Cyberpunk 2077 Hacking Explained

Hacking is one of the most important aspects of Cyberpunk 2077. Unfortunately, it tends to keep a lot of what makes it tick secret for you to figure out. Split that over tons of hacks and a few ways of doing it, and you might get lost quite easily. Luckily, we're here to help. Here's a rundown of how to hack in Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 - Quickhacking Explained

Quickhacking is, obviously enough, a quick way of hacking. You point at an enemy and let the rest of the systems do the work for you. Of course, it gets more complex, so let's give a brief overview. Your character in Cyberpunk 2077 has an operating system like any computer. It comes with RAM, which can affect the quality and amount of hacks you can do at one time. You can upgrade this at any time at your nearest Ripperdoc for a hefty fee. That fee is worth it as it strengthens your combat, stealth, and the rate at which you discover things. 

From the start of the game, you have access to hacks to turn things on or off, as well as Breach Protocol (we'll talk about this later) and a few others. Turn on your scanner and you will see anything highlighted yellow can be hacked, alongside enemies. You just click the corresponding button and wait for the small bar to fill up.

Perhaps the two most valuable quick hacks early on both have to do with stealth. The Distract Enemies quick hack sets off machinery drawing the attention of nearby baddies. This is a great way of getting by people or even a good way of setting up a gunfight. After all, it's much easier to win if the opponent doesn't see it coming. Another incredibly important quick hack is the Remote Deactivation ability. This is particularly strong against cameras whose sole purpose is to seek you out.

When it comes down to combat, the Detonate Grenade ability is as fun as it is self-explanatory. Hit the button, baddie goes boom. Weapon Glitch is good regardless of your build as its jams enemy weapons, and the Whistle is a great way of calling over enemies to get taken out silently. 

Quick hacks are likely something you will upgrade slowly throughout your time in Night City. It can take tens of thousands of eddies for a good OS capable of handling the best hacks, and upgrading your intelligence and quick hack perks is something that might take you a while. Intelligence will upgrade damage and duration of quick hack and upgrade your RAM capacity with each upgrade, making it an absolute must if you want to go this route. To find out more on Cyberpunk 2077's attribute system, check out our guide.

Breach Protocol in Cyberpunk 2077

Breach Protocol is Cyberpunk's central hacking minigame, and getting good at it can net (sorry for the bad pun) you lots of goodies in return. Whilst it's mostly optional, it's certainly worth learning how to do it as the tutorial doesn't do a great job at explaining it. I'll show a sample image of one and then show you how to solve it.

So, at the top of the screen, it says "Buffer." Underneath this is 4 squares. This indicates you can pick 4 numbers in a sequence. There are 3 possible sequences below to choose from. Logically, this must mean you find the data mine that grants you the most goodies and pick that? No, that's not what you should do here. 

When you pick a number from the allocated horizontal row, you then choose one vertically from there, horizontally from there, and so on. You start at the top, make your way down and then to the side. The amount of numbers in a sequence or in the buffer can change so you have to work your answer around that. Luckily, here, you can actually solve two sequence in one go, getting the most you can out of it. 

You effectively need to write a four number sequence out of: 1C 1C 8D, BD 55 1C, 55 1C 1C. The trick to this is that two of these share the same two numbers, meaning the sequence 55 1C 1C BD will actually unlock both Datamine_V1 and Datamine_V3. It sounds a little more complicated than it actually is. Give it a go whilst trying to figure out how to solve a few in one go; it should start to click.

The timer doesn't start on a Breach until you click the first number so if you need to take some time to plan your best choice, do that beforehand. You can also upgrade rewards, difficulty, and more through the perk progression path, so sometimes, it can be worth waiting to get something much better out of hacking.

And that's how you do the major hacking components to Cyberpunk 2077. You should hack the breaches for eddies and EXP, then uses that to upgrade your player and implants until you're stronger, quicker, and better hacker. Get out there and hack away.