Hello,

I was hoping someone(s...es...z...) could help me with a bit of a disagreement I have had with some of my players regarding hacking.

How does range affect hacking, for one. For example, if while traveling down the highway at 60mph the teah is beset upon by a GMC Banshee, how close do the parties have to be in order for a hacker to bruteforce and disable said helecopter?

Can a team hack the traffic control grid, locate a particular car using the grid, and then take it over using the same grid under the assumption if the car is using the grid then they have a connection?

The players answer is effectively: ANything in a major city can be hacked from anywhere with the assumption that the ambiant wi fi signal strength in the city provides all the signal they need. As long as the device is running, its hackable.

My understanding is: In order to hack something the target and the hacker had to be within the shortest signal strengths range to enable 2 way communication. They could not bounce a signal from their commlink to the nearest comm tower's receiver, use that to hit the Banshee, hack it, and receive info from the banshee in the same manner even if the banshee was running stealthmode with a signal strength of 0 to accomidate its rigger pilot sitting in the cockpit.

I cant find any clear examples or range in unwired or SR4.

Oh, and on a side note, this was unclear too... does a hackers programs run on his commlink, his targets, or both? IE do programs run by a hacker affect system performace of the target machine? I think yes. Players wanna say no, they can run 4 programs in a 1/1/1/1 system at full speed an power because the edit, armor, attack, and stealth programs are actually running int heir commlink not the target.

Book/page reference for any of the above would be a great help for bashing against the skulls of rules lawyers. Is this has been covered ebfore, please gimmie a link and I will head right over.

Thanks!

~Knight.

That's pretty much true, yes. Signal is mostly used if someone tries to use a signal jammer against you or the target, or when you go to an exotic place; in Antarctica there might not be a wifi net everywhere, so you probably want to bring a satellite uplink.

Consider the alternative: your Matrix access would also be restricted by your Signal rating. It'd be saying you can only browse internet in your own neighbourhood. That's clearly ridiculous.

If you're worried that your players will hole up in a safe house and hack from there, there are some solutions:
1) Sometimes this is just the clever thing to do. Every now and then they could get away with it.
2) If the hacker stays home safe, the team will tend to be split up. And we all know the risks of splitting up from B-horror movies If CorpSec manages to trace the hacker, they can send a team to pick him up without the rest of the PCs there to save him.
3) Secure locations will often have anti-wifi shielding. This is fairly easy, actually; wireless-inhibiting wallpaper or just a faraday's cage. Using cables in a secure location will also work.
4) Corp riggers will probably try to do something about PCs who want to hack their drones, like defend them.
5) You could try drones with high-grade autosofts that will maintain radio silence; to hack something, there has to be two-way connection. This is risky however, because the corporation also has no control over the drone until it's back home. You might spin some "we have accidentally released an AI into the experimental drone prototype" stories, where the corp hires runners to discreetly deal with a berserk drone before everyone finds out about it.
6) Anything the PCs can do, the corps can do too; hack the PCs' drones or their chase car



In summary: yes, you can bounce a signal through several nodes in between; that's how the Matrix works. Unwired actually notes that hackers don't really need super-high signal most of the time, response is the more important stat for commlinks.

They are right - that's the idea of Wireless Matrix. But at first hacker has to detect Banshee's node, which probably operates in hidden mode, and has some nice Firewall and IC. And its wireless connection can always be switched off by piloting metahuman.



Again, that's right. Programs run on their original node (commlink), until they are downloded on another node.

Ok the bit of information your looking for is titled Zones Pg 209 main book.

Basicly if where the players are and where the target is both have a wireles conections then yes they can hack there brains out.

As a GM that dosent mean that its that easy for them.

Firstly they have to locate the target in the matrix: If this is an expensive peice of military hardware its going to have a hell of alot of anti hacker protection.

My way of dealing with this aproach would be as follows:

The Banshee would be running silent so it isnt just going to show up on the local node layed out for the hacker so the first thing he is going to have to do to have to do is run a sniffer program and filter through all the garbage comunications going on in the area and figure out which one is the banshee.
- This wont take to long because more then likely it will be the most highly encrypted code in the air so they will find it but it might take them a few passes to get it unless the dice are hot. Also as a not the banshee is unlikely to ever run with 0 coms, it will always have a base level of info running in and out to keep its GPS upto date and other info the keep the piolet in the know especialy when flying in an urban inviroment.

From there yout hacker has to bypass the encryption which is where there brute force aproach comes in. Being military hardware the encryption vlaue is going to be fairly decent and its more then likely going to have IC built in as a second tier of defence.

From here if they manage to get into the Banshee's systems there will more then likely be further IC coming in as a defense adn they will probably be limited in what that can acheive from this position.

Can they take over flight control? Unlikely.

what can they do? a lot of things; screw with incoming information form GPS, communications with other units or command, attempt to bomb part of the OS.

What will the owners do? If the banshee has corp backing my guess is they will probably get one of there own hackers in there to play counter measures.

The long and the short of it is if the do manage to hack there way in there (which should be dificult but not imposible) with each combat turn that passes the counter measures will become more and more dificult to fend of untill there booted out.




His programs run mainly on his but he he will need a constant conection to his target.

All so as a further note you cant get matrix access anywhere. If there are no powered and maintained nodes in the slums/wildernes/underground areas then you cant get signal. There may be Pass worded nodes around but they will have to be hacked for access, in most city areas you should be good tho.

Also keep in mind wireless signals are blocked by alot of things, the most common is renforced concrete. So if there sitting inside a deralict building with no power or UPS the best signal there going to get is weak which will knock a couple dice out of there pool.

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