while i was commenting on a matrix thread the other day, it dawned on me that both agents and users may be operating inside the simsense/asist code, not outside it.
as in, when a agent or person does something inside the matrix, its simsense that they interact with first, not the lower layers.
and when one starts to move down that path, one starts to think that security may be similar to a 3d game today. as in, you cant get in because simsense says your outside, any doorway is closed, and the walls are to be solid. now if you can pass a simsense signal that say that your inside, and make the node think that said signal is correct, then you have bypassed security.
in 3d shooters one often hear of aimbots or wall hacks. the former is unrelated to this, but the latter is in a way. it relies on the fact that most servers send the location of all players on the map, not only those that you can actually see at any one moment. this to ease the workload of the server among other things.
but a modified game client can then use this traffic to show the player where everyone is, no matter how many walls there are between his "persona" and the other one.
also, we more and more often hear about real life security issues related to javascripts. this is a programming system built into webpages to give them greater interactivity. these issues show that one does not have to drop down to the transport layer of the network (tcp/ip and similar) to create a security problem.
hell, phising are a email related problem that come from the "insecure" design of the email protocol. the default protocol do not require the sender to hand over the correct return address. therefor the mail can look like it comes from one source while it in fact come from a totally different source.
so im suspecting that outside of electronic warfare, the programs used by a 4th ed hacker more often then not work around simsense. its a system built to work with the human brain, and the human brain is notorious for not behaving in a set manner. therefor it may well be that there are all manner of exceptions put into simsense to cover this. and exception leads to bugs, and bugs are security problems that are just waiting to be found.