Mr Robot is the TV series that has won the most awards in 2015, with an incredible success from the public and critics so much so that it has the highest score ever given to a TV series on the Rotten Tomatoes review site. I have never talked about movies or TV shows in this blog, but this time I have to make an exception because this Mr Robot, in addition to being a beautiful TV series to watch, is also a unique case to date where hacker computer science is portrayed in a realistic way .
If in the various computer and hacker films, including the CSI series, we have seen policemen or technicians move with a very fast keystroke, at random and without looking, working on three-dimensional interfaces like in video games, using invented commands and performing intrusion operations that were more tricks of magic without any sense, here in Mr Robot we are facing real lessons in computer technology that if on the one hand it can be disturbing, on the other it is certainly illuminating .
Elliot, the protagonist of Mr Robot, certainly does not use Windows or other invented systems to hack computers and passwords, but uses Linux, from the command line interface, which is certainly not beautiful to look at, but it is true and real.
Without going on the plot, it is enough to know, for those who have not yet seen it, that Mr Robot is a show with a "Dexter" style and an inspiration that comes from films such as "Fight Club".
The story is very introspective, very psychological, with a protagonist who, if on the one hand he is a computer genius, on the other is a sad and lonely sociopath who does not know how to relate to other people in real life.
There is a villain who really scares just by looking at him, there is a network of hackers who makes masked ads called fsociety that is very reminiscent of the true organization Anonymous, there are quotes that should be learned by heart and very tense situations that leave you breathless suspended and an unbridled desire to see the next episode.
The goal of fsociety (the organization led by Mr Robot aka Christian Slater) and also of the protagonist Elliot is to unhinge the pre-established system governed by 1% of 1% of the richest population in the world.
On the computer side, Mr Robot offers everyone a real lesson in computer security, giving us a lot of important information on how to protect our online life from external intrusions and how it is technically possible for anyone to enter our accounts, to know everything about us through Facebook or even spying at home just because we have the PC on and a webcam or an active microphone.
I can now reveal, for example, that in the article on how to choose secure passwords that are impossible to discover I was absolutely inspired by the show Mr Robot.
Computer enthusiasts will then find Mr Robot a show full of curiosity and many experiments to do.
Everything that the protagonists of the TV series do is really possible to do it even now and without having to buy expensive tools or remedy programs that cannot be found, without having to be professional programmers.
For example, already in the first episode we can find a very rapid explanation of how traffic on the TOR network is made anonymous and how, in the end, it can also be traced.
In the various episodes of Mr Robot, which should be reviewed in slow motion to understand the various techniques, we can find many hacks that can really be homemade .
A search on Google with the word Mr Robot will be enough to find step by step tutorials and find out how hackers do to :
- Find even the Facebook passwords of our most naive friends;
- Hack a Bluetooth receiver from your PC (Episode 6);
- Use a Raspberry PI mini PC to remotely control a heating system (episode 4);
- Infect a computer with a virus using a USB stick (and how naive someone who sticks a USB stick found on the ground to their computer);
- Send a fake SMS (SMS Spoof) from a real number to deceive a person (Episode 5)
- Make oneself impossible to find even after a computer crime
- Hide files on audio CDs (Elliot, in his activity as an executioner hacker, keeps the data of each of his targets hidden on audio CDs, a bit like Dexter who kept the test tubes with the blood of the victims).
- Root an Android smartphone on the fly using an SD card and install spyware to remotely control and spy on it.
- Send ultra secure and encrypted emails
- Hack a large company by encrypting the data on each of its servers located around the world making it impossible to recover (this time only in theory).
These Mr Robot hacker tricks have been described step by step by the null-byte technical blog and often require you to use Kali Linux as the operating system.
In conclusion, Mr Robot is not only one of the most beautiful TV series of the last year, but above all the best TV series of all time for computer and technology enthusiasts, who will really remain with bated breath in every episode and, I'm sure, will be more satisfied than ever with a television program.
For those who have to see it (I have already seen it in English subtitled and it was truly an experience) Mr Robot has finally been dubbed and is broadcast in Italy on the Premium Stories channel every Thursday so, if you don't see it, worse for you .
Below the trailer in English.
