Elliot’s reality is murky, but Mr. Robot tech advisors remind us the show’s is not

If it wasn’t already obvious, the people behind Mr. Robot keep tabs on the news. But unlike some of the ripped-from-the-headlines shows syndicated elsewhere on USA, reality serves as background tapestry—and not necessarily direct plot inspiration—for the series. As NPR TV Critic Eric Deggans told us ahead of this season, such a strategy “gives viewers the feeling everything is grounded in reality… Because they get the details right, the average viewer—and 80 percent of the viewers may not know the computer stuff—can watch it and it feels right. And when the show has to do something that’s unrealistic, this makes it that much easier to buy it.”

Last week, Mr. Robot put this idea to the ultimate test. S2’s big reveal has viewers confused about what reality means within the show’s universe, but that question largely applies to main character Elliot Alderson’s perception and not the show at large. Within the same hour, for instance, Elliot takes a very real-world approach to torpedoing the series’ stand-in for the Silk Road, Midland City. When invited to handle some sysadmin duties by the site’s operator, he subtly opens Midland City up to non-Tor traffic, indexes it on some top search engines, purchases a few banner ads elsewhere, and then tips the FBI about the whole thing. Simple and truthful.

During a webinar preceding the show’s latest episode, two of Mr. Robot‘s primary tech advisors only reaffirmed this ethos. Mr. Robot is a show based in reality, not on it. So while the biggest emotional plot line right now involves Elliot’s often unreliable awareness, things like Midland City or the FBI’s increased involvement provide a stable ground for the show to build those narrative threads upon.

“Obviously I’m going to have to hold back on a lot of what I want to talk about because it’s going to be at the end of this season and into next season,” said Andre McGregor, an ex-FBI man who’s now the director of cybersecurity at Tanium. McGregor wanted to start by discussing how his FBI background has been implemented both in obvious (FBI character Dom) and subtle ways. “The way this all started: E-Corp is hacked and the government has to have a response, and that’s going to come by way of the FBI. Recently, Presidential Directive 41 has labeled the FBI as the lead incident responder for national security cyber attacks. And Sam [Esmail] wanted to really understand how that process works: what tools are used by agents and computer scientists, how they interact with intelligence analysts and the NSA, and how is that info generated and collected.”

While Presidential Directive 41 carries a publish date from July 2016, the show has managed to align its portrayal of national cyber responses accordingly. That level of accuracy goes beyond merely using McGregor and the show’s technical consultants. An FBI public affairs official recently told Ars via e-mail that the show has managed to be so accurate partly because producer Joe Iberti (previously of Boardwalk Empire) has a long-standing relationship with FBI press officials. And creator Sam Esmail even traveled to a field office with some set designers to tour a real cyber-floor and arrange for actor Grace Gummer (Dom) to connect with two current female agents.

Making the infosec rounds

Among details big (the FBI) and small (getting Alf‘s original voice actor or the Full House theme song writers for a recent episode), Mr. Robot‘s tech—particularly its portrayal of hacking—still best illustrates this commitment to realism. The care that goes into a single screen shot of code has been discussed all over the Internet by this point, but the same fact-checking happens for things as simple as pronunciations.

“I’ll get calls from Kor [Adana], and he’ll say ‘Oh, I’m on set right now and we’re trying to figure out how to say a word,’” McGregor said. “I won’t give it away because you’ll see it soon, but they even want to get the accuracy of how hackers or infosec community say the terms that we use. Things like ee-maks versus em-aks [for Emacs] help reaffirm the show is staying true to life.”

Perhaps the most telling way the show maintains its accuracy comes from McGregor and Tanium colleague Ryan Kazanciyan’s travel schedule. Along with other show advisors and Mr. Robot‘s head technical writer Kor Adana, the duo has made the rounds within the recent infosec conference circuit. So researcher Samy Kamkar’s MagSpoof device—which uses an electromagnet to copy information from a card and then transmit it accordingly—didn’t appear on a recent episode by accident. And when asked on the webinar whether they ever worry about copycat attackers in real life, McGregor quickly pointed out the show’s reliance on exploits being discussed in the wild: