data is data

Yep.

In this case, in my version of the Universe, the Empire has AI programs that autonomously monitor all holonet communications, and woe betide anyone who tries to use that network for any other purpose.

If you’re the greatest hacker in the galaxy, maybe you can get away with it for a while, but if you try to do that too often, then even you will get caught. And then a whole fleet of Star Destroyers show up on your doorstep and really ruin your day.

...

Now, on that Imperial holonet, sure you can get near real-time broadcasts of sporting events. Only delayed by a few milliseconds, which is long enough for the Empire to do what they want with that feed if and when they want to. They could even front-run bets on that feed, either officially or unofficially, and if done correctly then there wouldn’t be any way that the bookies could detect the shady activity.

If religion used to be the opiate of the masses, then today I would say that sports is one of the big opioid replacements. And I don’t see any material difference in this regard between our world and the Star Wars galaxy.

It would be in the best interest of the Empire to keep those peasants mollified and sedated.

I'm actually fine with this interpretation of the Holonet. It's entirely consistent with what we know of/see in the movies and doesn't change the underlying fundamentals of the technology's function.

Others have already commented on the risk of slicing top-security remote systems via the holonet. However, if you want to have the holonet behave more like the internet, just be careful about those slicers who want to use computers where Knowledge skills would be more applicable.

In the end, you simply don't want Computers to replace or deemphasise a handful of skills.

Seems like an entirely reasonable precaution.

You'd have to do the same things today. Just because we have "the internet" doesn't mean you can hack a bank or CNN from your desktop. Everything significant requires being on site.

I'm pretty sure Target, Sony, and quite a few others might beg to differ. Not to say its as easy as typing "\hack" or anything, but if it's connected, it CAN be accessed with enough patience and intelligence. Security comes from making it difficult enough to not be worth the right someone's time. I'm not really looking to start an argument here, but if a machine is networked to the outside world, it can be a target. (It might be an exceptionally DIFFICULT target, but still.)

I'm not aware of the Target case, but the Sony hack just proves my point. They stole a password from someone in IT and planted malware. This required an insider to be on site. Their weakness was their physical security, not the network itself.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-hackers-broke-into-sony-2014-12

Again, almost everything worth doing requires someone on site, or at the very least being in close proximity to pick up specific signals. You can't just start typing from your desktop and expect to get anywhere. To relate it to Daeglan's Rebels example, they had to fly to the broadcast tower, shoot the guards before they could log out so Sabine could use their terminals, and inject the spike (malware). It's basically the same pattern.

As it relates to the game, and to reiterate, having an internet doesn't mean the players can just "roll Computers" and do something easily...all that fun stuff of social skills and infiltration is still very much a requirement.

We are 25 years into the internet/data networks. The galaxy is 20,000 years into using hyperdrive? Dunno any lore about the Holonet, but given the hyperspace time frame, I just assume that with a couple ten thousand years of finessing stuff, things got figured out somewhere along the way. Trying to apply how we do things to how they might work in Star Wars, regardless of poetic license, seems like a fairly stout case of hubris. Not to mention does anyone here think the way we even run the internet now is smart, or how we will do things in even just a hundred years??

You'd have to do the same things today. Just because we have "the internet" doesn't mean you can hack a bank or CNN from your desktop. Everything significant requires being on site.

I'm pretty sure Target, Sony, and quite a few others might beg to differ. Not to say its as easy as typing "\hack" or anything, but if it's connected, it CAN be accessed with enough patience and intelligence. Security comes from making it difficult enough to not be worth the right someone's time. I'm not really looking to start an argument here, but if a machine is networked to the outside world, it can be a target. (It might be an exceptionally DIFFICULT target, but still.)

I'm not aware of the Target case, but the Sony hack just proves my point. They stole a password from someone in IT and planted malware. This required an insider to be on site. Their weakness was their physical security, not the network itself.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-hackers-broke-into-sony-2014-12

Again, almost everything worth doing requires someone on site, or at the very least being in close proximity to pick up specific signals. You can't just start typing from your desktop and expect to get anywhere. To relate it to Daeglan's Rebels example, they had to fly to the broadcast tower, shoot the guards before they could log out so Sabine could use their terminals, and inject the spike (malware). It's basically the same pattern.

As it relates to the game, and to reiterate, having an internet doesn't mean the players can just "roll Computers" and do something easily...all that fun stuff of social skills and infiltration is still very much a requirement.

I was referring to the big PSN thing with all the user data stolen. I believe it was suspected to come down to some sort of database vulnerability exposed during a long-term attack on Sony's systems at the time. The Target thing was commandeered credentials as well, which does not have to come from the 'physical site'. Social engineering, injection attacks... never even have to be on the same continent if you're lucky. Does physical site access make it easier? Definitely. Is it absolutely required? No. You just need one person to click a bad link in their email or get sloppy with their login info online. The only way being at the physical site is an absolute requirement is if the machine is not networked.

EDIT: Source about the social engineering angle: a recent test we did at my workplace showed ~20% of the staff opened a fake 'malicious' email; 5% followed the link it contained, and 2% went so far as to supply their credentials.

Others have already commented on the risk of slicing top-security remote systems via the holonet. However, if you want to have the holonet behave more like the internet, just be careful about those slicers who want to use computers where Knowledge skills would be more applicable.

In the end, you simply don't want Computers to replace or deemphasise a handful of skills.

Isn't this already what the game does in most areas? Does using Skulduggery to get through a door deemphasize Computers? Or does sneaking past a guarded door deemphasize lying your way past it?

I was referring to the big PSN thing with all the user data stolen. I believe it was suspected to come down to some sort of database vulnerability exposed during a long-term attack on Sony's systems at the time.

Sorry, don’t mean to necro the thread, but I believe that evidence has since shown that this was actually an inside job.

The Target thing was commandeered credentials as well, which does not have to come from the 'physical site'. Social engineering, injection attacks... never even have to be on the same continent if you're lucky. Does physical site access make it easier? Definitely. Is it absolutely required? No. You just need one person to click a bad link in their email or get sloppy with their login info online. The only way being at the physical site is an absolute requirement is if the machine is not networked.

Phishing and spear-phishing is a very real vulnerability, which attacks the weakest link — the human element.

And that can turn an external attack into an “inside job”, once the credentials are compromised.

But a physical air gap should prevent that sort of thing from being able to be done remotely.

One thing to remember Lobot's cyberware allowed him to talk wirelessly with the Cloud City computer. i just think what you can do wirelessly is very very limited for security reasons.