I've got a question about just what one can do when you hack another persons cyberware. If you Crash Program/OS on it, does the cyberware shut down, at least for the reboot period (one full combat turn per System rating of computer)? Could you use this ability to shut off someones cybereyes and blind them for the duration of reboot? How do you determine the System rating, et cetera for cyberware?

The rule book says this about hacking cyberware:

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In 2070, almost every device is computerized and equipped with a wireless link—from guns to toasters to clothing to sensors to cyberware. As a rule, assume that any gear item that is electronic or mechanical has a wireless-enabled computer in it.

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While wireless functionality is convenient, it is also a security risk. The drawback to being able to save files on your favorite rifle or cyberarm is that it might get hacked. Wireless devices also tend to leave a datatrail as they interact with other networks around you (one good reason to operate in hidden mode and keep everything in your PAN slaved to your commlink). Being careless with that can lead to someone tracking you down or pinpointing you at the scene of a crime. One way to prevent this is to load your devices up with IC and encryption—courtesy of your team's hacker—but another might be to simply turn it off.

The usual way of handling it is to subscribe all of your cyberware exclusively to your PAN, thereby gaining its protection. Those that are worried about someone hacking in from less than the three meters that the cyberware's Signal reaches tend to use a skinlink for their cyberware.

Also, it's a lot faster to beat someone to death with a chair than it is to hack their PAN and muck with their stuff. I've been playing a hacker for several months, and the only time I've been able to do it before one of my fellow runners blows their head off was when we were holed up in a hotel room and holding them off.

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You can turn wi-fi off temporarily or permanently or buy it without wi-fi. Turning it off means you have to manuelly turn it back on. Temporarily shutting it off can be programmed to turn back on after a specified time.

I dont really have any good idea's but i cant resist giving my opinion.

If the character has DNI to the device he can cancel out any bad things with a free action on his next IP. (limbs, eyeballs, implanted comms)

If the character has to go through a jack or implanted comm to communicate with the device then you have to fix it manuelly with a simple action. (smartgun, ??)

If the hacker is still in your PAN then your top priority is getting him out however you can with the last ditch effort a restart of your comms or of the device. Complex action?

I dont think it really matters what they do to your cyber, your either not gonna use it or cant use it unless your beating yourself in the face with your own cyberarm.

Think what could be done if somebody hacked your skill wires or wired reflexes.

Edward

Hmmmm!! Although i would never have my wired reflexes hooked up to anything capable of being hacked what about skillwires or skillsofts. Does that mean You could use comms to let everyone else have the same skillsofts?

I don't think it should be possible to hack most ware. Only stuff like eyes will accept data from the outside, much less commands. You tell your ware what to do via DNI and it should only listen to that channel for commands. Almost all ware will send out data like status reports, but why would a skill wire system accept any data from wifi if not instructed to do so via DNI? This makes no sense to me.

More entertaining than hacking someones skillwires would be to hack their Datajack and slot a virtual persona-fix BTL. But then there's not much in the way of rules or examples of what can and can't be done by hackers, so I wouldn't know how to go about doing that.

The reason you build things into systems that makes them capable of accepting input from other sources without initially getting the primary source's say-so is in case the interface gets fucked up.

If I take a round in the shoulder and it damages my DNI with my cyberarm, it'd be useful to be able to tell it "accept communication from other sources" without having to go through the (now non-functional) DNI to do it. If you've got your ultrasecure "one input governs all the other inputs" connection going on, you're screwed if that input gets interrupted, and you need access to something you've got installed in the cyberlimb.

If someone Crashes your cybereyes, you can't simply reactivate them with a free action. The Crash Device option takes, if memory serves, a full combat turn to recover from, and simply because you're mashing the "on" button repeatedly doesn't mean your cybereyes can reboot any faster.

Shrike: precisely why I refuse to get full cyber eyes with any character. I'd much rather take the individual essence hits so that I can't have my eyes shut down on me.

You can have cybereyes and make them unhackable. You just wont be able to use them for AR or to transmit things you see(which you can bypass also with a commlink or a dtajack and a optical disk.)

Because then you can just turn them off. That and I admit to having a hangup on cyber eyes. Even though they can probably be altered to look like normal eyes there is just something about having cybernetic eyes as opposed to good ol' flesh there.

The hacker in your head can just turn them back on again, sending you into a game of "who's got more IPs"... oftentimes, that's the hacker. If nothing else, you blow a lot of actions fighting to be able to see.

That works, but when you fire the commlink back up, you've got to re-subscribe it to all your devices. This means your smartgun link would cut out, your group comms would cut out, the AR uplink you've got telling you where the guards are would cut out, and you have to resubscribe to each of these things and each of your teammates individually... it's not an ideal solution.

It also doesn't keep the hacker from forcing his way back into your commlink the minute it's back online.

Or, keep everything skinlinked (at the cheap cost of 50¥ each) as well as wirelessly connected. Then, when an enemy hacker gets in and is mucking up stuff, turn off your commlinks wireless capability. No reboot, no cutout of other things such as smartlinks, and the hacker still gets booted.

Your comlink would still have to be wirelessly active to maintain your comms, your AR overlays with maps and such. Sure you still have your smartlink though.

Hacking 'ware is one of those things that's just going to have to be cleared up in Unwired, when it eventually comes out. Until then it's entirely up to the GM what a hacker can actually do, and provided s/he is fair in his/her application to both players and NPCs that's not unreasonable.

You ever wonder why M249's can accept M16 magazines, not just belt feeds?

Ever wondered why your computer has an external power switch and a reset button, rather than just relying on being able to say "restart"?

Ever wonder why a lot of car computers have built-in settings that the car defaults to when the emissions sensors start giving data that doesn't make sense?

Backups are there because shit breaks. Backup on a cyberarm that you've also got other gear tucked into isn't necessary at all... but it can get you killed if you don't have it. Your choice.

the persona-fix way is definitely more entertaining, I must admit

To protect against electronic attacks against my cyberware I rely on a simple
"No WiFi" policy. All cyberware WiFi is off by default and controlled through DNI.
You can't Hack what you cannot connect too.

To Provide WiFi connectivity between my cyberware and my external gear I have a datajack with an extended cable hooked up to a splitter and my commlink. This method allows me to have only one point of entry to my ware (the commlink) and makes it easy to prevent any sort of hacking attempts.

So far here are the items linked to my cyberware by way of a hardware splitter:

Gyromount
Commlink
Biomonitor

The method is cheap. non-invasive and is essentialy hack-proof.

Personally when I want to be at my most hacker proof I skin link all the cyber and all the weapons and a cheep com link with the transmitter disabled, if I don’t have implanted vision mods I would also have skin linked contacts with smart gun and vision systems.

I would then have a separate pan with no skin links containing my external use comlink (as secure as possible) some AR glasses, sub vocal mike and possibly a set of trodes or data jack (if data jack its not skin linked), now you will find that I have full AR access and multiple access paths to my cyber wear but combat systems can not be hacked.

So...aside from carelessness, how would a person's cyberware, skillwires or otherwise, be in danger of hacking? It doesn't seem like there's much reason to leave your cyberware all linked together via wireless. I mean, if you felt that you had to have your cybereyes linked up in order to share data with your team, you could still have the rest of you offline, so the worst that could happen is you'd be blind.

Yeah but what happens when you have a comm w/ sim module hooked up to your brain via trodes or datajack or implanted comm with all your cyber in its own seperate PAN. Can the hacker send signals through your brain to your non wi-fi cyber through DNI ?

For example:

Bob has a a comm w/ a sim module hooked up to an implanted comm in his head. He also has a cyberarm with wi-fi turned off. Bob's comm gets hacked. Can the hacker then send a signal to bob's cyberarm through his implanted comm which has DNI access essentially spoofing Bob's arm into thinking he told it to start smacking himself in the face with it? Now that hacker might have to have a simrig to record the arm movements or something but you get the idea.

See, I don't think you can hack a biological brain and nervous system. You can attack it in a more general way, with black IC, but the kind of exact, pinpoint control required to do any kind of "meat puppet" thing, or to properly access cyberware via the user's nervous system connections to the cyberware, doesn't seem likely to me. Your brain isn't running on binary code; the instructions just wouldn't be compatible.