Im currently on a mission to kidnap a person. This person has cyber eyes..

I want to be able to hack into them and turn them off, or see what she see's.

Between our group I am a noob rigger, and I have a technomancer.

We should have the skills to be able to do it. But is it possible, If so. How Thanks.

Short answer, yes, probably.

Most likely the cybereyes will be slaved to your mark's PAN, which will be running off his commlink. So, you hack his commlink and get to the eyes through there.

OR you find out his access ID and spoof commands directly into the cybereyes.

I realise this is something of a brief answer, but an exhaustive flowchart would be, well, exhausting. There's another thread on here somewhere with a basic hacking how-to guide which will probably help you more tha I can.

As the signal range of cyber is necessarily short you might find it easier to hack his 'link first

The reality is that almost everyone will have everything but their 'link skin-linked to their 'link if it isn't turned off entirely.

If it is a big pay day it might be worth investing in Intruder (Activator) Nanites.

It is all fine and dandy if you turn off the cyber eyes once (just hack into the person's PAN and if the cybereyes are registered there then yes you can turn them off) (rules are in the BBB, and Augmentation), but if you pull out and don't force the cyber eyes to stay off the person can easily turn them back on again (the second your out of their system). I'm sure there are rules covering it but forcing your concentration on keeping the eyes off would put a penalty on you to do anything else. Frankly it is easier to just blindfold someone in that situation (unless your trying to temporarily blind someone in combat).

As Tarbrush pointed out there is a thread about hacking cyberware, I will try to find it and post the link here but for now you will have to use Search-Fu.

If you could, that would be greatly appreciated.

I was also thinking, Could the security team protecting the girl be hacked into the girls eyes and watching what she is seeing, Essentially there is an elite squad that take her to and from school. During school hours they have to have some means of keeping tabs on her.

What other tracking measures could this person have on her? Can I throw her in the shielded smuggling compartment with a scuba tank... Lol

http://www.shadowrun4.com/resources/faq.shtml#6

Is this one of the earlier Denver Missions perchance? And have you been a naughty runner that's been reading ahead in the adventure and knows about the tracking that can go on if the team doesn't somehow mitigate the girl's cybereyes?

Even if not, sounds somewhat like a similar situation. Our team found Tranq patches work wonders at making small non-combatant extraction targets go night-night, at which point the cybereyes aren't doing much of anything. A towel/blanket/armor bag over the head though is never a bad backup though.

Sometimes, the low tech approach is infinitely easier than the high falutin' high tech route...

Why would anyone have their cybereyes connected? The stuff in the FAQ is garbage because it ignores the option to have a hardwired on/off switch for your wireless in its list of things you can do.

Its seattle. I wouldn't even know where to read about that stuff. It just seemed logical to me. A high end security detail that just simply leaves while the child is at school.. There had to be more than just meets the eye

What kind of tracking can go on if the target has a set of cyber eyes and a rigger as part of the crew thats protecting her.

Thanks for the Tranq patch idea.

Because your eyes have an image link and camera in them.

What other cyber decives can be used to track a person?

Say I disable her with a tranq patch. Can the recovery team track us through her eyes?

Er, okay. Are you seriously telling me you'd run around with your eyes with open wireless access to the world, when you could just not do that. I can understand slaving them through your DNI to your commlink, but that seems pointlessly risky when you can just have thoughts injected directly into your brain and isn't relevant to this situation because leaving a kidnap victim with a mobile phone is astronomically stupid.

Exposing the wireless of the eyes themselves directly seems dumbtastic and pointless.



Realistically no, as long as you take her commlink. The signal on the eyes is presumably very low (it may not be, you have to take the rules about device rating in the book with a grain of salt) so they'd have to be very close to pick it up. At which point they'd see you anway.

Okay, now lets assume her commlink is in her head? Thats where I would get a headjammer right? Headjammer and a tranq patch should put her out and make her untracable.

Can a mage put an astral flare on her so he can find her where ever I take her?

You should just get an Area Jammer and tape it to them as soon as you can - it stops any bugs, RFID tags and whatever the fvck else you forgot about. You can buy a R6 jammer at char gen, and they won't have a high signal connection to beat that. It also eliminates possibility of missing something in a search.

RE: Magic, there are some magical tracking spells that are very hard to beat. It would be advisable to move them into a warded space at the first opportunity if at all possible. Sealing them into an underground bunker is also functionally unbeatable as the Gaiasphere blocks most of those spells.

RE: Tranq Patch - this is a strictly inferior option to possessing them. If they are possed, they can walk around under their own power. Failing that a tranq patch isn;t bad.

Posess? You mean like mind control right?

One of the other problems I have is actually finding the girl. She is in a group of a possible thousand students. We are short on time and have to nab her.

I have a hacker trying to find out what class she will be in and such, can I get a mage to throw some sort of tracking spell that can't be seen by the security mage?

Indeed, most professionals wouldn't be cought dead with wireless-activated equipment. Less than professionals, however, might. A bit like the way some people nowdays treat interent banking.
In another post, I read that while connected, you can set your weapons up to avoid shooting at friends, while remaining on automatic mode. That may be incentive enough for even professional security to leave their weapons online, plus their cybereyes/goggles.

How would I identify if somebody has a setup like this, when I am scanning and sniffing around for active weapons and such, Say I want to drop the ammo clips from the guns.. What do I need to do.

Situation: You know I am close by, but now im infiltrating and you can see me. My commlink is on hidden mode, I do however use safetargeting, and I heavily cyberwared out.

How would you eject my clip? Temporarily blind me, or Cause my cyber parts to fail.

I would attempt to scan you for hidden nodes (a complex action, p. 230 20-year anniversary corebook).
As far as I understand the process, this means I have to be near you physically, or at least have some means of scanning you that is in your range.

Assuming I detect the weapon node (I may be missing something here ... if your commlink is hidden, does that mean all your PAN devices are hidden ?)
Then I would hack your weapon on the fly (p. 230)
Assuming success, I would then attempt to spoof a command to your weapon (p. 232).

That sounds like a really good reason not to leave my weapons and cybereyes/goggles online. I certainly don't want to train myself to rely on a friend/foe designator built into my hardware, and then leave that hardware online for someone to hack.

Or, rather, I don't want the other guys on my team to do that.

True.
I guess the GM should make the call according to the professional status of the guards, and their expectations of hacker trouble. A mobsters goon squad going against a rival gang would probably leave everything online, and so would a lone star squad attempting to hold a riot in check. A force of corp security guards escorting a high level executive will be running with most equipment offline.

I'm saying this because i'm new to the game. If i'm missing something, please let me know. Maybe i'm mistaken, hackers are everywhere, and only blind wageslaves walk around connected.

Tacnet bonuses kinda fly out the window if everybody's offline, and those are considerable, As a squad leader, being connected to everyone's Image/Sound Links would be a great boon. Besides, most agencies offer training for these situations.

> They trained us on this in Knight Errant. If we thought
we’d been hacked in a firefight, we called a “10-30,�
found cover, and rebooted.
> Sticks

Page 46, Unwired.

It's the 2070 version of the "tap, rack, bang!" drill.

I'm just paranoid about that kind of thing, and know just how fast that could turn into a party wipe if it did happen. Great, so you know what to do if you think you've been hacked...well, when dealing with a team the size of a Shadowrunner group/average gamer table, by the time you have reason to suspect you've been hacked, the odds are decent you've got your dedicated combat guy Street Sam saying "10-30!" to himself, after having wiped out the rest of the group with a few long bursts from an Ares Alpha, or launched grenades, or what-have-you.

If there's one thing I need my characters to trust, it's their optics, y'know? Most of my characters in SR4 (thus far) have just had laser sights anyways, because firearms weren't their main thing...but the one that I've made that had full cybereyes and a smartlink, I made a point of actually using an old hardline cable to plug the gun into his datajack. Partially because I dig the mental image from my old CP:2020 days, and partially because that way I didn't have to learn the SR4 hacking rules as much (because I had one less thing to worry about).

I re-read the spoofing rules.
What you need to do is Detect the hidden nodes (I assume detecting the PAN of the guard also reveals all it's devices).
Then, you detect the user's ID using a matrix perception test.
Then, you spoof a command to the guard's weapon using said ID.

What might be interesting is if the guard doesn't actually have the access ID for his weapon. Perhaps, while on an duty, there's a spider (or AI, or something) somewhere, behind security barriers and ICs, with the access codes to the weapons, so the hacker might need to track him first. Unless the spider/AI/something is compromized somehow, a hacker can't just spoof a command and eject the guard's clip.

Huh. Aside from the cool aesthetics, that's a pretty good idea for the incredibly paranoid. For bonus points, use the trigger removal mod in Arsenal.

Now it can't be hacked, and if it's ever taken away, it can't be used against you. Poor man's Cybersafety.

No I mean like if you have a mage with a possession tradition rather than a materalisation tradition (detailed in street magic) you can posses the girl with a spirit.

As for the hardware thing - you can wire your gear together, then as nodes behind your commlink, requiring people to hack your commlink. If you think someone has got to the commlink you pull your commlink, leaving all your other gear together.

And seriously as you can just buy an old fashion earbug style radio, that isn't even going to take down your comms.

Lots of paranoia for wireless...

I still have yet to find a reason (as a GM) to hack any player's comm during or around a firefight. The amount of damage done by bullets greatly outweighs the temporary annoyances a hacker can have on your PAN. I mean, I could screw the sammy at the beginning of IP 1 by turning his wired reflexes off and when he turns them back on with a free action, he has to wait until the next combat turn to get his extra IPs, but that would be pretty dickish and metagaming.

Gaining access to comms during a firefight is most beneficial for being able to see where everyone is at and intercept their communication. But again, the 2-4 dice I'd be taking away from players by hacking them is not as constructive as just shooting them...IMO, of course.

I'd definitely get into hacking their 'links before the fire-fight breaks out.

Telematics Infra-structure detects the un-authorized hardware, security spider tracks them down and starts discretely penetrating the weaker nodes whilst building up security forces discretely in a good ambush point, call in your HTR backup and then drop the hammer on them.

Lockup their weapons and crash all the crucial nodes simultaneously. Runners tend to cluster weak stuff and hide it behind a single 'link. Take down that 'link and the cluster and they are shafted until the whole lot can re-boot. Meanwhile they are eating Flashbangs and Stick'n'Shock.

So true. I'm actually amazed people didn't think of using a mage mask on the girl before they though of turning off her eyes. I may be an old fashioned person but the blindfold has been used since the beginning of time to temporary blind someone. It works, it's cheap, and it doesn't require you to fight with the target to maintain it. For a more modern touch there are stun batons and traq patches that also work. Hacking cyberware should only be a viable option if your doing a sneak attack and you want to make sure the targets will be surprised.

In my experience, its a lot more common that the runner team is doing the ambushing, but on the off chance it is the other way around, I do agree, a coordinated hack-attack right before the fight starts could create some added obstacles...

You can't stop someone from hacking your stuff unless you turn wireless off on everything. In that case your completely isolating yourself from the rest of your team and putting yourself at a disadvantage. The best you can do is Slave everything to your Commlink, then get a good Firewall and Encrypt your Commlink. If you can swing it, Slave all your stuff to your Commlink, then have each member of your team Slave their Commlinks to your group's Hacker or TM. You'll need to stay within Signal range of your Hacker/TM, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. That setup forces any intruder to have to hack into your Hacker or TM's Commlink to get at the rest of you. Basically: force them to take out your best Matrix person on their own turf... it's equivalent of somehow forcing your opponents to have to shoot your group's Street Sam or Troll Tank before anyone else. Effective enough, IMO.

Malachi has it right there. You can't stop hacking unless you want to really put yourself and team at a disadvantage.

On a side note, I'd feel really bad for the table where the GM starts a scenario hacking the teams comms. There will be like one person (at most tables) that will be able to participate while the rest of the players sit around and wait. It just doesn't make for a fun session if the GM plans to ostracize all the non-hackers just to set up an encounter...

It is kinda the reverse situation of what happened to the Deckers in past SR editions. He was the guy always left out because all his work was tiresome, repetitive, and slowed down game play. I always get a little ticked when people complain about the current matrix rules, you kids got it easy these days! (in my best Old man voice). All kidding aside there are downsides to running in a wired world but as Malachi pointed out if you take the appropriate steps you can minimize the impact it has on your team, and it sure as heck beats how it use to be.

Sometimes the hacker needs to shine though, as he can often be shafted from the spotlight in other situations. This "time hog" effect can happen in any RPG though. In shadowrun, it isn't just limited to the hacker though. The face can sometimes run the game clock, as can the rigger or the mage (for astral).

Their are some major mechanical tools that can help keep things moving. Device ratings, buying hits, and GM weighting of what is important and what can be handwaved with one or two rolls all help reduce the watch me play for a bit scenario.

Also if you google "dice roller", WOTC put up a nice dnd dice roller where it will allow you to specify the number of the dice, and includes the result of each dice in a text box so you can still count hits.

Most of my players prefer hand shaking their hard dice, but as a GM, its nice to mash the roll button three or four times for tests rather quickly.

Last, as an observation, slaving nodes actually helps the GM, since instead of having to hack everyone's everything individually, they just have to hack the one master node to potentially have access to anything they need to do what they were attempting.