1. If I was a hacker tracking another hacker but I knew the hacker was better than I, what would be some creative ways to go about tracking him?

A few obvious answers:

Hire someone - I'm poor
Stealth + Trace - He's better than me : /

But the matrix seems too dynamic. There has to be some interesting ways to go about tracking. What about a beefed up agent program? Could I spoof the access ID of the Agent program and then his data trail as he leaves the node? I know it will all come down to some kind of opposed test, but I want to avoid it being me vs him directly. I have all the time in the world so there has to be some really careful way in.

If you have time, don´t forget social hacking. Depending on the abilities of your char you might wan´t to get the faces help on this.

Source? I Ctr-f social hacking in unwired and SR4th but didn't find anything.

Stealth and Exploit his weakest systems. Leave a virus or attack IC on his home node, or his car, or a message board he frequents. Try and get his passwords and access ID, or create backdoors into his systems so you can outmaneuver him and deny him access, while your team distracts or attacks him. Turn his IC against him with spoof programs. Small hacks and legwork should let you know his strengths and weaknesses.

I like where this is going, but I forgot to mention he's not someone I want to hurt. Just watch. I'm also aware in the meta that he has an LOE satellite up-link. But my character doesn't. A few things I know about him metawise. His DP is on-average 3-5 higher than mine in the matrix, and he has 2 more initiative passes than I do, so dealing with him head on is an option but a scary one(it defeats the purpose though, I don't want him to know it's me). I also want to find his physical location, is there no way to find how a node on the grid communicates to it's physical location? I assume no, and that I'd have to pretty much hack this guys identity to find his location.

What about ways for me to assume another identity or icon and attack him? He couldn't know it was me unless he tracked, and even then I could be accessing from another node(are their good public places to do confidential stuff or let you access the matrix from something like a nexi while being safe to hack?). But I don't know anything about rules for something like assuming another icon or "matrix identity"

Edit: How do I deal with the satellite uplink?

The greatest weakness is the human link. If you can get the trust of your target, you will gain valuable inside information about how he runs things. There are no specific rules about that approach. Post in the right way on the right VPNs, establish some form of communication, work from what you learn. If your char lacks social skills, the face can tell you what to post.

well...one thought is you could palm some random persons comm, do a hot search for him (no stealth etc) on their comm, and when he comes (digitally) looking for who is searchin him out so hard have a track program ready to tag him.

I agree with this. Set some bait that gets your target to a known-node, stack the dice against him in that node however you can.

Consider: rather than hiring someone that's a better hacker, hire one who is worse than your character. Hire two of 'em, they're cheap. Use them to assist you, but also be the bait. If successful, you can add, "Mr. Johnson" to your resume. And by successful I mean that you screw over your hirelings while achieving your goal

If you know a technomancer with sleuth sprites, use Traceroute on him.

To build on the Bait thing ... if you have the money, buy a new fake ID, one you don't mind burning right away. With that, buy a good commlink, and upgrade it to the gills. Park an Agent on it, loaded with Trace, armor, and Blackout, all at the best ratings you can get. Use that as your "bait" node. When the hacker gets there, and the Agent tags them with the Black IC? Their connection jams open, giving the Trace program more time to work on finding him.

For extra giggles and gags, once you've got him Traced, have another Agent (or the first, if you like) pop over to the hacker's commlink and unload every single piece of malware you can get your hands on.

The reason i suggested using someone else's com, and doing the search rather hamfistedly is to throw him off, if he sees such a finesseless attack, he probably wouldnt assume it was you (as you said he knows you, yes?) Hell, buy some street kid a meal or two and a new jacket and have HIM do the search to attract the attention

Tag him with a data or tracker worm perhaps?

There is also the inertia virus, if it manages to infect the targets stealth program.

Maybe get a RAT trojan to the target in some way, and then use that to get some kind of location reading (last time i checked, comlinks come with GPS style positioning ability).

Check this article on Wikipedia out: Social Engineering. It's got a lot of the most common hacks used. While a lot of those may not apply directly to situation at hand, it should give you ideas to start out with.

A tactic that some of my players used to lure out a villain (He wasn't a hacker, but the methodology is still sound) was to pose as people looking to hire him. They contacted him for a job and arranged a meet. To frustrate them a bit, I had him send an underling instead. During the meet, they were able to compromise the minion's weaker commlink, and used that to compromise the network of the company. They eventually tracked him down by monitoring the communications on the rest of the network and were able to piece together his location. They also made the mistake of siphoning 180,000 nuyen in company funds to pay for a semi truck and trailer, which meant the intrusion was detected before they could corner him. Still, it's a great way to get at someone.

Another idea is hack the network of anyone who he might be working for. Usually corp networks are less secure than an individual's, which would make breaking in easier. To make it look like his data was an incidental grab, be sure to take some paydata on the way out (which you can use fund your fight!). This trick could also work for the FBI or INTERPOL or any other agency that might have a casefile on him. Use their manpower and resources to help you in your hunt!

As I was talking to her about this post, my wife just suggested hacking his P2.0 feed. Gotta admit, it's not a bad idea. The FBI and INTERPOL have used Twitter data to nab ANONYMOUS and LOZSEC hackers, so maybe see if he's bragging about his exploits on P2.0. She also suggested trying to see if you can dig up advertising data or purchasing histories on him. It might not sound like much; but if you can find out what type of pizza he likes and where he orders from, then you can get his home address pretty easily. After all, I'm pretty sure Pizza Hut doesn't have military grade hardware protecting their ordering system. Of course, once you have his home address, you've got access to whatever you want as far as tracking him goes.

Good luck!

Edit: Something I should mention; there's a common theme in my suggestions: Not attacking him directly, but attacking the weaker links in his lifestyle. Use the weakness and lack of skill in the others he interacts with to help you find him. Hack smarter, not harder.

Yes, definitely this, I should have thought of it myself!

The above sort of approach is EXACTLY what the Quality Obscure is all about: making that data harder to single out from the millions of other schlubs with startlingly similar datatrails.