Okay, so, my group of 'runners wound up capturing a Stuffer Shack big rig. Or rather, what happened was that they counter-captured it in a crime of opportunity, having found another hacker had already captured it and was driving it to an unknown location in the Barrens.

I figured they'd just turn it right around and drive it back to its owners to score some easy, fast "nuyen" - 10% of the value of the hauler, the trailer and the load seemed about right to me, you know, salvage and all. They considered that, then ultimately decided that because none of them had a Stuffer Shack contact, they couldn't figure out how to make the approach without seeming like they were the ones who stole it in the first place and hence, were trying to extort money from them.

None of them wanted to seem like they were trying to extort money from a company owned by those friendly guys down south who rip people's beating hearts out of their chests on a regular basis to fuel their harvests, so instead they decided to just gank the whole damn thing.

So, now they have an AM Burro (same stats as the big rig from Arsenal,) with a trailer and loaded down with all sorts of Stuffer Shack goods, from sundries to the caf-pow machines.

They also aren't going to just go out right away and find a fence for it. They've decided to process it, since they have a huge junkyard in the barrens where they can easily hide it from aerial surveillance and ECM will let them squelch any squealers on the thing. So they're going to hand out the food to the local gangs and squatters, keep the household sundries and stuff to themselves play with the machines, and nuke absolutely every single RFID chip on the mother.


I reckon this is going to be a long, drawn-out process involving at least partial dismantling of the truck. Probably a long extended test.

I just haven't found any rules for it. Are there any printed as-yet on how long and what kind of skills are necessary to 'clean' a stolen vehicle?

Electronic Warfare and Automotive Mechanic.

EDIT: The major issue is going to be the engine and transmission, as they're not even troll portable, with the second-issue being the air suspension system for the rig itself and the brakes for the trailer (There's two hoses on the back of the rig that go to the trailer for this. It also connects the lights to make them match up.).

They can't just wave a tag eraser at it and be done? New coat of paint, etc.

A good place to start would be SR4a p329, as regards RFID tags, but I could have sworn there was a section in one of the SR4 books specifically relating to stealing cars.

The Tag Eraser bit is the Electronic Warfare part.

As for stealing cars, let's not get into the "Stealing Ford AmeriCars for a living" discussion again, please! (I'm already in trouble enough for the Clip/Magazine discussions.).

Plus jamming or otherwise preventing the car's own computer from yelling for help with its own wireless radio.

If they didn't have a jammer on it the entire time they are screwed. There would be a continuous track of both the trailer and the tractor sent every minute or so to their logistics center. Having the tracking signal stop when it got to a "junkyard in the barrens" might suggest somewhere for a search to start.

People who buy and operate these things in fleets in SR have some idea of how things can go bad and how to go about finding and recovering their trucks.

And there are no good rules for it. It depends on how paranoid the people owning the gear are. Without a decent sized radio a tag won't have anything to talk to. But I would expect a tag on every single retail packaged item, every device designed to be installed in a store, and at least one hardened and well hidden locator in the tractor, and that one would have a powerful radio and a long duration battery.

In Shadowrun, I'd expect these updates to be continuous.


Yeah, I'd think there'd be a Security Tag in, at minimum, the engine and frame of the cab, and at least one in the trailer; in the event that it's an intermodal trailer - as would be likely in Seattle - I would anticipate that both the container and the chassis would each have at least one Security Tag. And every location with a Security Tag would likely have at least one backup Stealth Tag. It's a lot like a VIN on a modern car: overkill is cheap.

They already stole it by stealing it from other crooks who'd already done the legwork in getting it out of downtown unnoticed. (The group AI tried to make things more interesting by 'detecting an AZT signal' during an RP session. I improvised, since they seemed to be spoiling for some action.)

They also damn-near flatlined the kid who was commanding it through the matrix. They got really lucky on their "is the GM a bastard" roll when the AI had an "oops" moment when she realized that she'd opened up with Black Hammer on a kid unwisely running hot sim on a rating 3 commlink and put him into dying. Fortunately for them, the kid's mother was in the house, and was a medical professional, so she managed to stabilize him while the group summoner sent a Force 3 Spirit of Man out to patch him up.


They're not gonna catch grief from Stuffer Shack over this, since the previous group already squelched all the main tracking signals, and the AI killed the backups almost as soon as they kicked in and fired up ECM. If anyone's gonna give 'em grief about it, it's gonna be the matrix gang whom they fucked over thrice: on initiating a new member, on their theft of the truck, and in that Stuffer Shack is probably going to come after them with no truck to show for it.

How does one burn out a Security RFID tag, anyway? Would just setting the thing up in a faraday cage and setting off some kind of EMP inside it do the job?

It's all essentially magic, like the rest of the computer rules. If you want a RW mechanic that would probably work.

For an IRL example, almost all big rigs like this in North America that aren't privately owned (Fleet trucks like the example given in the OP), had Lo-Jack before it was known as that, and monitors galore to see how well the driver is performing at all times (Some report that in real time, too, rather than an after-driving report when the rig gets "home".). That's TODAY. In 2070?

They're insured, but are a substantial investment, and penalty fees for the lost cargo as well as any cargo that can't be delivered because someone stole the rig to haul them.

Yup. Mostly they seem to use satcom links, not low power cell connections. And oddly enough, they are completely independent of the vehicle other than using a power feed to keep their battery charged. It really makes no sense to assume that you can hack the vehicle and deactivate the vehicle tracking systems. There would be no connection between them and no usable wireless connection. Instead it would require hacking the company running the satellite location tracking system.

Or physically removing said SatCom. But that'll light up the "I've been stolen!" alarms galore. Better to Spoof the SatCom signal to send other information.

Tag erasers do not work like that. They have some pretty specific limitations that make it a pain in the ass to wave it over every square inch of a car's internal hard to reach engine parts, and flat out don't work on some tags.

First off, there are no rules for de-tagging cars as a whole integrated procedure, so you will have to adlib a bit.

Basically you need a reliable way to do all of the following:
Detects all RFID tags, stealth tags, security tags
Remove all said tags
Prevent tags from transmitting while at the chop shop
Be 100% sure there aren't any viruses or backdoors or hidden tracking agents/ic hidden in any of the cars nodes or subnodes(there can be a surprising amount of these BTW, and remember that tags DO have device ratings themselves. A lot of people forget they can run ECCM, which is a very nasty surprise.)

There are multiple ways to do some of these things, and some are better than others, but its kind of the thing that should be left to professionals that have access to stolen factory specs on where all the tags are, copies of the relevant pilots so they can do fresh installs when they wipe all the electronics, etc.


Since you are going to need to physically REMOVE tags that you can't disable, arsenal provides guidelines for installing and removing tracker tags of this nature: You're going to need the hardware skill, the rules for adding and removing mods, possibly a Special Skill(per the usual mod rules) with the relevant Vehicle Mechanic skill because you're dealing with an entire car, and not a small piece of electronics. Then you need to repeatedly beat the threshold for removing all of them.
Keep in mind that these are mods for Weapons(arsenal) and Commlinks/Electronics(unwired, but uses the arsenal rules). Since it does not take any modslots(RFIDs are in EVERYTHING now) you can basically steal the rules for adding/removing it wholesale and apply it to larger objects.

Don't forget to slap a Spoof Chip on it, or something that works similarly, just so the truck doesn't show up on GridGuide all of a sudden.

I'd just like to recommend hacking the RFID tags. An AI should easily be able to hack some basic tags and reprogram them to broadcast anything he wants. Plus, the RFID might have juicy information on them (read: plot hooks).

I'm not a fan of tag erasers because in an AR saturated environment like SR, having somebody without RFIDs on them should be odd. It's like social media today, you can't really avoid it so you have to control the message.

Hrm... Well, this calls for some deliberate action.

Also, one of the players is a serious wizzer, and he was wondering if any spirits could help.. I'm wondering that myself.

Also, might it be worth it to develop a Demolish (RFID Chip) spell?

Anyway, as I'm thinking now, the steps to getting this thing sorted are:

1: Acquire the master factory specs that include the locations of all the RFID chips. That's probably not going to be easy, and would require the AI to start searching Shadowlands and shit, and they'll have to pay for them. What would be a fair price for these, 5%, 10% of the vehicle's base cost, up or down depending on negotiation, I guess? Extended Computer + Browse test with a threshold of something like 20 and an interval of an hour or something?

2: Manually access the RFID chips, since they're sure as hell going to be read-only wirelessly, and either manually replace them with ones you bought, or manually reprogram them with a consistent serial number and shit? That'd be what, an extended Logic + Automotive Mechanic test, probably with an interval of eight hours and a threshold of the vehicle's body, since you're literally disassembling the entire fucking big rig. It's a good thing they have a big garage. An RFID chip, even Security or Stealth, probably wouldn't stand any chance against an AI with hardware access, so I'll call that one a wash.

3: Clean out the computers, all of the computers. The simple way to do this would simply be to junk all of them and replace them with ground-up new systems, or at the very least reformat all the nodes and feed them programming you gave them. Or you could go through them line-by-line, decompiling all of the software to find the computerized gotchas. Basically, three ways to do this:

a: Easy but godawful expensive: buy whole-new systems off the shelf or build the rig's computers piecemeal as either a commlink or a nexus and buy the appropriate programs to go on it, plus any extras you may want, like some nice Black IC.
b: Cheaper but less versatile: Format all the drives, buy new programming. You save on the device costs, but you're limited to the rig's own basic System ratings for everything, which seems to be Rating 2. It'll get you back on the road, but the AI had better move from the Citymaster to the big rig and be ready to actively counter-hack anything that comes your way.
c: The long approach. Build the hardware piecemeal and then have the AI program it by hand. You'll save on program costs, but it will take a long time before you're ready to roll out in this bad boy.


4: Make it so Stuffer Shack wouldn't recognize the rig if you drove it right up to them. New paint scheme, maybe some cosmetic detailing on the outside to make it look like a different model year, throw in a Spoof Chip and the adaptive license plates.

It might well be simpler in the long run and more profitable in the short run to just fence the damn thing for 30% of the purchase price. 33K is nothing to sneeze at, especially when there's lifestyle costs to keep up...

That said, I have some very innovative players. I'm interested in what they'll do with a semi, so... Should be fun.

First of all, do we mean to say there's not a single section in a single SR4 book titled something like, "Stealing a car?" Boggles the mind.


The very best way to steal things! Cuts down on police reports a lot, although criminals tend to vigilantism more than civilians.


It's up the GM [Arsenal p57], but I would rule that a targeted bunch of EMPing or HERFing would do the trick. You'd want someone who knows about the truck, and someone who can read an RFID scanner.


+1. Today's fleet tracking telematics systems are widespread [nearly ubiquitous], real-time, and extremely capable. The business end - the actual unit itself, as opposed to the driver displays and so on - is also quite small, so backup units are easily possible, even built into the structure of the cab itself. Because most of us don't move in the logistics world, we don't see what's currently available, but it's much more common and much more powerful than people tend to think.


That does make a great deal more sense. Where would the rules for this be?

Well, first you sign on to their public account, then you… oh wait, they're bloody RFID tags: zap them.

You can still hack those. Even if they ONLY use sat-uplink you should be able to do a signal capture and find their nodes, then hack them.



You have to use direct hacking from mutual signal range (which I would assume to be 0 or 1), so you need to be fairly close, I would guess, after finding their hidden nodes. (The extended test is probably your friend, here, to just find all of the damn things in one go.)
The question remains what to DO once you have hacked a security tag. They are unpowered, don't run any programs, and basically just reply to an authorized query with some info - or so I gather. I'm not sure you could even tell one to shut down. However, going only by SR rules, that might still work. You could also edit the information they respond with when queried, for instance telling everyone that the item they are installed in belongs to you, rather than Stuffer shack. Or simply remove all authorized accounts, which means they will not respond to any query, unless hacked again.

Absolutely! In Shadowrun, even if they're independent of the vehicle's own systems, they're still systems in their own right, and completely hackable.


Well, setting aside that can of worms, that's not the question I asked. I was wondering where in the books the rules for hacking an RFID tag would be.


My question would be how. Why would the tag be read-write at all? Why would it be hackable? Why wouldn't it just be inductively powered whenever a reader got within range of it, and transmit whatever information it possesses?

Yes, that.

I utterly despise RFID tags and thus took decisive action against the annoying little buggers some time ago.

Step 1 – I had a previous mage character (I only play mages – why on earth would anyone play anything else? – but I digress) go to the trouble of creating the Detect [RFID Tags] and Demolish [RFID Tags] spells.

Step 2 – I had the team’s technomancer publish these spells all over the matrix. Even if the public copies end up censored, the shadows will still have them readily available. Information Wants To Be Free in action. This way, even new characters can justify having access to these spells from character creation, on the grounds that they are both publicly known and freely available.

Step 3 – I noted on my Standard Security Precautions sheet that my character, along with a whole page of other daily / situational / continuous security precautions uses these spells at least twice per day (morning and night) on herself, her house, and everything she owns, as well on any food purchased before eating it. Yes, I *am* that paranoid – you should see the rest of my standard security precautions; I think every PC should live their lives according to the Moscow Rules, and then some.

Step 4 – Kick back and enjoy your new RFID-free life. Problem solved.

How do you get LOS on the tags?

I still don't see in what way tag erasers aren't the instant, perfect fix for all this.

I don't see that it's necessary, as long as I have LOS on the objects they might be contained in. The same way that healing spells can heal internal damage even if you can't see that, either. I know that's a hotly-debated topic in and of itself here, but that's the ruling at our gaming table. Seriously, does someone get to be immune to area fireball damage if they hide behind a large sheet of cardboard they're holding up? That said, YMMV, and I know other people have ruled differently for their games, but at our table, area effect spells effect whatever's in that area.

I'd imagine that the RFID chips themselves are an integral part of any object which might house them, so you only need to draw LOS to that.



The problem is that the tag eraser needs to be brought within 1cm of the chip, and the manufacturers like to build them inside things, under things, deep within components and shit.



I'd have to agree with JanessaVR here. If you want to demolish the RFID chips inside a vehicle with a spell, you just draw a line to the vehicle.




Also, on the note of funny Demolish (Whatever) spells, I had a PC glitch, yet succeed, a summoning spell, and then he critically glitched the binding.

He was trying to summon up a Spirit of Man with Innate Spell (Healing.) Instead of screwing him over or anything, I decide that he had summoned a Force 3 Douchebag Dan, who is basically modern-day Scumbag Steve except without a shirt.

Douchbag Dan had Innate Spell (Demolish (Moon)). He skipped through the wards on the guy's lodge and off into the night, giggling and pew-pewing his fingers towards the moon. So now there's a hundred-mile tall cock and balls, rendered fairly artistically (Force 3 means he rolled 6 dice on his Artisan roll) carved into the moon, visible with a telescope.

Why couldn't you just hack it like any other device (except for stealth ones). And they have to be hackable because someone had to program them on who to report to, how, and when. These things are cheap and bought in batches; someone has to program them before they're installed. In fact, you'd probably want to have a fairly simple way of reprogramming them all in case you want to change the data reported, or update firewalls, or anything like that. If you can't access them wirelessly, anytime you want to change anything you have to replace ALL of them, which would be more difficult that clearing them out.

You're right that 'instant' isn't the right word there; more like 'after giving a careful once-over'.

Fireball is totally different, being an *indirect* area spell. AFAIK, you can't hit all the invisible (to you) RFIDs any more than you can manaball people behind walls. Thanks for clarifying about your table, though.

Maybe they're write-once, PoliteMan? It's true the rules don't describe them in any detail like we're discussing, of course. Still, in life, you don't necessarily get 'cheap and durable' *and* reprogrammable.

Wouldn't the light years of dead space (no mana) kind of put a crimp on that? I mean direct combat spells used to 'jump over' the space in between a spell and its target, but I thought that went away with SR4.

It's another debated issue. Certainly it *shouldn't* work, but there are a couple arguments about why the rules-as-poorly-written say it does. It could also just be another house rule for Janessa? Still, it's just a GM joke; if random Force 3 spirits actually could do things like that, it might be worth worrying about.

That would not work at our table - unless the Force of the spell was higher than 12 - the negative rating of the Mana Void between Earth and the Moon. This as per Street Magic, pp. 119-120. And even then, it would reasonably require a heck of a Force rating to carve something a hundred-plus miles wide on the moon. Sounds like something a Great Dragon *might* be able to pull off - if very drunk and very bored.

I didn't elaborate on this before, but a Cyberware Scanner 6 + a RFID Datasoft 6 is your best friend when hunting for stupid tags.

Oh, sorry JanessaVR: I misread that story as coming from you, not ShadowDragon. :/

Light Second, Not Light Years...
And there is a long and drawn out debate on the merits of Background Count and Instant Spells somewhere in the Forums (They never interact unless the caster is in the BGC by RAW).

Which incidentally means that if the moon is counted as a single object... you could powerbolt the moon! In SR3 now that would have actually worked: There, ya fracking moon, take D damage from my F1 powerbolt! Ye're an object, ye don't get to resist! All I need to do is keep rolling until I get over your astronomical object resistance.

Who needs a Deathstar? Seriously...

Yeah, it pretty much was just a joke. The PCs were trying to bind spirits, and the blaster-mage, who sucks at summoning (unlike the summoner, who sucks at blasting,) just kept on failing his rolls. When he glitched everything but the drain, though, I felt the need to inject some levity rather than, say, some grimdark by having him summon at toxic spirit or something.

"Um, sir, Lofwyr just drank all the bier..." "What? Well, it's his private stock..." "In Germany." "Oh... Damn! Get the spin doctors ready!"

Object Resistance of the Moon is just 1 or 2 (Natural Rock, Dirt, and Dust, after all), so it would not be all that Astronomical.

Oops yea a light year would be slightly overshooting the mark. Probably piss off the down cycle space dragons too.

No, silly, it's an Astronomical Object, so it gets 'Astronomical Object Resistance'. Duh.

My players had a similar issue, so they just setup a giant faraday cage in some random factory until they could either figure it out or otherwise remove the cargo they needed.

Sometimes near enough is good enough...

- J.

Jake: I assume they're smart enough to have already secured their home with radio-blocking wallpaper and such, and it was already large enough. So basically, yeah. They have time. They just need resources.

Yes. They've also managed to hack the signal before and spoof it (as others have suggested) but that was another time.

Faraday cages/wifi negation/etc is also good when you suspect that there might be other ways of tracking the vehicle that you aren't aware of.

- J.

I am probably a lot stricter than most GMs on removing stealth RFID tags from vehicles and drones. In my game, the short answer is to take it to a chop shop contact, for which the PCs will get around 10% the vehicle/drone's worth for their troubles. The chop shop sells cleaned vehicles to the syndicates for 25 - 30% base worth, and the syndicates ship these elsewhere to resell at 40 - 50% the vehicle's worth.

I think Attitude has a section on how RFID chips work, you would have to speak to someone who owns the book because I do not. In my game world, stealth RFID tags can only be found either at the preprogrammed times they emit signals or by taking the vehicle apart, literally. Some stealth RFID tags will "scream" at a set time each day, each week and if the vehicle is expensive there may be monthly screamers too. If you don't get them all, there could be complications down the line.

The way the chop shop people remove the stealth tags basically comes from their specialist knowledge of the various patterns manufacturers use for their various models/years. And yes, the shops use wifi inhibiting paint to block any signals until the car or whatever is cleaned.

YMMV, but if you let PCs locate and remove all (including stealth) RFID chips with a wave of the tag eraser (as Yerameyahu keeps suggesting), then your AI character is going to start stealing every vehicle and drone not nailed down and soon amass enough money to make running not worth its while.

I hate RFID tags. Simply because of how they have put hem into the game. ANY company worth their salt would include RFID tags into everything that is insurable. Why? Because it protects their bottom line. Also, the cost of tags are so low that they would probably LOOSE their insurance unless they have them.

Security Tags are 100Y a pop for the average consumer. Let’s assume that a company gets them at about 30% of market price so we land at 30Y per tag. Stealth Tags are only ever active if they receive a signal, and only cost 5Y and 30% of that is 1,5Y.
And lets not talk about the 1Y ones, they are basically free and you could SEED every product with them.

If we take the average cheap car at 10K a piece and insert a certain amount of tags in important locations:
Engine Block
Gearbox
Vehicles Node
Chassi
Wheels X4
That’s about 9 locations so we add 9 tags of each type INSIDE the vehicle on construction. That’s comes out at 283,5Y which is 2,84% of the market price.
The cost of that is redacted from any insurance the company or costumer has to pay as it increases security for the insurance company which means they can lower the insurance cost.

This concludes that we can look at AT LEAST 10+ RFID tags at virtually no cost – and lets not even go into vehicles costing millions – they would probably include a hidden cheap commlink that only transmits its location after a certain set conditions have been met and is hidden within the frame of the vehicle and almost impossible to find.

And don’t tell me it wouldn’t be feasible to put in a hidden secure commlink that is powered down at 10K when the vehicle cost 1 000 000 or more.
You pay 1% more and you get a shit ton of better chance of getting back your 1 Mil investment.

There's frequent mention that most items are RFID tagged. Most of my player's use a tag eraser (my character has one) and generally aren't the sort to steal everything that isn't nailed down.

For anything remotely of value they all know damn well that there will be at least one security RFID tag if not other protections in place - depending on the rarity and value of the item. This is just common sense.

- J.

This is why I'm more than half expecting one of my mages to come up with a Demolish (RFID Chip) spell. Then they can pile their loot into a big stack and wipe them all clean in one go.


Of course, the advantage to this is that since RFID chips are "so" secure, I imagine other (non-IC) security measures (like serial numbers) have been done away with...

So I think there might actually be far-reaching implications if someone did, as someone above suggested, research "Demolish (RFID Chip)" and then spread it far and wide across the matrix.

Would this spell require LOS to the chip in question or would it be enought to see the object it is hidden inside? I'd imagine all it would take is to put a restriction to a powerball spell.

I did that to a Pixies powerball with the restriction "Non-Living". She blasted the clothes and equipment away from people but didnt harm them.

I wouldnt be surprised if there was a modification to detect enemies into detect RFID spell as well.

Paint the entire rig in wifi inhibiting paint, inside and out - even on the underside of it.

That should take care of most problems.

As for cleaning it...yeah, a chop shop will take it from them at the standard rate of selling 'hot' goods. If they have time and want to dismantle it, they can get standard fencing price.

The interior goods...

Every pallet will have an RFID, every box will have an RFID, every package will have an RFID, every individual item will have an RFID. If there are more expensive goods in there--electronics and what-not--they'll likely have registered id's in their hardware as well, so they can be tracked as stolen over the net.

Isn't 'non-living' much too broad a restriction? I got the impression that you had to *at least* say 'Metal'.

Well, what about restricted target "Not Metahuman" then? After all, it is in the end all up to the intent of the magician making the spell. Restricted Target and the Very Restricted Target are rules that could be fleshed out a bit as they seem to be a bit lacking.

I would say that "Metal" would be a very restricted target while another player might think that "copper" is a very restricted target of the more common "metal".

Besides, I cant find anything in the rules NOT allowing me to make spells ignoring certain targets. I could make a restricted target powerball with only "Metahumans" - thus sparing any vital equipment around them whilst making bloody body baloon explosions.