I have two questions about the SR5 matrix related to two situations:

Question 1:

If I have:
- cybereyes with imagelink which is set to "wireless off"
- a datajack (also wireless off) but with an internal connection to cybereyes and a wire connection to my commlink.
- earbuds with soundlink which is set to "wireless off" but also connected by wire to my commlink.
- a commlink which is online.

With this device configuration, my commlink is able to receive a video call from my teammate and send image and sound to the dedicated device so I can see and ear my friend by Augmented Reality and I can send a mental answer with the DNI of my datajack.

But now, if a hacker want to target me:
A) He can only target my commlink which is the only "wireless on" device.
B) He can target any one of my 4 devices because the commlink is online and forward data by wires to the other 3 devices.
C) He can only target my commlink for the begining, but as soon as he have a mark (or more...) on my commlink, he can now target the other 3 devices through my commlink.

What is the correct answer and why the other two are wrong, please?


Question 2:

Now I have:
- a night goggle with imagelink, smartlink and night vision.
- a pistol with smartgun.
- a datajack.

Situation 1: If I want the +1 dices bonus and the +2 accuracy from the smartgun, I should turn "wireless on" the 3 devices so they can exchange targeting data, but now my 3 devices could be targeted by a hacker. No problem with this situation because it's the purpose of wireless bonus.

Situation 2: If I turn off all my devices, I can't be hacked but I receive no bonus at all. No problem with this situation too.

Situation 3: If I don't want the wireless bonus from the smartgun (+1 dice) BUT I want the +2 accuracy, I have understand that it is possible, but the smartgun still need to send data to the smartlink by wireless transmissions for the accuracy bonus... so they can't be hacked (because it's the price for the loose of the wireless bonus) but they still send wireless data...

I don't understand the situation 3 (what is the difference with the situation 1), so could someone give me a clarification about it, please?

Question 1:

The correct answer is C. If your devices are not wirelessly "on" then they cannot be hacked. The fact that you have a non-wireless connection from your eyes to your datajack, from your datajack to your commlink, and from your ear buds to your commlink mean that the data can flow from your commlink to the devices and vice versa - and cannot be hacked wirelessly.

Your commlink, however, can be hacked wirelessly, and once a hacker gets a mark on it, he can now effectively "enter" your PAN and start messing with your devices linked to it - but he still needs to get marks on your devices individually. (see below).

The same way that if there are cameras hooked up to a server via wires, and not transmitting wirelessly. You can't hack the cameras wirelessly - but if you can hack the server, you can now affect the cameras. The cables send data in both directions.

Now, the advantage of doing it with the wires, is that if you had your datajack and ear buds connected wirelessly to your commlink, and they hacked any one of them, they automatically also get a mark on your commlink. Now they have to get a mark on your commlink first, and then start getting marks on your devices.


Question 2:

"If you’re using a smartlink, the smartgun system increases
the gun’s Accuracy by 2. The smartgun features
are accessed either by universal access port cable to an
imaging device (like glasses, goggles, or a datajack for
someone with cybereyes) or by a wireless connection
working in concert with direct neural interface."

In this situation, your datajack is not needed. All you need is the goggles and the smartgun system.

Situation 1 - this is correct - you have the wireless features on, and so the Smartgun System in your gun communicates with the smartlink in your goggles wirelessly, gaining you the +2 accuracy and +1 die. Both items can be hacked.

Situation 2 - this is correct - if both are turned off, and you aren't using a cable to connect the gun to your goggles, then you receive no bonus, and you cannot be hacked.

Situation 3 - you turn off the wireless on both items, and connect a cable from the smartgun system to your goggles. You gain the +2 accuracy, but not the +1 die.

For the smartgun, I use the datajack to allow automatics action for "remove clip" or "switch fire mode" but it's not useful for the question 2.

So, If I sum up your answer, a smartgun (with a smartlink) give:
- no bonus if it's not activated.
- a +2 accuracy bonus if the smartgun is connected to the smartlink by wire.
- a +2 accuracy bonus and a +1/+2 dicepool bonus if the smartgun and the smartlink are connected wirelessly by the matrix, but they could be hacked.

Thank you, for your answer.


Question 1 :

The answer C ("He can only target my commlink for the begining, but as soon as he have a mark (or more...) on my commlink, he can now target the other 3 devices through my commlink.") also make sense to me, but I don't find an example or a specific rule for that in the SR5 book.

But I have another question: If the hacker create a mark on my commlink, what is the next step?
C1) He can now target (with a matrix action) any one of the wired devices connected to the commlink.
C2) He could make a "snoop" action against the commlink to analyse the data flow and find the wired devices.
C3) He could make a matrix perception test on the commlink to analyse the data flow and find the wired devices.

C4) He could brick your commlink with at least one Data Spike (gaining +2 Matrix damage per mark already achieved, at minimum) and your whole PAN is now crashed and useless. If said decker is optimally equipped and prepared for this, you have little to no chance to withstand an incredibly overwhelming attack. If said decker is also a sadist, your connected gear will be bricked first.

for the answer to question 1, it cannot work like that. there are no rules that even imply you ever have to hack device A to get to device B. that is a completely made-up houserule.

if you could create a device that could 100% guarantee filtering out all unwanted signals from passing through, but allows all wanted signals to pass through, then every single megacorporation in the world would be hunting you down and torturing you for the information on how you did it, because you have just created a device with a firewall rating of infinity, and that doesn't exist.

if you are accessing the matrix with a device, it is online. period. it doesn't matter how many other devices it is passing through. otherwise, in order to hack something from 10 km away, i would have to hack at least 100 devices along the way, 100 meters being the stated intended range for device-to-device communication.

Think of the poor Trace program trying to backtrack THAT data trail.

i'm currently interpreting "wireless" as "accepts data from the outside, at all;" however, in the specific case of an image link, i think it makes sense that the image link operates as its own device even in the cybereye, so you could hack/brick the image link without gaining overall access to the eye. it's like hacking the radio in the car without getting to the engine. this assumes it's permissible to wirelessly link subsystems of devices without linking the entire device itself. that seems reasonable to me.

as an aside, is there any good reason a commlink can't slave to a host? so basically, instead of shelling out for a bunch of high-security commlinks for the security crew, a corp could give them craptastic meta links and slave those to the building's security host to give them effective firewalls of 8 or 10? seems like a sensible solution; the host acts as a mega-firewall for the devices connected to it, so as long as the personas don't leave the host they should benefit from its protection. the downside is the "shoot a guard, get an easy hack" problem, but that's what biomonitors are for. just a thought.

edit: ah, i see there is no good reason not to do this. so any hacker trying to get into corpsec is probably going up against a very high firewall number to do so unless they can direct-connect to something stealthily. that makes sense.

The total security is answer A, because the hacker can only hack your commlink on not the other 3 devices.

If answer C is wrong, we stay only with answer B which implies that all devices of a wired network are automaticly online if any one of them is online. If it removes situations of chain defense, I'm not sure that it doesn't lead to not suitable situations.

Just an example: if you plug your commlink to your datajack and go online with your commlink (which is what many people do every day because it's a easy way to control your link), your datajack is online also... it was not necessary to give it a wireless bonus because it is always online as soon as you plug something on it.

You also cannot have an infiltrator character with wired devices for discretion but with still the capacity to communicate with his teammates if needed (with a kind of passive commlink running silent), except if you use an offline micro-transceiver. By the rules, with a wired network of devices including a micro-transceiver and all are offline, you can speak with your teammates and can't be hacked... but nobody can detect you in the matrix, or snoop your transmissions (even if you play your goblin rock playlist in the middle of a secret lab), or trace your physical location... oups... I have found a very powerfull firewall for only 100 nuyens (but IMO it's worst that the answer C).

If a rule like "any device linked to an online device is also online" is simple, we just have an "all devices offline"/"all devices online" dilemma which is not a "carrot" choice but a "stick" one, in my opinion.

so don't link all your devices together all the time.

you can still use your datajack without wireless. you just hook it up to something, and don't turn the wireless on for that something. for example, you could use it to have a wired connection to your offline smartgun (so that it can communicate with the smartlink in your eyes). you can also use it to get a direct wired connection to something for hacking, although that's not particularly special tbh.

separate the commlink from the rest of the devices in the example, and you've got perfect security on your other devices and are only risking the one device that is online.

if you want to get really fancy, you can even have two commlinks, one of which is online and used for communication, the other of which is offline and used to manage all of your other devices. or, as you pointed out, you can replace that online commlink with a microtransceiver if you want.

@ shinryu: aside from the chance a hacker can get marks on the host without risking the host itself getting marks on the hacker, there isn't much of a drawback. that said, not every host will have firewall 7 or 8... and not every hacker will be deterred by firewall 7 or 8...

Which actually helps make social engineering hackers more awesome. Also, there is one reason not to do this: It becomes easier to get a mark against the host if the guard has low Willpower or Intuition. Also, it could lead to a situation where the sam subdues a guard without tripping the biomonitor (or holds a gun to the guy's head an tells him not to do anything stupid), while the decker wires up to his commlink and hacks the host that way.

so by the rules....

There is nothing a character can use to slave to a host?
As host have no 'physical location'.
I can't wait for SR5's version of unwired.

Me neither. I hope to see a lot of love for technomancers. Otherwise a favored story character is just gonna vanish come 2075, 1 January.

p. 233
"There are also wide area networks, or WANs, with
multiple devices slaved to a host. A host can have a
practically unlimited number of devices slaved to it, but
because of the direct connection hack you rarely see
more devices than can be protected physically. If you
are in a host that has a WAN, you are considered directly
connected to all devices in the WAN.
Only devices can be slaves, masters, or part of a PAN.
In a WAN, the slaves must be devices, and the master
must be a host."

yeah, you can slave stuff to a host, as has been pointed out. the main problem with the plan is that, at present, there are no rules for how a PC would go about getting ownership of a host.

Pay a Lot of Money.

SAMPLE HOST RATINGS.
EXAMPLES. HOST RATING
--Personal sites--, pirate archives, public education. 1–2
Low-end commercial, private business, public libraries, small policlubs. 3–4
Social media, small colleges and universities, local police, international policlubs. 5–6
Matrix games, local corporate hosts, large universities, low-level government. 7–8
Affluent groups, regional corporate hosts, major government, secure sites. 9–10
Megacorporate headquarters, military command, clandestine head office. 11–12

Emphasis mine. Page 247. No costs yet for a personal site, but (rating * rating * 500¥)/month might be a good place to start.

Yep, that was me pointing that out too.

while the "direct connect" problem is definitely an issue, i think it's a lot more practical to slave personnel to a host under most circumstances. among other things, look at the typical ratings for "local corporate host", then extrapolate the matrix attributes accordingly. A firewall of 11 isn't out of the question for these hosts, and even the best commlink on the market only defends with a base 7. additionally, said host is probably teeming with IC that's based on a combination of HAL 9000, gary kasparov and vlad the impaler just itching to see an unfriendly face. mr hacker better be real, real subtle and make his move carefully and at the right time, cause the digital rape wagon is loaded and turgid with hate.

the interesting question is if the team subtly defeats the (presumably biometric?) security and just logs on with the commlink. wouldn't necessarily be able to do anything nasty with that access, but you could probably monitor security feeds, feed false intel, etc. that might be the way to handle "hacking" for a team without a dedicated decker. at least it's access.