The SR2 and SR3 rules had a provision for hacking in through cameras and such in a world where everything was wired. It made sense. With the world now being wireless, however, the validity of some methods of entry seem odd. Specifically, lets say two people have a commlink. These commlinks have some cyberware, some gear, and each other subscribed. There is no matrix connection.

An enemy hacker uses Sniffer to monitor the airwaves and detects their conversation. Not happy enough with jamming or listening in, the enemy hacker decides he'd like to put an agent on their commlink to record everything they do. Sprites with the Cookie power wouldn't work because when they have no matrix connection Sprites de-rez.

Given this situation, do the two commlinks that lack a matrix connection on their subscription list have the ability to be hacked into merely by their transmissions to each other?

No, because Man-in-the-Middle attacks only have rules for wired connections.

The logical consequence would be though that most people on both sides of the law would use such a connection to network, and connect to the matrix through a a heavily-guarded single node.

So, all members of a team would only be subscribed to each other, and their matrix link would be run through the hacker's main commlink, or even a remote-server placed in a vehicle or secure shelter, and choke-full of IC and agents, or even hackers.

I thought you totally could by sniffing their traffic, decrypting it, spoofing yourself as one of the items subscribed then hacking yourself into a node from there?

Quick FYI: You don't need to be subscribed to communicate via commlink. That's considered normal use of the device. The only reason someone would need to subscribe to your commlink is if they needed User level or higher functions to manage the device. For example, your secretary would need to subscribe to your commlink and be given User access to manage appointments on your calendar. You might want to give her Security access to screen calls and route messaging. You would have Admin access to add/remove/modify accounts, turn off the firewall, turn the device on/off, etc.

Also, there aren't any rules for turning off subscription, but you can turn off wireless. Your commlink is almost a total waste at that point except where you can connect it to the matrix via skinlink/jack.

Subscribing bypasses the fact the runners have their commlinks running in Hidden mode.

Though so, too... but the actual rules for Sniffer on wired and wireless are different.

I thought the rules were pretty clear. They only talk about one level of communication between devices, and that's matrix level. There's more traffic going back and forth and the commlinks are not acting as walkie talkies. If you had a couple of simple radios it would be different, but these are two devices made to setup and share a matrix connection between themselves.
In short, yes, you could sniff and exploit and load an agent onto the commlinks, but you would have to exploit each one individually.

To answer the opening question:

yes, commlinks can connect to the Matrix but can also create ad-hoc network (network between machines without a central access point). You can do the same with Wifi today: you can connect your computer to the internet (or a local network) by connecting to an Access Point but you can also connect directly to another wifi computer (or device). You can even have 3 computer form a network together this way.

So you can have a hacker inserting himself in the ad-hoc local network created by two commlinks.

Blade is right, but it should be noted that the default connection type for the wireless martix is ad hoc. They do talk so much about the meshing, don't they

Looking at page 225 (Intercepting Wireless Signals), I think gives me a slightly different angle than I earlier stated. And really, it comes down to defining what the OP meant by hacking.

Per RAW, you can listen in, edit, block, etc the traffic between the two devices...but, it looks like you wouldn't be able to upload an agent or access the subcription list. You could spoof the other device and if they receving node accepts the request to upload the agent, I suppose you could do that, but it wouldn't be like "Hacking on the Fly" and accessing the device.

So I retract my previous thoughts on my initial response...I still consider this hacking, but you are obviously limited on what you can do, based on RAW.

Excellent perspectives... thanks everyone!

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Holy crap... do we have a consensus?

Sssshh, otakusensei... you'll jinx it!!!!

:-)

one point worth noting is that, at least as far as i can tell, if your node's wireless capabilities are not actually turned off, and you're in range of a node with a Matrix connection, you are connected to the Matrix whether you like it or not. you can't unsubscribe from the Matrix.

I guess that connecting even if your connection is not supposed to be accepted is all part of the high treshold for finding the hidden node and also part of the exploit process (which, according to the FAQ includes the subscription to the node).