When the security system picks up the commlinks on the array of wireless signal sensors things won't get so good for them. Because the security system knows roughly (like within a few meters) where they are in real time and will provide this to to the operator, just like it's supposed to. Which means that at the very least the inside team can do a divide and conquer, killing at least two of the opposing team without loss.

With a little more effort they are inside their network and see exactly what they see and know exactly where they are.

And if you don't start communication once you own the building you are idiots.

Bah Scratch barely knows how to turn a commlink on let alone use the damn thing. He manages fine. He tells people what to do and they make it happen.
Ever notice that some Execs don't even have computers in their offices? I have, they don't really need em. IRL the richest person on the planet doesn't even use a computer. I think he's doing ok.

Yes I know they're not doing Shadowruns. The point is in the 2070's it's too damn easy to get the tech turned against you. Hell screw the commlinks I'm more worried about our rigged drone guns being subverted and turned on us.

So Helu got confirmed ?

Anyway no more OT from me.

Yeah, he did, in a recent Fortune article. Read it just a couple weekends ago. Poor Bill Gates, having to mill around with the rest of us not richest people in the world.

In the SR3 book Matrix 2.0, there was a profile of a hacker named Anubis, worked for Chimera, who specialised in assasinations using a similar method. But I no longer have that book, and can't recall how exactly he did it...I think it may have been some special chip he cooked up, and when the target loaded it into his deck, it scrambeled his brains.

10k of a denomination your your choice buys my silence.

You are hereby granted ten thousand karma points. You may spend them however you wish. However, it is not my problem if you can't find anyone to train your skills, initiate you, increase your attributes, etc.

I disagree with the interpretation on the grounds that if the device in question is powered down, there's nothing to power the wireless to let the intruders do their thing.

Likewise, say I have all my cyberware setup with an insertable dongle that talks with the 'ware and handles the wireless. If I don't have the dongle installed, my 'ware doesn't have any wireless transmission / reception capability. Once again, those nano intruders have nothing to work with.

In all the years of gaming with the group I was in, despite the fact that we were all a horrid bunch of powergamers who could rules lawyer with the best of them, we never ran into problems with loopholes because we also used a liberal dose of common sense.

In my scan of those nano toys, it was my initial understanding that if the device was powered on or otherwise set in a wireless receive mode, then they could do their thing. If the device was wireless disabled / removed / rendered inoperable / powered off, then they could not make it talk on the wireless.

To say it could make them do so anyways is much like saying your mouth was surgically removed but getting sprayed with these guys will simply put a new mouth there. Kinda goes beyond the perceived intention IMO.

That's why I disagreed with that thread despite its eventual outcome. Off is Off.

PS: Check out the latest iPhone news about Off is Off...

darthmord. Activators can turn on your gear, and activate the wireless connection. If your gear is disabled (bullet through it, battery taken out) they can't, and if you have taken out the wireless connection (an extended hardware test, something i wouldn't allow replicatable with a dongle) they can't.

If you had a dongle that "authenticated" for use of wireless, they could turn it on, by making the processor think it was authenticated. Thusly, you would in fact, be susceptible to activators. If you didn't want to be, for cyberware, you would need to have the wireless removed. This is described on pg 304 in SR4.

What I was thinking of in terms of a dongle was a much like a PCMCIA wireless card. Open the slot, slide the card in. The hardware itself is wireless incapable but it can talk to a device slotted in that *IS* wireless enabled.

Without the card, no wireless of any kind as no wireless hardware is in the system.

That's modern day 2007 tech. Something they surely would have in 2070. Sometimes, you want a feature that you can control like that. That comes up in everyday useage NOW. I can only imagine it as being moreso in the ever connected world of 2070.

The intruders still have the problem of needing to be in contact with the item. This brings us back to hacking the trodes into VR, changing modes and then getting the trodes within 1 meter of the signal transmitter, as all connectivity is limited by the lowest signal rating.

darthmord, the fact that disabling wireless is a test, would prevent me from allowing you to bypass having to make that test (and spend the time). Its a test so you can't just flip it back and forth. Spend the time to do it.

Intruders are a nanite bishop. They touch it when you squirt them on. They're in contact. They intrude, and turn on its wireless. Yes, if its signal rating is 0, you've gotta get within 3 meters, but that doesn't mean you can't do it.

Considering how small I've seen some of the cards go in physical size already...

1 Complex Action to insert / remove the wireless card.

Not terribly hard / difficult. Heck, even my 6 year can do that.

But it brings us back to the point where RL vs Game inevitably causes the game to break down when common sense from RL is introduced to the picture. In many cases, this is because the people who made the game don't have the specialized knowledge in the various venues of technology that many of the end-users like yourself and me have.

But not once did I state it needed to not take any time. I fully expect a small amount of time would need to be spent inserting / removing the card. But given that wireless is CURRENTLY (2007) modular and quite useful in that regard, it would be nonsensical to remove that ability.

So why again doesn't my cyberarm have an expansion port for a wireless card? Why again can I not get one?

darthmord, maybe because of the complexity required for the advanced wireless network, such a card has to be substantionally advanced, (particularly since all computing is optical) and thusly, the "disable" test COULD in fact be pulling out an expansion card from the device.

A 6 year old can shoot a gun too. They can even hit someone with it. But theres still a test for that. The same as there is a test for disabling wireless.

Noone says you can't ever have one. I'm saying going to any lengths to NOT be connected to the allmighty intertron in a cyberpunk game is like worrying your encryption might fail.

You can't by RAW because its not in the book.

I can. All my cyber is uses wires and not wireless and I am deeply unhappy about that. But since I am a professional trained ninja I know lots about hacking. Back in ninjaschool the fist implant I got was a cyberarm with smuggling compartment and a wireless (!!) datajack, now usually I have lots of smokebombs inside my smuggling compartments, but since my next job will be sneaking into Mitsuhama main corporate host and totally flipping out, I do the math and buy a couple of credsticks. 25 Nuyen for a 6/6/6/6 node sure seems cheap so with the rest of the money I can buy an agent and the all the matrix programs. After loading all these with agents I hide them on my body and proceed plug the "Sweet Dance Moves" (1) Knowsoft (since it is "electronical or mechanical" I'll go ahead and assume that "as a rule ... it has a wireless-enabled computer in it" p304 SR4) into my datajack. Now Im connected to the Matrix. No hardware test involved at all.
If you want to make one though you could probably convince a GM to allow you to remove the knowsoft part from the knowsoft while just keeping the wireless enabled computer part.

Not very complicated is it ?

EDIT- NM

Yes Sma. That datajack takes up capacity in your cyberlimb. And yes, you can plug the knowsoft in, to allow your datajack access to wireless. It still doesn't make your cyberarm wireless.

Your cyberarm isn't wireless, the knowsoft is. Your cyberarm is just connecting through the knowsoft.

The easiest way to black hammer grandma, is pin her down, stick trodes on her, and do it that way.

No, the easiest way involves a troll, a sledgehammer, and a can of spray paint.

I love the thread title, for no reason.

- der menkey

Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter.
~ Ernest Hemmingway

me too.

And remember the possibility of blackhammering anyone with a datajack or working trodes still stands proud. Not negligible for any hacker IMO

Cheers,

Max

hmmm... clearly, when i first brought this up, i did it the wrong way... because when *i* first commented that hackers could send black IC signals to anyone wearing trodes (provided the hacker had a hot sim module), everyone was in a mad rush to say it was impossible.

perhaps if i had started off with black hammer deth rayz™ people would have been more accepting =)

in any case, i would have to argue that any signal rating on a set of electrodes is referring to how far away they can communicate with a device. so if, for some reason, you have trodes with signal 8, and a commlink with signal 8, you could access your commlink via DNI from up to 100 km away. the trodes would still have to be right on your head though.

<reads thread>

You know, this is why my 50 year old shadowrunner, who had all his 'ware installed BEFORE all this wireless crap came about, refuses to upgrade.

His cyberarm might be an antiquated dinosaur, but you won't see anyone hacking that from 50 paces away. And it's going to be hard hacking his headware when it don't have wireless parts at all unless he plugs in his commlink via datajack.

And now, since people are talking about beaming signals right into his brain, I think he will get a Faraday cage installed in his skull.

Humph.


-karma

well, as per the rules today it¡s a little bit unclear how it works. I guess this "technique" now HAS to be addressed in much needed upcoming books as UNWIRED. [hope I am yelling loud enough for any developers out there]

In my game, however, I will allow it if it ever comes up. I always wanted hackers to be more powerful and direct. [and I am speaking about brainfrying DNIs, not the luddite grandmother deathray]

Cheers,

Max

This is the logical fallacy of the pro-brainfry contingent: the straw man. And in most cases, I think the straw man is entirely unintentional. Let me explain myself.

The issue at stake here isn't just 'can a decker kill someone who ordinarily believes themselves to be impervious to matrix-based attacks.' It's 'can a decker affect a living metahuman target which is not connected to the matrix, using the matrix alone to achieve the effect.'

It is certainly easier to shoot a victim than to hack them, no matter which theory of this thread you're using. No amount of hacking automation is going to be easier than 'aim, pull, death'. There are, however, a number of things that commlinks can do that guns cannot. Foremost amongst these is the Black Hammer program. A large amount of people on this thread are treating it as 'just another way to kill a guy', which is probably due to Frank's original post. But have we forgotten the powers of psychotropic black hammer? Psychotropic black hammer that, by the OP, is utterly indefensible against save by those who already know the attack is incoming, and therefore can use EW? Let's look at some of the problems with the entire basis of this idea:

1) Electronics Warfare is not 'armor'.
Maybe it's just me, but Counterspelling is a skill with no real-world equivalent, so I can see it being useful for blocking attacks. EW is almost by definition a proactive activity. There's very few ways I could rationalize the use of EW in the same fashion as spell defense dice. EW activities include signal scrubbing, jamming, proactive manipulation of ports and permissions, and isolating areas from outside signals. None of these are things that could reasonably be done by a human being automatically as a defense. This is because most of these require constant information awareness and constant monitoring of all the systems to be protected, which would leave no time for other tasks like talking, walking, eating. I could see it if there was a piece of cyberware which handled all the monitoring, but again, that leads us to the fact that once the attack is detected, it is already too late.

Moreover, I am philosophically opposed to the idea that just because the Matrix and Magic are 'unseen' and somewhat mysterious to the average joe, the rules should be the same. I think this is a crap idea, and undermines the advantages and intricacies of both. Maybe it might work for Technomancers, but for the average hacker? Not a chance.

2) Nanopaste Trodes are a tool, not a weapon.
I can't speak to the intent behind Nanopaste trodes, nor how others use them in their game. But certain things are abundantly apparent about them. For one, they have to go on your head. HAVE TO. For another, they are probably used because they are less bulky and prone to tangles than a standard trode set. For a hipster on the go, that's a must. Same reason iPod nanos sell well when the Video iPod is pretty much better in all regards save size. For three, they are paste. You cannot apply them to someone and have them not notice, unless you start making some heavy slight of hand rolls. Try applying toothpaste to someone's head some time. See if they notice.
That said, trodes and nanotrodes have a device rating of 3. I can accept that device ratings double as signal off-the-cuff, but they shouldn't double for signal *range* in certain cases. If we just apply this across the board, a top of the line medkit has the same range as a cell phone tower, which is just plain stupid. In fact, it has better signal than a stock top-end commlink. There's no reason for it to have that signal range unless it's specifically designed to - it's an unneeded draw on the expert system's power. I would encourage GMs to track signal range separately from signal clarity.

Just because the RAW has a rule-of-thumb for such things to save space doesn't mean it should be universally applied without forethought.

(Personally, I don't let trodes run hot sim. It encourages implanted commlinks and datajacks. But that is, I know, a personal call.)

3) Psychotropic Fuck You
Assuming that it is trival to suborn trodes and datajacks directly rather than working through the commlink that currently has them subscribed opens a big-ass can of worms: psychotropic black IC/Hammer. It's not an issue of how easy it is to kill someone. It's an issue of how easy it is to utterly manipulate someone. Say I walk into a bank. Say there's a security decker doing EW, looking for hidden nodes, et cetera. Fine. He probably won't find me before I'm done doing what I've done anyway. The teller has trodes and is hooked up to the decker's system, which affords her a whopping 9 in all matrix stats. HOTNESS! But it doesn't matter, because I can just bypass her security and go dead for those 'trodes. I easily slip past her defenses with one action, and on my second and third, I hit her with Gimmie Money 2.9 and I'm A Bad Girl 1.2. The first makes her believe I have filled out all the appropriate paperwork for a withdrawl of 150,000 nuyen, and the second will trigger at 4:30 pm. It will make her believe I was her ex-boyfriend, and she still really loves me, and she gave me 150,000 nuyen to win me back. She'll admit it was all her idea. So nobody ever needs investigate me - they'll all be looking at her past lovers.

All this, without bypassing matrix security? I don't think so.

There are myriad permutations to this trick, and all of them are really bad ideas. Bypassing all security like this opens so many cans of worms that I highly recommend anyone hearing an idea like this puts the kibosh on it as soon as it crops up. And it only gets worse if you agree with Frank that trodes aren't needed for DNI so long as signal strength is high enough.

4) You Cannot Hack Past a Certain Distance
This is only pertinent if you accept that certain devices shouldn't have signal range past a certain point. Read on if you like. I've encountered a number of hackers trying to not leave their houses while hacking Signal 0 peripherals, which they know to be connected to whatever node they're in. Usually they have found Node X, which has Peripheral Y. Say a camera or something. They want Camera Y to give them all its' data, but don't wanna hack the node to do it. "It's only 5 km away," they say, "And I have signal 6. I spoof it into giving me the data." That's great, other than the fact that a signal 0 peripheral cannot actually send the data back to you from this distance. In fact, you have no idea if your spoof has worked or not unless you have some other means of monitoring the camera. While it's possible to send a 1-way spoof to a target, unless the target has signal strength enough to get back to you, you'll have no idea what the result was unless you have additional means of determining it. Say, by hacking the node. Which means if you wanna blackhammer some guy's trodes and he's in Bellevue while you're in Cap Hill, you'll have no freaking idea if you've gotten access or not.

All in all, the idea of direct-peripheral ownage, while interesting, should be handled with *extreme* care, lest the matrix become more of a detriment to the populace of the planet than an aid.

"Trodes: This net/headband of electrodes and ultrasound
emitters enables the wearer to experience simsense
and are used with a sim module. Trodes are often concealed
under headbands, hats, or wigs."

"Sim Module: The sim module is an ASIST interface
that controls the simsense experience. It translates computer
signals (simsense data) into neural signals, allowing the user
to directly experience simsense programs and virtual reality
(see Virtual Reality, p. 228). A sim module must be accessed
via trodes or a direct neural interface (datajack, implanted
commlink, etc).
Standard (legal) sim modules only interpret cold sim
(see p. 229). It is possible to modify a sim module to allow the
user to experience hot sim (p. 229) and BTLs (p. 250) with a
Hardware + Logic (10, 1 hour) Extended Test, but this also
makes the user more vulnerable to Black IC programs.
As a safety precaution, sim mods override your motor
functions while you are fully immersed in VR/simsense, so
that you don’t blindly thrash around in the real world and
potentially injure yourself or break things. This means that
your physical body is limp while you’re online, as if you were
sleeping. This reticular activation system (RAS) override
can also be disabled with a Hardware + Logic (5, 1 hour)
Extended Test, at the user’s own risk."

"Black Hammer (Cybercombat/Hacking)
Black Hammer samples the command transactions between
the target and his commlink and injects dangerous biofeedback
responses into the target’s simsense interface. Th ese aggravated
BTL-level signals may overload the target’s neural connections
and in turn render him unconscious, trigger psychological disorders,
brainwash him, or cause death from stroke, heart failure,
respiratory paralysis, aneurysm, or neurotransmitter autotoxicity—
and those are just a few of the possible eff ects. For more details,
see Cybercombat, p. 230.
Black Hammer is intended as a weapon against hot-sim full-
VR hackers; against cold-sim VR users it only infl icts Stun damage.
It has no eff ect on programs, agents, IC, or sprites, nor will it
aff ect AR users."

Yes, a Hacker can fry your brains.... but it takes a lot.

Hacker needs a Hot Sim Module, Black Hammer.
Victim needs trodes, or wireless implant with DNI.
Hacker hacks Victim's implant/trodes to use the Hackers Hot Sim Module.
Hacker fires off the Black IC.
Bang, pain.

Now, because it can be done doesn't mean it's always done.

Everyone can legally own a a gun and simply shoot people in the face for
money, but they don't all do it.

So, as I understand it this entire thing is built upon the assumption that you can somehow just gain subscription to someone else's periphrial devices (trode sets) and bypass the commlink, this if they are running sim (no AR, which is more common for day to day, as I understand it anyway...) through a trode set.


Notebook: As I understand AR, the common way to expirence it is not through a brain feed at all, but through goggles and earbuds or what have you, thus black hammer just fucks up their AR, not their skull, though even that is a stretch given the way things read. Thus we can suggest anyone walking down the street is 99% unlikely to be running Sim/trodes at all. In theory. Feel free to prove me wrong on those totally made up statistics with actual quotes from in book that suggest a significant percentage of the population actually is set up for sim signals while doing everyday tasks.


Anyway: at first i thought part of this was to hack the targets simmodule and convince it to go hot, the answer being, naturally enough, to point out that you have to modify as simrig to play hot, that's hardware bub... no amount of hacking will help ya there. But since I can clearly see that this is all about broadcasting a hotsim signal I have to point out

1) there is no evidence that you can send hot sim signals through wireless that I can see. This is an assumption. Mine is that the wireless protocols resist that level of signal strength (possibly because it sucks too much bandwidth? I dunno, I'm not a net geek)

2) the assumption I always got was that a 'simrig' was a pretty dedicated peice of hardware designed to do a specific job. If someone doesn't have one, sending sim signals at them (even from another simrig) is pretty faakin useless. A trode set or commlink by itself (assuming a commlink without a built in simrig) isn't up to the task. This is 'Science!', like making a standard flashlight into a laser because they both use light.


Look, I'm not the best person to argue this, I'm tired, cranky and I solve player created problems like this with a casual wave of my hand 'yo, stop being stupid and play the damn game'... so I'm not exactly inclined to give it the level of thought you guys have.

This seems to be a 'rule by exception'... which probably has a specific meaning even though I just totally made it up for my own purpose... in that there is no rule sayign you can't do this, so obviously you can.

bah. There is no rule that says Ares doesn't have paratrooper commando elephants either.


EDIT::: damn, I really am tired.. the point: Yo, I see that you have to do some 'real world' link ups to get items in your PAN to talk to one another (wave one black square by another black square?'. This would suggest that even though this is a wireless hookup you can't just bypass the one part of the PAN that actually, you know, connects to the Matrix, by going straight to the device. While I agree that the book is unclear on this, I think any way of handling the PAN that doesn't treat the PAN as a single hackable system (with periphrial devices that can be manipulated) is going to bork the system, since it seems written with the intent that you got to go through the commlink 'CPU' of the entire network of devices.

Based on the signal rating table on pg 212 of SR4. Signal 0 is for nanoware tranceivers, cyberware, and intra-PAN devices. I think trodes fit neatly into the intra-PAN devices.

Also, from the same page, 212 SR4. "For simplicity, privacy, and security, you may configure your devices so that they only interact with another specific device (usually your commlink, as your PAN’s hub) or a specific network (your PAN). This prevents confusion between users (am I accessing my guncam or yours?) and also offers a degree of protection from snoopers and hackers. 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.
In game terms, your persona maintains a subscription list of nodes that you are accessing and that are allowed to establish communication with you. The subscription list may be unlimited in size, but the number of nodes, agents, or drones that a persona may actively subscribe to (access) at any one time is limited to the persona’s System x 2."
Thusly, they can't go straight to the trodes, they have to go through the commlink first.

spike, the matrix is composed entirely of hotsim signals.

if it wasn't, then hotsim users would get nothing out of their hotsim 99% of the time, and it would only be useful for delivering black hammer to their brain.

there is a quote from the main book that says something to the effect of "most people access AR through a sim module". so yes, actually, lots of people *do* have sim modules (probably not hotsim modified, mind you, but a sim module nonetheless). this makes perfect sense because a sim module is much cheaper than buying all the senselinks individually.

i do agree that a person's PAN should be treated as one device, though, but once someone hacks your PAN (which for the average person is no more difficult than hacking their trodes or other DNI device) they could then order the DNI to accept a signal from their hotsim module.

for the record, i also operate under the assumption that the matrix requires a two-way signal to accept orders. if there is not constant, 2-way communication, you can't spoof, hack, or otherwise access any device or node.

@DireRadiant

From what you have posted are you saying that a hacker can perform a Hardware test via wireless to rewire a sim module to hot mode?

To me a hardware test require physically opening and working on the sim module to make it hot.

WMS