Okay, here's my idea.
You take all your peripherals and slave them to your commlink (to hack them, one must hack your commlink first... I think ?). Now you install skinlinks in all of them, including your commlink.
Next, you turn off wireless in all your peripherals.
As I understand it, since now the wireless is off, hackers can't spoof commands to them. The only way to affect them is through hacking, and only hacking through your commlink is possible.
Downside is that to use them, you have to have your commlink touching your skin at all times.

I think this also means that your link to your peripherals cannot be jammed as long as you're touching your commlink.

This could work on most personal devices and cyberware, but I'm not sure it's really doable, as I'm pretty new and I may be missing something.
Thoughts and opinions would be most welcome.

They can certainly be hacked, as long as the hacker is also working off a skinlink, and touches you. And you let him, or are unable to resist his touchings. You could also simply get everything hard-wired to your commlink, although you'd look like the guys in Pitch Black when they're running to the ship with all those lights on them (looked for a clip on YouTube, couldn't find any).

EDIT: Also, as long as you are running off a skinlink, you are not able to send wireless signals of any sort, so while using this option you cannot talk to your team, again, unless they are touching you.

One could also have some kind of "slap patch" with a signal rating slaved to a comlink. Or have it have a rating itself and loaded with a limited agent. Slap it onto a guy, and use it to hack into his skinlinked stuff.

As long as he doesn't know it is there, or is busy fighting you hand-to-hand...

Except that skinlinks specifically say that they override normal wireless signals; the two are incompatable. When one is running, the other cannot.

I'll find the ruling for you.

wouldnt it be like a slap retrans unit? its just converting from skin to RF i would think raiting 0-1 just for a few meters of range but that may be all it takes

I'd love to see this citation. The wording of skinlink implies that it's an extra transmitter.

My reading of the OP's setup would be a spoof-proof slaving, as the only wireless-transmitting device would be the commlink. As the only weak link in a slave-master setup is spoofing the master's access ID, it's a good solution, though a pricey and inconvenient one (you can't keep your 'link in most pockets; you need to spend an extra action to connect to your smartgun after drawing it; you pay an extra $50 for EVERY. SINGLE. ITEM. you own, and that's assuming you can even find it, who manufactures a skinlinked survival knife?; etc.).

Why.....why would you skinlink a survival knife?

Also: Real people have skinlinked just their datajack and use it to comunicate with everything. Have your comlink plugged in into that datajack.. or better, just have it implanted. And why would i need an action to connect with my smartgun? I mean, yeah i can see why... but to keep it logically... have it just automatically connect. Write scripts for your datajack and your smartgun. And if they "feel" each other: BAM there it is. Should be fast enough to not count (Or be simultanious to your drawing the gun).

Hey, I keep my favorite playlists on my survival knife, and I don't like other people hearing the music that moves my soul, so I keep it skinlinked.

Well, SR4 corebook says the device is adapted to send information via the the skin's electrical field. Doesn't say anything about it being incompatible, although you can read it that way. I guess this part is a GM's call.

Thank you, I was talking about making the device spoof-proof (heh, spoof proof, spoof proof... spoof proof... this is a great jingle for skinlink ads)
Why do you need an extra action to connect to your smartgun ? Also I wasn't talking about making each and every item skinlinked... I meant just important peripherals you don't want others to mess with.

Finally, well played, Neraph.

I just looked through SR4A and I didn't see anything about a skinlink locking out the use of the standard wireless link while in use. As far as I can tell you can use both at the same time, which would make sense given how electronics work today. My phone can have wifi and 3G on at the same time, plus I can have the USB cable plugged in.

I'd be interested if someone can provide a reference to connection exclusivity.

I was being pedantic about "turn off wireless in all your peripherals." It's often best to argue extreme points of view, because once you start compromising, the discussion is over and you're haggling, which is best saved for the table itself than a hypothetical tangent.


I'm reasonably certain no "real person" has a datajack or a skinlinked device, but I'm being overly pendantic now.

It's a good idea, my last decker used this exact trick to keep his PAN noise down (we got busted once because although I had disabled the cameras, motion sensors, etc., the security spider tracked the two dozen wireless devices moving through a high-security area that didn't have company-issued RFID tags). The trouble is, not everybody wants to look like a decker, and plenty of characters (not players, but characters) don't have the techinical know-how to implement such a plan. Skinlink is Exactly What It Says On The Tin, doesn't cost essence, and is probably a selling point for more than a few commlinks. Much more reasonable for your classic shaman with Gremlins 4 to think "hey, if I don't USE WiFi, I can't break it!"

Aye, although I shudder to think what said Shaman does to the skinlink connections.

Also aren't implants generally immune to Gremlins?

Implants are immune, but their computerized systems are not. Your cyberarm won't malfunction, but you can't get the diagnostic display to stop playing Pong. Your nanohive won't make you smell like sewage, but it will tell you that you do. Your cybereyes won't blank out or paint porn over your vision, but they will display a marquee of "For a good time call 867-5309" to anyone who looks at you.

Huh. Apparently I assumed it was the case, when it is not actually the case. That changes how I do things...

A quick run-down of how this works:

Meet Bob.

Bob has a commlink, a Predator, contacts, and several other electronic devices.
Bob's devices are all vulnerable to hacking and spoofing, but can also be sent benign messages, commands, and updates wirelessly.

Bob gets a skinlink for all of his devices (for the moment, we're assuming that's possible for all the above, it's a seperate topic).
Bob's devices are all still vulnerable to hacking and spoofing.

Annoyed with the failure to improve his security, Bob disables wireless for all his devices (still having the skinlink).
Bob's devices can no longer receive wireless signals, so attempts to hack in that way are prevented, but so is that call from his girlfriend, who's now going to be very upset that he didn't answer. Bob's devices can still receive signals from other devices that have a skinlink connection to him and are still vulnerable to attack through that medium (so a hacker holding his hand could still try to get in).

Wanting to avoid more fights with his girlfriend, Bob re-enables wireless for his commlink.
Bob's commlink is vulnerable to hacking and spoofing wirelessly once again. His other skinlinked devices may be vulnerable if said commlink is "helpful" and passes those signals along via the skinlink (probably depends on how it's set up, I'd imagine this can be disabled). His other devices are vulnerable if his commlink is hacked. Hackers not wishing to actually hack his commlink can also spoof commands to his commlink to send commands to peripheral devices (proper settings may be able to limit what instructions the commlink is willing to accept via wireless. Bob's other devices are also still vulnerable to hacking via skinlink.

After having the continued vulnerability to hacking via skin-to-skin contact explained to him, Bob decides to slave all his peripheral devices to his commlink
Bob's peripheral devices can no longer be accessed via any medium without going through his commlink₁. However, access to his commlink now means access to all his peripheral devices, making their vulnerability to anyone who gets into his commlink an absolute certainty.

1: I'm fairly certain there's some exception to allow access to the slave device without the master, otherwise Bob potentially is losing all his other devices if anything happens to his commlink.

So... is it possible to spoof a command to the commlink, that says "send the X command to the peripheral" ?
If it's true then this entire idea is moot, since the point was making peripherals unspoofable.

Can you rig the peripheral devices in such a way, that if they lose contact with the commlink via skinlink, their wireless capability is turned on, and vice versa ?

I'm slightly fuzzy on this one, but I believe so, yes. That said, I think₁ it should be possible to set the commlink up so that it doesn't accept wireless commands to "send the X command to the peripheral." (It should also be theoretically possible to set it up to not accept wireless traffic from nodes that it has a skinlink (or wired connection) to).


This also should be doable, though I'm not sure there are rules for it. Logically, you'd need the peripheral device to occasionally ping the commlink and enable or disable wireless depending on whether it gets a response. You might need an agent for this, though it doesn't need to be a high-rating one unless you're going to be doing things with your commlink that make it hard for your peripheral devices to find.


1: Warning: User is attempting to apply logic to the Matrix rules. Continuing may result in fatal error due to dividing by pancake.

See, this is not something I am sure about. Pg. 236 SR4A.

"The target of a spoof attempt must either have a Pilot rating or be
a peripheral device."

A Commlink is neither of those things. So I would say no.

Why don't you just set up multiple PANs?

Yah, commlink in it's own seperate PAN just set up so you can make calls. Everything else wireless.



-karma

I always forget that restriction.

If I remember correctly, it was hashed out that everyone should be running four different PANS.

( A ) Cyberware

This PAN can be set to connect to the others through DNI if needed but generally speaking isn't.

( B ) Personal Running Gear

This PAN is totally skinlinked and includes your smartlinks, ect. Sometimes hooked to either your Cyberware PAN for DNI, trodes, or for the really hardcore, a second 'jack. Basically anything that you don't want even your teamates to be able to play around with goes her.

( C ) Black Gear

This is where your black 'link, team comms, and if you believe in bleeding wireless all over the place, tac-nets goes, in theory only your team has access to it, but never, ever allow anything here to link with your personal gear, just in case chummer.

( D ) Everyman Gear

This is where you keep all of the "nice" traffic that you need in order to function in society, a decent ( NOT A CRAPPY ONE! ) commlink with legit accounts, your music player, and your SIN broadcasting needs. Just remember to turn everything off when you get ready to go to work or I'll personally give you an extra smile, ya' scan?