My players are curious about not "working for the man." They possibly want to fight against the corps in sort of a Robin Hood fashion. I have come up with some really fun adventure ideas, but it seems like eventually the money would run out. I mean, who would be buying what they would steal from corps besides other corps?

There is little to nothing in the SR4 rulebook about Hacking funds. Is this possible? Or somehow creating secure credsticks. Could this be an extended test that a Hacker is always working on?

I have seen a little info on the "Radical Eco-Shaman" type character, but I wonder, is there any sort of Greenpeace/Adbusters type group that would fund anti-corp attacks? In a future world where urban life is dominated by the "Big Ten", is this style of play even possible without some organization catching on and wipe my players off the map? An Eco-Dragon Perhaps? I dunno, I just want to keep my PC players interested in the game, and still have plenty of things to spray with bullets and fireballs!

well sure, you could work w/ AzzieWatch, or for a dragon against the coprs, like HEstaby. You can be a neo-anarchists, work with AttacK!. Just check out Loose Alliances. Or they can go indy, and just sell their loot to a local fixer. Yes ,eventaully the corps would be after you, but that's what being a runner is all about!

Fistandantilus3.0 is right, Loose Alliances has some good ideas in this regard. Its an SR3 book with very little in the way of rules so it is still usefull for an SR4 game. For example;

The Commission on Megacorporate Affairs (COMA): a secret UN organisation supposedly under the Secretary Generals command that works to screw over the mega's at every opportunity whilst the rest of the UN licks their corporate masters' collective boots.

Antifa Direct Action (ADA): a loose network of Anti Fascist groups that share information and resources. Some of the Mega's border on facism in the way their corporate citizens are controlled, and ADA is (or was in 2064) at a stage where some of its cells were becoming more radical, assasinating key personnel of facist groups rather than just going in for political agitation and peacefull rallies.

Black Star: The anarchist movement's special forces organisation, a decentralised network composed entirely of shadowrunner teams who only take on black ops that target the Powers that Be (which includes the Megas), but also provide training for other anarchists and supporters of likeminded causes.

Attack!: An umbrella organisation that coordinates the efforts of various factions aimed at tearing down the megacorporate feudal power structure. Radical eco-terrorists, anarchists, fundamentalist groups, communists, all sorts of organisations and individuals are coordinated, organised and assisted by Attack!

Eco-Terrorists: Groups like TerraFirst! GreenWar and the Green Cells of course clash with the Megacorps on the issue of pollution. These groups both include shadowrunner types and hire shadowrunners when they need extra muscle.

Most of these groups fund their operations through illegal means, laundering money through front groups, so runners working for them won't necessarily be strapped for cash.

Thanks! That helped alot. Any suggestions as far as hacking funds/conterfeit credsticks?

I'd imagine most companies have their cash money protected pretty hard. I'm sure it's occured to someone, at least once or twice before, to try and hack in and steal a gajillion nuyen, and that the corps (being profit minded, as a rule), frown on that sort of thing.

I'm sure it's possible -- hacking into some department's budget reports, altering a little here, a little there, creating an employee record in this company and that company and this office and that branch and then getting an occasional credit transfer for imaginary workers, to your account -- but I'm also sure it's difficult, and if it's not done carefully and quietly, will get you very much dead.

Rerouting funds would be a risky, but potentially lucrative, method of obtaining cash. If you are already hacking into a corps systems to mess with their operations, you are probably going to be able to check their transaction records and predict when the next major funds transfer will occur (like when their insurance company pays out for the damage your current run will cause). Then you could organise for it to be transferred to an offshore private bank account moments after the money reaches the corporation.

It's like a high tech and high stakes variation on an old burglary trick. After breaking in to a reasonably lucrative house the burglars try again a few weeks later when they figure the owners have replaced everything they stole the first time. (Luckily in my case my insurance company was slow and the burglars impatient).

Of course, intercepting a virtual cash transfer of any appreciable size would be a shadowrun in itself, and you would need somewhere to get rid of it in a hurry since the corp you stole it from would be all over you very quickly. Some anti-corp groups might offer to launder the cash for you in exchange for a percentage, mobs could do the same but would take the majority of the cash and just pay you a 'finders fee'. In the end it would depend on how much you stole and who you took it from. Steal a big wad of cash from a Megacorp and no one will touch you.

thing is, there is no actual funds changing hands. instead its a matter of one bank telling another bank (preferably over a secure channel) that their client wants to transfer an amount to a client of the other bank.

then one bank decrease the account at their end, and the other increase. the datatrail at both ends verifys the transfer. its when the datatrail going missing that you have a problem.

now, if you can fake a transfer from bank A to bank B, suddenly you have "created" money isnt non-physical cash fun? the trick is to spend said cash on physical items before the "error" is spotted, and then sell the items of again to a third party. preferably do this 2-3 times, using certified credsticks each time.

tick is to make the trace more costly then the sum you "stole"

im guessing that all the AAA and many of the lower level corps have their account with the big bank in the sky.

basicly, dont belive that a electronic money transfer is anything like what you see in swordfish and similar where the numbers count down. the transfer will be over in seconds, ones the verifications have been taken care of.

so stealing cash by intercepting a money transfer is more or less a no go.

as for creating a fake certified credstick, that depends on how the stick works. is its entire sum stored on a encrypted chip inside the stick. or is is just a access "key" to a numberd account stored on some banks node?

given how laughable encryption in SR is, logicaly i would think its the latter. but i would not be surprised if its the former, and that the big boys are running one hell of a spin on how secure it all is. as long as it do not happen to often, or they can somehow pin it on user error, they dont care.

point isnt to make it 100% secure, but more trouble then its worth for joe wageslave to risk his social and economic life over. you have a nice job, a nice apartment, a steady income. why risk it by creating fake credsticks?

now, if you somehow no longer exist (officialy that is), but know how to do it, feel free. its a nice income source. and if you do it to often, some runners, a special ops team, or maybe even the star, will shop up at your place to tell what a bad boy you have been...

it does not have to be 100%, is just have to look like its 100%
its a bit like enron, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and it may be worth your while. but rock the boat and you will go down with the ship...

There's been a major crash in recent memory, so expect confidence in e-currency to be low enough that a lot of people will conduct most/all transactions in paper cash once again. As for hacking funds, it can be done, but there's nothing you can do to a credstick that will make you have fat stacks of fake money.

A credstick doesn't have any money at all, it just contains a very complex set of formulas that allow it to authorize servers that are very far away to transfer funds from one account to another. Hacking funds can be done a number of ways, and would work like this:

[*] Hack ZO. This is not reccommended, but if you go VR into Zurich Orbital itself and fight your way through all of its black black IC, you can use Edit to add as many zeroes as you want. Make sure you cover your data trail really well, because security hackers check for that sort of thing and can request that you be Thor Shot.

[*] Spoof ZO. Again, not reccommended, but it's more thinkable. In this model, you whip out some insanely fancy data interception, and tell someone's credstick that a large amount of money has been transferred to their account. This will only work as long as your spoof holds, but in the meantime you can have real goods and services delivered to you.

[*] Hack some Assets. In this model, you don't do anything to the finances at all, and instaid go after the much easier target of assets. You sell some things that are not yours (Real Estate, Urban Brawl Tickets, Software Licenses) for money that ZO considers to be "real".

[*] Hack a funds transfer request. In this model, you hack someone's credstick to authorize a funds transfer to your account. You can't transfer more funds than they have, and you'll need to have (or successfully spoof) access to their credstick.

The last two are the ones that are likely to work, but as they rely upon committing fraud against actual people or organizations, you'd better spend that money fast, or kill the victims, or whatever, because when that fraud gets reported the corp court is going to send a fraud management team after you to manage your claim.

-Frank

Sometimes, I really wonder whether people bother reading background info at all... before making stuff up.

The only credsticks you'll ever see 2070 are certified ones, and hard 'cash' tends to be limited to black markets or really underdeveloped countries.

Remember, NO corp except a two-week old start-up is going to have hundreds if not thousands of different accounts. There's no 'Saeder-Krupp Bank Account' - there's the 'Saeder-Krupp Chicago-Area Military Expenditures' account and the 'Saeder-Krupp Seattle-Megaplex Advertising Deparment' account. Part of stealing corporate money is figuring out where it won't be missed, at least not at first. A useful trick? Inflate the amount of money your Johnson withdrew at the bank (this takes some footwork to track him down). Then take the extra for yourself.

I got a little testy...

Good idea with looking into current fraud cases... I'm on it!

Well it has an ESOP, which could be considered a bank account I suppose. If you count the 401K it would have as many as 3. But as far as business operations go there is a single account.

Members of the owners family are paid like regular employees, as is the owner himself. It's a well established company so the owner can pay himself a sizeable salary, I believe the profits are disbursed annually as a bonus. I'd still say that the number of accounts a company has is probably dependent on industry and management style, as well as size and business locations.

On the subject of 'creating funds' for your team, here's one of my team's favorite tricks...

The hacker goes into a small company (Company A) with online sales and sets up an administrative (if necessary) passcode. She then places a sales order for some item that the company orders from its supplier (Company B) and marks the order 'paid in full'. Company A's automated ordering system orders the item, has it shipped, and the runners either pick it up (using generic vans and disguises), preferably directly from a warehouse, or have it delivered to a suitable location.

The 'stolen goods' are traded for money, favors or contact-building. Or, used to supply us.

The hacker, immediately after said item is delivered/picked up, goes back into the system and erases all tracks of the order: the sales slip, the video footage of the pick up, the delivery logs... everything. (We've done this enough - and we have players who have worked in shipping/inventory control/internal audit to give us the details - that we've come up with a SOP).

With electronic billing and automated accounting systems, it takes weeks (or months) before the two companies figure out what happened... Company B asks for payment, Company A denies ever ordering or receiving anything... If you do this with a company that has lots of sales (but isn't a mega-corp) it will take lots of time for them to figure out they've been hacked. Plus, eventually one or the other will write it off to shrink...

Like I said, we avoid the mega-corps and their closely held subs...

We run a very low financed team - we work for an NGO - so we have to find creative financing solutions. Since we have no cash for bribes, we do our research and bribe with goods... Amazing the reception a case of fine whiskey will get you...

very nice...

Now we are getting somewhere. What I am getting exited about almost more than the "free money" is that unbeknowest to my runners, I will be silently hunting them down. So, if they get too cocky about it and slip up a little... *chop!* the cleaver comes down.

I think I will like this GM thing...

Yeah, money is data, data can be stolen.

And there are lots of people who want to buy things besides corporations. SINless people living in feral urban zones and rural areas need things - steal a truckload of granola bars, or sneakers, or light bulbs, and sell it to them at 50% off.

Or, judging by the rules on fencing stuff... 70% off.

Our team tends to make money by doing insider trading (we've done something like this twice now). We just short sold stock on one of the corps we attacked since the data we leaked would drive the stock down, and net us a profit. Shortselling is a process which you make money off of a stock going down, so if you make the stock go down, you make money. Simple eh?

edit: Besure to never use that SIN again though if you do this