http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...st&p=703988

I see, so basically, you can have them all linked via DNI if you want, but you don't have to. Though, this means just because you have a datajack, it isn't automatically linked to all your cyberware either.

I think the idea of this new "feature" of DNI may be that all implants are susceptible to hacker attack, once the PAN of the user is connected to the matrix.

If that is considered a desireable change, what with all the discussion about opting out, it would have been fair to at least make the obligatory link for computerised implants fully functional. As it stands, you need to figure out on your own that there is only one route to go, risk and utility-wise: wireless adapters turned off, full optional wire, all implants clustered into one node. Anyone who wants to hack your cyberware has to pass the comlink, which has access to the processing power of the implant cluster. Alphaware has a device rating of 4. Think about it: cybereyes, ears, datajack, skillwire, wired reflexes...

Until someone tags you with some activators.

Not quite - each implant has it's own DNI, and they can be linked without relying on DNI.
(Of course cou can hack the next implant using that link...)


Per Unwired, a Datajack has a mythical forced link to any DNI implant.

Several k¥ for getting straight access to my implant cluster? You are not facing "three" Musketeers there. But if you are afraid of that, remove the wireless links instead of disabling them.

Hi there,

my premiere posting on dumpshock, yay.

I will soon start my first shadowrun game (as a gm) after many years of not playing at all or playing something else, and my first sr4 game ever. At the moment my players (2 of them completely new to SR, one familiar with the 2nd edition rules and one familiar with the 3rd edition, no one played the 4th yet) are digging through the corebook to build their characters, and one of them wants to roll a dronerigger. We where able to put most of the rules for him together, but there is one thing that kind of drives me mad, because i think the answer is right in front of me but i can not find it:

- Do you need to buy an autosoft ONCE and install it on every drone you want, or are they "one-use-only" and you do have to buy an additional autosoft for every drone.

(A source of the answer would be much appreciated)

Thank you

Depends, some autosofts are made for a certain type of drone, like an manuver autosoft for a roto drone won't realy work well on that steel lynx

granted the rest is up to you, for starters on a home game I would say, just make up a roll and have them crack teh soft ware and then copy and paste to your hearts delight, simply becouse the rules in unwired for programs degrading ect. realy suck for software heavy char's like riggers

Turn to the page on autosofts (German edition pg. 240). The headers tell you that Maneuver is per type of drone and Targeting per type of weapon. Be advised that you will later learn that Pilot is drone specific, too (Unwired pg. 52, no earlier hint besides logic).

Almost forgot: Welcome to DS! May your participation be long and fruitfull.

Thank you

Phew, glad I'm not the only new poster starting out with questions about how Unwired works!

I was just skim reading Unwired and was trying to work out how AI home systems would work when they're in something other than a commlink / nexus.

For example if the AI set up shop in (drone picked at random) a Bust-A-Move toy what Response, Signal, System, and Firewall attributes would it have? Do you just make something up on the fly?

Or would you just use the standard device ratings for a drone sized object using the rules from the BBB P214? (In which case how would you work if someone was running a rating six pilot program on the drone? As the drone now isn't able to actually run the pilot anymore.)

This is mostly from a GM'ing point of view, although with Runner Companions due out soon I guess it'll be important for if/when someone in my gaming group decides they want to play an AI evolved from a drone or something equally weird.

BTW - given that as per Runner's Companion you can spoof not only whole lifestyles, but also parts:

What exactly keeps a hacker from using Hacking + Spoof to order other goods?
Or, even easier - trick upgrade servers into believing everything is fine with his pirated copies?

In my game? Absolutely nothing.

i assume that if the hacker can get into the database that says he's allowed to patch his attack-5 program, he can also just hack into the database and 'buy' a new attack-5 program. this isn't likely to be easy, by any means, but if the hacker can pull it off i suppose they would be able to update their programs free of charge.

as far as buying themselves new programs using the 'spoofing the lifestyle' rules? imo it doesn't work for some things... it *especially* doesn't work for buying hacking programs, because you are not spoofing joe blow's information, you are spoofing Uncle Sam's military special forces account (the hacking kind of special forces, at that) to get hacking programs... and *that* is what i like to call a Bad Idea™

imo, you can't spoof something that requires a license (ie has an 'R' in the availability line) unless you can spoof it as someone who has a license for that piece of gear. such people will likely be a little bit more cautious with their information, though not necessarily overly so; you could probably get most restricted items with a bit of extra time/research involved. you can't spoof something with an 'F' in the availability line unless you can spoof it as someone who can buy forbidden gear... which is mostly going to be militaries and corporate black ops, or in the case of hacking programs, corporate/military hackers... given that hackers are far more likely to protect their information than Joe Blow is, and given they probably aren't licensed to buy it so much as they are licensed to carry it (ie the company/government owns the software and buys it through a centralised person who is responsible for a corporate/goverment account rather than Bob the Hacker buying his own), this makes it hard to access those accounts, and it is far more dangerous to steal from the local Ares Firewatch team then it is to steal from Joe Blow.

so if you wanted to get a restricted handgun? yeah, you could probably spoof that. if you wanted to get a T-Bird? well, you're gonna have to find someone who can buy T-Birds already, and spoof yourself as them. and hope that they don't send a T-Bird to go blow you up. considering the budget that entity likely has, and the political clout, you may wish to invest in a hefty life insurance policy and start planning your funeral before you try.

Getting yourself free updates should be easier than getting yourself a free lifestyle. In fact, it's been suggested to incorporate update cost as a lifestyle add-on.

i didn't say anything about making it hard to get program updates. i just said you don't want to be spoofing it the same way you spoof a lifestyle. i am assuming that you are dealing with legitimate sources when you spoof to buy stuff, i admit, but really shadow sources are probably not going to be very happy about you leaving a data trail to their commlink, which means you can't spoof directly to them (if 500 people all have illegal transactions pointing to the same person, and that person is the guy you buy programs from, he's gonna be just a little bit mad at you i think). i suppose you could theoretically spoof a lifestyle and sell it (netting you 50% of the value of the lifestyle, except for the fact that when you sell it as a player you typically get around 20% of it's actual value... so for every high lifestyle you spoof for someone, you get 1k probably, and start drawing a little bit more heat from lone star) but i tend to not see that as a good idea, because sooner or later something unpleasant is going to happen.

There is nothing else than 'Hacking + Spoof' to do so.

Going with that assumption - there are ton's of people out there that use exactly the same program legally that you got cracked.
On the other hand, the rules are not that specific/restictive - you just spoof things.

yes, there are tons of those people. many of them probably are licensed to use them, but not to buy them (that is, a military hacker may have authorisation to carry and use a hacking program, but he probably doesn't have authorisation to buy them for personal use, he probably has to requisition them from the quartermaster or be issued them.).

and those who are able to buy those forbidden items are not going to be like the random idiots you're stealing from. it is one thing to commity identity theft on joe wageslave, who's resources to do something about it consist of reporting it to lone star (or their local corpsec forces, or whoever). if you are stealing from someone who has legitimate authorisation to use hacking programs, odds are good you are dealing with an organisation (not a person) and that said organisation will not much appreciate you stealing from them. whereas you might be able to easily find 20 people that you can charge 1 each to, and not attract much attention to yourself when you're paying your MSP bill, it's a bit harder to find dozens or hundreds of organisations you can spoof your purchases as coming from when you want to buy a hacking program. and those dozens or hundreds of organisations probably have times where their employees occasionally have nothing better to do than spend 20 minutes with their hackers tracking you down and doing extremely unpleasant things to you.

i'm not saying it's impossible, i am just saying i don't think buying forbidden items using the spoofing lifestyles rules should not be abstracted. if someone wants to steal from the UCAS military or something like that, they can do it, but you don't just turn it into an extended test, because it's not like normal spoofing the lifestyle rules where you're basically just looking for a bunch of random people with limited resources to strike back at you with to steal from. in the case of spoofing a lifestyle, you're hacking a bunch of nodes which probably can't do anything more threatening than shutting down. in the case of spoofing your way into getting a rating 6 stealth program, you're probably looking at hacking systems that have defensive IC, maybe even some patrolling spiders, and so forth, and it isn't just risk-free hacking. the whole point for the spoofing lifestyle rules is that it's designed to abstract away something that is quite frankly very boring and would otherwise just uselessly take up time that could be otherwise dedicated to actually enjoying the game. that works for buying a package of jumbo-sized soydogs, because everyone is authorised to buy those. it doesn't work for buying forbidden gear, because you have to spoof yourself as being someone who is legitimately able to buy forbidden gear, and those people likely have defenses against identity theft in place.

But hardly for update.

Just that you aren't stealing from them - updates are free to legimate users.

Honestly, once you manage to spoof luxury lifestyles, that changes.

as i read it, that wouldn't work. before it patches anything, it will check if the program has it's copy protection intact. if it's intact, you don't need to spoof anyone, because you are also getting free patching. if it isn't intact, it won't patch it and will probably mark that account as having invalidated it's free patching, assuming you can even fool the patching service into thinking your program is the one the organisation you're spoofing yourself as has (it stands to reason that each program has a digital equivalent of a serial code. you could probably fake it if you had the serial code of a legitimate program from the organisation i suppose, but you'd still have the problem that your copy still shows up to the patcher as being an illegal cracked copy, and it won't update your program but *will* flag that account as having cracked a program and therefore invalidated their agreement. see above about the organisation you steal from being ticked off, tracking you down, and doing unpleasant things to you).

..a check which you could use Spoof to make it look intact. That's my whole point.

what are you spoofing to make the service accept it as intact? there isn't anyone around who is authorised to make the patcher patch an illegal cracked copy of the company's software, so you can't be possibly spoofing the access ID of someone who's authorised to do that. you can't spoof the program to make it look like it's not cracked either. that isn't what spoof does. spoof disguises orders as having come from a different user. it doesn't change what programs look like. you don't roll hacking + spoof to change the image in a camera, unless there is already an authorised user who has authority to make the camera show nothing interesting happening. now you could probably spoof an order for the camera to shut down for maintenance, provided you happen to know the access ID of someone who has authority to order the camera to shut down for maintenance.

in short, if you want to make the patching service patch your illegal cracked program, you're going to have to hack into the node of the company that sells the program and install some kind of virus, and hope that they don't find it. and i'm not convinced hacking those nodes is going to be trivial enough to abstract away in the same manner as spoofing a lifestyle is.

The copy protection responce, to look like it's still intact. Like I said, that's the whole point.
The SR4 Matrix has no secure identification short of passkeys - and those are explicitly only used for protecting Rating 7 programs.

No need to do that - Spoof can do more than stealing Access IDs.

In fact it can - that's what Spoofing Protection is all about.

spoofing protection is all about changing your access ID to be one of an already existing set of IDs that a program is limited against attacking. it doesn't say anything about making a cracked program look like anything other than a cracked program.

No. Changing your Access ID with Spoof will disconnect you from all Nodes - that's on the same page.

In fact, Spoof can change apperances, without aquiring any Access ID at all:

the appearance of an icon, persona, etc has no meaning in the matrix. i could have a persona that looks identical to your persona, and everyone would still be able to tell us apart unless i faked having your access ID. you're basically just faking your access ID to that one program instead of to the entire matrix, is all.

Obviously, it has.

No. Neither do the rules imply or say that an Access ID is involed, nor is it feasible - otherwise the targeted program would need to know every Access ID of every icon that it's not supposed to work against, including future ones. Your assumption is completly off and I don't even understand where you get it from - did you bother reading the rules at all? Are you just making up stuff?

You fake the response to that program about a certification/property:

And if you can pretend to be Renraku-certified, pretending that you have a legit program to update isn't really hard.

It is good to play with fire & sharp metallic objects.

do i hear the pot calling the kettle black?

your made-up rule that because spoof can be used to protect against specifically limited programs being able to target you equaling "you can change anything to appear as anything else without limitations" is somehow more legitimate than my ruling on how spoofing protection works?

because given neither of us are employees of catalyst, or in any way authorised to issue errata, or clarifications, i could've swore that we're both equally qualified to present our interpretations of the rules.

appearance in the matrix is meaningless. i can fire up 500 different reality filters on 500 different commlinks and view the same icon through each of them, and in every single case the appearance of the icon would be different but what that icon represents would remain the same. if it was just appearance, i wouldn't need spoof, i would need a reality filter, which is the program that changes what things look like.

as far as the program needing to know every single AID for every single renraku (or whatever organisation) user, presumably each company that wants to have it's own stuff marked as being that company's presumably uses a specific prefix or something in their AID. these prefixes are probably actually even public domain, since it's probably marketed as a way for people to know that something is really a good quality renraku program, and not just a cheap knockoff. spoofing said prefix (or other identifying marker) into how the limited program sees your AID is the only logical way i can see spoofing protection to work.

Your assumption lacks a foundation in the rules - mine isn't even an assumption.
If the rules say that Spoof can be used on the 'persona so that it appears to be something it’s not.'... then that's it.
And if they don't say that you need to aquire and spoof Access IDs to do so... than you don't need to, by RAW.

Yes, that's what the rules say, and what I say.

Actually, you just did see another way than involving Access ID.
Indeed, Access IDs are not the only kind of verification in the Matrix.

Folks, I'm not seeing anywhere that suggests that Spoof can make Matrix icons look like other Matrix icons. I've found one where you can use Stealth to do that, but not Spoof.

It seems to me that Spoof is used to convince nodes to do something by forging orders to them. That doesn't sound like disguising icons to me.

'Looking' isn't a Problem - there's noting required but the right icon.
Reading to Analyse/Firewall would like something different would be.

Where, exactly? Stealth is supposed to make you 'invisible'.

Sure, it can do that, too. But that's not the point here. It's:

Could you rephrase this? I have no idea what you're getting at, here.


Decoys, p. 72, Unwired.


If by "invisible" you mean "as 'invisible' as possible" (which is, I believe, the context of what you're quoting), then I agree. If your icon was completely invisible, the node you're in will stop sending you signals, and you'd stop being in the node. The description of the Stealth program doesn't actually say it makes you invisible, but rather than copy-and-paste here, I'll just send you to page 227 of your hymnal.


Awesome. Could you offer a reference, or are you asking us to take on faith that you quoted it verbatim from a printed source?

Just changing your Icon into a Renraku Icon won't help you - you need Spoof to read like a Renraku Icon to the Firewall or Analyse, too.

That only affects files and nodes, though.

Sure, as long somebody doesn't beat you in the Matrix Perception Test, he won't notice you.
We are just talking about how you can fool somebody/something that noticed you. And that's what Spoof can do per Unwired.

Sure. The quote is from Unwired, p. 99 Advanced Spoofing, Spoofing Protection.

I concur. Stealth makes your icon look innocuous. You have to spoof the onlooker to convince it that you're legit (see below).


So I read the quote, plus the entire paragraph in which it appears. It looks a lot like regular spoofing to me, although in this case the directive isn't "unlock the door" or "send me the file" but "add me to your safe list." I mean, look at the test involved: an Opposed Test against the onlooker. That ain't a passive use of a program (a la Stealth) and it ain't a Simple Test (a la Spoofing the Datatrail).

I heard once that truth is fact plus context. I was just thinking about that this morning.

So, you're spoofing the update server, with a "add me to your validated users who can update list"

your [edit: 'your' meaning 'rotbart van dainig'[/edit] house rule is that because you can explicitly (by some means which you are assuming has absolutely nothing to do with every other use of spoof) use spoof to fool a program into thinking you're on it's list of targets it can't blow up, that you can therefore use spoof to making anything else think whatever you want. so heck, i'll just spoof my persona when people try to ID it so that it returns code just like an attack program sends out and destroy everyone who is perceiving me, because apparently you consider that to be a legitimate use of spoof. also, instead of stealth, i'll just spoof myself to be allowed everywhere. and instead of editing files, i'll just spoof them into becoming something different, because apparently according to you, that works.

spoofing protection requires a successful matrix perception test to see the program option that limits your opponent from attacking you. it's not a stretch at all to assume that you use your knowledge of what it's looking for in it's target's AID and then spoof your AID with respect to that one entity (which we know to be possible, that's how spoofing commands works) so that it has what the program is looking for. this, at least, would be in line with all of the other uses of spoof, and is the interpretation i'm going to be sticking with rather than assuming that spoof also has a side use of making anything look like anything else it wants to, but that only one use of that entire function is listed anywhere in any of the core rulebooks.

it's not a matter of being a validated user or not (i do agree you could spoof yourself to look like you're a validated user, provided you have the access ID of a valid user), it's a matter of convincing the program that your illegal, cracked version of the program is allowed to be patched. logically, no one has the authority to change that setting; there is never any need to grant someone's illegal, cracked program to be patched. there is nobody authorised to give that order, so there is no access ID you can spoof to the server to be granted that privilege.

now of course, if you had an uncracked copy, you could spoof the server to add you to the list, since there is presumably somebody who has the authority to do that (for example, whoever it is that is responsible for looking into complaints of program theft could add or remove people from the list of people who can receive the patch). but that's a whole different kettle of fish.

You simply spoof your program to look as if it had the correct program option (copy protection). It checks the program, your spoof fools it, and it goes, "ok, this is a valid copy, update it".

but here's the thing: there's only one place that even remotely *implies* that spoof can do that, and it never really says how spoof does what it does.

so either spoof has a second function of which only one use is given, or spoofing protection doesn't work the way rotbart thinks it does. i know which one i'm going with.

Actually, it's no problem at all:

It is possible to create a Crash (or Disarm) Program with the Limitation (Not against Programs with valid Registration & Copy Protection).
Thus, Spoofing Protection can make your Registration and Copy Protection appear valid.

(bolding is mine of course).

so no, you can't spoof the program, per the spoofing protection rules. you may spoof your persona, which fits in with what spoof does in every other circumstance it is used.

And the program runs on your persona. So your persona heads over to the update servers, and they analyze it, see you're running the superfancywhatever 6.1 and they have a patch for 6.2. You spoof that it has copy protection and registration. So they say, ok, heres your patch.

no, because it doesn't say anything about spoofing your persona to make your programs protected from anything targeted at your programs.

They analyze your persona to find out about your programs. The program is on your persona.

Its not like you could send them the program to verify, after all, its supposed to be copy-protected.

Sure, you are just drawing the wrong conclusion.

Per main book, the Persona is the sum of it's Programs plus Icon.
Spoofing the Persona causes all of you Programs to appear valid - you don't need to do a test for each of them.

they can analyze your program, actually. just like you can analyze a file, and not just teh node the file is on.

rotbart may be on to something though. so, *if* you can find a security decker (or otherwise authorised person) to get their AID and that security decker has the exact same program(s) as you, *and* there isn't a limit of one patch per program owned (this could also be circumvented if you got the AID of a customer service tech by spoofing to the server that the original patch didn't work and resetting it to allow a second patch), you *might* be able to spoof your programs (which, being run by a software company that is probably selling all kinds of software that is forbidden availability, probably didn't slouch on it's matrix security).

assuming, of course, that your program is even written by a company that offers patching services, that is, and isn't something your hacker wrote himself, or traded for with another hacker, etc.

so, i guess it might work. i still don't think i would allow someone to spoof for patching services as easily as lifestyle, because for lifestyle you're just looking for someone with poor matrix security around their money, whereas with most programs you're looking for someone who has poor matrix security around their illegal programs, and not only are people with legal access to said programs less common than people with money, but those people with legal access to said programs are probably also more matrix security conscious on average then the average person who has access to money.

and of course, as it mentions in the spoofing lifestyle section, you do have to worry about the company noticing that the guy you're spoofing seems to need multiple patching attempts every single month, and get suspicious (which, if i remember the spoofing lifestyles rules right, is a possibility on a glitch or critical glitch).

so, it looks like it might even actually be possible. i still don't think it was intended for spoof to cover this sort of thing, but RAW it seems to work.

Guess what - resisting Spoofing Protection involves Analyse.

The certification checked by the Limitation option can be many thingy, but you do neither aquire an Access ID, Passcode or Passcode before you spoof.

Actually, poor matrix security isn't exactly what the upper end of Spoofing Life is about.

no, but you do need to detect the limitation option with a matrix perception check. if you can see the option, you can presumably also see what it is looking for, and therefore you know what to spoof from that. in essence, this is the step where you find out what access ID, passcode, etc you are looking for.

as for spoofing lifestyles not being about targeting low security stuff...



spoofing your lifestyle is essentially identity theft. you're impersonating other people and buying stuff using their names/accounts etc, or perhaps spoofing yourself to be the maintenance worker for the local vending machines, or whatever; in essence though, you are just committing identity theft, and the rules for spoofing lifestyles are just a quicker solution than rolling hundreds of scan, sniffer, analyse, etc rolls to see what you can get. essentially, you are stealing people's financial information and such, and because it's easier to target people who are not security conscious, those are the people you're generally going to be hitting, because why make it harder for yourself than it has to be? sure, you could probably (try to) hack into the S-K Prime accounts payable files and add in a payment for your rent, but it's much easier to hack some clueless wageslave's account and send a payment through extraterritorial shadow accounts and have it end up paying your rent, because the clueless wageslave doesn't have a rating 8 firewall with rating 7 analyse runnning on his commlink, whereas S-K prime probably does. not to mention the probable rating 6 agents with all kinds of SOTA programs (or possibly a few programs that go beyond SOTA) that might get assigned to tracking you down and making sure you didn't get any important paydata while you were there, and to destroy as much of your commlink as possible in an effort to clear out any information you might have missed.

no, you're much more likely to target Joe Wageslave, who owns a commlink with a rating 1 or 2 firewall, an analyse program of likely 0-1, and who's only agent is rating 1 with a browse program provided by his MSP for performing matrix searches.

spoofing your target is done by stealing information from people, and using it to impersonate those people. that will be much easier to do to people who are not security conscious. you just do it to a whole lot more people when you want a higher lifestyle.

No, that would take too much time. It's done in Cybercombat, it's two tests (Matrix Perception & Spoofing Protection), nothing more.
You just find out the Program is limited and spoof it - no checking up other icons for valid information, no searching around.

While I do not entirely agree to you assumption, it simply doesn't matter, mechanically.
My point is:

Spoof at the end always targets the Matrix Attributes of the entity you want to spoof.

No matter if/how you aquire/make up credentitials - at the end, you are targeting the provider.
So if you want a penthouse, spoofing it requires you to spoof somebody who is owning penthouses. And if you want around the clock security, you are going to spoof somebody who is providing it.

And at this upper end of the scale, no matter how you put it - it's pretty good security.