I've looked through the list of programs that are available to hackers and companies and thought it could use an increase. No book I know of (I haven't read much of Unwired) has more programs, so I thought of some programs I myself code for or use on a daily basis and retro-fitted them to Shadowrun. Some of these might be broken or overpowered, or they need tweeking. If you think something should be changed or tweeked, or if there already is a program out there that does what one of these does, let me know.
Fortify (Computer): This program ramps up the difficulty to overtake an icon through use of any hacking program. It launches debugging code into the middle of certain parts of the icon to detect and redirect common-use hacker attacks and malicious code, dumping them out of sensitive sub-routines. For each hit generated, increase the target number of any unauthorized access (any check from the Cracking group) except for hostile programs (such as Attack, Blackout, Black Hammer). This program can only generate a total defense up to the program’s rating and an icon can only be fortified once. If another Fortify command is issued on the icon, the new number may replace the old check.
VeriFly (Electronic Warfare): This program begins to ‘scrub’ connections to ferret out hacking attempts by running credentials through rigorous authentication. While in this mode, the user of this program must sustain the use of it, imposing a -2 penalty to all their other checks as they keep the program active and running. The user makes a check with all net hits (capped at the program’s rating) imposing a penalty against the icon’s Stealth program, unless the icon spends a simple action to ‘verify’ their credentials manually each phase they are in the system.
TarPaper (Hacking): With this program, the user slows down network and computer traffic, restricting certain access points constricting bandwidth by filtering it through query analysis. It does not outright check and verify the data, but it filters’s it based on the type of programs running. Once an icon has been Analyzed successfully, TarPaper can be used to lower the initiative of an icon. While active, the program imposes a penalty to initiative equal to it’s rating to the target icon. The user of this program also may choose to spam the target, instead rolling an opposed roll vs the icon’s Response + Firewall. If successful, the target icon’s initiative passes are reduced by one. If used on an icon when they have only one pass left, they lose that pass. If the target has no passes left, this penalty is applied to the next initiative round.
Erosion (Hacking): This program breaks down code, pulling it apart at the easiest and hardest-to-notice ways in a much longer-term then an attack program does. It does not simply try injecting code error into a program, it literally pulls the code apart and resaves the program back to the icon. When used on an Analyzed icon, the user rolls an opposed test vs Firewall + Rating of the program being targeted. If successful, the erosion lowers the rating of the program by 1. If the program reaches a rating of 0, it is lost and dumped off of the target’s icon. The erosion program targets all copies of the program loaded onto an icon’s node, so a hacker that loses a program cannot use it again until they load a clean copy of the code back onto their device.
SubClause (Computer): A program may use and implement harder-to-crack security services by using redundant verification and confirmation. Commonly known as the TOS pop-ups and other pop-ups that spam a user to enter name and password again or to accept a set of circumstances, else they lose out on access. Any user of this program running this actively automatically spams users when they attempt to log in to the network, regardless of legal or illegal credentials. When an icon attempts to login to a system with an actively running SubClause, they may review the warning message. The user of this program chooses one of the following: add dice to the dice pool of checks made by all friendly icons on the system, lower the defensive programs of all logged in icons by it’s rating (Armor, Stealth, ect), or allow the system to use a psudo Edge on any check made on the system. All of these ratings are equal to the SubClause program rating. Once a user agrees to these warnings, the SubClause program imbed’s itself into the icon logging into the system. This embedding sticks around so long as the user is logged into this node. If logging out, the embedding erases itself. The icon may rolls an Exploit + Hacking vs SubClause + Computer. If successful, they’ve found a loop-hole in the code rules and bypasses the embedding.