MGT Only: Hacking the Neural Comm

[CosmicGamer]

So you have this comm/computer in your head so that you can send and receive messages and information via your thoughts. Sounds cool. Until you serf the net and go to a questionable site or someone sends you a spam message you accidentally open and get malware loaded.

With a TL 14 version of the Neural Comm it is a pitiful Computer/1. Not going to be able to run much in the way of security software on that. Perhaps if it is specialized for security, then you can at least get up to Security 2 on it. Still, certainly not hack proof or insusceptible to other methods of being malicious. How would you like something like the following to happen:
Spam your thoughts with Advertisements
No Psion needed. Reads your thoughts and stream them out to Thoughtube (instead of Youtube)
Send strange disturbing thoughts that you can't stop and you get insomnia, perhaps go insane.
Perhaps via controlling your thoughts one could even control your actions?

First, just for fun, any other interesting pitfalls to having your Neural Comm compromised.
Second, Any thoughts on Neural Comm security.

Note that as the OP I'm specifically requesting not yet another discussion on how easy or hard it would be to hack in. The ease of hacking is not the discussion. Unique security issues to a Neural Comm are what I'm interested in.

Mine:
- Just like a regular comm, a physical off switch. Pull both earlobes twice or something.
- Just like a regular comm, Reset. Think "F8" when you are rebooting the Neural Comm to do a system restore.
- Part of the training to be able to control the comm with your thoughts is being able to compose a thought and send it. The device is not reading your mind, it is only receiving what you specifically "send". Think of it like a nerve controlling a muscle. It only gets the thoughts you send down it's pathway.
- Perhaps you can control your mind such that no matter what the device sends, you don't receive it. (maybe like a Psionic mind shield?)

Any other interesting thoughts?

 

[Quint]

Ok, a couple of things - hacking the comm is not the same as hacking the brain (important distinction) and I expect that hacking the comm in the manner in which you describing is also relatively hard (probably requiring special software and/or hardware). Hacking the brain should be akin, in some ways at least, to hacking an AI.

But, that aside...

Why not go whole hog? What is to stop someone simply directly controlling your body? How about more subtle methods of creating emotional responses (and conditioning) to certain things? Wiping out parts of memory, utterly rewriting someone's memories (implied when they can start doing mind transfers with the high level cloning). How about downloading somebody different into your mind?

How about cascading memetic warfare where things really are a war for "hearts and minds"?

Creating hallucinations, inducing seizures are also fun favorites.

Defenses may be that the anything coming via neural comm may have an obvious marker or tag that makes it impossible to mistake for anything but. Traffic may have to pass through a buffer that strips out anything that targets muscular control, etc.

D.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Ok, a couple of things - hacking the comm is not the same as hacking the brain (important distinction) and I expect that hacking the comm in the manner in which you describing is also relatively hard (probably requiring special software and/or hardware). Hacking the brain should be akin, in some ways at least, to hacking an AI.

But, that aside...

yes, please, put it all aside. I was not discussing hacking the brain or a person directly. It is the typical everyday hacking of a comm/computer the same way one would any other comm/computer. It just happens this one is implanted and connected and has some form of thought interface. An item in the core rules equipment list. As such, what security might be needed to prevent hacking the comm and using the thought interface in ways unintended.

Defenses may be that the anything coming via neural comm may have an obvious marker or tag that makes it impossible to mistake for anything but. Traffic may have to pass through a buffer that strips out anything that targets muscular control, etc.

Yes, that sounds good. I had figured the Neural comm itself is technically incapable of directly controlling someones muscles. (there is the Neural Link and Kinetic Interface in the Mongoose CSC)

The question is if the device can send output to ones thoughts, audio and visual, could it possibly create a false reality that someone attempts to interact with physically. Sound of an insect buzzing and you impulsively swat at it? Something more sinister? Or perhaps it is more like a HUD, the information you get is just one little piece of what you can perceive and you can concentrate on other things and easily ignore the neural comms output.

Why not go whole hog? What is to stop someone simply directly controlling your body?

Please, it's so early in this thread, lets not go whole hog taking this off topic.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

The question is if the device can send output to ones thoughts, audio and visual, could it possibly create a false reality that someone attempts to interact with physically. Sound of an insect buzzing and you impulsively swat at it? Something more sinister? Or perhaps it is more like a HUD, the information you get is just one little piece of what you can perceive and you can concentrate on other things and easily ignore the neural comms output.

I would expect it to be closer to a HUD than a reality overwrite thing, unless you also install something to stop the existing signals form your eyes and ears form reaching the brain. Brains are quite good at collating information together, so if you had both a neural comm and your senses feeding into the brain, you should be able to get it to see both and make sense.


of course, that doesn't stop the user getting confused. How will we be able to tell the raving loonies form those people having a augment over the neural comm? ("what?...No!......No, I don't want to!.....Look, just go away!....No ma'am, not you, I'm on the phone....")

 

[Jame]

I thought of this myself. Thank you for expanding on it!

 

[Jame]

I would expect it to be closer to a HUD than a reality overwrite thing, unless you also install something to stop the existing signals form your eyes and ears form reaching the brain. Brains are quite good at collating information together, so if you had both a neural comm and your senses feeding into the brain, you should be able to get it to see both and make sense.


of course, that doesn't stop the user getting confused. How will we be able to tell the raving loonies form those people having a augment over the neural comm? ("what?...No!......No, I don't want to!.....Look, just go away!....No ma'am, not you, I'm on the phone....")

There's a set of cartoons called Ghost in the Shell that have a neural comm; the characters tend to vocalize as they're communicating with their minds.

 

[Lycanorukke]

*Is the 'comm number' listed anywhere? Expect people to call up selling you crap or asking for donations. If your number is not listed a robo dialer my find your 'number'.

*Has someone misprogrammed a communications device and it keeps ringing you by mistake? "Hello? *fax squeal*".

*Drunken idiots calling you up at 3 in the morning - "I wuv you *hic* sooo much "

And these methods are not hack attempts or malicious. Just people who can access your 'comm number' and make calls.

It also can make tracing a person very easy unless there is an off switch - "Okay they have a neural comm and are hiding in the building somewhere. Lets fire up the signal locator and make a call to them"

At the very least you would want a block list and an off switch of some kind. Maybe look right and blink twice or some other mnemonic which can be detected.

 

[Condottiere]

Or a white list that only accepts calls from numbers that you pre-programmed in.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Another good bit that has come from Ghost in the Shell is that the team with Neural Comms usually connects to a more powerful computer before diving around in the Net - this way, they are backed up by a better system in cases of hacking.

 

[Ref00000]

having a Neural Comm vs. Having a waferjack.

The Comm is just a Smartphone in your head.
If the character also has a 'ware jack for using skill chips?
THEN their CNS has been rewired enough to be hacked.
if the ref. has decided brainwipe/rewrite tech exists then the possibility exists to have someone do a puppet-hack, or the much more subtle editing of... whatever.
If you want a good example of this, check out "Dollhouse", by J. Whedon.
the subtle hack is far more fun, IMO, and the idea of 'a fully 'real' world inside a computer' gives you a whole toolbox full of terror for PCs who want that Cyberware.
Having to get your 'netrunner' out of constructs they believe are real can be a recurring theme, for good or ill.

One should, IMO, again, naturally, assume the hardware/software/skills needed to pull this off are highly restricted, well controlled and very, very much not something anyone can buy off the shelf. this sort of tech, with clone/bot bodies essentially means technoimmortality. with that whole :CoW:

 

[Ref00000]

the cut-out collars that they firewall themselves with in Ghost In The Shell are a very excellent example of 'this is restricted tech' ie, sure, the PCs can attempt to get by without one... but you're more or less opening your head to whatever.
You only have to show the aspiring brain-jockey one drooling basket-case and have an NPC mention how 'what a shame... Doctor Krypto was our best operator, until The Accident'. Whelp! Let's get you Jacked In!' and your PC get nice and careful...

Another good bit that has come from Ghost in the Shell is that the team with Neural Comms usually connects to a more powerful computer before diving around in the Net - this way, they are backed up by a better system in cases of hacking.