Pardon the I robot reference but I have a host question. I know hosts use their ratings to protect, attack and such but do they actually take any actions on their own? This came up when the decker escaped a host during a run and asked how long he could remain outside the host without losing his mark to reenter?
This made me think;
The host runs probe IC pretty much 100% of the time so does this IC scan for marks or just hidden personas? If it does scan both, which I assume it does, when it finds a mark it alerts the host but what then? Does the host have an IC to remove marks, can it do it itself, does it have Agent programs it launches to resolve this or does the host have to sit around painted up like a fancy lady until a spider or admin logs in an wipes it clean?
If the Host doesn't scan for itself, instead relying on the Probe IC to run couldn't a clever hacker just keep crashing that IC program over and over thus forcing the Host into an infinite and futile loop or relaunching the same useless program only to watch it get smashed again and again while never progressing through its logic to launch anything else?
I know the spiders would prevent this kind of hijinks but technically if the host is sleezed into and the prob IC smashed before it scans anyone wouldn't the Host fail to alert anyone because, as far as it knows the program just crashed and needs a restart?
