It could be argued that EVERYTHING in Mr Robot could win Best Hack; from Sam Esmail hacking his favorite films through homage to the way Mr Robot pwns Elliot’s mind, but today we’re just after good, old-fashioned hacks, be they of the technical nature or completely low-tech…
And we’re gonna open with one of our faves from Season Two, when Elliot uses his initiative and baffles Joanna’s bodyguard with the contents of his backpack.
“The Cantenna”
Yes, Elliot makes “a high-powered antenna” which is directional, unlike most omnidirectional antennas, but it’s part of a larger plan involving a fax and the boy wonder impersonating a police officer to perform a social engineering (SocEng) con on both the cops and the phone company.
It was one of the ballsiest things we’ve seen Elliot perform. Normally, he’s anonymous behind a terminal, but impersonating a police officer raised the bar…
“Darlene and Angela’s Mission Impossible”
Remember when Darlene went all Angelina Jolie in Salt and Angela had to install a femtocell in the FBI’s E_Corp headquarters?
“We lost wifi. You need to get to a terminal and bring it back up.…If we can’t get the interface to load, we can’t use the juniper screen OS backdoor to own the network, which means I can’t wipe the security footage of you planting the femtocell.”
In terms of pure televisual tension, it was da bomb. Darlene talked Angela through the whole, suspenseful scene (which seemed to last an eternity like a Hitchcock scene) while Miss Moss took instructions via her Apple earbuds to install the femtocell to listen in on the FBI’s calls.
“Pwnie Phone”
In order to listen in on a Dark Army contact, Elliot uses the “hacker’s dream device” – a Pwnie Express Phone as a mobile platform to run a custom script he has written, CrackSIM.
CrackSim’s goal is to find vulnerable SIM cards and then crack the DES encryption of that card. Elliot then loads a malicious payload onto the SIM card, to Pwn the Dark Army phone from his pen testing device.
“Darlene Pwning Susan Jacobs’ SmartHouse”
Forget the hack involving a smart watch / Fitbit and the social engineering toolkit, this hack gave Sam Esmail the chance to direct Susan Jacobs in her own mini-horror movie.
“Trenton’s Stagefright Exploit”
Okay, so this Android stagefright exploit is a real simple hack, but we like it because it’s a great meet-cute involving Mobley and Trenton.
When comparing Android and iPhone browser speeds, she gains access to Mobley’s phone over the cafe wifi. Also, It also takes place in Ron’s Coffee, where it all of these best hack exploits started with Elliot turning paedophile Ron over to the cops.
“Elliot Hacks The FBI”
Not only did the line “I’m hacking the FBI” raise a fist-pumping “yeah” from us at Mr Robot Hacks HQ…
But it gave Elliot the chance to have four windows open at once and…
Better still, Mr Robot had the chance to go all ’24‘ with quad-split screens!
Beep-Bip-Beep-Bip!
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