How Dangerous is Wireless to non-Hacker Shadowrunners Options

[BlackJaw]

A lot of arguments on this board bring up the idea that no sane non-civilian would ever have their wifi on because they might be hacked. It most frequently comes up when talking about street sams on a mission into a secure facility, but it's come up when talking about 2075 military forces, augmented sports player (combat biking and urban brawl players are certainly augmented). For the purposes of this argument, let's stick with Street Sams as part of a Runner Team on a mission.

We'll go ahead set this up a reasonable street sam that is taking precautions to protect his wireless. A good R6 commlink owned by the Hacker, a Wrapper program to conceal device types a bit, and even a box of Stealth RFID to toss out if he get worried.

If I'm a Street Sam (something like the Archetype on page 112,) and I have most of my gear's wireless off, because it's a run and that's what smart people do, which is to say that's what the team's hacker told me to do. However, there is a handful of gear my street sam will want his bonus from, including Smartguns. So I slave those to a Rating 6 commlink owned by the team Decker. Let's say the decker is like the one on page 121. I also have a Wrapper program running on a tiny Bug-Drone, so all my wireless gear shows up in the matrix looks benign. Lastly, I've got a small Altoids sized tin, coated in wireless blocking paint, full of stealth RFID tags which I spread all over the place if I decide to really mess with a spider.

This is a basic run, nothing too extreme or easy. We're breaking into a corp facility after hours to steal a small non-military drone prototype. The facility has decent security, including a Host system, some on-sight security guards (rating 2 NPCs, page 382), security drones, and an on-call remote spider (Rating 5 Elite Corp Security LT on page 384).

Keeping in mind that radio signal scanners either spots & tracks an icon or not (they can't look for the number of hidden hidden icons or get details on icons they have spotted such as verifying their icon,) that Security Guards aren't very good at matrix actions (security guard NPCs on page 382 lack the computer skill), that the Spider isn't within 100m of the facility, and is probably in the host system not on the local grid if present at all (let's assume he is,) and that Drones do not have a persona and therefore can't take matrix actions at all, in how much danger is the street sam from being hacked? What happens when combat breaks out and security suddenly knows he's there?

The most immediate question that comes to my mind is who exactly is hacking the street sam? The Spider could do it, but he'd have to leave his Host to try, and that's something the Shadowrun team's decker would love. Even if he comes out of the Host, he's not a member of GOD, even if he's a member of the same AAA corp and this is all happening on their site. Moreover, the street sam is on the local or public grid. If the Spider comes out of the host and starts hacking the street sam, he's going to start getting generating OS and might get converged on. (You really don't think a massive souless corp will let even their own people hack at will? I don't think they trust their own people that much. A spider can do what he needs in his own division's host, but I bet he's not allowed to just doing things anywhere in the matrix because he's not part of the corp's subset of GOD.

Assuming the Spider does come out of his Web Host to hack the street sam, can he really brick the sam's smartlink enabled cybereyes before the sam has time to turn the wireless off? IE: can he do it in a single action?

[Jack VII]

Keeping in mind that radio signal scanners either spot an icon or not (they can't look for hidden icons or get details on icons they have spotted...

Uh, they can detect and spot hidden icons and they also pinpoint the location of the signal in the same action, so it's basically a Matrix Perception + Trace Icon in one action. The way the Bug Scanner description works, you don't even specify if you're looking for icons running silently, it's just that if there are any in the area, they have a chance to resist detection.

[pragma]

I think the real risk isn't the street sam's stuff getting bricked, but rather having the team's cover blown. If I'm the corp, I just stick an agent running constant matrix perception tests on a micro-drone (or other drone type) and hope that blows the cover of anyone not running totally wireless dark. Matrix perception tests are pretty hard to hide from, and even if the drone+agent has a smaller pool than the hacker, if there's an infinite amount of tests then variance will catch up with the samurai in the end.

The stealth RFID tags actually make this problem worse, because they add a bunch of weak, suspicious hidden nodes to the mix.

However, I consider the desirability of running infinite matrix perception tests and the ability to deploy matrix chaff in the form of wireless enabled toothbrushes to be the two biggest holes in the matrix system. I know it's not the purposes of this thread, but if anyone has ideas for how to housefule those then I'm all ears. My own blend right now is to strictly limit matrix perception tests (it's like sonar, if you get one then I get one), and to let hackers automatically matrix-spot anything they can physially point an antenna at.

[binarywraith]

Your basic premise involves having a dedicated member of the running team just to protect the Sammy, given that you can only have Rating x 3 devices in total slaved to the team Decker's cyberdeck, and commlinks provide essentially zero protection against a rival Decker's dicepools. Your average street sam is hauling around a dozen or so bits of cyber and gear that need that protection all by himself.

Without that Decker, the sammy's gear is toast.

Even though the Spider is well outside of the 100m range, he's inside the building's Host, and has all the time in the world once alerted. He's bricking roughly one item every other combat round with his Cybercombat of 7+ Logic of 5 vs the Sammy's Intuition of 3 + Firewall (None or by deck if he happens to have slaved his cyber to it), and the device resisting damage from the Spider's Atttack of 8 with Device Rating (2 for most everything the Sam's got on his sheet) + Firewall with an available (Rating/2 +8 ) boxes of damage each.

Since there are no visible effects of cybercombat damage, the sam's really got no way to discover what's under attack until it overflows and bricks.

Also, Security Spiders etc. are immune to GOD's concerns on the Matrix per the book, so yes, it is fully expected that the corps will turn them lose to hack at will on intruders because they face zero consequences for doing so. Welcome to extraterritorality.

[BlackJaw]

Uh, they can detect and spot hidden icons and they also pinpoint the location of the signal in the same action, so it's basically a Matrix Perception + Trace Icon in one action. The way the Bug Scanner description works, you don't even specify if you're looking for icons running silently, it's just that if there are any in the area, they have a chance to resist detection.

Oh I agree with all that. I was unclear in my initial post.

I was trying to say that Radio Signal Scanners can't detect the number of hidden icons in an area, which is to say they can't determine if they missed something. They also don't analyze icons they do spot beyond "This is the icon" and "This is where it is." That makes them very vulnerable to the Wrapper program.

[Lobo0705]

Your basic premise involves having a dedicated member of the running team just to protect the Sammy, given that you can only have Rating x 3 devices in total slaved to the team Decker's cyberdeck, and commlinks provide essentially zero protection against a rival Decker's dicepools. Your average street sam is hauling around a dozen or so bits of cyber and gear that need that protection all by himself.

Without that Decker, the sammy's gear is toast.

Even though the Spider is well outside of the 100m range, he's inside the building's Host, and has all the time in the world once alerted. He's bricking roughly one item every other combat round with his Cybercombat of 7+ Logic of 5 vs the Sammy's Intuition of 3 + Firewall (None or by deck if he happens to have slaved his cyber to it), and the device resisting damage from the Spider's Atttack of 8 with Device Rating (2 for most everything the Sam's got on his sheet) + Firewall with an available (Rating/2 +8 ) boxes of damage each.

Since there are no visible effects of cybercombat damage, the sam's really got no way to discover what's under attack until it overflows and bricks.

Also, Security Spiders etc. are immune to GOD's concerns on the Matrix per the book, so yes, it is fully expected that the corps will turn them lose to hack at will on intruders because they face zero consequences for doing so. Welcome to extraterritorality.

Well, you don't need to actually have the Decker dedicated to ust protecting the Sammy, he just has to own the Commlink that is protecting the Sammy's gear (Mind you, the only reason to do that is if the Decker has better mental stats than the Sammy, if not, then the Sammy can slave the stuff to his own Commlink. Either way, given that the whole idea of this exercise is that the Sammy turns off his non-essential gear, a rating 6 Commlink will protect 18 of the Sammy's devices, and if he only has the "essential" ones on (I will admit to not knowing the full extent of Blackjaw's essential devices, but I would assume it is less than 18) than the Commlink can protect them all.

I think Blackjaw's further point is that given that the Spider is inside the Host, he can't do anything to the Samurai's stuff unless he leaves the Host. This potentially allows 2 things, either 1) The team's decker is outside the Host, and can attack the Spider without worrying about IC as well, or 2) The team's decker is inside the Host, and now doesn't have to worry about the Spider (at least for the moment).

Next, as far as what kind of danger the Sammy is in, it depends. Assume your numbers are right with the Spider - Cybercombat of 7+ Logic of 5, but he has to account for Noise, which may be significant depending on how far away he is. The Sammy, on the other hand, resists with Int of 4 (the decker's) and a Firewall of 6 (the commlinks) which means that the Spider is only beating it by a little bit. What it probably means is that he does a significant amount of Matrix Damage to the device, but doesn't brick it in one shot.

Now, since Data Spike is an Attack action, it automatically lets the owner of the device (the Sammy) know that it is under attack (page 236). At which point, he takes a Free action, and shuts the wireless off for all of his devices (page 421) - at which point he is completely immune to the Spider's Matrix attacks.

Note - even if he doesn't buy a commlink, and has no Matrix support in the form of a decker, the worst thing that happens (from a Data Spike point of view) is that the Decker gets one attack, and then the Sammy uses a free action and disconnects himself from the Matrix with all devices.

[BlackJaw]

So I am actually interested to see if the the threat is real. My inclination is that it isn't as bad as people think it is, but I'm open to changing my mind if evidence is provided. I admit I'm biased, but I want the real answer here.

That said, I disagree with a lot of your response:

Your basic premise involves having a dedicated member of the running team just to protect the Sammy, given that you can only have Rating x 3 devices in total slaved to the team Decker's cyberdeck, and commlinks provide essentially zero protection against a rival Decker's dicepools. Your average street sam is hauling around a dozen or so bits of cyber and gear that need that protection all by himself.

1: Decker are supposed to be providing some matrix defense for their team, and they can do so for the entire team rather easily. The decker provides this benefit mostly passively, and can do it for the entire team through simply having a few extra $5000 rating 6 commlinks to accept the slaved devices. It's actually easier than having the team mage provide counterspelling. A rating 6 commlink provides Firewall 6, which is 6 dice towards protecting against rival deckers. All this, and it's not even costing the decker any actions.
2: He's not just protecting the Sammy. He can be actively hacking inside the host, and the sammy still gets the firewall and intuition of the decker, as is the rest of the team. With the wrapper program, these devices and extra links can be set to look like something safe, such as the RFID tags attacked to various every day items (candy bars, desk chairs, and all the other objects that are likely to be inside a building but not slaved to the host system.) A radio signal scanner is unlikely to raise an alert if a candybar is spotted in the building.

Of course once the sammy starts shooting, the alert is probably raised, so we can move on from there.

Without that Decker, the sammy's gear is toast.

Without that sammie, the decker's probably getting shot. Teams are teams for a reason. As I've pointed out above, the decker providing protection for the sammy gear is actually very easy on the decker so there isn't much of a reason not to do it. If a Sammy is really that paranoid about even his own team's decker, he really should be using throwback devices.

Even though the Spider is well outside of the 100m range, he's inside the building's Host, and has all the time in the world once alerted.

He has to leave the host to interact with icons not in the host. That's a basic matrix rule about hosts, as noted on page 246: "When you’re outside of a host, you can’t in- teract directly with icons inside it, although you can still send messages, make commcalls, and that sort of thing. Once you’re inside, you can see and interact with icons inside the host, but not outside (with the same caveat for messages, calls, etc.)." Hosts and buildings/physical space are not the same thing. If he leaves the host he will need to look for the icons beyond 100 meters of his physical location to find the sammy's icons in the grid. I agreed that once he has some idea what to look for, say from viewing the sammy on a security camera feed or the goggles of a security guard, it's probably only 1 action for him to locate an icon for the sammy in grid space, such as his active cybereyes.

He's bricking roughly one item every other combat round with his Cybercombat of 7+ Logic of 5 vs the Sammy's Intuition of 3 + Firewall (None or by commlink if he happens to have slaved his cyber to it), and the device resisting damage from the Spider's Atttack of 8 with Device Rating (2 for most everything the Sam's got on his sheet) + Firewall with an available (Rating/2 +8 ) boxes of damage each.

I think you're underselling the Sammy and forgetting some issues for the spider.
First, most devices have a firewall equal to their device rating (P 234: "For most devices, the Matrix attributes are the same as the Device Rating."), so that Rating 2 Smartgun will get to throw Firewall 2 + Intuition 3. Of course I noted earlier it's slaved to a rating 6 commlink, so it's actually 6 Firewall + 3 Intuition. Only, that commlink is owned by the decker, so it's actually Firewall 6 + Intuition 4.
Second, the spider is off-site, so he'll be taking a Distance Noise penalty outside of his host depending on distance. A datajack mitigates 1 points of this, and the example security expert lacks Signal Scrubber so that's all he's got. If he's more than 10 km away, he's taking a penalty of 2, 4, or 7, depending on distance. He's also on a local or national grid, and the street sam is on the public grid, so he's taking a -2 cross grid or public grid penalty too.
Note: Facilities that warrant on-site decker defense are much more dangerous than those with an off-site decker. Distance and grid penalties aren't such an issue inside a host, but to attack the sammy, the spider will have to leave the host.

That's a dice pool of about 10 (depending on noise and VR bonuses, 10 may be a high estimate) for the spider vs 10 for the cybereyes, once the spider finds them, which he can do fairly easily without giving himself away. Once found, he can launch a Datapsike at the sammy's eyes, but if it doesn't get through, it will rebound on him instead, so istn't without danger given the equal-ish dice pools. If the hit gets through, it's resisted with 12 dice (Firewall 6 + Device Rating 6) thanks to the commlink applying for matrix defense rolls.

You are right that the cybereyes probably have a a matrix track of 9 boxes (half rating 2 +8), but with the dataspike vs defense being about equal and then 12 dice to mitigate damage, I think it will take 2 or more hits to disable the eyes, which give the sammy time to turn them off.

Also, Security Spiders etc. are immune to GOD's concerns on the Matrix per the book, so yes, it is fully expected that the corps will turn them lose to hack at will on intruders because they face zero consequences for doing so. Welcome to extraterritorality.

I though they are immune to GOD while in their hosts. If they leave the host is that still true? (and a page reference/quote if I'm wrong on that.) As I noted, to attack the street sam, he has to leave the host.

[binarywraith]

Edit : Double post action!

[binarywraith]

1: Decker are supposed to be providing some matrix defense for their team, and they can do so for the entire team rather easily. The decker provides this benefit mostly passively, and can do it for the entire team through simply having a few extra $5000 rating 6 commlinks to accept the slaved devices. It's actually easier than having the team mage provide counterspelling. A rating 6 commlink provides Firewall 6, which is 6 dice towards protecting against rival deckers. All this, and it's not even costing the decker any actions.

This seems incorrect on it's face. If you've got a reference, I'd love to see it, but that would mean a 5k nyuen Rating 6 Commlink has the same firewall rating as a 826k nuyen Fairlight Excalibur, which is absurd. Mind you, it's these decking rules, so I wouldn't be surprised, just sad.

2: He's not just protecting the Sammy. He can be actively hacking inside the host, and the sammy still gets the firewall and intuition of the decker, as is the rest of the team. With the wrapper program, these devices and extra links can be set to look like something safe, such as the RFID tags attacked to various every day items (candy bars, desk chairs, and all the other objects that are likely to be inside a building but not slaved to the host system.) A radio signal scanner is unlikely to raise an alert if a candybar is spotted in the building.

A radio signal scanner -is- likely to go off if a dozen or more (many more, given the gear list on that sammy) unidentified icons wander in, though. Even with Wrapper, that's a lot of out of place stuff to walk in off-hours. If nothing else, it's movement in an area that it shouldn't be in, which is suspicious in the first place.

I think you're underselling the Sammy and forgetting some issues for the spider.
First, most devices have a firewall equal to their device rating (P 234: "For most devices, the Matrix attributes are the same as the Device Rating."), so that Rating 2 Smartgun will get to throw Firewall 2 + Intuition 3. Of course I noted earlier it's slaved to a rating 6 commlink, so it's actually 6 Firewall + 3 Intuition. Only, that commlink is owned by the decker, so it's actually Firewall 6 + Intuition 4.
Second, the spider is off-site, so he'll be taking a Distance Noise penalty outside of his host depending on distance. A datajack mitigates 1 points of this, and the example security expert lacks Signal Scrubber so that's all he's got. If he's more than 10 km away, he's taking a penalty of 2, 4, or 7, depending on distance. He's also on a local or national grid, and the street sam is on the public grid, so he's taking a -2 cross grid or public grid penalty too.
Note: Facilities that warrant on-site decker defense are much more dangerous than those with an off-site decker. Distance and grid penalties aren't such an issue inside a host, but to attack the sammy, the spider will have to leave the host.

That's a dice pool of about 10 (depending on noise and VR bonuses) for the spider vs 10 for the cybereyes, once the spider finds them, which he can do fairly easily without giving himself away. Once found, he can launch a Datapsike at the sammy's eyes, but if it doesn't get through, it will rebound on him instead, so itn't without danger given the equal dice pools. If the hit gets through, it's resisted with 12 dice (Firewall 6 + Device Rating 6) thanks to the commlink applying for matrix defense rolls.

You are right that the cybereyes probably have a a matrix track of 9 boxes (half rating 2 +(IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) , but with the dataspike vs defense being about equal and then 12 dice to mitigate damage, I think it will take 2 hits to disable the eyes, which give the sammy time to turn them off.

Ah, there's the reference. These writers are going to drive me to drink. So many very, very important parts of these Matrix rules that are only defined in 'probablies' and 'abouts' instead of giving us concrete data to plug into the damn rules formulas. But at the end of the day, you've basically only created an argument that a Sammy who is doing literally everything (short of being smart and just not using wireless) he can possibly do to defend himself from a hacker is only moderately vulnerable. Even then, the Spider doesn't need to leave the Host, or even bother hacking anything.

All he has to do is trip the silent alarms, and make popcorn while he sets up a routine to record the fun. But still, even if he decides to continue hacking, the sole defense the sammy has is to turn all of his shit off, like he should have in the first place, because the spider has nothing better to do than dog him. If the team's decker decides to go live to fight, he's got to worry about GOD, and the spider doesn't.

I though they are immune to GOD while in their hosts. If they leave the host is that still true? (and a page reference/quote if I'm wrong on that.) As I noted, to attack the street sam, he has to leave the host.

SR5, page 232 :

Of course, G-men, security spiders, IC, and other users who are officially sanctioned by GOD never rack up an Overwatch Score, even if they’re really misbehaving. Such is life on the Matrix. And in the meat world, too, come to think about it.

Nope, they're straight up immune. Authorized megacorporate users using decks burned with chips GOD knows.

[Lobo0705]

This seems incorrect on it's face. If you've got a reference, I'd love to see it, but that would mean a 5k nyuen Rating 6 Commlink has the same firewall rating as a 826k nuyen Fairlight Excalibur, which is absurd. Mind you, it's these decking rules, so I wouldn't be surprised, just sad.

Page 222:

Your Commlink’s Matrix Attributes
Your gamemaster will occasionally ask for one of two Matrix
attributes: Data Processing or (if your hacker isn’t doing her job)
Firewall. Unless your commlink is a custom job, both of these
attributes are equal to your commlink’s rating. Just keep a note
by your commlink entry in your character sheet’s gear section.

[BlackJaw]

SR5, page 232 :
Of course, G-men, security spiders, IC, and other users who are officially sanctioned by GOD never rack up an Overwatch Score, even if they’re really misbehaving. Such is life on the Matrix. And in the meat world, too, come to think about it.

Nope, they're straight up immune. Authorized megacorporate users using decks burned with chips GOD knows.

Thank you for the reference. I agree with the "driving to drink" part of the 5th edition rules layout.

A radio signal scanner -is- likely to go off if a dozen or more (many more, given the gear list on that sammy) unidentified icons wander in, though. Even with Wrapper, that's a lot of out of place stuff to walk in off-hours. If nothing else, it's movement in an area that it shouldn't be in, which is suspicious in the first place.

And of course, the team Decker should be hacking those scanners the same way he hacks security cameras. However, I don't think (your millage may vary) it's reasonable to assume the sensor trips an alarm, or even an alert to the spider, any time it sees anything new or moving. At least not in the mid-level security of the run we're talking about.

But at the end of the day, you've basically only created an argument that a Sammy who is doing literally everything (short of being smart and just not using wireless) he can possibly do to defend himself from a hacker is only moderately vulnerable. Even then, the Spider doesn't need to leave the Host, or even bother hacking anything.

Slaving your gear to the Decker isn't doing everything possible, it's doing the most obvious thing you should do: turn off the unessiary objects, and let the decker protect what remains. Doing everything possible might include full matrix defense or simply turning everything off.

I also don't classify a "ELITE CORPORATE SECURITY LT" with a Rating 7 Cracking group, Logic 5, and a $549,375 15R cyberdeck as a minor threat. I think the Sammy holds up rather well considering the amount of matrix heat that brings.

All he has to do is trip the silent alarms, and make popcorn while he sets up a routine to record the fun.

Otherwise known as not hacking the Sammy's gear.

But still, even if he decides to continue hacking, the sole defense the sammy has is to turn all of his shit off, like he should have in the first place, because the spider has nothing better to do than dog him. If the team's decker decides to go live to fight, he's got to worry about GOD, and the spider doesn't.

He certainly has something better to do: deal with the Decker in his Host. As you note above, the Spider is likely to leave physical security issues (the Sammy) to the physical security forces & drones. If a Sammy has made into his building without setting off a bunch alarms immediately, then he's probably got a hacker too, which means the Spider has threat he's specifically supposed to deal with.

[Xystophoroi]

It seems to me the entire thing relies solely on the Signal Scanner.

The Spider does nothing without the scanner flagging stuff up.

Any ways of stopping it working without triggering other alarms?

[Jaid]

and then you run into problems when the security contracted/assigned to that company responds, and send half a dozen hackers over to screw you over, taking them less than a second to arrive and start getting to work.

and actually, if there's a bunch of unauthorized stuff wandering around the building, i would be surprised if that *didn't* trigger an alarm unless it was paired up with specifically authorized stuff (for example, if it's the RFID for a frozen meal from another company marching along with a guard's commlink, gun, cybereyes, etc, it's probably not gonna trigger anything... if it's just a pile of mysterious candybars floating through space, that's probably going to get passed along to someone to take a closer look at, and is most likely to lead to an alarm being triggered in very short order).

going wireless enabled most likely is going to trigger an alarm before you can even get the run going, unless you're doing a social infiltration or something like that (in which case not going wireless enabled would be likely to trigger an alarm, ironically enough).

once the alarm is going, it's not that hard to call in additional matrix resources from nearby to shut you down hard, meaning that you either need to shut down your wireless gear (and not have the wireless bonus anyways) or let your stuff get bricked one or two pieces at a time.

so sure, you can have your wireless gear active... until you need it, which will be very soon because you just told the security you're there by leaving your wireless on. have fun with that.

(also, just hacking everything as you go isn't exactly a great option... you either need to be getting a direct connection to each one, or you need to face off against the host's ratings. the former means you have to pass through the sensor's detection radius before you can do anything to the sensor, the latter means the hacking is very much non-trivial, and you can either choose the hacking option that always lets them know you're there when you succeed, or the hacking option that always lets them know you're there when you fail, which will happen eventually... neither of those are great options).

of course, if you've pre-emptively done all your hacking to get into the host, you'll have a much better time of it, since that will give you your direct connection. on the other hand, who's to say they don't have either multiple hosts (one for research, one for security, or for separate parts of the facility, etc) or even just some equipment that isn't connected to a host to mix and match their vulnerabilities.

[Jack VII]

Any ways of stopping it working without triggering other alarms?

Hacking it and doing a continuous Edit File as the team runs buy. Of course, that could raise some alarms if your decker is not very good or the Host is highly rated.

[Xystophoroi]

Question.

In prior editions was there this level of 'a random group of unidentified icons has appeared, investigate immediately!' response?

Or is this new with Wireless?

If not new how were corp sec. described as dealing with it?

[pragma]

The sense that icons could be detected when they weren't actively doing hacking things started in 4th edition with the wireless matrix. Prior to that there weren't concerns about icons appearing because there were no icons to appear.

In 4th edition this could nominally have been a problem, but it was very easy to run wireless dark (or close to it) and avoid signal scanners.

Since running wirelessly dark is more contentious in 5th edition, and since the wireless spotting rules are kind of a hash, we have a lot more debates about the subject.

[Smash]

If I'm a Street Sam (something like the Archetype on page 112,) and I have most of my gear's wireless off, because it's a run and that's what smart people do, which is to say that's what the team's hacker told me to do. However, there is a handful of gear my street sam will want his bonus from, including Smartguns. So I slave those to a Rating 6 commlink owned by the team Decker. Let's say the decker is like the one on page 121. I also have a Wrapper program running on a tiny Bug-Drone, so all my wireless gear shows up in the matrix looks benign. Lastly, I've got a small Altoids sized tin, coated in wireless blocking paint, full of stealth RFID tags which I spread all over the place if I decide to really mess with a spider.

I don't buy that anyone does this, because like with everything in reality, we get slack over time. For instance, people claim that all security personel will always have their wireless off, but when their IT guys want to do some maintenance it will become an uber pain in the arse to manually round up everyone that works at a facility and give them all checkups, firmware updates, etc. Over time, and with no incidents going from months to years, security tends to get slack. A corporation will see that there is money to be saved by having wireless on, and reasonably robust security (a decent host rating, ICE and spiders).

All this ultra-paranoia is the ultimate game breaking reality, because in reality people become lax with security. Sure runners might constantly be in situations that will make them paranoid, but we don't really care about what they do on a day-to-day basis. We want to know what the security is doing. If it can't be circumvented then the hacker archetype is pointless.

Here's another reality check for Shadowrun. We all seem super security conscious with matrix security to the point that it makes deckers redundant but are totally fine with the fact that most facilities will only have enough security personel that a runner team of 3-5 is enough to use smash and grab tactics.

The most immediate question that comes to my mind is who exactly is hacking the street sam? The Spider could do it, but he'd have to leave his Host to try, and that's something the Shadowrun team's decker would love. Even if he comes out of the Host, he's not a member of GOD, even if he's a member of the same AAA corp and this is all happening on their site. Moreover, the street sam is on the local or public grid. If the Spider comes out of the host and starts hacking the street sam, he's going to start getting generating OS and might get converged on. (You really don't think a massive souless corp will let even their own people hack at will? I don't think they trust their own people that much. A spider can do what he needs in his own division's host, but I bet he's not allowed to just doing things anywhere in the matrix because he's not part of the corp's subset of GOD.

That's the exact point to consider. tactical hackers should basically be a runner-only commodity. Corps will have spiders, and perhaps special forces hackers, but certainly every 5th security schlub isn't going to be carting around a deck.

Assuming the Spider does come out of his Web Host to hack the street sam, can he really brick the sam's smartlink enabled cybereyes before the sam has time to turn the wireless off? IE: can he do it in a single action?

Exactly. It depends how they do it but either way they have to be pretty damn competent to do it in less than 2 IPs.

[SpellBinder]

Well, ya gotta give the whiny deckers something to do in SR5 since they apparently had little to do in previous editions. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Well, ya gotta give the whiny deckers something to do in SR5 since they apparently had little to do in previous editions. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Which is pretty entertaining, since my Cyberlogician had to triage his actions because he ALWAYS had things he could be doing on a run that involved Hacking. It is just that sometimes, shooting someone took priority over the hacking. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[SpellBinder]

.... It is just that sometimes, shooting someone took priority over the hacking. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Which goes against the apparent "logic" of how hacking works in SR5 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif) The way things are set, the hacker should be trying to digitally fornicate the opposition's smartguns and other various wireless things, not be shooting at them. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Which goes against the apparent "logic" of how hacking works in SR5 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif) The way things are set, the hacker should be trying to digitally fornicate the opposition's smartguns and other various wireless things, not be shooting at them. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

I so heavily disagree with that sentiment that I have difficulty putting it into appropriate words. It will ALWAYS be better to shoot someone than to try and hack their Smartlink. Especially since the Opponent Hacker will be so tied up in fruitlessly trying to hack my own non-wireless stuff that he will not actually see me killing him. *shrug* (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[SpellBinder]

And I'm with ya. "Never bring a computer to a gun fight."

[hermit]

There are two really problematic matters with the prescribed way of defending against hackers as a non-decker:

1) You have to effectively sign over ownership of cybernetics to a person that is not you yourself. A person who may even just be assigned to your team on a by-mission base. A person who is a career criminal and who you likely do not know all that well. That is a great amount of trust in a likely malignant stranger that's required. And who's telling the Sammy the decker will not insert a backdoor into his eyes for when they are on opposing teams?

2) High-Threat Response Hacker Teams (HTRHTs). Given the relative compactness of a metroplex setting, noise is less a factor than it is made out to be, and putting a team of combat hackers someplace within a 5 mile radius of everything is definitely possible. Either a AAA has it'S own in-house hacker team, or securicorps rent theirs out to other, smaller companies for a price. The HTRHT is on-site in what, one turn? - and will proceed as Jaid has described. End of runner team.

In the end, if you are discovered, you are done for. Forget ever using you targeting aids in the kind of situation where you need to shoot your way out of someplace - it'll be a system on alert and the Matrix will be swarming with hackers; you'll need to unwireless hard or risk vital implants being bricked. And there's really precious little a non-hacker can do without acting highly naive (1.) or the world decidedly ignoring possibilities for game convenience in a popcorn movie plot hole manner (2.).

And, given the wording of how security spiders are exempt from GOD overwatch, there's even a third possibility: proactive hacking. Given that security spiders are "never" going to raise an OS, they can just roam the grids and brick whereever they want whatever they desire, so a raid on a runner team (a Shadowrun staple) should start not only with a spirit materializing, but also with a few combat hackers bricking all cybereyes they can locate (I doubt the team decker is on Matrix overwatch all the time, so maybe they want to brick his deck too while they're at it). It's possibly just yet another instance of CGL's current writers being unable to write clearly, but ... well, read as RAW, this makes non-hacker mundanes and especially cybernetics heavy character types even more vulnerable.

[BlackJaw]

Well, ya gotta give the whiny deckers something to do in SR5 since they apparently had little to do in previous editions. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Which is pretty entertaining, since my Cyberlogician had to triage his actions because he ALWAYS had things he could be doing on a run that involved Hacking. It is just that sometimes, shooting someone took priority over the hacking. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Which goes against the apparent "logic" of how hacking works in SR5 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif) The way things are set, the hacker should be trying to digitally fornicate the opposition's smartguns and other various wireless things, not be shooting at them. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

Guys, you're starting to get a bit off topic. Weather or not hacking needed this kind or reworking isn't exactly relevant to this particular discussion.

2) High-Threat Response Hacker Teams (HTRHTs). Given the relative compactness of a metroplex setting, noise is less a factor than it is made out to be, and putting a team of combat hackers someplace within a 5 mile radius of everything is definitely possible. Either a AAA has it'S own in-house hacker team, or securicorps rent theirs out to other, smaller companies for a price. The HTRHT is on-site in what, one turn? - and will proceed as Jaid has described. End of runner team.

Deckers aren't cheap. They are highly trained individuals equipped with hundreds of nuyen worth of gear each. A small team of them costs millions, that's just for one shift. Round the clock, "there in seconds" coverage would be extremely expensive. So expensive that for the same cost as a team of 6 deckers, you could get 5 combat experts implanted with the latest combat gear and rigger in a Nissan Hound, the "bleeding edge" & fully armed helicopter, to deliver them to which ever facility within your hypothetical 5 km just discovered Shadowrunners, and shoot them and their step van get away car to hell. 5 km isn't far to cover a Nissan Hound. Another example might be having powerful Spirits on call. They can arrive about as fast as hackers could through the matrix, but they can seriously mess runners up in the physical instead of just trying to hack devices. For millions being spent to have your hypothetical response team, a crop could keep a selection of bound spirits to send out to their facilities when alarms are tripped.

I think it's overkill. I think things have to escalate to a particular point before an HTR, virtual, physical, or astral, is called in, and they have to be scrambled, which will take minutes of communications even for virtual or astral versions. "You got a cyborg troll monstrosity firing rockets and lobbing grenades? Ok, HTR will be there in minutes." vs "You got break in? Buddy that's below my pay grade. Call me if something explodes, and keep in mind we'll be billing your department for the cost of the response."

It seems to me the entire thing relies solely on the Signal Scanner.

Or off how Matrix Perception works, depending on your point of view. Running Silent should be the answer to a lot of these issues, but without Sleaze it's kind of a joke, and while the developer reponse was "slave your stuff to the decker's cyberdeck" that doesn't work for groups with a Technomancer, and cyberdecks have really small device ratings so they can't accommodate nearly enough devices. The other half of the topic is "can the street sam walk around without setting of alarms" thanks to his lack of access to Sleaze ratings, and what happens when the alarms have been tripped: how likely is it that building security will attempt to counter hack him, and what would that look like?

and actually, if there's a bunch of unauthorized stuff wandering around the building, i would be surprised if that *didn't* trigger an alarm unless it was paired up with specifically authorized stuff (for example, if it's the RFID for a frozen meal from another company marching along with a guard's commlink, gun, cybereyes, etc, it's probably not gonna trigger anything... if it's just a pile of mysterious candybars floating through space, that's probably going to get passed along to someone to take a closer look at, and is most likely to lead to an alarm being triggered in very short order).

This really is gray area of the rules. Depending on how a GM interprets the effectiveness of signal scanners really affects how wireless gear can be used by players.

I'd argue that all icons are just icons floating in space to a signal scanner. They don't have the smarts to look at something and consider if it makes sense or not. That's actually pushing the limits of the Dog-Brian drones and software Agents of Shadowrun too. A Spider paying close attention to his radio signal scanner logs might notice it, but I'd argue, if only for reasons of playability, that the signal scanners just spot icons, and could probably set off alarms if those icons are of a type that should be a concern (weapons, mag lock sequencers, chameleon suits, etc.) A Spider looking at the logs might notice something, but getting an alert every time an benign looking icons is picked up is probably only a good idea in heavily secured facilities where they can do a full detail scan of every one and everything coming into the building to compare it against.

going wireless enabled most likely is going to trigger an alarm before you can even get the run going,

It could, in high security facilities that make sure they know about all the icon in their building and have the resources to tack down every single icon that suddenly shows up. I'm arguing that's not something most facilities do, as it's the equivalent of airport like full body and gear scanning everything that enters the building so you can compare that static data against anything new. I'm betting most buildings don't do that for the same reason that physical security isn't at 100% efficient in all facilities: human beings just don't act that smart, especially not cogs in a massive institutional bureaucracy. Also, signal scanners aren't 100% effective, and employees might turn their devices on after reaching their desk. The likelyhood of false positives vs runner teams in most buildings means an alert for the spider to look at something is what you'd get most of the time. The spider might look at the log on the signal scanner device, or he might leave his host and come look on the grid space, but I suspect spiders prefer to stay in their hosts.

once the alarm is going, it's not that hard to call in additional matrix resources from nearby to shut you down hard, meaning that you either need to shut down your wireless gear (and not have the wireless bonus anyways) or let your stuff get bricked one or two pieces at a time.

Again, that's assuming the spider leaves the host to come attack you and that fellow spiders are somewhere on stand by, or willing to leave their posts, and come engage in grid-level combat. GM's call I guess.

(also, just hacking everything as you go isn't exactly a great option... you either need to be getting a direct connection to each one, or you need to face off against the host's ratings.

Actually once you are inside a host, you are considered to have a direct line connection to everything in the host. The point of a Host system is that's like a big secure virtual building. Hacking into it is hard because hosts have high ratings and often higher firewalls, and once inside you have to deal with IC, but the devices are vulnerable. It's why spiders need to be very careful about what devices or on the host. Page 233: "If you are in a host that has a WAN, you are considered directly connected to all devices in the WAN." Page 359: "Creating a Host is akin to constructing a building and putting important things inside." A Decker can, and should, be disabling the security systems they will be encountering, but he will probably need to direct line connect to something on site first in order to get into the host to do that. Once inside the host, they can work on all the Cameras, signal scanners, and so on, although those device icons may be running silent inside the host too. Their most pressing issue is likely to be Patrol IC and/or the Spider.

Of course sections of the building may not be online, but then the sensors aren't in the host, and aren't sending alerts to the spider nor are they visible to the spider. It's also probably a section of the building with wireless blocking paint or wallpaper, so the Street Sam won't be online anyway, so the entire issue of spiders attacking the sam or other runners becomes moot in those areas.

[BlackJaw]

There are two really problematic matters with the prescribed way of defending against hackers as a non-decker:

1) You have to effectively sign over ownership of cybernetics to a person that is not you yourself. A person who may even just be assigned to your team on a by-mission base. A person who is a career criminal and who you likely do not know all that well. That is a great amount of trust in a likely malignant stranger that's required. And who's telling the Sammy the decker will not insert a backdoor into his eyes for when they are on opposing teams?

Firstly, being master in the slaved device framework doesn't change ownership, so the Decker isn't effectively the owner of those devices, and can't therefore do anything that requires him to be the owner of those devices. It actually wouldn't give him the ability to do anything with them besides defend them in the matrix. To do more than that, the owner, the Sam, would have to invite him to place marks on the devices.

Second of all, the closest thing to a "back door" in this case would be marks. Marks vanish when you restart your device, or when the person who placed the mark restarts the device running their persona. Either way, hacked back door won't last long.
Even if the Decker were some how get the legal "open invitation for 3 marks" that invitation can be rescinded, the device restarted to clear the mark if it's there already, and the problem is gone. Long term hacks like true "Back doors" simply don't exist in 5th edition (yet.)

That means the only thing the Street Sammy needs to worry about is the Decker hacking him while they are working together on a run... which is about as likely as the decker needing to worry about the Street Sam shooting him for no apparent reason, or the whole team needs to worry that the Mage will use mind control magic on them. Professional runners aren't likely to be doing this kind of back stabbing and remain in the business. Either their Rep will take the hit and they won't be able to get work, or they will be shot by someone.