For some reason, the term "What's in the bag?" makes me think first of "What's in the Box?" ala Se7en, and "Howdiditgetburned" ala...well... Nick Cage.

Ha, that's what I said!

If money is unhackable, can it be used as the foundation for a secure system? I'm having vague visions of a couple thousand credsticks clustered together until they resemble a basic computer..

According to Corporate Guide, certified credsticks are more easily hackable than regular accounts because the Orbital Bank works with the encryption guys to make it incredibly secure.

That isn't to say electronic cred (that isn't certified cred) is not hackable/counterfeitable, but it looks like it's going to be absurdly difficult, like making a Fake SIN.

It sounds like the reason it's hard to hack is because the only authoritative answer on money is Bank of Zurich.

Which.. is weird.

The only way it can work is if:

Bank of Zurich has records of every bank account, in every bank, in the world using their currency.

Here's an example.

Bank of Seattle
Bank of New York
Citibank
Renkaru Financial Services
Ares Corporate Bank

each of these banks has lets say 100,000 bank accounts with various sums of money on them.

BZO has UV nodes with super duper encrypted databases that have the account information of /every/ single one of those banks. (And all the others in the world)

If a customer with Bank of Seattle wants to buy something from Renkaru, he orders it online, and uses his SiN to authenticate and approve the payment.

Commlink -> Renkaru Purchasing server -> BZO -> BZO transfers they money from 1 account to another.
BZO -> Bank of Seattle: Customer A's account total is now X
BZO -> Renakaru Financial Services: Renkaru Account R45T534AFV new total is now X

But if that's the case why would anyone ever ever bank with anyone but BZO directly. And talk about no deniability. BZO has records of every credit transaction in the world.


The other option is that all currency servers must be built according to certain specs, and running specialized BZO OS and Agents/IC/what have you. Of course, you can't strong encrypt signals. So really anyone in a helicopter and a sniffer could scan,decrypt, and edit transactions to BZO as they happen. Talk about ugly

The Geimenschaft is on the ZO station, which apaprently is really hard to find. It's also got about a dozen spoofing sats that are shipping off highly-encrypted garbage. We're talking Love Boat rerun garbage, just to mess with enterprising hackers.

They're also what amounts to the World Bank/Federal Reserve. This is the bank that the banks go to in order to get their daily operating money, so in essence they control the interest rates and nuyen flow (and even some of the currency exchanges). They don't have records of every transaction ever, but the banks on the ground are asking for X amount of cash to make sure their reserves are met and if the number is substantially higher one day than the next, then everyone's going to check their records to find out why.

If it's because an enterprising hacker has created a few million nuyen to grace his personal accounts, chances are they're going to find it and fix the problem. Then again, everyone's so big that it takes a lot of counterfeiting in order for these guys to want to really do anything - unless the currency starts to overinflate.

Because your account isn't big enough. It's quite likely that BZO doesn't want small balance account (and small is probably something with fewer than 9 zeros behind it) or that if you don't meet a minimum activity level (banks make money when money does stuff, not when it sits) you either pay a massive annual fee, or bank with someone else. If you're a AAA or AA corp or maybe a larger National Goverment you probably can bank direct with the Z-O Bank.

A rating or higher. A rating corps are recognized by the CC, AA has all the size of a mega but not the pull, and AAA's have a seat on the Court and a share in the bank.

But then how is the BZO keeping Electronic Nuyen unhackable?
They have to control the authoritative source of the transactions.

Otherwise, I hack into Bank of Joe, and I create some fake transactions moving money between accounts. Or creating accounts out of whole cloth.

"encryption" isn't the only issue with money transactions.
if I can bribe an employee of Bank of Joe to enter in an extra 0 here, an extra 1 there, what's actually stopping that from happening?

It's actually a problem we have today with the Dollar. There are more electronic Dollars than actual dollars in circulation. Add to that, the problem that there are more dollars in circulation than there is gold even pretending to back them.

I suspect the answer is that it's /difficult/ but not impossible to hack/counterfit money.
The problem is two fold.
Corporations don't do it, because if you get caught doing it an Omega Order will be the last of your worries.
It's not rampant, because ZBO has dedicated personnel that does nothing but audit transactions looking for it. When they find it they have a ZBO "Audit" team that is the best brute squad money and secret research projects can buy.

So, Hackers do pull it off, in small amounts.
Hundreds, Thousands, even 10's of thousands and potentially millions a year. But compared to the scale that's nothing. The sloppy and the greedy get caught, and made examples of. The smart get away with it for a period of time, and then if they're smart, they stop.

The answer has to be not so much that it's not hackable. Because it is, it's that, it's not percentage to do it.

You are correct: It's not unhackable - it's just more difficult to hack than certified credit. Yeah, BZO's got the Matrix Authority working on their encryption, and the Grid Overwatch Division tracking down serious counterfeiters.

Corps don't do it because they can't do it on the scale they'd need it for, and that would hyperinflate the currency. That's very bad. Small fries do it because the amounts they forge aren't enough to gain people's interest, and GOD still tracks them down from time to time.

Joe Q. BankTeller probably won't take the bribe to insert an extra digit into your account, since his actions are logged and tracked, and he doesn't want to end up on his ass without the bribe and no job on top of it.

There's also no backing to the nuyen besides the public's faith in it - it's a fiat currency. Precious metal isn't even assumed to be backing it.

Further to this: Do you know who the Secret Service belongs to in the executive branch, if like most people you think it's the Executive Office of the President you're absolutely wrong. They belong to the treasury. Do you know what their [primary job is? (Hint it's not protecting the President) That's right it's fighting counterfeiting. Figure the ZO has adivision much like the Secret Service to combat Counterfeiting, which would probably include some really good hackers.

I think I basically said that
Dedicated personnel searching for counterfeiting and discrepencies.
Hackers, Agents, AI's, Accountants, experts on counterfeiting.
And when they find someone, they send in the scary people.

Shadowrunners ARE the scary people.

Nah
AAA corp special forces guys are the scary people.
Delta cyber/bio/genetics
Specially modded equipment


Or you know, they send shadowrunners after them.
Heck even if the shadowrunners fail, that's less shadowrunners in the world, no real loss.

there are people even shadowrunners are scared by.

Bubba the Love Troll?