There are active RFID tags now that are the size of a quarter with a year-long standard battery life.

Yeah, but SR batteries have The Power of Plot.

Okay, yeah, that equipment entry is very poorly worded. And probably was not updated after the addition of Signal Rating 0, which I argued for during playtesting.

I'll have to see about getting that some errata attention.

It should not be saying there are microscopic Signal Rating 1 RFID tags. Those aren't supported by the rules.

where does it say anything about microscopic?

It's not really important, now I've thought about it, Spike. I guess I just felt a little like you were suggesting this was the only realistic method, and I felt that was rather exclusionary, like you were saying "I've worked out the most realistic approach to this setting".

If you are interested my original question was along the lines "What's the point of delineating these two approaches?"

I mean no disrespect as they're very detailed and clearly took you some time, but arguing that "it's more realistic" doesn't really cover it, as the whole setting is fantastic. Sure, one can extrapolate from current wireless technology to guess how SR4 tech works in theory, and then impose certain security responses based upon it, but this is just theorising, and it's no less realistic to approach it differently.

Myself, I encourage a runner team to maintain as much radio silence as possible, only exchanging digital information when the sh!t hits the fan. The hacker, I presume, has adequately good equipment to mask his interference, encrypting his signal and piggybacking on existing signals or some such. Other runners might have bought adequate software and hardware to also hide their communication, but they're unlikely to have the nuyen or the skills to use them until they're prime runner material.

Ornot:

The purpose, if you will, is to delineate the 'perfect' endstate, the 'prime runner' skills that runners should start developing as early as they can in their careers. Ideally any runner who has reached the status of 'prime Runner' should be able to go either way depending on the needs of the job, mastering both skill sets.

Any runner can, and should, reduce their signal profile on jobs as much as possible. Clean out those excess 'fun' nodes in their clothing, use Commlink networks only when 'safe' or necessary. The hacker should be aiming at 'total E-War Spec' out of the box if that is his primary duty. Every runner should, if only because it's cheap and easy, begin picking up hacking skills as a secondary skill set, again aiming at E-War.

I didn't say that every run, or every fresh out of the box runner, should be required to be 'LN or E-war'

But descring half way states is sort of silly. You talk about the goals. Players in team sports talk about how they will win the game, not how they will 'try to win' the game.

As I pointed out in the 'E-War' portion, even the experts at counter-signal work will still strip down to only what is needed for the job. And nothing stops them from going in Luddite Ninja and going total E-War when the job goes Sour. They aren't mutually exclusive; they are tools every runner should develop.


Does that help?

Thanks Spike. I think I was just being rather sensitive in some ways before.

I still think that a large part depends on what assumptions one makes about how SR4 tech works, and I don't think it any more unrealistic to assume that all you need to do is a couple of spoofing rolls to prevent being traced just by your very presence in a facility. The rules are very abstract after all, and the tech does not exist today at the level seen in SR, so quite how it would actually work, and how one could avoid or exploit it is not at all set in stone.

I appreciate that if one makes the assumptions about wireless tech in SR4 that you have, one would need to adopt some measure of the tactics you describe to infiltrate any competently defended corp facility.

I've been wrestling with these issues myself, as I'm starting an SR campaign soon and haven't played SR since 3rd edition was new. Even then, I had more SR 1 & 2 experience, so the wireless world and the wonky rules are a bit daunting.

I agree that RFID tags weren't well thought-out. Real tags only respond to signals, and generally don't do any computation. The SR sensor tags, I'm assuming, are coded to respond to a very specific set of sensor readings and then transmit -- anything more and you really need something that can run a Pilot program. I don't see stealth tags as anything more magical than a tag with a password, essentially. Once transmitting, it's about as detectable as anything else, although maybe a bit harder if rigged to transmit on oddball frequencies as the text says. For that matter, I'd think a little bit of Hardware hackery could fairly quickly turn a normal RFID tag into a stealth tag, just by changing the signal-response logic.

For my game, the general Spoofing the Datatrail rules (p.224) appear sufficient for 90% of infiltrations. A little bit of Matrix recon to lift actual employee access IDs would help a lot too, so long as no one is checking that Bob Smith appears to be in two places at once. Even better, add temporary employee records matching whatever IDs the 'runners are spoofing. As long as you aren't giving them secure access, basic HR databases should be pretty easy to hack, except at the most secure installations, and wouldn't be audited very often.

I dunno. HR databases are currently the most sensitive, if only because they are the biggest targets. You constantly hear about them being hit now... and I don't think it's because no one cares.

hmm, interesting thought. copy the access id of some cleaning drone

sure its a signal there, but its just a cleaning drone doing the rounds. err, now there are 5-6 of them clustered together...

Don't discount good old social engineering too. You don't always need to hack your way into a database to get the data changed the way you want.

On a similar note, how often do you think corp security would audit employee IDs? Say you have some 'runners spoofing some "good enough" commlink IDs while infiltrating a location. Obviously there would be access points that would actively check commlinks and possibly need other credentials (biometrics, passcode, etc.) plus deal with guards and things like MAD and cyberwear scanners. Given how cheap it would be, both monetarily and computationally, to have loads of hidden sensors scanning for commlinks and auditing ID info, why wouldn't this spoofing be detected incredibly quickly? Or are we to assume the rules abstract this enough that it shouldn't even come up, and I should just wave my hands and move on?

Gah, I really wish Unwired was out and addressed these huge holes. I'm not a big fan of running games that I have to ad hoc rule on 50% of what my players are likely to do, and potentially spend large portions of gametime arguing rather than playing.

hmm, true. one could stuff sensors in every door frame, drones in every room and so on.

one can in theory make a building into fort knox, but is it worth it?

i can see the billboards allready.

"come work for SK, live under SK protection, never have to worry about ID theft again"

that is as long as you only shop in company owned shops and all that...

Why would you want to stop in another company's shops? Everybody else's products are inferior, anyway.

I'd let my players use the satellite uplink trick as a distraction, but a corpsec team is gonna be going out and picking up that thing as a matter of priority as soon as they can triangulate its position (not hard). not a bad diversionary tactic - get a team of meat-guards off base when you go in.

it seems like if there's no hacker running the semi-frequent spoof then things deserve to just go horribly wrong. the technology aspects presented by spike are really intriguing and I can see alot of sound thought behind his initial post.

if the team has a hacker, just watch for those spoof checks - if the hacker stops doing them on a semi-frequent basis then hit the team as if the security knew right where they were. shut down the street sams wired reflexes on him and get busy reminding the hacker to remember to do his job at covering the tracks next time.

that's what I kinda see this thread resolving into as far as how I believe I'll apply it (hint to my players who're reading this).

thanks again spike.

Well if the sammy is stupid enough not to take the rather simple steps necessary to ensure that his/her cyberware is virtually unhackable then you need to get a new sammy after selling the current one to a group of organ leggers post mortum.

Although personally I'm in the camp of not allowing a Sat Uplink to have a range of 100km for ground based Signal, (I'm assuming that whoever wrote the stats simply didn't think about how high of a Rating it really needed to reach orbit and threw a number out there bigger then anything a commlink could do.) something to remember is that in the Sixth World might makes right and the corps have access to bigger and better lawyers then you do.

Now, yes you could place your stat uplink in such a manner that it would appear to belong to another corp, but then Corp B would be perfectly within rights to take it out, ect...

Not saying that it couldn't be done, but it wouldn't be as easy to get away with it as I read people making it out to be.

it doesn't have to be common. it's got a 100 mile radius that it hits.

and quite frankly, that missile going into an apartment building might go over fine in the barrens, but that's a whole different story from a AAA area, which is where people have money for that sort of thing anyways.

overt acts such as you are describing are the kind of thing that gets you ripped to shreds, not because john q public has lawyers and spin doctors, but because Ares Macrotechnology, Renraku Computer Systems, Evo, Horizon, and so forth all have lawyers and spin doctors whose job it is to make life a living hell for Aztechnology every single time they do something stupid in public.

it's a fragging LEGAL item. you don't even need a permit to own one. if the corps didn't want people to have and use them, they bloody well wouldn't be selling them to every damn idiot who wants better reception for their wireless matrix connection, they'd be restricting the stupid things. the simple fact that you can buy one without even leaving a paper trail from a regular store should really clearly demonstrate that the corps don't exert any control whatsoever on who gets a fragging satellite link.

I believe I'm going to run sat links as if they have a ground based signal of 3 (as per its device rating) and a signal rating of 8 so that it may establish contact with a low orbit satellite (this in a similar fashion to a laser microphone - satellite uplinks have to be aimed). regardless of the arguments, this is how I interpret it, so it's how it'll get played in my campaign world.

as far as the argument that a corpsec team can't go and pick it up since it's 'off base' is concerned; it is an overt breach in security. flooding a shielded corporate facility with public matrix access is a critical breach, and if the facilities security teams didn't have the gumption to send a team out to restore matrix security, then I'm sure a local lone star/knight errant patrol would be swift in arriving to deactivate the sat uplink and restore the facilities security. afterall, the sat uplink has to be equipped with rating 3 ECCM which is not exactly legal as it's a 'hacking' program.

the way I'm choosing to run it for my players, doing this would require aiming the dish at a corporate facility (not into the sky) and load an ECCM 3 program into the uplink - this would be something seen as a direct threat to a facilities security and would provoke a response based on this fact. ...seems reasonable to me, correct me if and where I'm wrong.

***edit***

another thought - so the runners set up a sat uplink to crack the virtual walls of the facility they need into. since the public matrix floods into the facility, can't the security team just run a quick scan to virtually locate the uplink from within the matrix then just send a hacker over to crash it and call it a day? if the uplink comes back online then just dealing with it by sending a corpsec team or calling lonestar to deal with the security breach seems like it'd take care of the problem.

at any rate, seems like it'd be a successful diversion.

Another thing to keep in mind is that a satellite uplink is a, well...satellite uplink. It's hardwired to send the signal in a method can be picked up, interpreted by and forwarded by a fairly specific set of (expensive) services and switching centers. Why do I mention this? I mention this because you can't just take an off-the-shelf uplink unit and use it to blow through any jamming your team might have. It has to synch with the receiver, which is typically hauling ass around the planet, and be within line of sight to work right. That's right, satellite uplinks are LOS.

So you can calmly tell your players that it ain't that easy...
Mark(psycho)Phipps( HAHAHA! )

hmm, good point. so the only way you could 'get inside' a building with one is say, aiming it thru a window to pick up a node on the inside of the building or something. at that point the corp hackers could just isolate where the breach is and lock that node out of the system, effectively making the building again 'offline' to public matrix access.

still, most sites aren't so extreme as this. they aren't 100% offline facilities. there's public comm lines running in and out of the building, Joe Schmo can make a commlink call home to his wife from his cubicle without having to walk outside to get a signal to the outside world.

I can understand having a R&D department in a facility that's shielded with rating 10 wallpaper, but shielding the building as a whole? probably not.

And who owns satellites? I would be very wary to involve a fragging satellite in my SHADOW operation... Particularly in runs against Ares or Yamatetsu

Cheers

Max

the satellite link thing doesn't breach security directly at all. you still can't access the stuff inside. wifi inhibiting wallpaper is still good for security, because it keeps your network in no problem.

in order for me to be able to manipulate your wireless network, it isn't enough for me to be able to transmit in, you have to be able to transmit out to me.

the purpose is not to get the signal in so you can hack, it's to clutter up things with wireless noise so that when you go in, your signal is not the only one there. if you wanted to hack the system, you'd have to put a satellite link *inside* their facility, broadcasting out, in which case it's on their property and of course they'll do something about it.

as far as the corporations sending in black ops to take out people's satellite links to prevent the wireless noise from making it harder to detect when a new network comes in, i don't think so. it's not worth it to hire shadowrunners or even to send in a corporate team every time someone sets up a satellite link.

now if you want to rule that the satellite link actually has a signal rating of 3 for normal purposes, then that's fine (not what the rules say, but i can certainly understand the reasoning behind it), but the fact is, a satellite link is not a legitimate threat to corporate security directly, and legitimate channels won't do anything to stop them from being used. (if legitimate channels were worth bringing to bear, it would at least be a restricted item). black ops to go attack some rich kid's treehouse and destroy his satellite link are a bit pricey, and ultimately a bit risky (sooner or later you will slip up, and either a reporter will catch you, or LS will catch you, or whatever... and then you have to start bribing people, sending teams to kill the reporter, and so forth).

all in all, i see no reason the satellite link wouldn't be a reasonably common piece of equipment, which means that in any corp with wifi inhibiting gear of rating 8 or less, it is entirely possible that there is enough traffic within the facility to make it at least a slightly difficult search to find your signal, isolate it, and track it.