For a job our novice shadowrunners are about to take part in, we reckon stealing a van would be safer than using our own vehicles.

What hackery shenanigans are, in your view, necessary to:

a) Steal the vehicle

b) Operate the vehicle whilst it is stolen

c) Not get caught for at least a couple of days.

a) Hack the vehicle's firewall (shouldn't be too hard, a 3, I think), for security/admin access, whichever is available. Then either drive it away, or get itself to drive away. Of course, this assumes a run of the mill van that belongs to some poor-ish family, who can't afford better security.

b) Operation shouldn't be too hard, in and of itself. However, you may want to disable Grid Guide, just in case.

c) New plates, new paint job, new AR sculpting (possibly), new Pilot, Radio signal scanner/tag eraser to get rid of RFIDs. Probably more, but I can't think of everything right now.

c appended) add spoof chip or have hacker fiddle with the access_ID.

I only have this to say about the topic.

Excellent point.