core, and there will most likely never be nodes in any SR5 book, because they just spent years trying to figure out how to banish them to the deepest pits of hell forever. they did this because they wanted hackers to be able to actually do things alongside the group, rather than needing to spend 5 hours hacking through the endless chain of nodes before they get to what they really want, and it won't be coming back, because that's the whole damned reason we have a new matrix in the first place.

you don't ever have to hack a device in between you and another device ever again. it's gone, and good riddance. there are ways to prevent a device from passing along code you don't want, and it involves your firewall stat, not whether you connected your device with a piece of optical fibre or wireless.

hacking has been greatly simplified specifically to prevent this kind of crap from ever happening again. hackers are FINALLY something that you can legitimately bring alongside you and expect them to actually hack things without everyone else needing to go and get pizza. there may be some bad things about the SR5 matrix rules (like certain stupid wireless bonuses that make no bloody sense), but this is not one of them. it actually makes it viable to have a hacker in the group, not because they were incapable of getting the job done before, but because they finally made hacking something that you can resolve quickly instead of needing hours to figure out.

if you're going to bring back impenetrable bottlenecks, then i sincerely hope you are going to tell your players that they shouldn't even bother thinking about building a hacker, because it is going to suck royally. it makes hacking unviable purely due to taking too long to resolve anything if a hacker has to constantly break through a million layers of security.

seriously, if you're going to pull this kind of crap, you may as well just ban hackers as a playable archetype and not have any rules for hacking in the game, or ban non-hackers and force everybody to play one, because otherwise you're going to randomly have large segments of time where half the group is sitting around waiting for the other half of the group to do something.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I will say this again, Jaid... If you were spending 5 hours hacking, then you were doing it wrong. In all of SR4, we ran Hacking Parallel to the action, in step. Never once did we have a problem keeping them synchronized in play. I say this having played a Hacker for well over 300 Karma, and having seen others at the table do the same thing.

Single Point vulnerability is STUPID, STUPID, STUPID. Worst design decision ever. Yes, it plays fast, but it is boring and ignorant to not have nested "nodes" (if you will) to provide layers of protection.

SR4A would work just as well, by just removing the Extended rolls Schema for Hacking. *shrug*

[Jaid]

if you have to houserule to make it work by removing the things that make everything take longer, you can no longer argue that the rules don't take too much time to resolve.

if the rules only work well when you house rule them, then they obviously needed changing.

[Draco18s]

TJ Fallacy.

[Epicedion]

ok, why do people have this thing in their head where a cable magically prevents all unwanted signals from getting through? it's a piece of cable, not a bloody impenetrable firewall beyond which no hacker can ever pass.

it's bloody stupid. if the megas could protect their entire network from hackers by simply purchasing hundreds of cheap commlinks and running their matrix connection through them, and from that point on being completely impervious to matrix attacks, they would bloody well do it. for a few thousand nuyen, they could completely secure any of their facilities from hackers, and that is so obviously not how the setting works that it is extemely obvious that it's not how the rules work.

devices in SR5 are designed, from the ground up, to be part of the matrix. that means that they are designed, from the ground up, to pass on transmissions. there are no nodes in the core, and there will most likely never be nodes in any SR5 book, because they just spent years trying to figure out how to banish them to the deepest pits of hell forever. they did this because they wanted hackers to be able to actually do things alongside the group, rather than needing to spend 5 hours hacking through the endless chain of nodes before they get to what they really want, and it won't be coming back, because that's the whole damned reason we have a new matrix in the first place.

you don't ever have to hack a device in between you and another device ever again. it's gone, and good riddance. there are ways to prevent a device from passing along code you don't want, and it involves your firewall stat, not whether you connected your device with a piece of optical fibre or wireless.

hacking has been greatly simplified specifically to prevent this kind of crap from ever happening again. hackers are FINALLY something that you can legitimately bring alongside you and expect them to actually hack things without everyone else needing to go and get pizza. there may be some bad things about the SR5 matrix rules (like certain stupid wireless bonuses that make no bloody sense), but this is not one of them. it actually makes it viable to have a hacker in the group, not because they were incapable of getting the job done before, but because they finally made hacking something that you can resolve quickly instead of needing hours to figure out.

if you're going to bring back impenetrable bottlenecks, then i sincerely hope you are going to tell your players that they shouldn't even bother thinking about building a hacker, because it is going to suck royally. it makes hacking unviable purely due to taking too long to resolve anything if a hacker has to constantly break through a million layers of security.

seriously, if you're going to pull this kind of crap, you may as well just ban hackers as a playable archetype and not have any rules for hacking in the game, or ban non-hackers and force everybody to play one, because otherwise you're going to randomly have large segments of time where half the group is sitting around waiting for the other half of the group to do something.

So it's your contention that the aforementioned rigger with everything turned offline can have his cyberears wirelessly hacked if his car's smartgun is online?

[Skynet]

ok, why do people have this thing in their head where a cable magically prevents all unwanted signals from getting through? it's a piece of cable, not a bloody impenetrable firewall beyond which no hacker can ever pass.

(...)

Because the cable is not transmitting the data from the matrix but new information generated by the wireless device (i.e. the smartgun).

And it's not a bottleneck because it is not used to transmit anything from the connected, wireless-disabled device(s).

To take your cheap-link example: The system would be an isolated network of wireless-disabled (read: offline) devices. As soon as you try to process external data not directly intended for the commlink, the target-device has to enable it's matrix-protocolls (i.e. go online/enable wireless).
Also a device can only slave rating x 3 other devices (and no daisy-chaining), whereas a host has no such limitation.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

if you have to houserule to make it work by removing the things that make everything take longer, you can no longer argue that the rules don't take too much time to resolve.

if the rules only work well when you house rule them, then they obviously needed changing.

No houserules were needed, just an Optional One. We liked the Stat to have some importance, after all. *shrug*

Damn, Draco18s, I knew there was something worng with the argument. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[Jaid]

So it's your contention that the aforementioned rigger with everything turned offline can have his cyberears wirelessly hacked if his car's smartgun is online?

*shrug* the cyberears may not actually be connected, but if you're using them to receive data that is coming from the smartgun, then yes.

your cybereyes are definitely vulnerable, because they're attached and receiving data. if you don't want them to be vulnerable, don't receive the data.

as it stands, all someone has to do is get the signal of their attack (or sleaze) to be passed on to your cybereyes when it shouldn't.

this is what hacking is. it's getting signals to the target to make it do something, in spite of the defences.

if you think it makes sense for a smartgun to be able to access the matrix and then send a separate 100% clean signal to your smartlink, then you must also think it makes sense for a corporation to be able to just use a separate device to do all the matrix stuff, then send a separate 100% clean signal to their own network.

at which point, you have essentially decided that hackers should go right back to needing 2-3 actions minimum before they can even try to use an action that will actually be helpful. more if the target is paranoid enough to put 2-3 layers of defense in between.

because if i can have a smargun that does this, then why the hell can't i have a separate module external to my cybereyes that accesses the matrix, and then sends the result in a completely unhackable signal to my cybereyes. in fact, what kind of moron wouldn't just have that module built right into the cybereyes in the first place, as a standard safety feature? what kind of shadowrunner would it take to be stupid enough to not just run that module with half a dozen other impenetrable barriers in between, and what kind of security, military, or paramilitary organization wouldn't invest in the exact same thing?

if it is possible to have an external module that allows you the full benefit of matrix access with none of the security risks, every security-conscious person in the world would be using it, unless they are absolute morons who are barely capable of figuring out how to use a spoon to get their pre-chewed food to their mouth (in which case, i'd say they're probably not security-conscious).

if there was some kind of perfect cut-off device, it would be the standard, and would be incorporated into the rules for hacking. instead, the rules tell us that you can directly hack places like banks and secure megacorporate research facilities.

[Lurker37]

your cybereyes are definitely vulnerable, because they're attached and receiving data. if you don't want them to be vulnerable, don't receive the data.

Speaking as someone who does software engineering and device interfaces for a living, there is a world of difference between giving something access to feed in a display image, and letting it control the function commands of the display unit. It's the difference between an antenna input and the remote control. Much as they would love to, free-to-air broadcast networks cannot send a signal to your television to force it to change to their channel.

The smartlink system is the imaging system projecting target information onto the goggles/retina overlay/cybereyes. It is a component of the display feed into that device, but not the totality of its function. Bricking it does not render the goggles/ helmet etc inoperative - just the smartlink functionality.

So the most a decker could do with the cybereyes is mess with the AR overlay from the smartlink. This could cause you to miss, for example, but if the hacker simply bricked it, the only inconvenience would be that the hacker character would need to turn the smartlink AR overlay on their cybereyes off.

To hack the actual cybereyes, the cybereyes themselves would need to have wireless functionality enabled. Then they would be vulnerable to being blinded.

[RHat]

Speaking as someone who does software engineering and device interfaces for a living, there is a world of difference between giving something access to feed in a display image, and letting it control the function commands of the display unit. It's the difference between an antenna input and the remote control. Much as they would love to, free-to-air broadcast networks cannot send a signal to your television to force it to change to their channel.

The smartlink system is the imaging system projecting target information onto the goggles/retina overlay/cybereyes. It is a component of the display feed into that device, but not the totality of its function. Bricking it does not render the goggles/ helmet etc inoperative - just the smartlink functionality.

So the most a decker could do with the cybereyes is mess with the AR overlay from the smartlink. This could cause you to miss, for example, but if the hacker simply bricked it, the only inconvenience would be that the hacker character would need to turn the smartlink AR overlay on their cybereyes off.

To hack the actual cybereyes, the cybereyes themselves would need to have wireless functionality enabled. Then they would be vulnerable to being blinded.

Right, because the Matrix rules are really that granular.

[Epicedion]

Right, because the Matrix rules are really that granular.

Well, they are. Wireless off on a device = device cannot be wirelessly hacked. Says so on p421.

[RHat]

Well, they are. Wireless off on a device = device cannot be wirelessly hacked. Says so on p421.

That's not really granular, certainly not in the sense to which I refer. Binary kinda seems like the opposite of granular.

[Flaser]

*shrug* the cyberears may not actually be connected, but if you're using them to receive data that is coming from the smartgun, then yes.

your cybereyes are definitely vulnerable, because they're attached and receiving data. if you don't want them to be vulnerable, don't receive the data.

as it stands, all someone has to do is get the signal of their attack (or sleaze) to be passed on to your cybereyes when it shouldn't.

this is what hacking is. it's getting signals to the target to make it do something, in spite of the defences.

if you think it makes sense for a smartgun to be able to access the matrix and then send a separate 100% clean signal to your smartlink, then you must also think it makes sense for a corporation to be able to just use a separate device to do all the matrix stuff, then send a separate 100% clean signal to their own network.

at which point, you have essentially decided that hackers should go right back to needing 2-3 actions minimum before they can even try to use an action that will actually be helpful. more if the target is paranoid enough to put 2-3 layers of defense in between.

because if i can have a smargun that does this, then why the hell can't i have a separate module external to my cybereyes that accesses the matrix, and then sends the result in a completely unhackable signal to my cybereyes. in fact, what kind of moron wouldn't just have that module built right into the cybereyes in the first place, as a standard safety feature? what kind of shadowrunner would it take to be stupid enough to not just run that module with half a dozen other impenetrable barriers in between, and what kind of security, military, or paramilitary organization wouldn't invest in the exact same thing?

if it is possible to have an external module that allows you the full benefit of matrix access with none of the security risks, every security-conscious person in the world would be using it, unless they are absolute morons who are barely capable of figuring out how to use a spoon to get their pre-chewed food to their mouth (in which case, i'd say they're probably not security-conscious).

if there was some kind of perfect cut-off device, it would be the standard, and would be incorporated into the rules for hacking. instead, the rules tell us that you can directly hack places like banks and secure megacorporate research facilities.

Jaid, I'm a newcomer, but even I'm starting to find you pushing your singular interpretation without taking any heed of what others say tiresome.

1. The rules don't support your interpretation. (You've never acknowledged this)
2. You never supply a different set of rules to fit your interpretation (You just insist that they make sense and that the rules should fit them)
3. You ignore it when actual software developers tell you that you're wrong. (So you're holding onto your image of 'Hacking the Gibson' to a fault, even it clearly conflicts with other people's suspension of disbelief).

So please, stop reiterating your position, as it's getting tiring, it's not constitutive and detracts from the discussion.
Either bring something new, try a new argument, or just stop posting.

[Jaid]

you're thinking in terms of modern practices. you're not thinking in terms of rules that are designed so that hackers can hack everything, which is what shadowrun 5 is based on.

yes, that's an incredibly stupid basis for society to make decisions regarding data security. in fact, it is the exact opposite of the basis for which anyone should be making any sort of decision when it comes to making your equipment secure from hacking. but it is the basis on which SR5 hacking rules were made.

those people who are saying "nobody would ever design a system that way" are forgetting that key point. i completely agree that it is a stupid, stupid basis for the setting. but it's the basis we have.

but really, let's stop and think about this some more:

an external smartgun system costs 200 nuyen. if there was a device which, for 200 nuyen, could allow you to gain ALL of the benefits of being online, without ANY of the risks, who in their right mind would not use that for EVERYTHING?

because we have people walking around with hundreds of thousands of nuyen in combat 'ware that has to be directly exposed. what kind of dumbass moron wouldn't spend the extra 200 nuyen to protect their wired reflexes and reaction enhancers? what kind of idiot would you have to be not to build an external module that does all the work for your cybereyes and then merely pipes the result right back to them with perfect safety ensured? what kind of complete and utter imbecile would it take to not install these things into everything that is expensive and remotely likely to ever be hacked in the first place?

whether you believe the smartgun provides a magically invulnerable protection from any and all hacking attempts, restricting them from ever doing more than merely rendering the device offline, or not... you believe that the world is full of complete and utter morons who shouldn't be trusted with the choice of what to wear to work today, let alone how to securely design devices.

personally, while it makes no sense to me that the world was designed with really atrociously bad security, it actually makes even less sense to me that there *is* a perfect security available, at a rather low price, and nobody is using it except for one single device which is hardly the most important thing to protect.

if there is some device which actually provides perfectly secure protection while allowing you to enjoy all the benefits of the matrix, it is used EVERYWHERE. your hacker is a useless piece of crap, because all he's ever going to be able to do is temporarily disable a 200 nuyen piece of equipment while alerting security, and he may not even knock them offline (i mean, it's 200 nuyen... any serious mega can afford to have an entire *array* of these things, and it's even well within a shadowrunner's budget to invest in half a dozen or more).

you can pick which setting you like. you can pick the one where everything is protected and there is no such thing as hackers, because it turns out the corporations were absolutely correct: they really did make the matrix perfectly secure, and have removed hackers from existence. or you can play the setting in front of you, which tells you that if something is online, it is online. period. there is no magical "quasi-online" status that allows you to connect things to the matrix indirectly and avoid all of the risks.

you're seriously asking me to go through the entire matrix chapter and provide a quote that tells you that if you have device A that talks to device B, and device B is talking to the entire matrix, and device A is receiving the benefits of that matrix communication, that device A is explicitly on the matrix?

seriously? if there is a road from A to B, and a road from B to C, do you really need me to spell it out for you that there is also a way to get from A to C while staying on the road?

[Skynet]

Sigh.. ok imagine the following: Instead of sending a digital image (or stream thereof) to your senseware/goggles/whatever, the smartgun uses its built-in mikroprinter to generate the images which is then scanned by your senseware-adapter and projected into your field of view.
It's not 'road from A to B and the same road from B to C', it's taking your car (general-purpose-locomotion) from A to B (smartgun) via the road (matrix) , the smartgun then registering 'yep, that's a pink ford-americar' and sents that info via magnetic monorail (completely unconnected to roads) to C (senseware).
Only if C opens up it's own roads can you reach it with your clown-car full of crazy-stuff, and even then it may require you to pass checkpoint D (commlink used as master).