How Mr. Robot 'fudged' its hacks to protect the public

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.itpro.co.uk/security/33779/how-mr-robot-fudged-its-hacks-to-protect-the-public

By Adam Shepherd
ITPro.co.uk
June 5, 2019

AMC's Mr. Robot is a modern Robin Hood tale about a gang of hacktivists 
taking on a morally reprehensible multinational corporation. The show has 
garnered particular attention for the authenticity with which it portrays 
hacking and cybersecurity, and showrunner Sam Esmail went to great pains 
to make sure all of the hacks shown in the series were plausible and 
realistic – up to a point.

James Plouffe, a strategic technologist at MobileIron, was one of many 
cybersecurity industry practitioners that Esmail brought in to advise the 
writers on the technical elements of fsociety's hacks and exploits. 
According to Plouffe, there was some debate among the show's writers and 
technical experts as to exactly how true to life the fictional 
anarcho-hacker collective's exploits should be.

"You wanted to get it right, but not right enough that someone could 
copy," he explained in an interview with IT Pro. "And I don't want to 
spoil it for folks who haven't seen some of the things that take place in 
season three, but I remember kicking around some of the ideas to make 
certain things happen. And there was this debate between those of us who 
are working as tech consultants about whether or not it was technically 
feasible, and a little bit of research suggested that it was."

[...]

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