comStar Firewall alert - PhaseThrough

ight commands to bring those things to her doorstep. Of course,
sooner or later the people the hacker is ripping off are going to find
out and cut power, send her bills, reclaim property (and possibly
break her hands), so a hacker spoofing her way through life has to
be constantly juggling her needs and extras, re-issuing commands,
switching services, and grabbing new access IDs all the time.
> The phrase “living on borrowed time” comes to mind.
> Icarus
tooLS of tHe trade
Posted By: Slamm-0!
Being a hacker isn’t all about buying a better commlink or
upgrading your warez—you want to hone your skills to compete
with the likes of yours truly, and you’ll need to learn a few of the
tools of the trade that they don’t teach in the after-hour comp-sci
classes at the local pub.
expLoitS
Any good hacker knows that an exploit doesn’t just happen;
you have to make it happen. If you wait for the perfect flaw to cross
your path, you’re never going to get anywhere as a hacker. You have
to go out and look at the code, see where the ambiguity lies, and
keep an open and creative mind for how to tweak your programs
to take maximum advantage of the opportunities that exist.
When you get down to it, exploits are the most basic
building block in a hacker’s arsenal. Every attack program, every
strategy or tactic for bypassing security, every hardware or software
hack is based around an exploit of one form or another.
Without an exploit, no user would have privileges beyond those
basic access rights assigned to them. Without exploits, there
would be no hackers.
> And the armies of darkness would march across the face of the
Matrix …
> Glitch
Most exploits aren’t due to programmer faults or deliberate
flaws placed in the program by skilled and foresighted hackers;
they come about from translation errors or slight incompatibilities
between different code, creating ambiguities that a skilled user
can take advantage of to do things they aren’t suppose to be able
to do—such as bypass system security or other safeguards. The
Matrix has so many layers of code that it is practically impossible
to prevent exploits in code, not that programmers ever stop trying
to make flawless code, or spiders stop patching up new exploits as
they’re discovered.
A new exploit is worth its weight in gold radicals, and hackers
tend to hoard them—the less often an exploit is used, the less
likely it is to be discovered and patched. On the other hand, data
brokers (and even other hackers) are always on the lookout for a
good exploit and will trade in cred or favors for them.
BLack Matrix Service providerS
People like us need to access the Matrix, and for that you
need a Matrix Service Provider (MSP). Of course, without a SIN
(or not wanting to give out a SIN), we need an MSP that will
accept straight cred and not ask any questions: a black MSP. Some
Unwired
of these services border on the legal, providing the same services
as regular MSPs without asking for SINs, while others are hacked
accounts on a normal MSP or strictly illegal operations set up by
Matrix syndicates, which tend to offer special services like anonymizers,
one-shot commcodes, dead-drop e-mail boxes, and credit
laundering services.
anarkh
One of the many free shadowy MSPs available to shadowrunners
and the SINless, Anarkh is a no-frills black MSP that offers
only the most basic service—a commcode. But there’s no ads and
no charge. I wouldn’t leave any files in your mailbox (ever), and
it can be hacked by a couple college students on brainbenders …
but hey! Free!
anonymizers and re-Mailers
While not always illegal, a good portion of the anonymizers
and re-mailers available on the Matrix are run by Matrix gangs, or
as under-the-table start-ups by enterprising spiders and programmers
in little-used corporate nodes. The advantage of the shadowy
anonymizers is they don’t have to work with law enforcement; the
downside is that they’re less trustworthy than legitimate Matrix
security corps. Both cost about the same for their level of service.
fuchi telecomm
A lingering remnant of Fuchi Industrial Electronics, this
splinter corporation was lost in the shuffle as the megacorps
squabbled over the remains of the former AAA megacorp. Because
of lingering contractual obligations, NeoNET has to allow Fuchi
Telecomm access to the new Matrix protocols for existing customers.
Of course, by the same obligations, Fuchi Telecomm can’t
accept any new customers, so there’s a brisk under-the-table trade
in existing accounts. Billing doesn’t care to know the SIN as long
as they’re paid at the beginning of every month. They don’t give
you agents, but they do offer anonymizer and re-mailer services
for a nominal fee.
one-Shots
A service exclusive to the larger and more organized black
MSPs are one-shot commcodes, good for a set period of time
(usually 24 hours after activation, though this varies from provider
to provider) or the duration of a single continuous Matrix
session (up to the maximum period), and then all traces of the
commcode are erased. Shadowrunners usually use one-shots
when they need limited Matrix access, or they don’t want to
worry about being sloppy.
pusan Undernet
An affiliate of the Choson Ring in Seattle, the Pusan
Undernet is typical of the larger and more organized black MSPs,
the type that charges as much (or often more) than a comparable
premium MSP but offers additional services in the form of oneshot
commcodes, numbered credit accounts, and escrow services.
BackdoorS
In hacker parlance, a backdoor is a hidden account or deliberately
programmed security flaw that lets you access a particular
system easier. People can get really paranoid about backdoors because
Simon Wentworth (order #1132857) 9
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hacker’s handbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .