So I have 2 questions regarding hacking. It says in the book that if you can overcome the copy protection on a program, then you can copy it indefinately. So does that mean if a hacker breaks the copy protection on a agent, or if they wrote the agent themselves, then could they copy the agent indefinite number of times and have an infinitely large army of agents at their beck and call? And couldn't megacorps do the same thing, assuming they write their own IC?

Second question is, is the hacker considered vulnerable on his own commlink? Or a better way of asking is, if someone hacks into your hackers commlink, can he use an attack/black hammer/blackout program against said hacker, even if the hacker is in another node (remember, hackers can be in mulitiple nodes at the same time, and is vulnerable in each one)? If so, it seems like a nice way to blindside the hacker, since he is focusing on whatever node he is trying to hack and not realizing that he himself has been hacked. Also, makes it important for the hacker to put a guarding agent/IC on his own commlink for defense (or, put an indefinate number of agents on it).

You can only have a limited number of agents subcribed to your comlink at one time. The same would be true on a node.
The second problem is that if all your agents are plain clones if a hacker finds a security flaw via exploit on one agent. He has access to them all as they all share the same security flaw.

The comlink would be vulnerable but the hacker is currently in another node. So I don't actually know if the hacker could be attacked by that direction. A smart foe would attack the comlink its self while the hacker's attention is else where.

And also, if you hack into someone elses commlink, can you steal the programs that they are running? seems much cheaper than going to your fixer and buying that black-hammer 6 program.

If you were to do that, would you first have to break the copy protection to make a copy of it, or would they try to use their program and find that it had gone missing?

I could just see the following:

H1 has hacked into H2's commlink, and H2 spots him

H2: Ah ha, I see you, now prepare to face the wrath of my black hammer-6
H2: ...
H2: Where the hell did it go...
H1: What, you mean this one?
H1 kills H2 with his own black hammer-6

You'd have to break the copy protection, which might take some time. You'd also have to hack the comlink to allow the data transfer.
I doubt you could steal it while the program is running. Generally you can't copy a program while its in use and even if you can its usually not a good idea.

What if he wasn't running it at the time, didn't want to slow down his response.

a further question. it says that system is limited by response, you can only have system x 2 programs running at a time, and every (system rating) programs you have running reduces your response by 1.

So, if you have response 5,system 5, and you run 10 programs (max for system 5), then your response drops by 2, to 3. but your system is limited by your response, so your system drops to 3. With the a system of 3, you can only run 6 programs, so you have to unload 4 of them. But then, with fewer programs running, your response increases to 4. So your system increases to 4 as well. So you can run 2 more programs, giving you a total of 8 programs.

Following this logic, it seems that with a system with response 5, system 5, you can actually only run a total of 8 programs. Is there something wrong with my logic? Is the decrease in response not supposed to cause a decrease in the system?

There is a flaw in my logic, you can run more than system x 2 programs, just not more than system x 2 subscriptions. Let me change my logical flow.

from the point where response is at 3 and system is at 3 at have 10 programs running. with 10 programs running and a system of 3, response will be decreased again to 2. So system gets decreased to 2. So with 10 programs running and a system of 2 and a base response of 5, response gets decreased to 0. So, if you have 10 programs running on your system, your system crashes.

following logic with the following format
response/system/programs
with 9 programs
5/5/9
4/5/9
4/4/9
3/4/9
3/3/9
2/3/9
2/2/9
1/2/9
1/1/9
0/1/9
0/0/9

So with 9 programs, the system crashes again

try with 8

5/5/8
4/5/8
4/4/8
3/4/8
3/3/8

at that point it works fine, but you are left with a response and system of 3 each

5/5/7
4/5/7
4/4/7

at that point it is fine as well, so with 7 programs, you have response/system of 4
same goes with 6 and 5. 4 and fewer programs gives you response/system of 5

I am hoping that the reduction in response doesn't cause a reduction in system, but no such mention is made in the rules

aren't circular dependencies great

Well I just house ruled it to say that you can have one agent on your commlink but past that each one drops your response by 1 because they are so complex.

One of the problems the base system has is that it treats all programs of the same rating as the same size. A rating 4 paint program wouldn't be as big as a rating 1 agent.

Maybe instead of complexity it could have a reponse modifier. Maybe take your rating and add or subtract something to reflect how much it impacts the response.

Maybe take response x 10. Then system rating +5, paint rating -3, firewall +1, Agent +6, etc. Then you could have a better idea of how much space things are taking. Each 10 points lowers the effective reponse by 1.

The commlink rules are not a spiral of death. The correct calculation is the following.

Response 5 Commlink:

4 Programs = Response 5
5 Programs = Response 4
10 Programs =Response 3
15 Programs = Response 2
20 Programs = Response 1
25 Programs = OS Crash at Response 0

So you can safely run 9 programs at a Response 5 commlink but it EFFECTIVE response is cut to 4 for calculating maximum program rating ans system rating.

Well, I was talking about launching his programs FOR him if you successfully penetrated his defenses, rather than a straight forward attack.

It requires a simple action to issue a command to a commlink right? So you can't just hack in and open "a bunch" of programs. You have to open them one at a time... And the enemy hacker could open them as you close them, or instead of messing around with silly tricks he could just attack your icon while you open his progs one at a time...