We were always going to be interested in Mr. Robot. After years of l33t TV hackers aimlessly pounding away at keyboards from a parent’s basement on your Law & Order of choice, USA’s unexpected hit series clearly stood out as different from its very first scene. Elliot, a quiet, enigmatic, and savvy IT pro, sits in a cafe talking about gigabit Internet speeds, Tor networking, and the downfalls of onion-routing protocols due to exit nodes. Frankly, it may have become the best television hacker portrayal on the merits of that opening sequence alone.
Of course, Mr. Robot didn’t stop there. Over its three seasons, the show’s creative team has demonstrated time and again that they follow the infosec community as closely as any respectable tech journalist—there has been PwnPhones and cantennas, Kali Linux and crypto-ransomware. And with the show boasting former FBI agents, IT pros, tech journalists, and infosec analysts among its advisors and writers, we shouldn’t be surprised.
It all makes Mr. Robot a natural fit, whether you’re talking about the halls of Def Con, annual best of TV lists (for S1 and S3, at least), or our ongoing Tech on TV series. So as we continue to look at the tech powering our favorite shows both on screen and off, it’s finally time to don a black hoodie and get wrist deep in a terminal.
After taking a closer look at the series, we have merely two pleas for creator Sam Esmail. First, as we once told Kor Adana, Elliot would totally read Ars. And second, if the ever-present Star Wars rumors pan out, we expect the same level of technical dedication. (They use ProtonMail among the Rebel Alliance, right?)
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