Number 1: Strong encryption (1 - 24 hours decrypt interval) on your commlink node. So any hacker trying to hack in will take forever to do so, even with massive dice pools - certainly no where near the 10 seconds a combat tends to last. Can't use strong encryption on signals though so I guess a hacker can still spoof commands to your drones etc...

Number 2: Slave your gear to a Technomancer's biological node. As far as I understand it, you can't hack a slaved device without going through the master first, and biological nodes cannot be hacked, except by other technomancers or sprites, auto-protecting you against the vast majority of hacker foes.

So ok, not totally surefire, but pretty handy? Anyone at least can take strong encryption, even if you don't have a techno handy for Number 2.

Does this sound right? Am I missing something?

Encryption (despite the ability to eventually be broken fairly easily) is definitely the strongest defense against hackers. Even the non-Strong version will slow a combat hacker, but you're right, Strong Encryption (assuming the GM allows it) is the way to go.

The only real drawback is the need to have the Encryption program running at all times, so it takes up a program (or Ergonomic) slot on the 'link.

Strong encryption never sat right with me, if it was that easy to make a node arbitrary hard to hack, every node would use it. I rule that it takes as much time to legitimately bypass the encryption as it does to make a hacking test.

As for number 2, do you have a technomancer with whom you can trust to give that kind of power. If you slave your device to them, yes only they can give your devices commands, but your devices will also accept any command from them.

I usually just slave all my devices to my 'link, and use them all skin-linked, and then use another link for accessing the matrix and talking to team mates. That way my gun can't be hacked.

No, subscription lists. You can't forge/copy an access ID until you are on the same node as it, and you can't get on the same node because of the subscription list. ...

I'm not sure that's the case. Access IDs never seemed that hard to get.

It's a matrix perception test against an icon. When do the rules say you can make a matrix perception test?

I changed the Encryption rules so that everything is harder to do as you constantly fight against an adapting encryption program.

Encryption VS Decryption
Active encryption programs cover ALL avenues of a node/commlink and changes constantly by switching encryption keys on the fly. All tresholds against a node/commlink is raised by the program rating minus the attacker decryption rating up to a threshold increase of +/- 0. This works similar to how ECCM works with Signal rating against ECM (ECCM+Signal-ECM= Signal).

A drone can be programmed to simply ignore specific commands or actions.

Technically, you should be able to program a drone to ignore any command that isn't preceded by the word "Snarfle".






-k

Of course that's all sort of assumed speculation due to the complete lack of comprehensive rigging and drone rules.

I'm sure we'll get a really solid rigging rules set, and that's how we'll know SR5 is right around the corner.

You can do that, but Spoof still beats Snarfle.

Bye
Thanee

Yeah strong encryption seems a bit too good to me. I'm tempted to houserule it to nexi/mainframes. Fits the fluff mostly. Basic encryption is mostly good enough, isn't it, for runners in the middle of combat? Rating 5 encryption is threshold 10 to break, which is what, at least 2 passes for a really good hacker? And then they have to actually hack your piece of gear. Would generally give you enough time to shoot the hacker, detect his attempt and switch off, or make your escape, etc ..?

As for techno's and slaving to their biological node, I'm thinking maybe houserule a -2 penalty to all dice rolls (similar to having Registered Sprites on hand) for each piece of gear slaved. Something to create a downside it?

Slaving everything to the TM is problematic from since only he can command those things. Which means you aren't going to be using your commlink. You could also argue that all sensor feeds (i.e. from a smartlink) would go to the TM then, too.

And the TM only has so many subscriptions.
--

The idea of appending a word or something to the beginning of a command is fine, but hacking would ignore it. Hacking circumvents any and all standard security controls. The only real defense against it is a strong Analyze (to detect it) backed up with IC, and a strong Encryption (to prevent it).

Strong Encryption is powerful, but I figure that the time and resources it takes to set it up means it's not changed as frequently as standard encryption. Strong Encryption of 1 hour takes, IIRC, 1 hour to set up, which is an hour window where you have no encryption protection.

You could also easily have an agent running that changes the Encryption key (thus necessitating a hacker re-decrypt) every combat turn. Or running dynamic encryption.

But remember, running Encryption eats up resources that that nexus would likely want to be using on something else. It's not represented well rules wise (and I imagine it would be), but things that get in the way of their employees' productivity will always be weighed carefully with the advantages gained.

You can sniff the traffic to get the access ID, then spoof the ID to send a command. Hackers have been doing that since the (19)60's.
Every single bit of traffic you send has the info necessary to ID yourself, otherwise the receiving device would ignore the data packet, right? And you are broadcasting into the air. So, any idiot with the right gear can pick up your broadcast, open the packet and get your "access ID".

Indeed. Matrix Perception on an icon is *a* source of Access ID, that's all.

Really, the only sure fire protection against combat hacking, or hacking in general, is to not use commlinks in the first place. Hence why I play mages and adepts that are also shifter. Not only do I not need a commlink, I don't know what one is.

The perfect plan...

You still need one, you just don't know it or have one.

Logically, yes. But NOT by the rules.

By the rules you can't even record data streams that you can't decode.

1. Hm... wasn't it that strong encryption only works on files... not on running systems? It is to make it slower to encrypt the relevant Data in time and on the run, not to secure systems. (Correct me if i am wrong... don't have the books at hand at the moment)

2. Technomancers (as written) are bullshit.

But since you cannot strongly Encrypt Communications, decryption becomes pretty basic.

1. You can Strong Encrypt a System as well, by the rules. It just takes time.
2. Technomancers are not all that bad, In My Opinion.

You can encrypt the files.
You can strong encrypt the files. This takes time.

You can encrypt the node/nexus. This requires Encrypt to be running on the node/nexus.
You can strong encrypt the node/nexus. This requires Encrypt to be running on the node/nexus. This takes time.

You can encrypt your wireless signals. This requires Encrypt to be running on one of the two connected devices. This also takes up a subscription slot.

Probably the most impenentrable piece of IC would be one that runs Analyze and Encrypt. It alternates between doing a Matrix Perception Scan, and Encrypting the node (simple action). The drawback would be that it would need to continuously send out the encryption key to authorized users (likely a list of Access ID's), that a would-be hacker would have to continuously try to intercept.

Or just hack into the account of one of the recepients to get a live feed of encryption keys.

The former requires that you hack into the parent node in order to find the child nodes' access ID.
The latter requires that you intercept wireless traffic, and if there isn't any (skinlink, hardwire)...

But lets assume that there is wireless traffic.





That's a minimum of 2 complex actions and 1 simple* before you can even begin spoofing.

*Decryption is a simple action if you have the key. If you don't...




Even a R1 Encryption on your comlink will delay the hacker enough to make him irrelevant in the first whole round of combat, and if you can finish the combat by the end of the 4th pass, it no longer matters if he gets in: combat is over. Adding in the additional 2 complex actions before a spoof can be attempted, that puts the hacker's earliest opportunity at Pass 3, Round 2.

I think the time for one roll is a combat round.

Bye
Thanee

It sure is, see above.

Correct, Decryption takes an Entire Combat Turn (up to 4 passes).
So Rating 5 Encryption is likely to tie up the hacker for a minimum of 2 Turns, maybe more.

Technically it only ties up his Decryption program, the hacker himself is free to do other things, but given that most of his ability lies in having devices to control and he has no devices....

Explain to me the point of having unhackable systems in a game where one of the major character archetypes is 'Hacker'?

Or, given that Hacking already takes up an inordinately large amount of real-life game time, why anyone would be motivated towards making it even more difficult (unless to make it impossible, and thereby not part of the game)?

Is this whole thing - you can't hack me! nnnnaaaaa naaaaaaaa! - just a masturbatory thought exercise that is outside the purview of a supposedly cooperative story telling game?

What is the point.

Oh right, this kind of weirdly abstract, contrarian, adversarial play is why I don't really play SR anymore. I guess I answered my own question.

Assuming there was no wireless traffic before a fight started, decryption would take enough time to take a hacker out of the fight. Seriously, if it were easy to stop hackers, there wouldn't be any hackers.

If your stuff is all skinlinked to your commlink and your commlink is slaved to your TM, and there is any traffic, (like say battle-tac) a hacker can sniff your teams signal, decrypt it, spoof a command from your TM to switch your master node from IP 1.2.3.4 (your TM's) to IP 5.4.3.2 (his). Then, the hacker owns your system, cause it's slaved to him now. So he turns your cyberarm mounted gun to the TM, and blows his head off before he can fight back.

Right? Did I miss anything?

This is not correct. Sniffing an access ID after breaking radio encryption is one of the example hacks (between Netcat & Slammo, IIRC)

The access ID can then be used to spoof commands, explicitly not requiring hacking the target node. This is the primary reason spoof exists IMHO.

If the opposition is not readily hackable (and many mooks and grunts will still be hackable; running an Encrypt program on their rating 3 commlinks takes up a significant amount of their commlink's resources), then the hacker should start getting creative. Can't take over that sam's gun? Hack the car in the street and ram him with it. Short out that vending machine over there to launch fizzy pops at him. Send that glorified roomba to polish his shoes. There's probably a drone nearby that's easy to hack; grab it and use it. Turn out the lights. Jack up the music. Etc., etc.

Also, realize that wireless signals aren't blocked by terrain. That hacker can start working on another team's comms before the engagement actually begins.

Hackers have a role, and it's generally not where the bullets are flying. Not saying they can't do anything, but it's not their best area. Cracking that secure system so the rest of the team can get in and do their parts, that's there main role. IMO.

There are no such things as unhackable systems, only varying degrees of difficulty and time.

Hehe, a self-quote post? It's nothing so dramatic as all that. SR is a game of arms-races and planning, so it's beyond understandable that people will look at the rules (which theoretically are related to the game world) and… do that. As Bearclaw demonstrates (and as we all know), hacking never really made sense. If it's so easy, the world couldn't exist; if it's so hard, hackers couldn't exist. We try to find a fun region of 'balanced conflict' in the middle. It's the same with everything: if corpsec is too strong, shadowrunners can't exist. If runs don't pay enough, no one would bother (the $6mil-man argument; the car-thief/drug-maker/etc. arguments). And so on.

And I agree with Eratosthenes: it also depends on the perceived role of the hacker in the world. If you want combat hacking in your games, you have to use X set of assumptions and SOPs. If you want slow-hacks, prep, etc., you need a different set.

The game has a built in arms race as a function of the main kind of conflict: runners vs corps. The conflict is made insane by the rules themselves, which are wide open in terms of possible solutions to any given problem.

Hacking, as an archetype, and as presented in fluff, is supposed to be a real-time phenomenon and the rules would suggest that a hacker can, could and should be actively engaged in hacks at the same time and in the same time measurement as combat, or even legwork / social challenges.

Taking the actively and aggressively adversarial route as a player or a GM is a death-wish to the game and the very reason that, by and large, any Shadowrun game I have played in / run has resulted in varying degrees of impasse between players and gm.

Questions like 'how do I make my PC / NPC immune to a fundamental arm of the game' are ones that, if plausible, are utterly game breaking. And why, as I asked, would anyone give a shit about something at such a far extreme end of play that, by its very nature, sets up a pernicious relationship between players and game, gm and game, players and gm.

Riddle me.

And further, why is it that the designers are content to produce content which is so readily coopted towards a total 'hrrruuuuuh?' moment and to the wicked delight of power gamers?

Again, riddle me.

Why is this topic, and others like it, of such regular and cyclical interest when the payload of such a topic is one that is insalubrious to the very activity we are (supposedly) discussing: playing a game together. RPGs != war games. This is a long standing beef that I've had with SR in general, with DS in general, and I am actually quite interested if anyone can explain to me - relative to the OP's goal of making hacking impossible - what good can come of it in game / gaming terms.

I don't know if I would call hacking cyberware a fundamental arm of the game. I would call it "Something that didn't exist until this edition and has been kind of haphazardly thrown in."

As if Cyberware didn't have enough disadvantages.

As to your real query, which is something along the lines of "Why is everyone so combative and powergamy," you have to think of the environment. You're on an internet forum discussing a game with a gigantic character creation system. The fact that it isn't a war game goes entirely out of the window. Character creation, and therefor building the "perfect character," is going to be a huge part of this community for the same reason that people will pour hundreds of man-hours in to Damage Per Second calculation spreadsheets for MMOs. It isn't that this sort of forum for discussion necessarily brings out the "worst" in gamers, but that there is only so much to talk about without just posting what your group did today so you end up discussing mechanics and how to deal with them.

Since character creation is such a large part of Shadowrun, conversations will gravitate there. So you'll see a lot of that, most of which turns in to either defensive or offensive crowd-sourced fine tuning.

Since Shadowrun can be a very subjective experience (it isn't run by a computer or hard coded, but is translated and filtered through a human being who attempts to do what he can to recreate the rules and story) different people have different ideas of what is and is not "overpowered" or something to worry about. Game Masters also aren't perfect, some of them can be pretty vindictive or petty. If you have a jerky kind of Game Master who has a particular hardon for Hacking, you'd find yourself here asking how to defend against it as well eventually.

So thats how this board sort of evolved to the experience that it is. Not just this board, but any Game related board.

Was he talking specifically about cyberware hacking? :/ If so, agreed: cyberware hacking is, at best, quarter-baked in SR4. It is not playable.

I still think the arms race as I described it is valid: you and the GM are aiming for that 'fun challenging balance' sweet spot. You're right that no one should be aiming for 'X-proof', in such a situation.

However, it's still beyond obvious: people want to be better. Better leads to best, and 'immune'. You don't have to take such a tone about it. Most people don't start out planning to break the game, but that's one of the endpoints of the arms race (again, in *every* aspect of the game). It's not like they're bad people or something.

Oh, of course the Arms Race is going to be present in any case. It is sort of how the world and humanity works; TTRPGs are certainly not exempt, even in a "friendly scenario" like around a particular table.

In fact TTRPGs and online video games are the worst of the bunch because the consistent influx of new material (through supplement books or content patches) perpetuates the arms race by ensuring it remains a changing battlefield. Every time you think you've got the "right way" or any sort of optimization a new book or patch comes out and changes the rules. Add in an internet community that is chomping at the bit to get a hold of things like this and you've got a recipe for extremely aggressive arms race.

No, I agree with your analysis. Dumpshock, as an example, does indeed attract the people with the dedication and expertise that results in 'optimization' discussions, and the flow of new stuff (powercreep splatbooks, heh) keeps it all running ('the metagame'). It's also just interesting to talk about, a puzzle, so it gets talked about.

Well I wouldn't say that Dumpshock attracts "those kinds of people," I'm sure there are plenty of Lurkers and such. I'd say that the opposite is true (not just here but most forums) where "those kinds of people" are the ones most likely to post which then tends to steer the conversation. But I suppose I'm kind of splitting hairs at this point.

And yeah I agree with the puzzle. Character Creation might be the most interesting part of the game for me at this point (hell, I've been playing Shadowrun since 2nd ed and I'm running out of 'new and exciting' things to do in the setting). I'll spend hours tweaking Street Samurai and Augmented Adepts that I will probably never play because I'd be hard pressed to find a game with a power level conducive to letting those characters fit in without rocking the boat too much. Trying to balance Attributes, Skills, cash, and essence (not to mention magic for an augmented adept) to build something nifty is a lot of fun.

When did this become a debate on principles?
As already shown in this thread, these specific setups do have their inherit flaws. A hacker can work a way around them. Cascading slave connections (a way around subscription limits, I think) will leave you very vulnerable to spoofing attacks.
I think it is one of the base assumptions in SR4(A) that indeed everything can be hacked somehow. Maybe that's why Strong Encryption is an optional rule

My take on mechanical optimization is more the thrill of solving a puzzle (thanks for the simile) than the desperate try to beat my GM at all terms. I look at the topics discussed here and take the bits I personally would like to use, those that fit my style.
It also depends a lot on the gaming group, as always. Who says a GM can't cook up something like the basis of this thread to give the hacker something to chew on?

Well you're exactly right. If the party is chewing everything up with lots of bullets I would certainly expect something with a heavy armor value to show up to make things interesting. Stuff in this thread is sort of the Hacker's equivalent.

You can't let your TTRPGs come down to rote. Same challenges with the same solutions, or things get boring. Why bother to invite the players over if you're going to throw the same challenges at them and they'll respond with the same solutions? You could roll that out on your own without wasting their time.

I do agree that a Shadowrunning Street Samurai should make himself as unhackable as possible and the GM should allow as such. Mostly for the same reaons that Mental Manipulation spells magically don't exist in Shadowrun Missions. Being a player who has lost control over himself and is summarily run down because of it is the absolute antithesis of fun and if you take the augmentation hacking rules at their face value it is entirely too easy to do (I mean rules for hacking augmentations, not rules for hacking from Augmentation, that might have been a little fuzzy).

I was being silly, but I was drawing the silly from the section of the rules that tell us that Spoof is ineffective if the command being Spoofed is on the drone's pre-programmed "do not execute" list.

So, silly, but also technically legal.



-k

Yes, it can be done. But no, it still wouldn't defeat the Spoof program. That's part of the Spoof test: finessing the command into something that the device would recognize as a legitimate command, based on wireless traffic captured. If you get the format right, it works; if you don't the command gets ignored at best, triggers an alert at worst.

It's no different than determining if commands sent to the device should be in a Bourne-shell style syntax, or a C-shell style syntax.

Outright disabling certain commands, however, can be done at the account level, instead of how the commands are formatted. Basically turning off certain features.

Want to hack someone? Best hope their wireless is actually on. If not, then you've got no road in, and hooray, they're hack proof.

In a combat situation, shutting down your normal wireless systems should be step 1.

Hmmm.

For the IMO entirely reasonable sum of 8,300 nuyen:

• Hermes Ikon (Signal 3, Response 4)
• Novatech Navi OS (System 4, Firewall 3)
• ... Firewall 6
• ... Analyze 4
• ... Encrypt 4

To hack your 'link, they will first have to initiate Cryptanalysis. That's their EW skill, plus their Decrypt program rating, with a threshold of 8 and taking 1 combat turn per roll.

Then, they have to actually hack in. That's Hacking + Exploit, versus a threshold of 6 for a User account, 9 for a Security account, or 12 for an Admin account. And you can simply set it to have NO user or security accounts, so really the threshold is a striahgt-up 12. Sure, each test is only one complex action now - so you'll get multiple rolls in a combat turn. But it's still going to take all of the round, and maybe some f the next round.

Meanwhile, each time you try, the 'link gets to roll 10 dice (Analyze 4, Firewall 6) to detect the hack. If it detects the hack, the simplest response would be "Terminate the Connection", pitting the 'link's 14 dice (system 4, firewall 6, Restricted Alert bonus) against the hacker's Hacking + Exploit (+2 for a security account, +4 for an Admin account).

Honestly, that sounds pretty well defended, given the comparatively small amount of money spent on it. If that still feels insufficient?

• Hermes Ikon (Signal 3, Response 4)
• Novatech Navi OS (System 4, Firewall 3)
• ... Response 5
• ... System 5
• ... Firewall 6
• ... Analyze 5
• ... Encrypt 5

Now the Decryption threshold is 10, and it's rolling 11 dice to detect, then 15 dice to eject, the hacker. The total cost is still a reasonable 14,800 nuyen.

If we have access to Unwired, we can burn a measley 500 nuyen and Optimise the 'link for Firewall. That doesn't chane any of the thresholds, but adds +1 to both the Detect and the Terminate die pools.

Then we can pack both Encrypt and Analyze with the Optimisation feature, at rating 1. This lets the programs themselves go up to rating 6 each. The cost for this is only 600 nuyen (+100 for the option, +200 for the Rating increase, times two programs).

At the end of all this, we've got a Commlink with:

• Response
• Signal
• System
• Firewall
• Optimised: Firewall
• Analyze 6 (Optimisation 1)
• Encrypt 6 (Optimisation 1)

Threshold to decrypt: 12.
Threshold to hack "on the fly": 12
... DP for hack to be detected: 13
... DP to terminate hacker's connection: 17
GRAND TOTAL COST: 15,900 nuyen.

If you're a samurai and you're dropping 10K or 20K on each of 2-4 guns, not to mention 100K to 150K on bioware and cyberware? 16K nuyen for a reasonably hack-defended commlink should be the default.






Or, in the least, go into Hidden Mode. That, and rating 3 "Nonstandard Wireless Link" plug-ins, means it's that much harder for an opposing hacker to do diddly to the whole team. Heck, it's possible their Scan efforts won't even FIND the team network ...!

Yes as noted above I think normal encryption is usually going to be plenty good enough for "in combat hacking protection" for appropriate NPCs or PCs. Strong encryption seems too good to me, and in our campaign we'll restrict it to mainframes/nexi.

As for slaving... I actually dont like it at all. It first appears in Unwired, no mention of it in SR4A. So I think we just won't use it in our campaign. I dont think it really makes sense, first off, and second why make protecting systems easier (a LOT easier if you're a techno)? More hacking opportunites = more fun, imo.

As to why I made this thread in the first place - (i) to find out if my understanding was right, or if I was missing something (I'm kinda slowly reading bits and pieces of Unwired, and this stuff stuck out to me as a potential balance problem - and as I understand it both of these things are not strictly speaking optional rules), and (ii) figure out a fix for these two issues.

Thanks to all for your comments.

There was a post several years ago regarding multi-commlink hacking which made hacking nigh-impossible.

You simply got several commlinks and created a unique user ID for each of them and linked them all together. The main commlink went through all of them ina a daisy chain and used the signal rating of the last one.

1. Enemy hacker traces signal to commlink X
2. Hacks commlink - Finds traces to another node
3. Followt race to next node...

Rince and repeat until you reach the 'real' node.

Since the original ID for each commlink is logged out and not available there is no persona for an attacking hacker to identify so spoofing becomes a moot point - they are just nodes that must be hacked.

All this do is to buy time but if it gives you 3-4 combat turns per commlink then a hacker can easily gain 30 seconds or more without a problem before he need to set up hacking defenses. Even better, put in a cheap agent that doesnt do anything useful except for being annoying to anyone getting inside each node.

Slaving has limits.

First off, it takes a subscription, which limits the amount of devices that can be slaved. I don't think cascading slaving (i.e. slave device A to B, then B to C) works, since B forwards all traffic to C, thus making either A uncontrollable/inoperable, or passing on the subscription to C. You could still cluster devices, though.

It makes a lot of sense from a security standpoint. No longer do you need to beef up the Firewall for every rating 2 camera you have in the facility; slave them to the security nexus. All the hacker needs to do is hack the nexus, or spoof the nexus.

Slaving is vulnerable to spoofing. And if you manage to hack the master, you get default control to all of its slaves. You're putting all your eggs in that one basket; you'd better watch that basket!

--

Turning wireless off is a viable option, but it, too, has disadvantages. You're not on the Matrix, you won't be accessing any TacNets, getting messages from teammates, etc. Wireless exists solely because it gives advantages (i.e. information). It does come with costs, though (i.e. being hacked).

--

@The Jopp:

I'm not sure I understand your example? Are the daisy-chained commlinks slaved? Non-wireless connection? What do you mean by not having a persona logged in? That wouldn't affect a hack, except that there'd be no one logged in to view it. If they're slaved, then hacking the first node would give access to them all. If they're non-wireless connections, with only the last commlink having a wireless network to the Matrix, then hacking that last commlink should allow a matrix perception test to notice the incoming access ID's of all the commlinks "daisy-chained". You wouldn't need to hack any of the intervening commlinks, as they're just passing the data along. Just like you don't need to hack every node on the way from the Pizza Planet you're sitting in to the Renraku servers you're trying to hack across the matrix.

It'd definitely slow a hack down somewhat, but sounds unwieldy.

Re: Dasy Chain

This is an option in the rules (i beleave it was called routing, but I am afb), but it reduces the Response of the com u r actually using by 1 per routing node, which makes u very slow very fast. You still have a normal persona, but the ID is the one of the outer most (wireless) com (actually it can be any kind of node, i.e. some public wifi router you hacked), you need to hack into that to get the next ID (and physical location if they r not the same) in the chain. U can still spoof normaly however, as all the devices the chain-hacker commands are tuned to the outer most ID! So this option makes tracking the com and hacking it harder/slower, but it does not effect spoofing and comes at the cost of response!

The other 2 possibilities mentioned above would be that the nodes are just re-transmitting or slaved (no effects on spoofing/tracking/hacking, just on signal range).

A quibble:

I agree the network should be hidden. So the first step is to find the icons in the first place - a static threshold, that is very difficult/impossible unless they have high-rated software and hardware, and slightly time consuming even if they do.

My quibble is that there is no stealth program. You can slow them down more by using stealth. Before they can decrypt, they have to analyse your icon to determine if it IS encrypted. Having a stealth program makes this an opposed test. It reduces how much information they get per attempt at minimum, and denies them any information for that attempt at max. Have no stealth makes your system easy to look at.

Stealth affects icons (personas, programs), not the node in general, IIRC. You can hide an IC program that's actively scanning the node, but not the fact that the node itself is encrypted.

@MK Ultra:

Ah, yes, that's the rules for proxies, correct? (Unwired, pg 104). Great for defeating traces, hard on your Response.