Security analyst and hacker Keren Elazari is impressed by the technological accuracy inMr. Robot. With a 94% Tomatometer score and 93% Popcornmeter score, the USA Network series that aired for four seasons was beloved by critics and general audiences.
TheRami Malek-led showfollows his character, Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a cybersecurity engineer who joins a hacker group known as fsociety. They have an ambitious plan to erase the financial records of the conglomerate known as E-Corp and free the world from debt. While being caught up in this world-changing scheme, Elliot struggles deeply with his mental health.
In anInsidervideo, Elazari breaks down a scene in season 2 where Elliot and his sister, Darlene (Carly Chaikin), visit a hacker space engaged in a capture the flag competition. As Elliot works to access a backdoor planted in E-Corp, Elazari explains how the show’s depiction of the situation is incredibly accurate. Check out her comments below:
Elliot and Darlene are visiting a hacker space that is currently hosting a CTF. A CTF is a capture the flag competition. And this is a type of hacker game. It might be about decrypting a really unique piece of code or something like that. So in this scene, they’re in the qualifying rounds for Def Con. And Def Con is a real-world hacking conference. It’s the world’s largest hacking conference. There’s even hackathons and CTFs that take place in Italian farms. I’ve been to CTFS at convention centers, university campuses, although the one they’re at right now is extra underground.
What Elliot is doing could be even considered quite rude. Having somebody should surf you like that, yes, it does happen. However, for Elliot to within one second understand what’s going on that screen, get all the context on that code, and then tell them how to win that challenge…I understand the show sets him up to be above-average intelligence, but he would have to be a supercomputer.
It sounds like the hackers need to reverse engineer or take apart a mind sweeper-style game. This sounds quite realistic. It’s actually based on the real-world CTF challenge from 2012. So, I think it’s really cool the show went to the trouble of getting a real-world hacking challenge.
What he’s doing right now is very realistic, and it would have taken him a lot longer than it did. One does not hack a registrar in two seconds. Elliot needs to get in touch with the backdoor that they planted inside E-Corp in the past season. In order to do that, he’s utilizing the fact that backdoor, which is basically a computer software, has a hard-coded C2 domain. C2 in this context means command and control. And it’s often where hackers or malicious criminals create a piece of code that’s going to run inside an organizational network. But in order to be in a position to communicate with the backdoor, Elliot first needs to take over the domain. And the next thing he does, and we see him do it, is issue the command shred. Shred is a Unix command to not just delete files, but also rewrite them so that the files would be much more difficult to recover even with specialized forensic software.
I’m going torate this scene at nine out of 10. I’m only deducting the one point just because of how fast everything happened and how quickly those hackers let Elliot jump into their CTF game.
What This Means For Mr. Robot
The show’s technological accuracy is one of the key factors that enables mostMr. Robotepisodes to be masterpieces. Instead of just having Elliot tapping away at a keyboard and using hacking-related vocabulary, there is authenticity to everything that he says and does when he is hacking.
This authenticity not only applies to Elliot, but also to Darlene, the other members of fsociety, and in the CTF scene. It is easier to be immersed and invested in the show’s story and in the idea of Elliot being an unparalleled hacker when nearly all the hacking details are grounded in reality, and there aren’t inaccuracies that could prove to be distracting.
The inaccuracies that Elazari points out are not about what is shown on the computer screens. The flaws she finds have more to do with human behavior, including how fast Elliot solves the problem and his interactions with the other hackers. It is arguably fitting that the errors relate to human behavior and not as much to the actual hacking that takes place.
Our Take On Keren Elzari’s Comments
Elazari’s comments are an important reminder of howMr. Robotportrays hacking better than nearly any other movie or show. This realism was always one of the show’s greatest strengths, and the accuracy continues to be impressive years after the series ended.
There are someshows likeMr. Robot, but none have managed to be so technologically accurate while also delivering a timely, shocking, and profoundly moving story. Elazari’s breakdown is also a reminder that it is time to relive this magic and begin another rewatch.
