In the previous post in this series, I discussed 5 technologies that I saw prominently featured in the USA television show Mr. Robot. I say that like I planned for it to be a series. Spoiler alert: I didn't.

The post got some decent engagement and zaps, so I figured folks might be interested in a follow-up. As I mentioned in the original post, and as many stackers called out in the comments, there are plenty of other prominently featured technologies in the show beyond the 5 that I originally discussed (Kali Linux, Python, Raspberry Pi, Signal, Bitcoin).

In this post, I will discuss several other technologies featured on the show.

Also, I will refrain from forwarding zaps to @ek, so that if he feels inclined to zap this post, he is able to. It is nice to be able to promote content in your own territory, after all!

Alright, let's get into it.

The Tor Project (short for The Onion Router) is a privacy and anonymity-focused software project. I think most people know it as the Tor Browser, where you access .onion addresses to visit websites via the Tor network. As documented on Tor's site, it has many privacy-enhancing features like blocking trackers, obscuring browser identity via traditional device fingerprinting mechansisms, multiple layers of encryption, etc. In short, if you are privacy conscious, browsing the web with Tor is likely something you're already doing.

Tor is mentioned in the opening scene of the series (see this reddit post for a detailed discussion of the scene). It's also more indirectly shown in a later episode related to an online marketplace (see this blog post for a detailed analysis of both scenes).

Our very own stacker.news itself also runs an onion service, so check it out!

WireShark is an open source network packet analyzer tool. You can use it to monitor and inspect network traffic packets on your local network. It has many "non-suspect" use cases such as if you are working on software that interacts with the network at the packet level, and you need to troubleshoot or debug. But it also has many use cases that help with hacking, such as sniffing the network for unencrypted traffic. Someone on the network might be entering sensitive information and you can obtain it this way, like someone in the show does. WireShark even has an "In the Media" page that highlights its own references.

It's a fun tool to mess around with, and is another certainty in the hacker's toolbox. Give it a download, open it up, and check out the traffic on your home network. You might be surprised with what you find!

Iceweasel is basically Mozilla Firefox built for Debian, or a re-branded fork of Mozilla Firefox used in Debian-based distributions, such as Kali Linux, discussed in the first post in this series. The name itself is a parody of Firefox (Fire Fox -> Ice Weasel lol). You can read more about the naming dispute here.

In the show, you can see characters launch the browser by typing iceweasel into the command line on their terminal. Before the days of desktop GUIs, this is how programs were launched, and is still a common pattern among developers, "hackers", and lots of other groups.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a protocol for text-based communications across a network. It can be used for group chats in channels, direct message chats between users, and other similar use cases. If you see the word "Relay" in the title and think nostr, it would be worth comparing the two. I think there are some similarities, but also some striking differences. But that's not the purpose of this post. I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

Throughout the show, we see IRC used all over the place. We see it being used to communicate within hacker teams and between hacker teams like fsociety and the dark army. We also see Dom use it to find a chatting partner for some old school internet phone sex. Later in the show, IRC seems to be at least partially displaced by Signal, which I also discussed in the original post, so check that out if you missed it!

Last but not least, we have Proton Mail. Proton Mail is a service that provides end-to-end encrypted, private email to it's users, free of charge. The source code is open source. The company is based out of Switzerland. It makes money by charging for upgraded services, but the base tier is free to use.

Many stackers here use Proton Mail. It is pretty highly regarded in the community, though nothing is free of complaints or issues. We also see characters in the show use Proton Mail for their personal email needs. There is in fact a very pivotal scene around the midpoint of the show where a certain email delivered to a certain Proton Mail inbox provides a key piece of information to advance the plot, solve a major problem, etc. 🤐

If you're considering a switch for email, check Proton out! They provide other services as well, like cloud storage, VPN, etc.

I hope you enjoyed reading this second installment of taking a deeper look at Mr. Robot. As one of the comments on the original post indicated, this is almost like a fact-checking mission, validating many of the scenes in the show to assert their accuracy. That wasn't really my intent, but I like that perspective!

Are there other technologies you noticed that I have yet to mention? What do you think about those discussed in this post? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

PS: I was asked to tag @ch0k1 to notify them of this new post, so here you go!