WARNING: (POTENTIAL) SPOILERS AHEAD
I've been watching the television show Mr. Robot over the last few months, and I am nearing completion. I will try not to spoil anything, but to give a quick high level introduction of the show: it follows a cyber-security engineer named Elliot who has severe anxiety, a very active inner monologue, and likes to put his hacking skills to use. Various events take place related to online privacy and security, hacking - both online and "IRL", etc. I think it fits right in to the stacker community, so I am surprised it hasn't been discussed more here.
As I've been watching, I've noticed several key pieces of technology that are referenced/used in the show, and that play a significant role, in one way or another. One thing I really like about this show is how its technological references are very accurate. Nothing's worse than watching a tv show or movie that depicts "hacking" and it's just some idiot slapping their keyboard for five seconds and then "I'm in."
Now, I can't say that the show is 100% accurate. Obviously, it's a work of fiction. But, in any case, they do get a lot of things right. I'd like to briefly touch on some of the key pieces of technology I noticed.
Kali Linux
Kali Linux is an open-source, Debian-based Linux distribution geared towards various information security tasks, such as Penetration Testing, Security Research, Computer Forensics and Reverse Engineering 1
There are numerous scenes in the show that highlight Elliot and his colleagues using Kali to do their hacking work. A slogan of Kali is "The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear", as you can see on the desktop of the operating system.
Kali ships with a ton of OOTB software installed that would be well suited for someone looking to hack their way into a target system. If you're interested in learning to become a white hat (or other colors, the choice is yours), it's likely that you'll run into Kali as you work on that path, and that it will help you along the way. Having the right tools in your toolkit is essential, and Kali is a good starting place for that.
Python
To put it succinctly, Python is used all over the place in the show. We as viewers often get a peek at characters' monitors, preparing scripts to perform one hack or another, and Python is almost always the language of choice. It's no surprise, given that Python is one of the world's most popular programming languages2, especially for scripting with it's wide variety of packages available on PyPI and other indices.
If you're looking to learn programming, Python is a great choice. Like above with Kali, if you're looking to learn hacking skills, you're very likely to learn with Python.
Raspberry Pi
There is a critical moment in the show where a Raspberry Pi device is used to solve a very specific problem. Without giving too much away, the small physical footprint, ease of programmability, and access to hardware ports made the device ideal to perform a certain hack.
I actually found the choice to use a Raspberry Pi in this show to be unexpected. If you've been around stacker news a while, you'll see that many people don't actually care for them very much, for a plethora of reasons. I think some of the major complaints include value per price (too expensive for what you get), and lack of being fully open source:
The Raspberry Pi's design and schematics are not entirely open-source. While the software running on the Pi is open (like Linux distributions), the hardware, especially the Broadcom chip, is proprietary. However, its philosophy and widespread adoption make it an integral part of the open hardware movement 3
I would have expected the show to use an Arduino instead, but I suspect Raspberry Pi had more name recognition and it would mean more to viewers of the show.
Regardless, I thought it was neat to see the Raspberry Pi make an appearance, having used them for home projects in the past and enjoyed my experience with them.
Signal
I didn't notice it early on in the show (maybe I missed it, maybe it wasn't there?), but the second half of the show highlights the characters using Signal to communicate with each other. Honestly, it almost feels like product placement to me. But, with Signal's claims to verify that your communications are not being intercepted by a third party, it aligns with the characters in the show and their preference for online privacy. I won't get into the pros and cons of Signal, you can search SN for that and find a wealth of discussion. I personally don't have any experience with Signal, so any discussion would not be verified on my end, anyway. I just thought it was noteworthy given how much this community prioritizes online privacy.
Bitcoin
Last but certainly not least, our favorite technology gets many mentions throughout the storyline. In some ways, I think the show paints a bad picture of bitcoin, when it tells us about a certain character's online marketplace for all sorts of illegal and illicit goods and services only accepting bitcoin as payment - furthering the stigma that bitcoin is only used by criminals. There are other contexts where bitcoin is described as a leading contender (fighting against one other distinct opponent) for a worldwide currency, a hyperbitcoinization-like perspective. I won't share any more, to help avoid spoilers, but nevertheless, there are plenty of mentions and references that I think this community will enjoy watching.
Conclusion
I am certain there are other technologies that I've overlooked, but these five caught my attention. For some reason, I felt the need to share here with you all. I didn't go too deep into any of them, but I'd encourage you to do further research if any of them seemed interesting to you.
Big shout-out to @ek for recommending the show to me. If any of the above caught your attention, I highly recommend you check the show out, it's fantastic!
Footnotes
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An article covering open-source hardware like Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc. ↩