the best solution for this might be:

You pay the full amount of money at chargen, regardless the way you acquired the software (you also pay for 2nd hand Ware, even if you cut them out of your enemies body). If you have an appropriate SIN and licence you can choose to have the software registered or not. If you don't, the software is considered to be not registered (illigal, freeware or selfcoded).

At chargen you pay BP for worth of the Equipment , which you are starting with, not the price you actually have payed. So a Stealth 5 Program is worth 5k aka 1BP, even if you coded it yourself, you cracked it, someone donated it to you or you downloaded it from a freeware network.

cya,
Tycho

That's about what I had in mind - I just focused on the case where the player building the character didn't have Unwired and thus didn't made that choice. In that case, as there were no Datatrail & Track penalties against the character, it has to be unregistered software.

Yes, for Players without Unwired, there should be a paragraph in the BBB that explains this issue:

something like:
If you have an appropriate SIN (and licence for R rated Programs), you can choose to register your software, which means you will get regular updates, as long as your software is copy protected. On the downside registered programs will leave a suspicious data track, which makes it easier to track you. On the other hand, without the patches and updates your programs become less effective over time (see Unwired p. X, Y and Z für Degradation, Registering and Piracy vs Legal Software).

cya
Tycho

Nope, there shouldn't. The main should just work without referring to Unwired - and it does, in this case.

It's up to Unwired only to make sure this does not cause headaches.

Yeah, but you only pay half the standard price.

Cracked software has a downside, just like second hand ware, and carries a discount, just like second hand ware, there's no real reason you should not get both qualities if purchasing it at Chargen.

I disagree. In fact, I'm willing to bet that, using the rules as written, you can come up with at least one way to gain an account in a maxed-out encrypted node in under twenty-four hours; consider it a challenge.

There's a hint in the spoiler if you'd like one.

That's a darn good point. One could have IC running in a node (or a spider) that checks out incoming icons to see whether they're agents or personae. And, of course, agents may run Stealth for themselves.

Umm, use an Electric Kitsune to out-fox it?

No?

Would the most straight forward method not be to break the Signals Encryption and then intercept the traffic until you can pick the Nodes Encryption key from someone's log in traffic?

*headkeyboauyhjn*


Good answer. Not the only one, though, and not the one the hint might lead one to find.

Have the pornomancer in the group talk some idiot worker out of their account information and passcodes despite any communications protocols put in place by security? Valid account would bypass encryption by having the encryption key

Strong encryption isn't really there to make corporate servers unhackable.
It's there to make your comlink, cyberware and drones unhackable.

Because you are the only one that knows the key, enter it directly and only seldomly.

I like it.

If the node has traffic, I´ll beat signal encryption and spoof a "Backup file to" order.

"Hi, name is Werner Brandes. My voice is my passport. Verify Me."

Hahahahahahahahaha!!!

Too many secrets.

Ahhh, the oldies are always the best...