I'm playing a pretty paranoid SR4 game right now, and the team's hide-out is likely to be painted with wi-fi inhibiting paint, with a laser link network to interface with security drones and security systems. On a bad roll, even simple matrix legwork might alert the opposition, and with a decent decker (which most opposition has) and a triangulation, your safe-house could be compromised.

So, for the sake of the thread, assume you can't ever hack from your safehouse. Now, where do you hack from? Contribute secure ideas for the VR hacker (assuming that he doesn't have to go on site). Where can you go to lie down and go for a VR hack? How do you keep yourself as secure as possible? How are you defended? What's your escape route if you're faced with a raid?

The backseat of a Jackrabbit running GridLink Spoofing Software and fake SINs out the Wazoo through B- and C-Security rated Highways.

Constantly on the move, hard to locate, and even if they do, a quick trip into the Barrens and you're lost.

In yesterdays game a question came up. (and not wireless) If maglock is hooked to the node as part of a spyders sec network or any other "port" for that matter. Could you create a smart "adapter" attached to a comm or retrans unit to hack through it?

Your basically talking of patching into the network. I don't see why not (its more difficult than wireless, and if something is weaker than current rules, I usually let it pass).

I've created patches for cameras during runs before that were hard wired. We had to go into a vault that they did a hurried job at putting a camera in there, so the wire was exposed on the outside. So clipped a burner comm onto the wire that was running prerecorded video.

One thing I did in an old game that the hacking problem came up in was on the roof of my building I put a hidden laser communication system and a transiever on the roof of another building a 2 blocks down the rood that I had LOS of the roof. If it ever got traced they would end up at the building down the road and not my place. ITs not the easy solution and on bad weather days it doesn't work that great but its either that or hack on the move with a friend drivingand either stay off the grid or spoof it.

Although even if you did that, they would easily be able to figure out where the laser linkage came from with some sort of electronics test. So you'd buy yourself time to escape, but you'd lose the safehouse.

Some sort of sewer access might work. There's very little surveillance down there, and if they triangulate you you've got many escape routes (my personal favourite would be a dive-tank and a nearby underwater vehicle (The manta ray? that cool grab-on vehicle that can hold four people under-water). The problem of course is that while there's no cameras, there's probably ghouls or any other number of nasty toxic flesh-eaters. And there's the smell.

In SR4, can you still do the old anti-trace trick of bouncing your connection through sat-cons and other nodes?

I figured that was part of the 'spoof' action.

I suspect the best route for the ultraparanoid is just to do it from a highly public location with multiple exit points and a back up SIN if you are AR hacking (which you should be). Sit down in your local starbucks in a crowded mall, enjoy the coffee, and switch off your private comm then frag off when the corp investigators turn up.