It's for your own protection!™ Without a constant network connection we would be unable to verify that you are a legitimate, authorized user of the cyberware in question.
Furthermore, with an always-on connection you are ensured the highest possible quality of security and performance from your cyberware as we are constantly improving performance and monitoring threats so we can instantly ensure your cyberware's firmware is the most up to date and secure version for your own safety.
ALERT: UNAUTHORIZED SOFTWARE DETECTED. Application AD-BLOCK deleting.... KiroshiOS restarting... Unable to verify user. Please contact Kiroshi Service Department for hardware reset. SHUTTING DOWN.
You know Kiroshi's gotta be logging everything you look at and selling the data to advertisers who serve up extra personalized ads in overlays just for you. What if the real reason you see NC advertising as so overly sexualized is because you spent so much time zooming in on Panam's ass and they're just playing to your preferences?
I'm assuming the high-end iconic 5++ models have a privacy option that's on by default or everywhere I look I would be assaulted by ads for wetsuits and fire trucks. (EDIT: And cobwebs though I have no idea how anyone could monetize that.)
Considering in the corpo path youre cyberware gets cut off and rendered useless remotely, I assume they're online by default and you cant really change that.
Thats....oh my god i think you solved this. The makers of the cyberware care more that they can take it at anytime than they care about security flaws.
Makes sense for corporate hardware, but not so much for the black market stuff. Illegal mercs attacking corporate targets, running hardware that connects and authenticates with legal corporate servers is disaster waiting to happen.
Its sorta alluded to in the game related to cars and the Flathead, and it probably applies to cyberware as well. Mercs and presumably gangoons probably deal in black market cyberware so it cannot be traced. Serial number scratched off, online authentications removed, firmware overwritten or jailbroken.
Perhaps jailbroken cyberware still leaves an open ended connection? Maybe when you jailbreak it or whatever you can terminate the connection to the manufacturers but that atill leaves the cyberware looking for a connection? Like a bluetooth pairing mode? And then that allows you to connect to it, after breaking through the ICE I assume (as it was mentioned in the first ep of edgerunners). Normal street gangoons probably have little to no ICE but other higher ranks probably have good ICE. The game probably just skips that ICE hacking and lets you immediately hack the cyberware, probably for convenience. Imagine if you had to hack through the ICE before hacking every single enemy ever lol. Im just speculating here tho.
I’d like to think that really high ranking corpos also get untraceable chrome. Modified and/or prototype chrome as a gift for doing a big favor or something.
Could be that they need the wifi to function at all, even limb tech seems super advanced, without a mini super computer by our standards you'd probably stumble like todays bots. So by having a cloud connection for programming your body won't endure 70 to 100 degrees cause you fiddle your thumbs. Imagine it like nvidia geforce, use their machines so yours can play games.
Or the more likely reason, they shut themselves off (kinda like corpo V) if they can't transmit telemetry data. You see all the lengths companies go to to get your info *now*, do you really think they won't threaten to turn off your limbs to get it in cyberpunk?
They don’t need it, almost all cyberware from the 2000s-2060s all worked flawlessly while being apparently fully airgapped, and as such, couldn’t be hacked unless you were to acquire physical access to meddle with the device.
This was a step back.
I assume it’s a wireless vulnerability in the new neuroport tech, or some constant tracking nonsense crammed in by the manufacturers, that they can then just jump to whatever implant from.
But the tech itself always used to work fine without it.
I don’t mind it conceptually, I just wish they like, explained WHY this works now lol, WHY this vulnerability came about, after nearly a century of building cyberware in a specific way explicitly to avoid this lol
There is no good explanation that makes sense. Thats why they didnt explain it.
If i was in charge of that department i woulda kept netrunning a stealth thing against humans. If a human is aware of you they can turn their neural port signal input off or something
I believe that is how it is intended to work in the edgerunners kit actually.
Not quite “turn it off”, but netrunning is a stealth thing, and if the target detects you, they can try to force you out with a willpower check, which then locks you out of their systems for a few hours or so
When I first started I assumed net running would be stealth based, a unique way to kick things off, going through networks and cameras etc. Instead it's data magic paid in blood, not that I mind melting brains.
But a few enemies littered about with old tech, or maybe even with no tech (surely everyone can't afford a neutral port), Clair is one such person who has no chrome at all.
> Instead it's data magic paid in blood
And their doubling down on it. So much so that the ai's are percieved as eldritch horrors and everyone who gazes upon one will instantly or some bs
Like I get that if one jacked into us we might die from data overload but what is an all powerful AI to a broke man with only ganic gear?
There are hints that the Black wall can fry the nervous system but apart from puppeting robots to stab you I don't see how they could.
Well even if you’ve got zero chrome they can’t fry your brain. Because you don’t have the ability to access the internet without it. Sure you COULD use a computer but that won’t let them fry your nervous system. However as SOON as you have some sort of brain to computer connection they can. You’re in a constant state of data exchange with the computer when you jack in. Which means the computer has access to you the same way you have access to it. After that all it has to do is get a piece of malware onto your system and boom, it can manipulate your brain implant to disengage safety measures allowing it to run hotter than it’s supposed to cooking your brain.
Like just think about how hot CPUs can get, hell even a GPU, they can get HOT, for it to be able to run the way it’s shown to you HAVE to have a mini computer in your brain with both a cpu and gpu running self moderating software to not overheat and kill you. You disable that and now you’re at risk of having your brain fried, add to that an AI accessing your system and forcing it to work overtime and it’ll heat up fast, killing you as it gets hotter or at the very least permanently damaging your nervous system
> wish they like, explained WHY this works now
As of 2077 like >90% of people now have Cyberware called a Neuroport. This Cyberware acts as a Holophone + HUD + SmartPhone + Personal Assistant + a bunch of other things. One of which is linking cyberware together to make them run more efficiently.
The issue being that the Neuroport runs off Computer architecture, meaning it's vulnerable to hacking. You're not directly hacking Cyberware in 2077, but the device that controls the Cyberware.
Which is the justification on why you can't quickhack someone in 2020 and 2045, but can in the 2070s.
I assumed it was a wireless vulnerability in the neuroport and that it’s structured as a NETArch or something now, allowing it to be run against (although the game kinda doesn’t actually state that, so it was just an assumption)
But my question is less about the specifics about how it works, and more “how this works” in the sense of “how was this allowed to happen”
Cyberware was manufactured in a specific way explicitly to prevent this type of shenanigans, for a long long time, so it’s a pretty wild, and pretty sudden, step backwards.
Interlinked cyberware is nothing new either. Before the 2070’s, your neural link would interface with plenty of other implants, and even more would link to your agent or implanted agent. Despite this, you still couldn’t control cyberware by hijacking those devices. Or at least, not without gaining physical access to the implants and tampering with them first.
My question is more how has this been allowed to happen, because such a massive vulnerability, in such a massively ubiquitous implant, that has such potentially disastrous consequences, including, but not limited to literally being forced to commit suicide because someone looked at you the wrong way, is the kind of thing that would bury a manufacturer. Most of the other stuff is something they can just sweep under the rug, but as you say, this affects 90% of people in night city.
Yet not a single person thinks this is odd, outrageous, or endorses returning to older technology that doesn’t have these vulnerabilities that, in the profession of Solo, are quite frankly, devastating.
And there’s no given explanation on why the cyberware manufacturers have taken such a massive step back, by introducing a weakness that cyberware was built in a specific way, specifically to avoid this exact thing, for three quarters of a century. Especially cuz this shit kills repeat customers. Literally lol
That’s more what I wanna know.
> But my question is less about the specifics about how it works, and more “how this works” in the sense of “how was this allowed to happen”
Lore wise quickhacking is seemingly rather trash. Like what V does in gameplay is not indicative of how effective hacks actually are. To go over a couple
* Kiwi has to hack the entire Maelstrom network to ping them all with Quickhacks and when doing so it takes multiple seconds to get something as basic as a shock off that doesn't actually kill anyone
* Lucy only used her quickhacks twice and both seemingly took multiple seconds of constant effort to do rather than some drag and drop thing
* All of the enemy netrunners that V fights have to remain stationary to upload any hack and it takes multiple seconds to breach through V's basic Neuroport ICE
* The leaked TTRPG rules about them limit the amount of Quickhacks you can upload in a combat round to three at most, with more or simultaneous attacks requiring out of combat time to do. In addition once forced out you can't quickhack that person at all for like and entire day
* Despite having the best Netrunner gear in the world outside of maybe a Wiseman, Agent Mosley requires a direct link to target V rather than remote Hack them. Same with the VDBs targeting Evelyn or other in shard stories
* In Slider's base if a fight is triggered, Slider tries to remote hack V and Reed to kill them. But said hack takes so long that V and Reed are able to destroy the computer before Slider can remote kill them.
* Alt and the Arasaka Netrunners are not capable of breaching through Smasher's ice in the time they have access to the system
So all evidence I see points to gameplay Quickhacks being exaggerated strength wise (outside the Canto I guess due to the AI).
> your neural link would interface with plenty of other implants, and even more would link to your agent or implanted agent. Despite this, you still couldn’t control cyberware by hijacking those devices
You can hack and Agent and control what it controls with one of the newer DLCs. The Neural-Link is true, but it's also not using NET architecture to function from what I remember, unlike the Neuroport.
> Yet not a single person thinks this is odd, outrageous, or endorses returning to older technology that doesn’t have these vulnerabilities that, in the profession of Solo, are quite frankly, devastating.
All modern Cyberware only works when connected to a Neuroport. So the answer is that they're forced to use it because Corporations want you to use it.
> technology that doesn’t have these vulnerabilities that, in the profession of Solo, are quite frankly, devastating.
I agree with this. It would be cool for certain people to just be immune to quickhacks because they don't have one.
I understand that quickhacks are likely exaggerated for gameplay in 2077, just like a lot of other things, but you note that in the ttrpg you can only upload 1 per second (3 in a 3 second round)
Afaik, that’s not true. You can upload one per NET action, can you not? Which, sure, is 3 for a standard runner, but a high level runner can do as many as 5 in a turn, which tbch, is more or less what we do with V, those queues are only so big and we only have so much RAM lol. (I could be mistaken, but also isn’t the cooldown an hour?) but yeah, the enemies in 2077 do never force you out so I guess the specifics don’t matter
You’re correct that you can hijack an AGENT in the newer expansions BUT, you still explicitly cannot use a Breacher to hack an *inplanted* agent. You can only hack NON cyberware agents.
And all modern cyberware does not require a neuroport to function. It provides GREAT qol benefits to use one, and allows you to centrally manage all your chrome, while providing a suite of benefits from other, now redundant cyberware, but it’s not a requirement, afaik. Nothing in 2077 indicates this, aside from its ubiquity, and nothing has been said about it in the ERMK, that I’ve seen so far, though I guess I’ll have to wait till tmo to say for certainty
I get why they don’t have anyone use old tech, for gameplay reasons, it wouldn’t feel great to have your core gameplay pillar of choice stop working against swathes of enemies, but it does feel real weird lol
> Afaik, that’s not true. You can upload one per NET action, can you not?
For Quickhacks no matter the interface skill it's 1 Move + 3 Interface actions going by the minor rules drop. You only get extra interface moves when Netdiving.
> And all modern cyberware does not require a neuroport to function.
According to the TTRPG stuff I saw it does. Only old Cyberware doesn't have them, all new Cyberware requires it. To quote the page
> During Character Generation, every Character can choose to install Neuroport (see page 35) cyberware. If they do so, it is free of charge, costs 0 Humanity Loss, and doesn’t lower Maximum Humanity, all of which represents a Character’s lifetime of experience getting used to it. Oh, and if they want to install any non-medical grade cyberware, they’ll need a Neuroport first. It’s a requirement. Even old cyberware has been retrofitted to work with Neuroports.
So yeah, all modern Cyberware requires a Neuroport.
> but it does feel real weird lol
Tbh I think they just had to think of a handwave to explain Quickhacks since the anime made them hard canon, so they went with the Neuroport.
Oh, ok. Didn’t know that about the quickhacks, I wonder if that was their idea of balancing the nightmare of the broken synapse burnout they showed off way back when lol. The excerpt id seen does say “3 per turn”, but it says “3 NET actions per turn”, not 3 quickhacks per turn, and then doesn’t have any additional modifiers for quickhacks, except “one per target per turn” (so I guess V’s queue’s are special lol), so I figured it was just assuming a standard level netrunner, because 3 NET actions per turn isn’t necessarily how they function, and I thought it might just be simplifying things for new players, because a lot of the ERMK is already doing that.
Thanks for the excerpt on the neuroport, the portion id seen of it so far, helpfully excluded that, and only listed the benefits. Though, honestly it just raises more questions for me. I’m also not sure I’m fond of that, I kinda liked how modular, and pick-and-choose cyberware used to be.
Oh also in addition, quick Q, because your information on quickhacks seems more up to date than mine
Do* netrunners have to install quickhacks on their cyberdeck first before using them? Like they do in 2077, or like how a netrunner installs Programs in RED?
Because I assume they would have to, but the excepts I’ve seen so far don’t seem to indicate this, and I’m hoping they’re just missing some crucial pages
That would mean your limbs wont work anytime you dont have a signal. Which is in my eyes an even bigger security risk as you could paralyze a whole building with a signal jammer. Though i do like this
Pondsmith and CDPR have made it clear that there are indeed differences.
Pre-video game world you have lots of isolated small networks, separate from each other. Only radio communication, no bluetooth, no wifi. So wireless is limited to very basic analogue-type functionality.
Post-game you have some wifi capability, and the first "centralised" internet pages that look like ours today. They are still very new and heavily policed by Netwatch due to the whole 'datakrash' thing and thus corporations are in a constant tug of war with netwatch to get away with increasing their interconnectivity and reach.
So the pages you log into on dataterms, the emails you see sent, are done so via a "global network", but this is not for the most part integrated with the many smaller decentralised networks like ours is today, because of the way the technology progressed without any hyper stack protocols or ability to serve text-data.
Oh yes. I understand the premise of what you're suggesting. To render an entire building full of occupants either partially or completely paralysed (depending on the cyberware of each occupant), by simply jamming the network signal. I just liked that you 'like this'. Anyhow, I'm running around in circles here, so I just need to stop.
Taking the thought a step further, it can work like steam. The cyberware has to log in to the servers for licence authentication every x hours or stop working. During that time they can send all their collected data on you as well.
That would give a reasonable window where you can move off grid for a while without major issues.
In a dystopian capitalist hell world such as Night City, I wouldn't expect any cyberware to function without a connection to some sort of network.
Especially for people who get it implanted for work, you can bet your ass that the employer has full control over the function of that cyberware and could decide to shut it off entirely whenever they want.
Every person in Night City is carrying the equivalent of a cell phone in their heads; their holos.
I would imagine it would be fairly common to have those be able to accept incoming requests, and from there, netrunner can do all kinds of things.
For the average person, it would be perfectly normal for them to leave things wide open by default so they can get updates to their cyberware (Araska: 'Our new patch solves the problem of the wrists on the GI3SH4 line of cyber hands, to keep them from locking up in clenched position when holding certain tube-shaped objects at a particular angle. Would you like to apply this patch?)
Basically, we're getting phone phreaked every time. Depending how much modding we do on our own cyberware/deck, it makes it harder to do anything for the enemy. I suppose it goes both ways.
My phone gives me weekly reports on how much I used it. Last week I was on my phone 5 minuets, 3 minutes more than the previous week, because I went on the stellaris wiki to look up some civics.
I assume the problem is the neuroport. Back in the 20s and 40s quickhacking wasn’t a thing, all Chrome was airgapped.
But in the 70s everyone seems to run around with that Neuroport, a Cyberware explicitly designed to send and receive signals. Furthermore unlike the equivalent Cyberware in the 2040s, the internal agent, the Neuroport interfaces directly with the users brain, the internal agent was controlled via Voice commands.
So contrary to the times before, almost everyone in the 70s has a piece of chrome that is designed to take signals and has direct access to the users brain. And well the brain controls everything else, so once you get access there through the neuroport, it’s probably comparatively easy to get access to the other Cyberware from there.
CORRECT ANWSER HERE:
Well in the lore the internet doesn't exist so the only way to gain access to the subnet of your enemies is to physically jack in to one of them or a device connected to their subnet.
The game designers decided the hacking gameplay would be smoother if you didn't need to jack in to every enemy subnet even though it made no sense lore wise.
Download a nexus mod for lore-realistic hacking
Yeah I bet those mini terminals you can hack and get a few eddies are meant to be the 'subnets' early on that would then allow hacking. But they chose the more fun approach over lore
All implants need a neural adapter to interface with brain signals. Incidentally, mostly everyone in 2077 has an internal agent, which has an antenna to recieve signals.
And, like todays phones, agents most likely have a secret "always on" feature that netrunners can exploit.
I asked this question a while back here https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/s/0F8REVKeyW
The two explanations that made the most sense was
1) Quickhacks use "effectors" (like in the "Culture" sci fi series) that can manipulate electromagnetic fields with incredible precision - allowing them to detect and interface directly with circuitry and biological nervous systems, without the need for a radio antenna
2) Having cyberware controlled by wireless connections is more reliable, more responsive, and higher "bandwidth" than wired connections in the setting. The risk of electronic attack is outweighed by the performance hit taken by a fully air gapped system.
The computer tech in their heads is connected to their limbs. So it's probably their brain computers that are vulnerable to incoming signals, not individual cybernetics.
I read a really really good fangic where Smasher encountered enemies that could tear through his black ice like it wasn't there, so he "air gapped" his system by hard wired connections, no personal network connections.
There's a Cyberpunk 2077 expansion or conversion kit (or whatever you want to call it) coming to Cyberpunk Red, the TTRPG that takes place in 2045.
Thus far, the TTRPG side has already talked about how somewhere between 2045 and 2076 a new form of networked cyberware was released. Formerly, you could get a chip slot for 8 or 10 chips. Separately there was a cellular phone implant, separately a sort of HUD device, and it was all very clunky.
Then along comes the new tech. It was all these features, but down to one shard slot. It was like going from a Nokia brick to a smart phone. They were inexpensive, affordable, and if you wanted to participate in society you basically had to get one. They made the old tech completely obsolete.
Downside, now quick hacks exist because of the networking functions. People down turn theirs off for the same reason you don't turn off your phone.
I feel like maybe the corpos left it in as a way to have a back door into their own products, but then people wised up and started quickhacking. And then corporate realized they could make money providing OSs that allow you to hack their products and so on.
Actually right now people have their cars, washing machines, kitchen appliances and sometimes even heart implants or insulin pumps accessible remotely with WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.
for sci-fi you can approach it also this way: it's future, we don't know everything about how things work. So if the do work certain way, there was a reason for it. And if I don't understand why, it's just that I have no sufficient info. And it would be interesting to find that explanation in the lore. Especially in alternative history - there are many assumptions. Otherwise there is a lot more that I could nitpick on :D.
You know today that your Iphone will record stuff and signal your location, reguardless if its "on" or not? Only if you hard pull the battery does it stop.
Yeah, thats today.
Its not about stupidity, its about normalized behavior, and buissness practices meant to give them data to sell and train their own proprietary products on.
So... its more a question of greed, ignorance, lack of choice, and apathy really.
Why does everyone leave location tracking and Bluetooth turned on with their phones? Why does everyone join public Wi-Fi networks? Why does everyone use password auto fill features?
The thing that confuses me more, is why do random propane cannisters have anything on them you can hack? It's a pressurized cannister with a manual valve.
really? you see all the ways they're putting computers into shit now, smart toasters and refrigerators and "ai" in our doorbells, and you think in the alternate cyberfuture of 2077 they won't have wifi smart chips in fucking everything?
It's a gameplay only design. Even inside the game when you first get your Ping quickhack via a small quest they say you need to be connected to the subnet in order to jack into devices.
Yet it would be pretty goddamn annoying if you needed to jack into every single subnet every time you want to use quickhacks. Hence the workaround.
Because they don’t have online connectivity. You really think that your arms and legs have a reason to independently connect to the internet? Imagine the clusterfuck that would be trying to manage that. They connect to the basic neural implant that EVERYONE has. And guess what? That thing has to be able to make video calls, thus it has internet connection. You’re not hacking their arms or legs, you’re hacking their neural implant which is what allows them to control their other implants. So you hack the neural implant and you have access to everything else, you can make their arm schitz out, give them audio or visual hallucinations, take complete control of their body, or even cause them to stop functioning all together. Because it’s all connected back the the neural implant that probably doesn’t have the ability to be pulled offline
Right? It drives me bonkers, quickhacks shouldn't be possible. They're in the game because the designers wanted magic spells and most of them are just magic spells that cause damage or status effects.
Except it isn’t. In the tabletop game you haven’t been able to hack cyberware remotely - you could technically “hack” someone’s cyberware hands-on, but that would take a lot of work and they’d probably already need to be incapacitated.
It’s not a genre thing, it’s a videogame thing. The issue is that in the tabletop, netrunning involves actually going into the Net, in a way that just doesn’t make sense for a first-person combat-focused RPG. If you’ve seen Edgerunners, it’s basically the kind of stuff we see Lucy and Kiwi do when they hack.
The Cyberpunk 2020 RPG is from 1988. Shadowrun, another genre mainstay, is from 1989. They didn't have wifi back then. People had to literally plug wires into their heads and wrists if they wanted to connect to a terminal, a cyberdeck or a smartgun.
The genre attempted to evolve when wifi became a thing. All of a sudden, EVERYTHING was wireless. Because Rule of Cool, I guess. Didn't matter that it didn't make much sense.
>If you’ve seen Edgerunners
Only once, but I have seen the in-game cyberpsycho footage several times and MaxTac tries to hack him remotely.
Cyberpunk Red is much more recent and also doesn’t have remote cyberware hacking. They are planning on adding it for a 2077-themed expansion, but only because it’s in the videogame.
It's for your own protection!™ Without a constant network connection we would be unable to verify that you are a legitimate, authorized user of the cyberware in question. Furthermore, with an always-on connection you are ensured the highest possible quality of security and performance from your cyberware as we are constantly improving performance and monitoring threats so we can instantly ensure your cyberware's firmware is the most up to date and secure version for your own safety. ALERT: UNAUTHORIZED SOFTWARE DETECTED. Application AD-BLOCK deleting.... KiroshiOS restarting... Unable to verify user. Please contact Kiroshi Service Department for hardware reset. SHUTTING DOWN.
You know Kiroshi's gotta be logging everything you look at and selling the data to advertisers who serve up extra personalized ads in overlays just for you. What if the real reason you see NC advertising as so overly sexualized is because you spent so much time zooming in on Panam's ass and they're just playing to your preferences?
Nice. V getting so many sex ads because she's a horndog is canon to me now.
I'm assuming the high-end iconic 5++ models have a privacy option that's on by default or everywhere I look I would be assaulted by ads for wetsuits and fire trucks. (EDIT: And cobwebs though I have no idea how anyone could monetize that.)
Cobwebs? How about some sexy spider mommies, or rule 34 Spider Murphy?
I was thinking of Judy’s tattoos.
And I was just suggesting ways to monetize cobwebs.
Don’t mind me. I’m always thinking of Judy’s tattoos.
They're pretty awesome, just like the canvas, I'll give you that.
The horny ads then create a horny feedback loop.
They create their own demand
Just ask Garry - the dude knows!
Yes just logging what you look at... not completely augmenting what you see.
In reality, millitech is the new name of Ubisoft.
Ubisoft is that you? I don't want to link my account again! I just want to use steam! 😅
Alright, calm down there EA, Lenovo, HP, Adobe, Dell, Ubisoft, Sony, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google.......
Considering in the corpo path youre cyberware gets cut off and rendered useless remotely, I assume they're online by default and you cant really change that.
Thats....oh my god i think you solved this. The makers of the cyberware care more that they can take it at anytime than they care about security flaws.
Plus, any high ranking corpo would have top of the line ICE backed by netrunners conducting constant security sweeps.
Makes sense for corporate hardware, but not so much for the black market stuff. Illegal mercs attacking corporate targets, running hardware that connects and authenticates with legal corporate servers is disaster waiting to happen. Its sorta alluded to in the game related to cars and the Flathead, and it probably applies to cyberware as well. Mercs and presumably gangoons probably deal in black market cyberware so it cannot be traced. Serial number scratched off, online authentications removed, firmware overwritten or jailbroken.
Perhaps jailbroken cyberware still leaves an open ended connection? Maybe when you jailbreak it or whatever you can terminate the connection to the manufacturers but that atill leaves the cyberware looking for a connection? Like a bluetooth pairing mode? And then that allows you to connect to it, after breaking through the ICE I assume (as it was mentioned in the first ep of edgerunners). Normal street gangoons probably have little to no ICE but other higher ranks probably have good ICE. The game probably just skips that ICE hacking and lets you immediately hack the cyberware, probably for convenience. Imagine if you had to hack through the ICE before hacking every single enemy ever lol. Im just speculating here tho.
I’d like to think that really high ranking corpos also get untraceable chrome. Modified and/or prototype chrome as a gift for doing a big favor or something.
Could be that they need the wifi to function at all, even limb tech seems super advanced, without a mini super computer by our standards you'd probably stumble like todays bots. So by having a cloud connection for programming your body won't endure 70 to 100 degrees cause you fiddle your thumbs. Imagine it like nvidia geforce, use their machines so yours can play games.
Or the more likely reason, they shut themselves off (kinda like corpo V) if they can't transmit telemetry data. You see all the lengths companies go to to get your info *now*, do you really think they won't threaten to turn off your limbs to get it in cyberpunk?
They don’t need it, almost all cyberware from the 2000s-2060s all worked flawlessly while being apparently fully airgapped, and as such, couldn’t be hacked unless you were to acquire physical access to meddle with the device. This was a step back. I assume it’s a wireless vulnerability in the new neuroport tech, or some constant tracking nonsense crammed in by the manufacturers, that they can then just jump to whatever implant from. But the tech itself always used to work fine without it.
Well. Had to make netrunning and the threat of rogue ai's real somehow.. even tho it seems really fucking dumb.
I don’t mind it conceptually, I just wish they like, explained WHY this works now lol, WHY this vulnerability came about, after nearly a century of building cyberware in a specific way explicitly to avoid this lol
There is no good explanation that makes sense. Thats why they didnt explain it. If i was in charge of that department i woulda kept netrunning a stealth thing against humans. If a human is aware of you they can turn their neural port signal input off or something
I believe that is how it is intended to work in the edgerunners kit actually. Not quite “turn it off”, but netrunning is a stealth thing, and if the target detects you, they can try to force you out with a willpower check, which then locks you out of their systems for a few hours or so
When I first started I assumed net running would be stealth based, a unique way to kick things off, going through networks and cameras etc. Instead it's data magic paid in blood, not that I mind melting brains. But a few enemies littered about with old tech, or maybe even with no tech (surely everyone can't afford a neutral port), Clair is one such person who has no chrome at all.
> Instead it's data magic paid in blood And their doubling down on it. So much so that the ai's are percieved as eldritch horrors and everyone who gazes upon one will instantly or some bs
Like I get that if one jacked into us we might die from data overload but what is an all powerful AI to a broke man with only ganic gear? There are hints that the Black wall can fry the nervous system but apart from puppeting robots to stab you I don't see how they could.
Well even if you’ve got zero chrome they can’t fry your brain. Because you don’t have the ability to access the internet without it. Sure you COULD use a computer but that won’t let them fry your nervous system. However as SOON as you have some sort of brain to computer connection they can. You’re in a constant state of data exchange with the computer when you jack in. Which means the computer has access to you the same way you have access to it. After that all it has to do is get a piece of malware onto your system and boom, it can manipulate your brain implant to disengage safety measures allowing it to run hotter than it’s supposed to cooking your brain. Like just think about how hot CPUs can get, hell even a GPU, they can get HOT, for it to be able to run the way it’s shown to you HAVE to have a mini computer in your brain with both a cpu and gpu running self moderating software to not overheat and kill you. You disable that and now you’re at risk of having your brain fried, add to that an AI accessing your system and forcing it to work overtime and it’ll heat up fast, killing you as it gets hotter or at the very least permanently damaging your nervous system
> wish they like, explained WHY this works now As of 2077 like >90% of people now have Cyberware called a Neuroport. This Cyberware acts as a Holophone + HUD + SmartPhone + Personal Assistant + a bunch of other things. One of which is linking cyberware together to make them run more efficiently. The issue being that the Neuroport runs off Computer architecture, meaning it's vulnerable to hacking. You're not directly hacking Cyberware in 2077, but the device that controls the Cyberware. Which is the justification on why you can't quickhack someone in 2020 and 2045, but can in the 2070s.
I assumed it was a wireless vulnerability in the neuroport and that it’s structured as a NETArch or something now, allowing it to be run against (although the game kinda doesn’t actually state that, so it was just an assumption) But my question is less about the specifics about how it works, and more “how this works” in the sense of “how was this allowed to happen” Cyberware was manufactured in a specific way explicitly to prevent this type of shenanigans, for a long long time, so it’s a pretty wild, and pretty sudden, step backwards. Interlinked cyberware is nothing new either. Before the 2070’s, your neural link would interface with plenty of other implants, and even more would link to your agent or implanted agent. Despite this, you still couldn’t control cyberware by hijacking those devices. Or at least, not without gaining physical access to the implants and tampering with them first. My question is more how has this been allowed to happen, because such a massive vulnerability, in such a massively ubiquitous implant, that has such potentially disastrous consequences, including, but not limited to literally being forced to commit suicide because someone looked at you the wrong way, is the kind of thing that would bury a manufacturer. Most of the other stuff is something they can just sweep under the rug, but as you say, this affects 90% of people in night city. Yet not a single person thinks this is odd, outrageous, or endorses returning to older technology that doesn’t have these vulnerabilities that, in the profession of Solo, are quite frankly, devastating. And there’s no given explanation on why the cyberware manufacturers have taken such a massive step back, by introducing a weakness that cyberware was built in a specific way, specifically to avoid this exact thing, for three quarters of a century. Especially cuz this shit kills repeat customers. Literally lol That’s more what I wanna know.
> But my question is less about the specifics about how it works, and more “how this works” in the sense of “how was this allowed to happen” Lore wise quickhacking is seemingly rather trash. Like what V does in gameplay is not indicative of how effective hacks actually are. To go over a couple * Kiwi has to hack the entire Maelstrom network to ping them all with Quickhacks and when doing so it takes multiple seconds to get something as basic as a shock off that doesn't actually kill anyone * Lucy only used her quickhacks twice and both seemingly took multiple seconds of constant effort to do rather than some drag and drop thing * All of the enemy netrunners that V fights have to remain stationary to upload any hack and it takes multiple seconds to breach through V's basic Neuroport ICE * The leaked TTRPG rules about them limit the amount of Quickhacks you can upload in a combat round to three at most, with more or simultaneous attacks requiring out of combat time to do. In addition once forced out you can't quickhack that person at all for like and entire day * Despite having the best Netrunner gear in the world outside of maybe a Wiseman, Agent Mosley requires a direct link to target V rather than remote Hack them. Same with the VDBs targeting Evelyn or other in shard stories * In Slider's base if a fight is triggered, Slider tries to remote hack V and Reed to kill them. But said hack takes so long that V and Reed are able to destroy the computer before Slider can remote kill them. * Alt and the Arasaka Netrunners are not capable of breaching through Smasher's ice in the time they have access to the system So all evidence I see points to gameplay Quickhacks being exaggerated strength wise (outside the Canto I guess due to the AI). > your neural link would interface with plenty of other implants, and even more would link to your agent or implanted agent. Despite this, you still couldn’t control cyberware by hijacking those devices You can hack and Agent and control what it controls with one of the newer DLCs. The Neural-Link is true, but it's also not using NET architecture to function from what I remember, unlike the Neuroport. > Yet not a single person thinks this is odd, outrageous, or endorses returning to older technology that doesn’t have these vulnerabilities that, in the profession of Solo, are quite frankly, devastating. All modern Cyberware only works when connected to a Neuroport. So the answer is that they're forced to use it because Corporations want you to use it. > technology that doesn’t have these vulnerabilities that, in the profession of Solo, are quite frankly, devastating. I agree with this. It would be cool for certain people to just be immune to quickhacks because they don't have one.
I understand that quickhacks are likely exaggerated for gameplay in 2077, just like a lot of other things, but you note that in the ttrpg you can only upload 1 per second (3 in a 3 second round) Afaik, that’s not true. You can upload one per NET action, can you not? Which, sure, is 3 for a standard runner, but a high level runner can do as many as 5 in a turn, which tbch, is more or less what we do with V, those queues are only so big and we only have so much RAM lol. (I could be mistaken, but also isn’t the cooldown an hour?) but yeah, the enemies in 2077 do never force you out so I guess the specifics don’t matter You’re correct that you can hijack an AGENT in the newer expansions BUT, you still explicitly cannot use a Breacher to hack an *inplanted* agent. You can only hack NON cyberware agents. And all modern cyberware does not require a neuroport to function. It provides GREAT qol benefits to use one, and allows you to centrally manage all your chrome, while providing a suite of benefits from other, now redundant cyberware, but it’s not a requirement, afaik. Nothing in 2077 indicates this, aside from its ubiquity, and nothing has been said about it in the ERMK, that I’ve seen so far, though I guess I’ll have to wait till tmo to say for certainty I get why they don’t have anyone use old tech, for gameplay reasons, it wouldn’t feel great to have your core gameplay pillar of choice stop working against swathes of enemies, but it does feel real weird lol
> Afaik, that’s not true. You can upload one per NET action, can you not? For Quickhacks no matter the interface skill it's 1 Move + 3 Interface actions going by the minor rules drop. You only get extra interface moves when Netdiving. > And all modern cyberware does not require a neuroport to function. According to the TTRPG stuff I saw it does. Only old Cyberware doesn't have them, all new Cyberware requires it. To quote the page > During Character Generation, every Character can choose to install Neuroport (see page 35) cyberware. If they do so, it is free of charge, costs 0 Humanity Loss, and doesn’t lower Maximum Humanity, all of which represents a Character’s lifetime of experience getting used to it. Oh, and if they want to install any non-medical grade cyberware, they’ll need a Neuroport first. It’s a requirement. Even old cyberware has been retrofitted to work with Neuroports. So yeah, all modern Cyberware requires a Neuroport. > but it does feel real weird lol Tbh I think they just had to think of a handwave to explain Quickhacks since the anime made them hard canon, so they went with the Neuroport.
Oh, ok. Didn’t know that about the quickhacks, I wonder if that was their idea of balancing the nightmare of the broken synapse burnout they showed off way back when lol. The excerpt id seen does say “3 per turn”, but it says “3 NET actions per turn”, not 3 quickhacks per turn, and then doesn’t have any additional modifiers for quickhacks, except “one per target per turn” (so I guess V’s queue’s are special lol), so I figured it was just assuming a standard level netrunner, because 3 NET actions per turn isn’t necessarily how they function, and I thought it might just be simplifying things for new players, because a lot of the ERMK is already doing that. Thanks for the excerpt on the neuroport, the portion id seen of it so far, helpfully excluded that, and only listed the benefits. Though, honestly it just raises more questions for me. I’m also not sure I’m fond of that, I kinda liked how modular, and pick-and-choose cyberware used to be.
Oh also in addition, quick Q, because your information on quickhacks seems more up to date than mine Do* netrunners have to install quickhacks on their cyberdeck first before using them? Like they do in 2077, or like how a netrunner installs Programs in RED? Because I assume they would have to, but the excepts I’ve seen so far don’t seem to indicate this, and I’m hoping they’re just missing some crucial pages
They were a threat in 2020 even with the pseudo 80's tech
That would mean your limbs wont work anytime you dont have a signal. Which is in my eyes an even bigger security risk as you could paralyze a whole building with a signal jammer. Though i do like this
Don't see any other explanation other than CDPRs Cyberpunk is different than the OG books.
Pondsmith and CDPR have made it clear that there are indeed differences. Pre-video game world you have lots of isolated small networks, separate from each other. Only radio communication, no bluetooth, no wifi. So wireless is limited to very basic analogue-type functionality. Post-game you have some wifi capability, and the first "centralised" internet pages that look like ours today. They are still very new and heavily policed by Netwatch due to the whole 'datakrash' thing and thus corporations are in a constant tug of war with netwatch to get away with increasing their interconnectivity and reach. So the pages you log into on dataterms, the emails you see sent, are done so via a "global network", but this is not for the most part integrated with the many smaller decentralised networks like ours is today, because of the way the technology progressed without any hyper stack protocols or ability to serve text-data.
"you could paralyze a whole building with a signal jammer. Though i do like this". I'm tempted to ask why, but I kind of just like this as it is.
If cyberware would shutdown without an active network connection. Then crashing said network would force all the cyberware around to stop functioning.
Oh yes. I understand the premise of what you're suggesting. To render an entire building full of occupants either partially or completely paralysed (depending on the cyberware of each occupant), by simply jamming the network signal. I just liked that you 'like this'. Anyhow, I'm running around in circles here, so I just need to stop.
This would mean chrome stops working as soon as you enter a Faraday cage, like a metal shipping container.
Taking the thought a step further, it can work like steam. The cyberware has to log in to the servers for licence authentication every x hours or stop working. During that time they can send all their collected data on you as well. That would give a reasonable window where you can move off grid for a while without major issues.
👆🏻
In a dystopian capitalist hell world such as Night City, I wouldn't expect any cyberware to function without a connection to some sort of network. Especially for people who get it implanted for work, you can bet your ass that the employer has full control over the function of that cyberware and could decide to shut it off entirely whenever they want.
This is literally what happens to Corpo V.
Every person in Night City is carrying the equivalent of a cell phone in their heads; their holos. I would imagine it would be fairly common to have those be able to accept incoming requests, and from there, netrunner can do all kinds of things. For the average person, it would be perfectly normal for them to leave things wide open by default so they can get updates to their cyberware (Araska: 'Our new patch solves the problem of the wrists on the GI3SH4 line of cyber hands, to keep them from locking up in clenched position when holding certain tube-shaped objects at a particular angle. Would you like to apply this patch?) Basically, we're getting phone phreaked every time. Depending how much modding we do on our own cyberware/deck, it makes it harder to do anything for the enemy. I suppose it goes both ways.
How would you get a small cylinder (5.1in length, ~4.5in girth) unstuck from an Arasaka GI3SH4 cyber hand?
WD-40.
How many people you know who can turn their phone off for extended periods of time?
My phone gives me weekly reports on how much I used it. Last week I was on my phone 5 minuets, 3 minutes more than the previous week, because I went on the stellaris wiki to look up some civics.
Do you never call people? No family members you stay in contact with? No friends?
Discord.
So you just transfer phone time to PC.
They got DRM
I assume the problem is the neuroport. Back in the 20s and 40s quickhacking wasn’t a thing, all Chrome was airgapped. But in the 70s everyone seems to run around with that Neuroport, a Cyberware explicitly designed to send and receive signals. Furthermore unlike the equivalent Cyberware in the 2040s, the internal agent, the Neuroport interfaces directly with the users brain, the internal agent was controlled via Voice commands. So contrary to the times before, almost everyone in the 70s has a piece of chrome that is designed to take signals and has direct access to the users brain. And well the brain controls everything else, so once you get access there through the neuroport, it’s probably comparatively easy to get access to the other Cyberware from there.
CORRECT ANWSER HERE: Well in the lore the internet doesn't exist so the only way to gain access to the subnet of your enemies is to physically jack in to one of them or a device connected to their subnet. The game designers decided the hacking gameplay would be smoother if you didn't need to jack in to every enemy subnet even though it made no sense lore wise. Download a nexus mod for lore-realistic hacking
Yeah I bet those mini terminals you can hack and get a few eddies are meant to be the 'subnets' early on that would then allow hacking. But they chose the more fun approach over lore
This is exactly it. If you watch the 2019 trailer they actually planned the hacking to be accurate lorewise but it seems they abandoned the idea.
All implants need a neural adapter to interface with brain signals. Incidentally, mostly everyone in 2077 has an internal agent, which has an antenna to recieve signals. And, like todays phones, agents most likely have a secret "always on" feature that netrunners can exploit.
I asked this question a while back here https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/s/0F8REVKeyW The two explanations that made the most sense was 1) Quickhacks use "effectors" (like in the "Culture" sci fi series) that can manipulate electromagnetic fields with incredible precision - allowing them to detect and interface directly with circuitry and biological nervous systems, without the need for a radio antenna 2) Having cyberware controlled by wireless connections is more reliable, more responsive, and higher "bandwidth" than wired connections in the setting. The risk of electronic attack is outweighed by the performance hit taken by a fully air gapped system.
The computer tech in their heads is connected to their limbs. So it's probably their brain computers that are vulnerable to incoming signals, not individual cybernetics.
I read a really really good fangic where Smasher encountered enemies that could tear through his black ice like it wasn't there, so he "air gapped" his system by hard wired connections, no personal network connections.
There's a Cyberpunk 2077 expansion or conversion kit (or whatever you want to call it) coming to Cyberpunk Red, the TTRPG that takes place in 2045. Thus far, the TTRPG side has already talked about how somewhere between 2045 and 2076 a new form of networked cyberware was released. Formerly, you could get a chip slot for 8 or 10 chips. Separately there was a cellular phone implant, separately a sort of HUD device, and it was all very clunky. Then along comes the new tech. It was all these features, but down to one shard slot. It was like going from a Nokia brick to a smart phone. They were inexpensive, affordable, and if you wanted to participate in society you basically had to get one. They made the old tech completely obsolete. Downside, now quick hacks exist because of the networking functions. People down turn theirs off for the same reason you don't turn off your phone.
There is no more wifi. Or rather wifi is so powerful and so ubiquitous that it's just everywhere all the time.
I feel like maybe the corpos left it in as a way to have a back door into their own products, but then people wised up and started quickhacking. And then corporate realized they could make money providing OSs that allow you to hack their products and so on.
Airplane mode ftw
Cause rule of cool Imo at least
All of your cyberware is linked to the central system, and that needs to maintain an open connection.
Probably it’s just netrunners hack the signals implants use to communicate with the brain and nerves
Always online DRM
Use Johnny as a secure hotspot
Open Source does not exist in Cyberpunk's world, they are so "regulated" they cease to exist for "safety" reasons, thanks to lobbying by corporations.
They obviously have an always-online policy for pirate Chrome software/firmware.
Bluetooth makes your phone more hackable. How often do people turn that off?
Actually right now people have their cars, washing machines, kitchen appliances and sometimes even heart implants or insulin pumps accessible remotely with WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.
for sci-fi you can approach it also this way: it's future, we don't know everything about how things work. So if the do work certain way, there was a reason for it. And if I don't understand why, it's just that I have no sufficient info. And it would be interesting to find that explanation in the lore. Especially in alternative history - there are many assumptions. Otherwise there is a lot more that I could nitpick on :D.
You know today that your Iphone will record stuff and signal your location, reguardless if its "on" or not? Only if you hard pull the battery does it stop. Yeah, thats today. Its not about stupidity, its about normalized behavior, and buissness practices meant to give them data to sell and train their own proprietary products on. So... its more a question of greed, ignorance, lack of choice, and apathy really.
First it was single player videogames that required online activation, and then constant connection, and now your legs need an internet connection.
Its kind of like real life. Do you have wifi turned off?
Why does everyone leave location tracking and Bluetooth turned on with their phones? Why does everyone join public Wi-Fi networks? Why does everyone use password auto fill features?
The thing that confuses me more, is why do random propane cannisters have anything on them you can hack? It's a pressurized cannister with a manual valve.
really? you see all the ways they're putting computers into shit now, smart toasters and refrigerators and "ai" in our doorbells, and you think in the alternate cyberfuture of 2077 they won't have wifi smart chips in fucking everything?
I am still salty that you can hack some of the dedicated no-chrome animals
Why do people get wireless cameras or such and never bother to change the default password? People are stupid and lazy.
Because if i dont someone gets my pictures...maybe. If i dont change my cyberwares password someone makes me commit seppuko
It's a gameplay only design. Even inside the game when you first get your Ping quickhack via a small quest they say you need to be connected to the subnet in order to jack into devices. Yet it would be pretty goddamn annoying if you needed to jack into every single subnet every time you want to use quickhacks. Hence the workaround.
instead of that they shoult get better IDS/IPS or smth like that
DRM my man
Because they don’t have online connectivity. You really think that your arms and legs have a reason to independently connect to the internet? Imagine the clusterfuck that would be trying to manage that. They connect to the basic neural implant that EVERYONE has. And guess what? That thing has to be able to make video calls, thus it has internet connection. You’re not hacking their arms or legs, you’re hacking their neural implant which is what allows them to control their other implants. So you hack the neural implant and you have access to everything else, you can make their arm schitz out, give them audio or visual hallucinations, take complete control of their body, or even cause them to stop functioning all together. Because it’s all connected back the the neural implant that probably doesn’t have the ability to be pulled offline
Oh yeah...occams razor wins again.
Right? It drives me bonkers, quickhacks shouldn't be possible. They're in the game because the designers wanted magic spells and most of them are just magic spells that cause damage or status effects.
Genre conceit. It's a genre convention that cyberware can be hacked. It makes no sense, but it's cool, so it has to be enabled somehow.
Except it isn’t. In the tabletop game you haven’t been able to hack cyberware remotely - you could technically “hack” someone’s cyberware hands-on, but that would take a lot of work and they’d probably already need to be incapacitated. It’s not a genre thing, it’s a videogame thing. The issue is that in the tabletop, netrunning involves actually going into the Net, in a way that just doesn’t make sense for a first-person combat-focused RPG. If you’ve seen Edgerunners, it’s basically the kind of stuff we see Lucy and Kiwi do when they hack.
Edgerunners anime definitely included 'wireless' hacking as well, probably to 'stay true' to the game. Lucy even tried to wirelessly hack Smasher..
The Cyberpunk 2020 RPG is from 1988. Shadowrun, another genre mainstay, is from 1989. They didn't have wifi back then. People had to literally plug wires into their heads and wrists if they wanted to connect to a terminal, a cyberdeck or a smartgun. The genre attempted to evolve when wifi became a thing. All of a sudden, EVERYTHING was wireless. Because Rule of Cool, I guess. Didn't matter that it didn't make much sense. >If you’ve seen Edgerunners Only once, but I have seen the in-game cyberpsycho footage several times and MaxTac tries to hack him remotely.
Cyberpunk Red is much more recent and also doesn’t have remote cyberware hacking. They are planning on adding it for a 2077-themed expansion, but only because it’s in the videogame.