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Message no. 1
From: Mon goose <landsquid@*******.COM>
Subject: Trace and go Boom (but HOW?)
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 10:39:50 PST
X-files Sun, feb 15 spoiler space
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>/ > Personally, I liked the orbital weapons platform sending down a
particle beam on a phone signal. Adds a whole new twist to "trace and
burn" doesn't it. Now who in 2050 would have such a toy I wonder...?
>/

In the X-files episode, IMO, the "trace" was just enough to get a
general area fix. The AI then had to use a spy satalite to survey the
scene and pick a target. I'm guessing the little cross hairs were
probably just part of the hackers trace aquisition montering program,
makes more sense. I figure the AI needed visual confermation, cause it
WOULN"T need visual aim. Of course, if it was using visual, why didn't
it SEE Invisigoth and shoot her instead of the cellular modem?

>At one time I had a player going after a heavy hitter NPC of mine on
>the net. The NPC traced him, decked a destroyer in a nearby port,
>and launched a cruise missile at him.
> Imagine his suprise as he's a block away watching his apartment
>to see what happens when a cruise missile flies down the street and
>makes a hard right turn into his appartment window.

You know, trace programs always bugged me. Where does the info come
from, as to the deckers location? Sure, if your at some legal,
legitimate jackpoint, the physical location might be recorded. Real
common for, say, jackpoints inside an archology or secure facility. But
Deckers can make thier own jackpoints numerous ways. Who records the
location of every illegally boosted matrix link, or of a newly spliced
dataline junction? Or even just of the illgally run "extension" off of
some innocent neighbors line? Hell, when the phone guys come to my
building, I have to show them were most of the stuff is.

Any decker who risks a trace on a line with a recorded jackpoint deseves
a laz strike. It'll improve the metahuman gene pool.

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Message no. 2
From: Spike <u5a77@*****.CS.KEELE.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: Trace and go Boom (but HOW?)
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 23:37:38 +0000
And verily, did Mon goose hastily scribble thusly...
|You know, trace programs always bugged me. Where does the info come
|from, as to the deckers location? Sure, if your at some legal,
|legitimate jackpoint, the physical location might be recorded. Real
|common for, say, jackpoints inside an archology or secure facility. But
|Deckers can make thier own jackpoints numerous ways.

Well... There is such a thing as reflectometry, even now.
With this, when you send a signal down a transmission line, the terminator
at the end much be matched. If it isn't, part of the signal reflects back
down the line, and with a decent osciloscope, it's possible to work out how
long the line is....

Now, if there's some other form of interruption on the line, such as a break
or tap, it's possible to calculate exactly where that tap is.

Then it's just a matter of simple detective work to figure out where the tap
is going... I think it's feasable in the 2050s.

You could get the exact building it was tapped from even now.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|u5a77@*****.cs.keele.ac.uk| Windows95 (noun): 32 bit extensions and a |
| | graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit |
|Andrew Halliwell | operating system originally coded for a 4 bit |
|Principal Subjects in:- |microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that|
|Comp Sci & Electronics | can't stand 1 bit of competition. |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|GCv3.1 GCS/EL>$ d---(dpu) s+/- a- C++ U N++ o+ K- w-- M+/++ PS+++ PE- Y t+ |
|5++ X+/++ R+ tv+ b+ D G e>PhD h/h+ !r! !y-|I can't say F**K either now! :( |
Message no. 3
From: Mon goose <landsquid@*******.COM>
Subject: Re: Trace and go Boom (but HOW?)
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 16:33:49 PST
.
>|You know, trace programs always bugged me. Where does the info come
>|from, as to the deckers location?

>Well... There is such a thing as reflectometry, even now.
>Now, if there's some other form of interruption on the line, such as a
break or tap, it's possible to calculate exactly where that tap is.
>

Its possible to calculate from you signal injection point how far it is
to the "break", if there are not any boosters allong the route and you
know the route the line follows. More than that gets tricky, with a
HUGE margin for error.

That might be circumventable- but why does every Tom, Dick, and Harry's
trace IC, not to mention Trace UTILITIES, know just where every bit of
fiber in the world is routed? The Program WOULD need acsess to that
info to pin the deckers location down to more than an area, using
something like refectometry, or any other method I can think of.

>Then it's just a matter of simple detective work to figure out where
>the tap is going... I think it's feasable in the 2050s.
>

Yes, there is rules in Shadowbeat for the trid companies tracing down
illegal hookups using such methods. It takes days or weeks, not seconds,
like Trace IC does.

>You could get the exact building it was tapped from even now.

Easily, if the building had the equivalent of its own IP adress or some
other routing code, with a corresponding recorded (in reasonably
insecure database) physical location. Going farther than that would
require knowledge of the floor and routing plans INSIDE the building,
which, in the paranoid world of 205x, should NOT be public knoledge
available to the user of a simple trace utility. Even if it were, the
speedof the Trace would require the knowledge to be stored in-system,
orworse, for traceutilites, in DECK. Locationof every world wide
jackpoint- thats a LOT of data, evenis suck info is available.

Regardless of your hacking skills, you could NOT tell the location in
the building I live in of my appartment, given my Phone number. When
I got the sevice, and did the wiring myself. Nor should a simple trace
have acsess to Phone Co type records, even if the locations WAS reorded
there. I did NOT tell them I lived in the part of the building not
zoned for residence, cause I wanted to save cash on a residential line.

Reflectometry wouldn't help you a whole lot, either- you MIGHT get the
distance from the junction box that my phone was, but who's to say the
actual route, without time consuming physical examinations? And what if
I intentionally put in misleading loops of extra material, or unexpected
secondary junctions, or any of number of things that can fuck up
reflectomety? Hell, I ran my phone through old wires I don't know the
route of!

Reflectomenty works well for finding breaks in underwater cablelines-
straight shot, known route. Its a sucky way to get less than completely
confusing data about the spaghetti jungle called a local grid.

Trace needs some active method of finding the location of a jackppoint,
something that can send a signal to a jack, sense its location (in GPS
type terms) and report it. I don't see that happening, or if its
possible, I don't see why a decker could'nt jam it. It definately
implies more than just software operations.

Mongoose / Technological progress is like an ax in the hands
of a psychotic - Einstein

get sucked into -The Vortex- Chicago's shadowland BBS
http://www.concentric.net/~evamarie/srmain.htm


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Message no. 4
From: losthalo <losthalo@********.COM>
Subject: Re: Trace and go Boom (but HOW?)
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 22:22:33 -0500
At 04:33 PM 2/17/98 PST, you wrote:

>>You could get the exact building it was tapped from even now.
>
>Easily, if the building had the equivalent of its own IP adress or some
>other routing code, with a corresponding recorded (in reasonably
>insecure database) physical location. Going farther than that would
>require knowledge of the floor and routing plans INSIDE the building,
>which, in the paranoid world of 205x, should NOT be public knoledge
>available to the user of a simple trace utility.

Agreed, it would prolly be limited to the location of the phone line (i.e.
the matrix location of the line you jacked in from). You would not get
information on what floor, which end of the building, or any such info, and
I don't know where that is implied in SR rulebooks, though I don't have VR2
handy to check ATM. I don't think SR ever suggested that trace IC would
tell you which side of the room the deck is on or anything.

Even if it were, the
>speedof the Trace would require the knowledge to be stored in-system,
>orworse, for traceutilites, in DECK. Locationof every world wide
>jackpoint- thats a LOT of data, evenis suck info is available.

What if it simply extracted to jackpoint info from your persona? It has to
have some sort of tag in it that tells the info going to the deck *where*
to go. The communication is always 2-way in Matrix, your deck is sending
commands to outside systems, LTGs, RTGs, and hosts, and receiving
information in return from them. IC's job is to attempt to do things to
intruding deckers, one of those could be to extract from the decker's code
the location from which his commands are being sent.

>Trace needs some active method of finding the location of a jackppoint,
>something that can send a signal to a jack, sense its location (in GPS
>type terms) and report it. I don't see that happening, or if its
>possible, I don't see why a decker could'nt jam it. It definately
>implies more than just software operations.

The signal the deck is receiving in return from the 'persona' commands it
is sending to the host are perfect for this. The Trace IC tags along, and
then bounces a copy of its destination (the decker's comp) to the host it
comes from. Then the company whose security you've just illegally violated
starts playing 'guess where he is' from that net.address they've got. That
is where things actually get dicey.

lostalo
Message no. 5
From: Mon goose <landsquid@*******.COM>
Subject: Re: Trace and go Boom (but HOW?)
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 11:30:17 PST
>>>You could get the exact building it was tapped from even now.

>>Easily, if the building had the equivalent of its own IP adress or
some other routing code, with a corresponding recorded (in reasonably
>>insecure database) physical location. Going farther than that would
>>require knowledge of the floor and routing plans INSIDE the building,
which, in the paranoid world of 205x, should NOT be public >>knoledge
available to the user of a simple trace utility.
>
>Agreed, it would prolly be limited to the location of the phone line
(i.e. the matrix location of the line you jacked in from). You would
not get information on what floor, which end of the building, or any
such info, andI don't know where that is implied in SR rulebooks, though
I don't have VR2 handy to check ATM. I don't think SR ever suggested
that trace IC would tell you which side of the room the deck >is on or
anything.
>

It is not stated how specific the info is. There's simply a table of
"security asset response times"- the implication being thats how long it
will be before goons are kicking in your door. That seems to be what
the fiction supports, and how everone plays. Witness the recent support
for possiblity of Oribital weapon strikes or cruise missle launches of
amazing pinpoint acuracy.

SR3 should make clear just what sort of physical response is possible- I
could buy that table if it was the time neded to deploy forces to the
area and start searching for possible hackers, whick is how we play it,
buy thats not how most people seem to read it.

If those forces don't see somebody running around with a deck, they
might try to pose as "linemen" or something, and trace down the actual
jackpoint, or call the detectives who investigate matrix crime.

>What if it simply extracted to jackpoint info from your persona? It
has to have some sort of tag in it that tells the info going to the deck
*where* to go. The communication is always 2-way in Matrix, your deck
is sending commands to outside systems, LTGs, RTGs, and hosts, and
receiving information in return from them. IC's job is to attempt to do
things to intruding deckers, one of those could be to extract from the
decker's code the location from which his commands are being sent.
>

A resonable method of tracing a MATRIX adress, to be sure. Cloak=
anomous relay, and other tricks can be used to create masking and
evasion. I never meant to say getting a MATRIX adress was to hard-
otherwise, ice would not work at all. I just meant that Mapping that
matrix adress to real world location is not an automatic process. A
decker PC running a trace utililty can have a matrix adress, maybe even
a LTG number. He might even acsess LTG records and find an adress from
that, if its not secured info. But he's not gonna get the GPS
cordinates of Raku's security decker inside the archology by running
that same trace.

>The signal the deck is receiving in return from the 'persona' commands
it is sending to the host are perfect for this. The Trace IC tags
along, and then bounces a copy of its destination (the decker's comp) to
the host it comes from. Then the company whose security you've just
illegally violated starts playing 'guess where he is' from that
net.address they've got. That is where things actually get >dicey.

Good point, basically what I was trying to say. That method of "trace"
occured to me just after I sent my mail. Its a good one, but VR1+2 both
gloss over the measures and countermesures that apply to turning a
matrix adress into a street adress.

Unfortunately, the only "dicey" part in the book is the "10+2d6 minutes
till goons arive" dicey. :)
Not, "Well, I tap into my obnoxious niegbors line, run a cable though a
steam tunnel, and deck from across the street, so HE'S the one getting
traced" dicey.

In fact, the table in VR2 seems inverted to me- jackpoints in MORE
SECURE locations take longer for corporate and govt. agents to respond
to, implying its EASIER to find the location of a Jack in area with
crappy legal enforcement, But those areas are the ones most likely to
have chaotic, illegally routed grids.

Mongoose / Technological progress is like an ax in the hands
of a psychotic - Einstein

get sucked into -The Vortex- Chicago's shadowland BBS
http://www.concentric.net/~evamarie/srmain.htm


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