It's pretty straightforward to get your commlinked hacked or hack someone elses. In fact given enough time it's almost impossible to stop.

Now I figure the reason corp systems don't get hacked by everyone with a decent stealth program and hacking 1 is because they have tiered systems. You can spend hours at the basic system(which may also have usefull stuff sometimes) but once you get inside and start on the next tier you run the risk of running into always active IC, Agents, or security deckers keeping an eye on the place.

I was wondering if something like that is possible with personal comlinks. You have one comlink with all your stuff on it. Than attach it to a second via fibre and use the second comlinks wireless. In the second comlink is just a very mean always active IC looking for people trying to access the primary comlink (give it periodic matrix perception tests or something against a hacker).


Does all that sound right? I'm just making the transition to SR4 now.

So the commlink that is connected with a wire will trust everything that comes over a wire, and not any wireless transmissions?

Of course I chained my comlink - to my wrist, it would be bad if some pickpocket lifted it (The chain isn't thick enough to really hinder a determined assailant, since I prefer loosing the comlink to getting my hand cut of...)

The FAQ topic does not even mention wireless connections. It's about subscribing/slaving. It starts with:

But if a node has its wireless connectivity shut down, running only within the boundaries of itself, sort of like it being a wired system and not part of the Matrix. If that wourld were connected to another node through optic cables and that other node was wireless capable then you can access the first non-wireless node only through that second wireless node. Or by actually being in the first node.

This also can translate to commlinks, as originally asked. If 'link A has its wireless shut off but is connected to commlink B by an optic cable, and commlink B has its wireless on, then you can only wirelessly access commlink A by first going through commlink B. The only other way to get at commlink A is if you get the actual commlink and directly hack into it.

Which basically kills the concept of chocke points. As per the FAQ, you will never ever have to hack anything except the node you want to break in, even if it is behind 5 nodes of high security chokepoints. And as you can always probe a target to gain admin access, you have a 83% to hack into every node there is with any access to the matrix without being noticed, as admin that has, also per FAQ (which I think is OK), no restrictions.

Good bye security.

You can also directly hack into any cyberware, bypassing the comlink.

That is not what I want. Thats why Im writing SGMs.

What you do... is put all your important stuff on one commlink... and put it in Hidden mode.... and have another link.. thats completely out in the open with a little bit of normal stuff... first off a normal scan will pop up your 'link... finding the hidden 'link tho.. is just ridciulously hard to find given the fact that they have no idea what to look for.. besides "hidden nodes" then in all that they have to search for what ever yours might be.... Cuts back on the wiz kid tring to hack into everything.

And whos gunna keep hacking away when they find your node anways.. and notice that its pretty basic?

People who are not stupid.

The point is, the one wireless node in the chain acts as a router to the wired nodes.
So even if the node doesn't accept wireless signals, it still accepts the signals routed from the one wireless node...

I have ruled that if a wired node is attached to a wireless node, then you must first go through the wireless node to reach the wired one. It is like the wired node is an external hard drive on your computer, the only way to access it is to go through your computer, and if your computer is part of a netwrok then others can go though your computer to access said hard drive. But if your computer has a security system in place to limit people from accessing the hard drive, then they first have to get through that security to reach the hard drive.

Ok I can kind of see bypassing the first node. After all trafic is passing through it to the second, which is how the whole of the internet/matrix works. So someone using stealth or whatever to pretend to be that traffic could interact with the second device.

However what's with all the netword security talk on p223 about then? Is it just FAQed away?

Ah well I suppose it makes for more interesting running when you have to get the decker their in person.

And since any system can be comprimised at the admin level by copying a stealth 5 program a few times and sending out some kids with hacking 1 it makes sense that anything remotly useful would be held in offline storage.

I don't understand this strong desire for a tiered network with chokepoints. There really isn't much of a reason to have chokepoints at all if you have a sufficiently large node.

Without chokepoints:
The entire network for a large office building could be a single node with a firewall rating of 8. This basically becomes the threshold to do anything on that network, from modifying security feeds to opening doors to downloading files. The emphasis now becomes centered on rolling to accomplish something every time a point on the run comes up where you need to accomplish that task. A kid with stealth-6 can't hack the network without physically being in the building (or some other creative equivalent). Also, in the case of 0 signal items such as cameras and maglocks, you may have to be physically right next to the damn thing to establish a good connection.

With chokepoints:
The entire network for a large office building goes through a single node, located somewhere in the building. The hacker must still be in the building, although now its a little harder to explain why he needs to be right next to a maglock or camera instead of somewhere in the lobby. After all, if the camera is conncted to the chokepoint, and the hacker is connected to the chokepoint, all of the hacker's actions can be taken from a janitor's closet for all anyone cares. The kid with stealth 6 is still not an issue, because he needs to be in the building. To hack in, a hacker needs to access the high firewall node ( firewall 8 ), then access another host, and then do his thing. But why stop there? Let's have 5, 10, 20, 50, 5,000 chokepoint hosts with firewall 8s. I'm sure the player won't mind - he loves rolling d6s, right? Let's just have a little game with him for the next hour or so, while the other players wait patiently.

By the way, I meant for that to read as ( firewall 8 ), not (firewall . I don't smile often...

I think you should be clear then that you're talking about house rules and modifying the game from how it is when you're discussing something like that then. There's a risk you will be giving someone a false impression if you don't indicate that you are suggesting a house rule.

Alright, just so it's clear: My stance that the owner of a PAN can turn "mesh networking" on and off for devices on their PAN when they turn off wireless connectivity for that device, based on such concepts as "Rather than allowing any stranger access to all of your electronics, anyone that wants to interact with your PAN must connect to your commlink first," and "Not all networks are configured as mesh networks" which may be found respectively on p.212 and p.223 of the rulebook that we all paid good money for must certainly be houserules, because they apparently contridict an answer given in a FAQ that any given Shadowrun player may or may not even see depending on how net-savvy their gaming group is.

A answer, by the way, to a question phrased in the terms of subscription lists, and not terms of Mesh Network vs. Tiered Network, so there's the distinct possibility that the Line Developer may not have realized that that's what the question was really about.

Happy now?

Very!

/signed.

There is one little interesting tidbit though. Pilots and Agents technically have their own persona since they have their own Hardware, Software, System, Signal and Response making up their OWN persona.

So, if hacker A has no subscription to Drone A then Drone A could still have a subscription to Hacker A.

This would of course mean that in order for a two-way communication BOTH devices would have to have a subscription.

This poses a few problems since nodes are also devices and must have their own subscription lists in order to have any kind of two-way communication (send / receive data). This would in that case limit any matrix connection to System X2 users at once which is completely unrealistic.

So, do you really need a subscription list in order to just browse the net? Well, according to the FAQ you DO.

Well, at least for my part, I got most of this covered in my sgm 1.0. As for RAW, I have no idea.

I know this was a dead thread, but I just noticed something today that I feel adds to the discussion.

The thing I don't get about this whole daisychaining of commlinks business is why you need to hack the second (hard-wired) commlink. The first (wireless) commlink is a trusted subscriber to the second commlink. So surely if you've hacked the first commlink - which is communicating with the second commlink - you can just send data or commands to the second commlink with impunity? You don't need to penetrate the second firewall as data from the first commlink must be allowed to access the second commlink.

With 'ware however, you need to hack the commlink first as 'ware has a puny signal, and you need to hack the 'ware seperately as you're trying to interact with it in a non-normal manner and effectievly break it.

But then I was never into hacking in the older SRs as it generally got glossed over with a few dicerolls by the GM. And I also have fairly limited understanding of modern day computer security protocols.

I imagine one of the reasons why more corps aren't hacked is because their active security crashes anyone they catch. I'm inclined to beleive that high ranking hacking programs are usually pretty rare, as if they were common corps would develop a means to defeat them and they wouldn't be high ranking anymore. If you equip a bunch of kids with a state of the art hacking utility you may gain access, but you are unlikely to find anything valuable before being spotted and booted and the corp in questio will fix whatever needs fixing in their firewall so your hacking utility ain't so useful anymore.

Also, if you're trying to base your view on the fact that the part of the FAQ that said "Hack the commlink first" was talking about hacking cyberware, and the part of the FAQ that said "you can skip to the last device" was talking about chained commlinks, I would just like to point out that the section for hacking cyberware provides guidelines for "hacking cyberware (or any device, really)" (emphasis added). Last time, I looked, a commlink was a device.

The only way that I can see to resolve the conflicting answers is to consider the question about chained commlinks to be an explanation of how mesh networking works, but that mesh networking is not the only option available, as mentioned in the section of the book that points out the possiblity of tiered networks and reinforced by the section of the FAQ that describes the requirements for hacking cyberware and/or a device.

My point about having to hack 'ware twice was based more along the lines that in many circumstances you're trying to make the 'ware do stuff it won't normally do, for example freeze up in the case of an arm or go solidly black for extended periods in the case of cyber eyes.

What I didn't understand was how having a second commlink protected your first one. I think I get that you have the first one able to access the second and send data through it, but have the second only able to accept data and route it back to the first, without being able to access any of the files on it. This does seem to leave a hacker that has appropriated admin control over the second commlink able to send normal commands to the first, analyse the data that is being transmitted through the second, and spoof data from the second, although it does safeguard any data on the first commlink and prevents the hacker from accessing 'ware which is only lnked to the first commlink. Of course, like I said before, I'm not a computer software/security person and may be misunderstanding how all these things work.

Regarding the rarity of programs: It's true that high level hacking programs don't have a very high availability, which, if anything is rather misleading. Surely if a high level hacking prorgam was that easy to get hold of, surely the 2070 equivalent of Norton or whatever would get it, analyse it and send out a fix for all their subscribers? Consequently a hacker would have to experiment with any software they wanted to hack to find new weak points all the time, or buy new hacking programs frequently, as fixes were implemented and their old software became obselete.

I still have to object on grounds of game play that having a benefit for wearing a belt full of commlinks tiered if useful would hurt the game. Serbitar's concept that the rules should acount for all varieties of trickery by including that trickery in ratings rather than forcing the players to be tricksters in a field they are less compitant in than either their players or their player's software designers.