I work on the assumption that with vast processing power, ready access to assorted superhuman/posthuman intelligences, and a solar-system-plus worth of data available, most fair-sized networks have some incredibly interesting things on them or associated with them. Security -- While most people in Eclipse Phase are not *elite* hackers, plenty of individuals are extremely familiar with the software and live lives intertwined with the inner workings of their local mesh. Sentient AIs, infomorphs, hackers, programmers, AI/infotech researchers, obsessed augmented-reality gamers, and to a degree everyone whose work is deeply connected to the mesh or at least infotech (arguably almost everybody). A barge that has managed to muddle through this long has probably survived at least some brushes with very, very serious threats. Remember, in objective time 95% of the transhuman race died off ten years ago and almost everybody left fled into space. Even the people who never saw or suspected TITAN technology are aware that hideously powerful weapons -- including infotech weapons -- were deployed in that war, so certain holes tend to be plugged. It's just that on a lot of the barges -- particularly the ones which evaded the worst incursions and infiltrators -- that security is often handled in unusual ways. Some barges probably rely on things like inhabiting colonies of AIs to defend them -- which range from friendly tagalongs and/or uplifted crew to... Advanced civilizations living in accelerated time who treat the barge as a home, a backup node or a useful drop point/sensor array to... Hostile or simply incredibly deadly infotech and nanite weapons hyperevolving using evolutionary algorithms, which treat the native crew and a few visitors as symbiotic organisms which are mainly off-limits (so long as they don't stray past certain limits) and subvert or annihilate everything else to... Just about anyone using the barge as a front, from red-tech marketeers/smugglers to Exhuman researchers/predators to seed AIs to AI colonies using legally questionable masses of computronium to Firewall operatives to everyone else's operatives to... A simple, outsourced set of complex defenses (remember, with the number of competent AIs, informorphs and limited AIs available, the level of basic to mid-level work required is no problem) sustained by way of any number of deals -- if you are a node in a major smuggling, encrypted communication or egocasting network you may have considerable resources, or you may simply trade rep, giving you firewalls that may be formidable and/or contain secret flaws enabling access either to your former contractors or those who know their secrets, or simply higher-order intruders such as any seed AI, to... A very low-infotech, high-biotech system, possibly assisted by the odd de facto psi, overrrun by the Exsurgent virus, which takes down anyone foolish enough to interface with its few computer systems directly. The inhabitants should theoretically fall at some point, but it the virus may be lurking, may have so few basilisk-hack and other options that it's stuck in a closed loop, or some other factor may be at work -- to... Perhaps the scariest option -- the barge has already fallen or is in the process of falling, and you are meddling in a place which is utterly owned or infected by a force you know nothing about, and which may be vastly more intelligent and dangerous than you are. Finally, one of the things I assume about Eclipse Phase is that many of the most powerful and advanced intelligences are keenly aware of what happens to the less powerful around them, even when they possess no real sense of compassion. Whenever an aggressive force acts, it exposes something about itself in doing so -- the technology it possesses, tactics it employs, goals it may or may not seek to further by way of a particular assault. Hence, advanced transhumans, Exhumans and seed AIs are often involved in a kind of cold war wherein they act subtly to assist otherwise outclassed victims -- a single "ping" alerting an invaded system of an ongoing attack, a sudden shutdown of a key communications hub in mid-incursion or basilisk hack, an involuntarily inserted or gift software patch that renders an obvious technique completely useless against the individual or organization. One factor often seen in these kinds of conflicts is an unspoken, ongoing assessment made by all of the relatively sane participants. Am I exposing too much of my resources, technology, tools and/or identity in this matter, and if so, is it worth it? Even a moderately powerful, newly emergent seed AI should probably have a few levels of increasingly potent resources, and virtually all of the notable ones have probably figured out some unique tricks, if only ones related to specific regions, individuals or organizations they have studied, or to their particular areas of specialization. Incidentally, I treat all seed AIs worth the name as having at least several psi chi sleights, if only as a consequence of their superior insights, technology and programming.