Hacking

How To Hack

The Core Mechanic

The system for hacking is the same regardless of whether your character is remotely hacking a Cloud Network, a Hyper Object, or someone’s Tendril Access Processor (TAP).

1

Hack the target’s Firewall by making a Hacking (Firewall Penetration) skill roll versus the network’s Defense Rating, or the Firewall of the TAP. This is a regular action.

If the roll fails or does not generate a raise, the target can make a Hacking (Intrusion Detection) roll at a penalty equal to the rating of any stealth engrams running in AMS. If the roll is successful the intrusion is detected.

2

Once you’ve hacked past the Firewall, you can perform actions by making the appropriate Hacking or Knowledge (Programming) skill check with the Target number being equal to the Defense Rating of the network or the Firewall of the TAP. Each skill roll is an action, though you can take multiple actions. Standard multi action penalties apply.
If you have a Sprite, you can upload it into the destination network, where it acts like an Extra under your control.

As above, if any of the rolls fails or does not generate a raise; the target is allowed a Hacking (Intrusion Detection) roll (modified by and stealth engrams you have loaded in AMS) to detect the hacker’s activity.

3

Repeat Step 2 as many times as you wish, or log out. Logging out is a regular action if your character isn’t under attack. If the character is under attack, you must make an opposed Hacking roll against the Defense Rating of the Network or the Firewall of the TAP, to log out. Failure means you can’t log out that round.

Range

The range you can hack targets at is equal to your smarts die, some TAP upgrades can increase this range.

Engram

Skill Engram Technology, or SET, is used to map activity in the neural pathways of the brain when the character uses certain skills with the Tendril Access Processor. SET takes this neural map and creates digital engrams of those skills. These engrams are loaded into the Tendril Access Processor’s Active Memory Sectors (A standard TAP has 4) as programs which provide a bonus to skill rolls for the appropriate specialization. More sophisticated engrams can also have additional effects like damaging attacks, and some can even act independently of the character as Allied Extras or Allied Wild Cards.

Creating Engrams

Engrams are created with the Knowledge (Programming) skill. To create them, the character makes a skill roll at a difficulty modifier equal to the number of Active Memory Sectors (AMS) the engram uses. When an engram is created, it must be coded to a specific TAP. The engram will not function on any other TAP than the one it was originally programed for. If the character’s Knowledge (Programming) roll fails, the character must start over losing any invested time. On a Critical Failure, he must spend 24 hours clearing the corrupted engram from this TAP and then start the programing process over.
It takes 24 hours to create a stable skill engram. If the character needs to create one on the fly, she can attempt to do so at a −4 penalty. An engram created in this manner is unstable.
A list of engrams can be found in game.