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Why Mr. Robot is the best series about the IT industry

Good day, dear readers of Habr!

On December 23, 2019, the final series of one of the most popular TV series about IT - Mr. Robot - was released . After watching the series until the end, I firmly decided to write an article about the series on Habré. The output of this article is dedicated to my anniversary on the portal. My first article appeared exactly 2 years ago.

Disclaimer


I understand that the readers of Habrahabr are people working in the IT industry, experienced users and avid geeks. This article does not carry any important information and is not educational. Here I would like to share my opinion about the series, but not as a film critic, but as a person from the IT world. If you agree or disagree with me on any issues, let's discuss them in the comments. Tell us your opinion. It will be interesting.

If you, readers of Habrahabr, like this format, I promise to continue working on other films and series, trying to choose the best, in my opinion, work.

Well, let's get down to the series.
Caution! Spoilers



Key characters


We will start with the main character of the series. His name is Elliot Alderson .



Elliot is a young cybersecurity engineer during the day and a hacker activist at night. Elliot is an introvert and not socially adapted. Due to the constant feeling of anxiety and anxiety, it is difficult for him to communicate with other people. He revealed a dissociative identity disorder, that is, a multiple personality disorder. Elliot can lose control of his body and control goes to him .

Mr. Robot




Mr. Robot is Elliot's second personality. He is his father. The father he deserved. In the future, he will be called the “Defender” mask . Mr. Robot is a co-founder and leader of the hacker group fsociety (Fuck Society), a revolutionary prophet who plans to destroy the world's largest conglomerate. Although smart and charismatic, Mr. Robot is also emotionally manipulated and can be quick to kill. This led to a comparison with the behavior of militant cult leaders.

Darlene Alderson




Elliot's sister. She is also an activist hacker. Darlene is one of the few people who sees through Elliot and always knows who she is talking to. She can see what Elliot himself cannot see.

Angela Moss




Angela is the second person who knows Elliot. They grew up together and both lost their parents as a result of a chemical leak. He lost his father, she is the mother. Angela is a close friend of Elliot, with whom he is secretly in love. Love was unrequited.

White Rose




White Rose is a hacker, the mysterious leader of the Dark Army organization. He is a transgender woman from China, obsessed with the idea of ​​time management. When they meet with Elliot Alderson, he gives Elliot three minutes to discuss the attack on the Evil Corporation (E-Corp). The motives of the White Rose cannot be explained, and when Elliot asks why he helps the Fuck Society, he does not answer the question, because Elliot has exceeded the limit of three minutes allotted to him.

In public, White Rose appears as a man, Minister Zheng from the Ministry of Public Security of China. As him, he accepts FBI agents investigating the hacking of Evil Corporation's electronic reserves.

Minor Characters


Tyrell Wellick



Yes, you heard right. Tyrell is a minor character (at least as Sam Esmeil intended). Wellick is Senior Vice President of IT at Evil Corporation. He wants the death of a conglomerate no less than Elliot, and for this, he is ready for anything.

Romero



Romero is a cybercriminal, engineer, and biologist specializing in phreaking and growing marijuana. Romero is a professional, but his desire for fame and self-will lead to conflicts with other members of the fsociety group.

Mobly



Sunil Markes, a hacker named Mobly, is a member of the Fuck Society. Mobile is an example of a hacker who is represented by outsiders from IT. He is full, all the time on the nerves, arrogant.

Trenton



Shama Biswas, a hacker also known as Trenton, is a member of the Fuck Society group. Trenton's parents immigrated from Iran to America in search of freedom. Her father works 60 hours a week, helping to find ways to evade taxes for a millionaire art dealer. Trenton has a younger brother named Muhammad. The family lives in Brooklyn, and she is studying at a nearby university. I think it’s clear who she personifies.

Krista Gordon



Elliot Psychologist. Krista is trying to help Elliott figure out herself, but she does it with difficulty.

Dominic Di Pierrot



Dominic "House" Di Pierrot - special agent of the FBI, is investigating the case of the hacker attack 5/9 (attack Elliot). Although Dominic is self-confident and persistent at work, she does not have a personal life, relationships or close friends. Instead, she communicates in anonymous sex chats and often talks with Alex, Amazon Echo's smart speaker.

Irving



Irving is a high-level Dark Army employee. The character himself is extremely colorful and represents a successful mercenary who will do anything to satisfy the employer.

Leon



At first glance, Leon is a friend of Elliot Alderson, with whom he sometimes dines or plays basketball. He behaves at ease, likes to chat and often talks about TV shows. Secretly, he is an agent of the Dark Army, which is supposed to protect Elliot during his imprisonment. Leon has many connections in prison circles and smugglers, such as pornography and drugs.

In many series, minor characters are not thought out, but not in the series "Mr. Robot." Each character is thought out so much that people see familiar faces in them and ask them to leave the heroes they love. So, for example, Tyrell "got" right up to the fourth season, although the author of the series - Sam Esmale wanted to remove it in the second.

For such a detailed study of minor characters, you can only applaud the authors.

Producer, Director, Writer




Sam Esmail got his first computer when he was nine years old. The boy began to learn programming and write his code a few years later. When Sam attended New York University, he worked in a computer lab. This continued until he was assigned an academic probationary period for a "stupid act."
In the film, he showed not just a third-party hacker, but himself (to some extent). He understood who Elliot was and how to organize a hack in real life. That is why hacking looks very realistic and spectacular.

2 interesting facts.

  1. Sem Esmail gave Elliot his birthday.
  2. In the fourth season, it was he who introduced the poison to Elliot with the phrase "Bye, friend."

In general, the picture was in good hands. The author knew the whole side from the inside, and he was also a screenwriter, director and producer, which helped, saving the picture from the disputes of “money”, “brains” and “eyes”.

Plot


The plot of the series is as simple as a faceted glass. Elliot wants to hack the Z company, which he calls the Evil Company (in the original, we see the company name as the English letter “E”, and Elliot called it the company “Evil” - evil). Hacking is necessary for him in order to destroy the company of evil and free society from oppression. He wants to save people from debts, loans and loans, thereby giving people freedom.

I will not speak about what was happening inside the film. You yourself know this, and if not, look better yourself and draw your own conclusions. I'll talk about the finals.

The finale we deserve


The very case when the finale changed all attitude to the series, and the media rushed.
Firstly, fortunately, the ending is not in the style of the Lost series, where what is happening is a dog’s dream.
Secondly, Mr. Robot did a great job catharsis in the last episode. Besides, however, as always, brilliant camera work, directing and acting, the ending "rolls" the viewer along the "emotional roller coaster." No matter how strange it may sound, the finale turns everything we knew about the plot upside down, but at the same time puts everything in its place. The viewer is breathtaking, he admires, exults, clutches his head, he is covered with nostalgia - a storm of emotions, and all in one hour.

Few series have managed to say goodbye to the audience. Walter White at the end of Breaking Bad walks nostalgically around the laboratory, recalling his path with the audience. And even looking directly at the camera, saying goodbye. In the finale of “Mr. Robot,” the viewer was given a special role. In a scene clearly inspired by the "Space Odyssey of 2001", we are also asked to leave, because while we watch, the show will not end. Emma Garland from Vice, even before the final, called the series "decisive for the 2010s." And her words became prophetic: “Mr. Robot” perfectly completes the decade in which the serial industry entered a new “golden age”, paying tribute to us, the audience, without which he would not have come.



6 persons


Elliot has 6 personalities. Think about it, six!

I will sort them all out:

  1. Host The real Elliot, whom we have not seen in the film not once .
  2. Organizer (mastermind). Elliot whom we see 98% of the airtime.
  3. Defender. Mr. Robot.
  4. Prosecutor. The image of Elliot's mother, who was very strict with him throughout his childhood.
  5. Child. Little Elliot who reminds him of who he is.
  6. Observer. Friend. All viewers

The fourth wall is destroyed to the ground. Just awesome work!



Soundtrack


I decided to divide this section into 2 parts - ambient and soundtrack of third-party authors.

Ambient


Ambient is the background music that sets the tone for the film. The entire ambient was written by Mac Quail, who did his job perfectly. The film has 7 albums of the original soundtrack. Each melody subtly conveys the atmosphere in the film. There were practically no misses.

I took the 3 most popular compositions in Russia from each album. Have a nice listening.



Other artists
The film has a huge number of artists and the music is selected just perfectly. All the music "jumps" from one style to another, as the main character is trying to adapt to the situation. I picked up 6 tracks by which you can understand the degree of diversity of the selected soundtrack. Listen for yourself.


The soundtrack is gorgeous. Move on!

Breaking into


Separately, it is necessary to mention how the hack was removed. This is just a masterpiece. How was it possible to remove the running line and fingers beating on the keyboard, as it was done in the series “Mr. Robot”. Estimate yourself.


Of course, hacking was shown in many films and series, but it was either completely fantastic (remember at least the Matrix), or extremely dull (like, for example, in the movie Password Password Swordfish, where hacking was fraught with pathos effects on the sides, but the code was not beautiful, but the shell).

Rami Malek The

game of this actor can not be called less than the "ingenious", he understood the role itself. I got used to the image in a way that not everyone could, but he played something of a deeply ill person.

Esmale answered questions about the difficulties encountered during the casting for the role of Elliot Alderson / May 2016
– , – THR, . – , , , . , . , . « », , USA Network , . . , .


The style is perfect.

Elliot is a hacker of modern times . A vicious, inconspicuous opponent of public rules. His weapon is stealth and ingenuity. Everything that he does in the film, he does remotely and using a PC.

Mr. Robot is an 80s hacker . Remember the series “Halt and Catch Fire” (“Stop and Burn”). Elliott's father looks the same. Stylish, strong, independent, courageous person who knows more than others. His strength is iron. There is no hacking as such, but fixing computers with a smile in the laboratory of electronic circuits speaks for itself.



Believability


Each attack looks as realistic as it is legitimate to show.

Do not believe? I'll prove it to you.

Mr. Hacker Tools Robot


Deep Sound

Why is it for a person who throws memory blocks into the microwave, CDs on which he stores the stolen information about people. Elliot uses DeepSound, an audio conversion tool, saving all people files among WAV and FLAC files. Simply put, DeepSound is a modern example of steganography - the art of keeping information in sight.

Encryption is the most common and one of the most reliable ways to make your personal files inaccessible for viewing by other users. But besides encryption there is such a cool feature as steganography, the essence of which is to disguise the file inside another.

Steganography is a way of storing and transmitting information in which the very fact of its existence is masked, in contrast to cryptography, which hides the contents of a secret message. Typically, this method is used in conjunction with the cryptography method, i.e. first encrypt the file, and then mask it. The concept of steganography dates back to the time of the Roman Empire, when a slave was chosen for message delivery, whose head was shaved, and then a text was applied using a tattoo. After the hair grew back, the slave was sent on a journey. The message recipient shaved off the slave's head again and read the message. The modern world has moved forward and now there are many ways to hide important data. One of the easiest ways is to mask confidential information in ordinary files by type of picture, video or audio recording.



ProtonMail

This is a browser-based email service created by researchers at CERN. One of the advantages of ProtonMail is that no one except you and the recipient knows about the contents of the letters, in addition, there are no IP address logs. Users can set the lifespan of letters, after which they self-destruct.



Raspberry Pi

A small and cheap computer that allows you to create tons of fun things. In the case of Mr. Robot this microcomputer was connected to a thermostat for temperature control in Evil Corp storage.



RSA SecurID

A two-level authentication system that adds a second layer of security when trying to log in. The password is generated at a time and works only for 60 seconds - why Elliot had to go on a very bold plan.



Kali Linux

A Debian-based Linux version designed specifically for cracking testing and security auditing, used in several episodes of Mr. Robot Kali Linux is a free and open source system with hundreds of pre-installed testing programs. If you are interested in the topic of network security - download it for yourself and start trying. Naturally, only for educational purposes.



FlexiSPY

Tyrell covertly installs monitoring software on an Android device. After gaining root access using SuperSU, he installs FlexiSPY - a tool that allows you to monitor activity on the device using a network portal. FlexiSPY does not provide access to past data, but can show everything that is in the phone’s memory. Also hides SuperSU.



Netscape navigator

Windows 95 and Netscape Navigator are mentioned in the series when the protagonist recalls his first steps in the path of an attacker. The screenshot shows how the user views the HTML source ... And if someone looks at the source - he is clearly a dangerous hacker! A modest web browser can actually serve as a useful tool for attackers - whether they use web applications for their business or explore LinkedIn to conduct attacks based on social engineering.



Pwn Phone

In season 2, Elliot takes on the “Pwn Phone,” which he uses to crack other devices. He calls it a “dream device for hackers,” and it really is. The phones were created by Pwnie Express, although the company has since removed them from the market.

Elliot uses Pwn Phone as a mobile platform to run his own CrackSIM script, which he wrote. Crack Sim's goal is to find vulnerable SIM cards and then crack the DES encryption of that card. Elliot then downloads the malicious payload to the SIM card to connect the phone.



recon-ng

Perhaps one of the most popular tools for collecting target information. After all, before hacking something, you must first collect all the necessary information, about 90 percent is killed only by collecting information, drawing up an attack vector, etc. This will help us with such a cool tool as recon-ng, it will help you collect information from the object such as: a list of employees, their mail, first and last names, info about the domain of the object, etc. This is only a small part of what this utility can do. Not surprisingly, recon-ng appeared on Mr Robot in season 4 of episode 9.



John the ripper

A tool used by Elliot in the second episode to crack Tyrell’s password. The main task is to identify weak Unix passwords. The tool can pick up a weak password for several hundred thousand or millions of attempts per second. John the Ripper is available on Kali Linux.
John the Ripper is designed to be versatile and fast. It combines several hacking modes in one program and is fully customizable to your specific needs (you can even define custom hacking modes using the built-in compiler support for a subset of C).

Magspof

If you do not know Samy Kamkar, then at least you heard about one of his hacks. For example, the Samy computer worm that cracked MySpace, its compressed air trick that opens the security doors, or the Master Combination lock cracking calculator.
In episode 6 of season two, Angela visits one of the FBI floors at Evil Corp offices to establish a femto network, a low-power cellular base station, with an exploit on it. But before she does, Darlene breaks into a hotel room next to the Evil Corp building, using some sort of hacker trick. To safely connect to a femto network from afar, cantenna (antenna bank) was required.

To get inside, she clones the maid’s key to the hotel, which has a magnetic stripe. But since cloning a physical map takes too much time, it uses a device called MagSpoof.

MagSpoof is Sami's creation. In fact, he uses an electromagnet to copy the same template as a maid’s key card to a card reader, then transfers this data to the lock. The stronger the electromagnet, the further it will work.



Social-Engineer Toolkit

Social-Engineer Toolkit is an open source penetration testing framework designed specifically to simulate social engineering attacks, such as phishing emails, fake websites and wireless access points, all of which can be launched through the system menu.

Elliot uses this tool in one of the episodes to introduce himself as a tech support worker and, on the pretext of confirming his identity, to receive answers to the victim’s personal questions to enrich his dictionary for password selection.



Total


Once again, I recall all my conclusions:

  • Coloring characters
  • Authors literacy
  • Great story
  • Brain-Ending Final
  • The destruction of the fourth wall
  • Properly selected soundtrack
  • Operator Mastery
  • Cast
  • Chic style
  • Believability

The series just has no cons. He may like it, maybe not, but I have not seen such competent work for a long time (if ever I have seen it).

If you liked this format of articles, I can continue my reviews, but for other pictures. In the near future - "Halt and Catch Fire" ("Stop and Burn") and "Silicon Valley" ("Silicon Valley"). I promise to make out the following series no worse and take into account your wishes.

I would like to express special gratitude to the Russian fan group on the series Mr. Robot .

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