A quick discusion of what the Mesh is and is not as well as how it can be misused and how to protect yourself for its misuses.
Information wants to be free
Too much information
Most devices are linked to the Mesh. This creates a vaste sea of information: from camera feeds, news, bloggers, and all augmented reality devices, the flow of information is vast. Finding the right information is not hard but sifting it to get something useful out of it is.
Muses
A tiny AGI software that helps organise the Mesh flow of information based on the user's known preferences. It is a secretary, a confident, and a organiser always on the look out for things of interest and keeping track of what the user feels is important. Of course, they can be hacked. However, hacking an AGI is beyond the vaste majority of hackers.
Reputation
Most of the online communities will have reputation based economies. Some of that reputation might even transfer between communities -- A Chinese hacker of great standing might keep 90% of his reputation when moving to France but only 60% coming to the USA. Reputation can be spend like currency to gain knowledge or favours. The flip side, is that you have to gain and maintain it. Think of Kudos or Whuffies.
Oddly enough, most of the hacker community trade in reputation although some will trade in money as well depending on the risks, rewards, and well the reputation of the favour.
Hacking
Networking
All Mesh enabled devices are either:
No network: The device needs to be physically connected before any attempt can be made to subvert it.
Limitted network: Be it wired or wireless, you can get access to the feed of information but not change it -- unless via a man in the middle attack.
Fully networked: You can either take control or subvert either a subset of the functionality or the full functionality of the device.
Note that this gives you the ability to subvert the devices and not necessary the ability to make them do thing they were not meant to do. On one hand, most medical nanotech is very resistant to inflict harm upon its host. On the other hand, an automated mounted gun system will quiet happily shoot hostile targets even if a few seconds ago, they were friendly.
While most devices fall into the second category, there are private networks that need a physical connection into them first but once in, other access is possible.
Subversion
The easiest way to subvert a device is to have a exploit for it. Those can be self discovered or bought through some fixer or hacker -- Having many Whuffies does help. Then the exploit must be weaponised so that it can delivery payloads. This allows the hacker to potentially subvert the whole device or at least part of its function.
Most of this consiste of preparation work, research, and knowing the right people in the right places. The hack either just works or does not work at all. However, detection during or after the fact is still possible.
The other way to subvert a device is to masquerade as someone authenticated to do whatever you wish to do. This can be done via social engineering, exploits of the master system, or just lying to the device. The man in the middle attack fall squarely into this category.
This type of hacking can involve a cat and mouse game between the attackers and defender which is mostly done on the fly, using ICE on both sides. If done via a deck, it is very slow but safer. If done via cyberbrain or other cybernetic implants, it is fast but dangerous. In the former case, only your deck can fry. In the latter, your ghost could be hacked in return.
Example: A small device
A fridge will know what produces within it are going to spoil or run out soon and can order new ones from the shops. The fridge would not have access to the front door (for delivery) or credit card information or know if the inhabitant is present in the house or not. But the fridge will be an integral part of the house network.
Example: An office
Accessing the mainframe of a company building and gaining root privileges might require some physical access within the building (via a cleaning crew?), the knowledge of a normal user account (gain via blackmail), some clever ICE software to masquerade as the Chief of Security, a diversion so the Chief of Security is no where with easy network access, and more ICE to disrupt the automated defences that the AGI Firewall will have. To get all of this right might require a few months of work for a dedicated team.
Example: In the heat of battle
Batou san is facing four goons who are trying to kill him. They are all corporate goons from a company he was investigating as part of his job at Section 9. He knows what protocol they use and has written a little ICE to masquerade as their commander. During the fight, Batou san uses his ICE to hack the vision software of the goons to skin himself as a by stander. Since the goons cannot tell him apart from civilians, they let him escape. Later on, they get a demotion to toilet cleaning duties for failing to keep their software up to date and for falling for such a rookie trick.
Example: A Ghost hack
Alice and Bob communicate vital information, Chuck wants to subvert that. He spends a great deal of resources and time exploring Alice's life to find the right leverage. Then, Chuck kidnaps Alice and hooks her to a ghost hacking rig. The latter is mostly an AGI with some pretty hard core hardware behind it. During some painful hours, days, or weeks, Chuck subvert Alice's mind defences. Depending on how deeply Chuck wants to go, he has to reprogramme some of Alice's memories: just enough so that Chuck is now an old friend of Alice. He lets her go, knowing that she will pass all of Bob's information to him. However, Bob suspects something is wrong as Alice's ghost feels weird and wrong. Bob dives in (again, massive kit needed) and managed to get out the implemented information. Bob then hires a hit square to pay Chuck a visit. Chuck and Bob are within the top 1% of hackers in the world.
Note that trying to subvert an AGI will require as much, if not more efforts because what it lacks in history and personality, the AGI will make up in raw processing power.
Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics
ICE are generic software that help attacks, defence, and either detection or obfuscation of the hacker.
Sniffer: This ICE is aimed at finding the location (both Mesh and physical) of the hacker. Note that it is only a matter of time before a sniffer finds the hacker.
Obfucator: This ICE is the anathema of the Sniffer. It will try to confuse, mislead, and lose sniffer ICE.
Fortress: This ICE will enhance the protection of devices on the Mesh (at a cost in speed and functionality) thus making it harder to subvert.
Demon, Trickster or Coyote: This ICE seeks to trick, corrupt, and subvert devices. Most of this type of ICE are very illegal for obvious reasons.
Black: ICE that actively seeks to damage the hacker's ghost. Those are fully illegal and classes as war crimes -- the equivalent to shooting your prisoners. Note that this ICE must be combined with a sniffer one to be fully effective.
Succubus: The ICE is a traditional honey pot: a nice trap for hackers. Can be coupled with sniffers or black ICE.
Sleeper: This ICE infects a system and stay dormant until such a time as it is activated and then it releases its payload which might contain other ICE software.
LeCarré: This ICE is used to transform a device into a spy which will rely the information learned to an external source or store it for later retrieval.
The referee strongly suggest players come up wither their own wacky a names and functions for specific ICE software.
Artificial Intelligences
AGI: Artificial Generic Intelligence
Artificial Generic Intelligence (or shackle AI) are limited in how they evolve but nonetheless contain a large amount of power dependent mostly on how much hardware they can commandeer. Most muses can be seen as tiny AGI. Most multi-national companies do have core AGI that help in the running of the place.
SAI: Seed Artificial Intelligence
Only a myth so far, the Singularity is not here yet but on a clear day you can see it on the Horizon.
Machine augmented ghosts
A cross between a human ghost and an AGI. Mostly, an utterly insane mix with some brillant insights. Viable for a short time only, in the best case reverting to either a human (although an insane one) or a AGI (although a broken one) but most commonly just gibberish.