[Ryo]

A rating 12 host defend and attack with 24-27 dice (depending on the hosts matrix attribute array). This include, but is not limited to,  Mark and Edit Files

So we take what I would think to be a medium sized organization of hackers and find the top three best hackers in the group.  Out of maybe 50 people in the group I would think we could find 3 people with 8 in the relevant skills.  As far as the stats we can bump those up temporarily by paying a few magicians to cast increase logic, willpower and Intuition on the three for an evening. for simplicity sake lets put those stats at 9.  the technomancers of the group spend time registering machine sprites so that they can use diagnostics on the 3 hackers cyberdecks douling the skill portion of the hackers dice pool with team work tests.  +2 for hot sim. We can also use a few iterations of the infuse matrix attribute from the technomancers to make sure we don't run into any issues with exceeding our limits.  We can also have a few nurses or paramedics with the first aid skill and biomonitors on hand to help with any matrix damage they take. 

8 skill
+8 team work from machine sprites
+9 stats augmented by magicians
+2 hot sim bonuses
=27 dice

for three people matching or exceeding the dice pools of the host I would think there is a reasonable chance of success on the mission.  There may be even more dice we could squeeze into the 3 amigos I've shown above but I suspect then we start to limit the number of hacking organizations who can ge into the thick of things.  As it stands I would suspect at least several dozen groups capable of pulling this sort of thing off in the fluff.  It would take a bit of initial investment but Im sure the payoffs would equal or exceed 100-1000 times the investment as long as you were the first one into to host cause once its been hacked the information would lose value rather quickly. 

There really isn't a reasonable chance of success in that example. A host can have up to its rating in IC running at once, each rolling Host Rating *2 dice, possibly with a +2 on there if IC count as being in Hot-Sim the way agents do. That's twelve IC programs against your three hackers, and four to one odds with equal dice pools are terrible odds. Especially since IC can't be stopped permanently. If the deckers do manage to brick any of them, the host will just launch another one at the beginning of the next combat turn. And that's without the host having equally good security spiders on their side, which they definitely would.

[deathwishjoe]

A host can have up to its rating in IC running at once, each rolling Host Rating *2 dice, possibly with a +2 on there if IC count as being in Hot-Sim the way agents do. That's twelve IC programs against your three hackers, and four to one odds with equal dice pools are terrible odds. Especially since IC can't be stopped permanently. If the deckers do manage to brick any of them, the host will just launch another one at the beginning of the next combat turn.

in order to not brain fry your lead research scientist or god forbid a high level executive due to some sort of misunderstanding or read write error on the part of there commlink or something like that anything that could kill you should be stored and then deployed during an alert. while I personally didn't go higher then patrol IC in the original challenge for this very reason the rating 12 host might have a few blaster IC active patrolling the area before the host realizes its under attack.  This way it would only knock out or seriously harm someone during a misunderstanding and not kill them.  It then deploys one IC per combat turn just like lower level hosts.

The real question is how long does it take to locate and DL all the pay data on the host?  the hackers need only fight off the IC for that long before making a retreat. 

And that's without the host having equally good security spiders on their side, which they definitely would.

While the security spiders might be as skilled as the 3 people going in they aren't very likely to have all the support the three themselves have.  your looking at needing to have roughly three shifts of spiders guarding the host 24-7, then having 2-3 mages per spider to buff there mental stats each day and each shift and then a small group of technomancers who can call and register the sprits each day fo reach shift an then a few more on top of that to increase each of there matrix attributes with complex forms.  Now the Matrix spiders probably costs close to a million nuyen each.  we've got highly trained professionals with high salaries along with needing the best matrix equipment money can buy and keeping them ahead of the curve as new tech comes out.  Then we have 2-3 mages each which arent cheap.  I mean only some people can become mages and as such there services are never cheap.  So lets say another million nuyen a year for the magician support per spider per shift.  Now finally we have the technomancers.  Most corps don't trust them and have been hesitant to hire them in the first place.  Assuming the corp was able to get over its paranoia of technomancer in order to feed its paranoia of people stealing there data were looking at an even smaller pool to hire from then mages and since there so new its not like there are any universities they can get training from in the traditional sense for a long term life contract style of investment most mages get.  were pobably looking at another 1-2 million a year per hacker per shift.

Maybe I'm wrong but to me this just doesn't seem financially viable.  But since only megacorps can generally afford this level of host (I assume at least since prices for a host aren't listed) and there aren't many other cost effective ways of protecting them maybe I'm wrong and its worth it.  How much money is the megacorp willing to pay annually on matrix security though for one host?  Its not like its the only host the megacorp needs to worry about and they will probably have a few of these in different parts of the world. 

[Ryo]

1: Every file on a host that secure is likely to be Protected. You cannot copy or read a Protected file without breaking the Protection. Cracking a file is an Attack action, and thus immediately notifies the host that it is being hacked as soon as it is successful. It is impossible by the existing matrix rules to steal even one file without the Host being aware its being hacked. The countdown would begin immediately, and you have 3 deckers that have to fight off the incoming horde, and at least one of them needs to devote all his attention to copying files.

2: Security Spiders can launch IC in a host. So if there's a dedicated spider in the host (and there would be), they can get a full regiment of IC running much faster than your team of three deckers can take them out.

3: Never assume that a runner team is better equipped and better supported than the corps. That is never true.

[8-bit]

Perhaps you underestimate the amount of money corps are willing to spend on security. I can honestly see a corp like Evo, or hell, Ares that would spend this much nuyen to protect something. I mean, when they have experimental data that could make them trillions or quadrillions of nuyen, then sinking 10 million into just security doesn't seem so bad. If your data gets out, you could lose all your profits. Not to mention that some of these megacorps are run by dragons, and I'm sure we all know how long term their plans are. Personally, if I were running a megacorp that had data that was this valuable, I'd shell out enough to top all of your hackers, set up multiple security spiders, make sure everything is nearly impossible to discover to begin with, and have a lot of Track IC running anyways. 2 hits on you gets your physical location, which any megacorp who is this invested in security can probably annihilate with no issues.

So, is hacking it possible? Yes. Feasible? Not so much. Sure the rewards are amazing, but the fact that you probably have to run hotsim and that everyone involved has large chance of dying, not so amazing.

Oh right, don't forget the billion black IC that make it impossible to leave the host. They fry your brain too.

[deathwishjoe]

2: Security Spiders can launch IC in a host. So if there's a dedicated spider in the host (and there would be), they can get a full regiment of IC running much faster than your team of three deckers can take them out.

I'm not seeing where this is listed.  Its not in the listings of matrix actions and I didn't see it in the section talking about IC but maybe I missed it. Another interesting note is that a host can only have 1 of each type of IC active at any time.  Kinda sucks not being able to have 5+ Black IC fighting on your side.

I can honestly see a corp like Evo, or hell, Ares that would spend this much nuyen to protect something. I mean, when they have experimental data that could make them trillions or quadrillions of nuyen, then sinking 10 million into just security doesn't seem so bad.

10 million only gets you one spider buffed like that on shift at any given time.  Plus there's the costs for the host itself which can't be cheap but is currently unwritten so who knows.  Since the hardware costs of the host are spread around the world in the cloud the only financial solution for paying for a host has to be a fee paid to whatever megacorps are in charge of the basic structure of the matrix.  probably all of the big ten get a share of the fees and share the maintenance costs of the hardware itself.

Oh right, don't forget the billion black IC that make it impossible to leave the host. They fry your brain too.

You can still jack out you just take dump shock.  Also remember we have nurses on site to help with the damage.

2 hits on you gets your physical location, 

hack from a bunch of trucks when the run is over drive off.  by the time the po po catch wind and get someone on location your long gone delivering milk to the thirsty suburbs. 

even if the numbers are an issue a few of these organization could band together and share the loot.  Now I have images of a cyberpunk oceans eleven. 

After much thinking on the matter I think I've found a reasonable way of protecting data in the new rules.  If the data is stored on a device the device itself could be made inaccessible being surrounded by brick steel or whatever.  The device will have a switch which employees will use to connect the device to the host when they need to use it.  during an alert the host should be able to severe all data connections with these sorts of devices thereby making the information inaccessible.  The data Is still vulnerable while its being worked on but presumably there are a bunch of other people on the host during business hours working which would make a stealth option of getting the data very difficult. 

[Ryo]

The core book mentions data on a host only accessible if an allowed user accesses it first. It's called an Archive. Host Archives, page 247. There's no info on how to access an Archive, which will presumably be in Data Trails.

[deathwishjoe]

The core book mentions data on a host only accessible if an allowed user accesses it first. It's called an Archive. Host Archives, page 247. There's no info on how to access an Archive, which will presumably be in Data Trails

They specifically say that the only way of accessing it is to have someone who already  has a mark on it bring it out of archives.  I have to say in a world like shadowrun this s really a silly idea.  Sure it makes an interesting complication for a team of runners but can you imagine what kind of headaches this causes for company executives or system administrators who are unable to access files because an employee was killed or captured?  maybe your company has a policy though where a local system admin or your direct manager ill also have marks on all files you archive thereby having some sort of redundancy in place if you are no longer a company asset.  Well this system then breaks down during a local disaster and lets face it there are a lot of those in the 6th world.

So I'm going to adjust the original post soon to update it accordingly.  I don't think however that I will be using the archived file set up as it requires a bit of social engineering.  While one can indeed make a hacker with skills in also being a face I feel the combat requirements would stretch the system too far to be good at all three areas. 

[8-bit]

Spiders are considered owners of all files, devices in a host's WAN, and vehicles (which are technically devices). So, if they have a security spider/decker, they could retrieve the files out of the host. It is a hassle, I will admit.

[deathwishjoe]

I've updated the original post.  If there's any issues please feel free to voice them and I'll do what I can.  Wish I could keep the 3 tiered system but alas its not an option.  I have a few finishing touches to make to a hacker I've been working on.  If no one posts any attempts in the few couple of days I'll post him and his attempt for this run as a baseline. 

[Xenon]

"You can tap devices with data taps but then wont be able to work against the items device rating."

You get a direct connection to both the cyberdeck and the security device if you attach a physical cable to the data tap....

Cyber decks are also pretty darn expansive. You would get payed more for this run to just shot the guard in the front desk, steal the cyberdeck and fence it for money....



Faraday cage work both ways. How can you seems a message to KE if all devices is within Faraday cage?



It sounds a bit extreme to have everything wired and shielded, including the first floor and the first floor elevator..
.


I'll update with an alternate scenario soon

[Xenon]

Suggestion:


All devices and hosts are located on the Renraku Global Grid.

Two security cameras on the first floor that overlook the front door and reception area are not slaved to a host, but they are running silent. The live feed is send to a file in the a rating 7 Renraku Security Host (Local Corporation Host) for safe storage. The elevator on the first floor is not slaved to a host.

The elevator on the 3rd that goes up to the top floor as well as maglocks on the third and top floor are all slaved to the rating 7 Security Host. All security devices (camers, sensors etc...) on the 3rd and top floor are running silent and slaved to the rating 7 Security Host. Live feed from cameras are sent to the rating 7 Security Host for safe storage. There is a camera right outside the first elevator on the 3rd floor that will capture any shadowrunners that exit the elevator unless they take actions.

The actual lab is surrounded with rating 4 wireless inhibiting wallpaper and the new hot "Bust-A-Move II" and a data bomb are both stored in a protected file on a wired off-line device in the lab.

[deathwishjoe]

*sighs* I have to say it rankles me to think of having wireless accessible security devices.   However I concede the for the purpose of this challenge having things connected to the relatively high level host will be sufficient. 

Cyber decks are also pretty darn expansive. You would get payed more for this run to just shot the guard in the front desk, steal the cyberdeck and fence it for money....

well, who wants to buy a cyberdeck that's owned by someone else? another one of those areas where the matrix rules are weak.  For all we know at this point ALL electronic devices with the ability of having a registered owner may be functionally unfencible.  technically the grand you have in your pocket was the upfront amount you got for the run and the amount you get for complementing the run is as of yet undisclosed.  Assuming you could fence it your looking at probably getting about 1/3 or less of the items value which comes to about 60K.  This is allot of money but truth be told you could make as much or more boosting cars for a living.  At least with a high end car there isn't a guard standing withing reach of the item usually.  I'll admit that this does pose a problem.  too bad commlinks can't run agents anymore.

It sounds a bit extreme to have everything wired and shielded, including the first floor and the first floor elevator..

well were looking at a remodeling job. It's not cheap but certainly not out of reach of even a small office.  what amounts to chicken bailing wire is installed underneath the drywall or futuristic equivalent.  its then attached to a ground wire so when the electromagnetic waves turn into a current in the cage it has somewhere to go.  A special conductive film is placed over the windows and plugged into a ground wire as well and your good to go.  Theoretically 4 guys an afternoon and a few hundred dollars could shield a small office if it weren't for the fact that the bailing wire is ugly as sin and people would want it installed under the drywall.  While we are tearing up the drywall might as well make everything wired and run the data cables around the building next to the power cables going through everything. 

"You can tap devices with data taps but then wont be able to work against the items device rating."

You get a direct connection to both the cyberdeck and the security device if you attach a physical cable to the data tap....

I could have sworn I read otherwise.  I don't know where I saw it but a quick read of the rules shows you are correct sir. 

Faraday cage work both ways. How can you seems a message to KE if all devices is within Faraday cage?

 

the idea was to have some sort of wireless device just outside the cage that was wired directly to the cyberdeck but somehow limit it to only one way communication.  calls go out but nothing goes in.  *shrugs*

However all that aside the ability to hack a rating 7 host multiple times does indeed serve the purpose of showing that the character can hack a difficult target. 

All devices and hosts are located on the Renraku Global Grid.

Sorry if this wasn't said earlier.  I guess I forgot to mention that this was the case.

Two security cameras on the first floor that overlook the front door and reception area are not slaved to a host, but they are running silent. The live feed is send to a file in the a rating 7 Renraku Security Host (Local Corporation Host) for safe storage. The elevator on the first floor is not slaved to a host.

So by not slaving them to a host we are essentially asking the challengers to take an opposed test to locate the hidden devices against a dice pool of 4?  the cameras would fall under the security item heading under device rating and since there is no host or cyberdeck to provide a sleaze rating we roll against just the device rating if I remember correctly.  If I'm correct on this then you might as well just have the security spider watch Adam West batman reruns for as easy as it would be to nullify the cameras.  It would take a little thought on the players part to make sure the spider didn't see anything but the point here is to challenge the characters not the players. 

The elevator on the 3rd that goes up to the top floor...

the entire office was supposed to be three floors + a basement level or two.  nothing really big as then they might have an on site HTR team.  I've based the elevator idea off of a few things I've seen in the real world.  I worked in an office which was I think 5 stories tall.  The CEO of the company was rather well known and voiced his political views quite frequently.  As such there were more then a few threats on his life and bomb threats to the building.  As such you had to use a key card in the elevator to access certain levels of the office building. I've also seen express elevators in much taller buildings that jump right past the lower levels and directly to the higher levels.  Combine these two ideas together and we have a special elevator that only executives and scientists use. In a world of Shadowrunners and corporate espionage this seems practical.  Keep all high value targets on the top floor and limit who can and cannot reach said floor.     

So looking back at the challenge how do we pose both physical challenges that a combat secondary character can and indeed have to over come and matrix challenges the a hacking primary character needs to overcome?  To be honest aside from the two fights and hacking the high level and pretty well guarded host everything else is secondary.  I've tried to put some level of believability into the scenario but my experiences and expectations are off from what others here have.  There also needs to be a bit of written in railroading which while normally is bad for an adventure we want this one to force the character into certain challenges and not allow them to bypass them creatively.

I wish I had more examples of matrix security in the current edition.  Any place that employed or outsourced even one security spider will have had to spend some major nuyen to protect its assets. 

The elevator on the 3rd that goes up to the top floor as well as maglocks on the third and top floor are all slaved to the rating 7 Security Host. All security devices (camers, sensors etc...) on the 3rd and top floor are running silent and slaved to the rating 7 Security Host. Live feed from cameras are sent to the rating 7 Security Host for safe storage. There is a camera right outside the first elevator on the 3rd floor that will capture any shadowrunners that exit the elevator unless they take actions.

The actual lab is surrounded with rating 4 wireless inhibiting wallpaper and the new hot "Bust-A-Move II" and a data bomb are both stored in a protected file on a wired off-line device in the lab.

So in this instance on the elevator ride up or before we show up to the office entirely we hack the host and then either regain access to edit the video feeds and unlock the doors. We then locate the lab it's stored in and then hack a low level device to get the info? 

[Xenon]

If we slave the easy to physically access cameras in the public reception area then we make it to easy for them to get a physical direct connection and with that a mark on the host. By having them unslaved we still force the hacker to fight device rating x 2 (which would be the same if he get a direct connection anyway - and for a hybrid build that just have a little hacking on the side might still struggle.... This will also start the timer for the Renraku demiGOD to begin his search) but we prevent him from getting a free mark on the host.

The big matrix challenge will be to hack the first slaved camera before you exit the elevator. You can't physically connect to it without first being recorded. This is where you would normally use improved invisibility while exiting the elevator or have the B&E expert use the service tunnel or ventilation system.

Either you walk out of the elevator. Get caught on film which might or might not raise an alarm. Establish a direct connection to the camera (Decker only). Hack it and with that gain a mark on the host. Enter host. Now you have a direct connection to all other devices. Hacking the protected video file will still use host ratings (so hacking will be very hard). Finding it would probably be a matrix search test with a base time of one minute (reduced by net hits).

Or you hack the device wireless. It will defend with host ratings so this test will be really hard. A TM with cleaner and/or static veil could start the run some 10 hours earlier by hacking the host. Once you get a mark on the host you can enter it and use the direct connection to the device to bypass host ratings. Edit the camera feed in the camera in real time as the elevator doors open.

Once you are in the host you get a direct connection to all devices and you will probably not have much trouble with high matrix ratings from this point.

The device the file is located on might for example be a high rating commlink. The file protection is not depending on the device (but limited by the Data Processing attribute of the device we used when we protected the file). The data bomb rating is not depending on the device either (but limited by the Sleaze attribute of the cyberdeck used to create the bomb).

[deathwishjoe]

If we slave the easy to physically access cameras in the public reception area then we make it to easy for them to get a physical direct connection and with that a mark on the host. By having them unslaved we still force the hacker to fight device rating x 2 (which would be the same if he get a direct connection anyway - and for a hybrid build that just have a little hacking on the side might still struggle.... This will also start the timer for the Renraku demiGOD to begin his search) but we prevent him from getting a free mark on the host.

Let me just rephrase what you are saying so I can make sure I understand where your comming from.  The issue with slaving the cameras in the front entrance area is that it would allow a hacker using a direct connection to put a mark on the camera resisted against the cameras inferior dice pool which would also transfer over to the host.  More or less meaning that we get marks on the host with out having to go up against the hosts crazy dice pool which I think we both agree is bad. 

The big matrix challenge will be to hack the first slaved camera before you exit the elevator. You can't physically connect to it without first being recorded. This is where you would normally use improved invisibility while exiting the elevator or have the B&E expert use the service tunnel or ventilation system.

 

So there's the mirror shades version but it occures to me pink mowhawk just wears a mask they put on during the elevator ride up and shoots the camera.  Even if we reduced the knight errant response time to somthing like 3-5 mins we would need something to slow down the character a bit or they just walk out before the cops show up.  No need to deal with the host and we bypass the possibility of gettng into matrix combat.  Sure when they get to the device they have some decent pools against them if we assume the databomb and the file protection are done by the host but a significant portion of the challege is still bypassed. 

I've been mulling around a few ideas.  I like having the cameras slaved to something with a sleaze rating.  that way they can run silent with a decent dice pool.  The Cyberdeck idea was nice because if there was any sort of breach of security on any of the devices an alert is sent out directly.  what if we wired everything to a commlink at the front desk and have everything including the commlink slaved to an off-site cyberdeck running an agent like before.  This seems like a very affordable method of doing matrix security for a small company.and having it offsite fixes the issue with people stealing it.    They should have a reasonable number of dice in order to run silent or defend against hacking.  Now you can still wirelessly connect to the slaved commlink thereby getting marks on the cyberdeck and the security devices.  This method would not however gain you access to the high level host.  In order to get a direct connection you need to use a data tap but the benefit of this can be limited by using securty level or higher devices. 

I really liked the button idea I had.  It forced the characters into the building and forced them into the high level host.  However the more I think about it the more I think its vulnerable to data taps.  I can prevent direct connections using standard data cables using archetecture to make the device more or less inaccessable but with a building surrounding it its going to have noise issues and if we wire a cable off to an antenna or dish on the roof for good reception its then vulnerable to data taps.  Even if the device is put on the roof and an armored casing is built around it your not going to want the casing ruining the connection and that means an antenna or dish outside the casing which will have a cable going to it which can again be tapped.  . 

[Xenon]

Re not slaving public or easy access devices. Yes.

However, I am not sure it is a bad thing. It still resist with device rating x 2 dice. This is the same amount of dice it resist with if you "hack" a maglock "manually", using lockpicking.

It will still be a challenge to a samurai, adept or hermetic magician with a bit of hacking on the side. Advantage of the on site hybrid is that he can use a physical direct connection to bypass host ratings (which would be impossible for him to hack).

A dedicated hacker should not really have much problem hacking devices, or else it would be pointless to bring one. It would be much safer to bypass them "manually". The big challenge for a dedicated hacker is to get that initial mark on the host without raising alarms (and without physical attributes he will probably do it from a distance) and to copy and/or alter host protected files.



From the rest of your post it seem as if you want to make it really difficult for the hacker to support his team. In that case you could just slave each device to a different host.... But I don't really agree that it is the GMs job to make the players role impossible to act out.... quite the opposite. You should probably create flaws that your players can abuse. Maybe there is a service hatch in a semi public area (like the underground garage where visitors are allowed to park) with a maglock slaved to the same host as security devices on the 3rd floor....