- [Narrator] Is anything real on Mr. Robot? It's often tough to distinguish what's happening inside Elliot's head from what's actually taking place. You remember the whole prison fiasco that enraged the internet, right? But at least when it comes to tech in the series, things are much clearer. Mr. Robot has earned admirers within the IT-iest of forums to the paranoid halls of DEF CON for it's attention to granular hacking detail.

- Master/Slave is one of my favorite episodes, largely because we get this great Mr. Robot version of a heist scene. Darlene and hacking noob Angela have a plan where they need to intercept traffic from a temporary FBI office. Angela's gonna plant a very real fentacyl on site and Darlene's gonna break into a hotel room nearby to discretely connect to it. Now, Angela takes the social engineering group, but Darlene has never really proven herself to be a charmer. Instead, she swipes a maid's key and has to make a clone of it. But, making a physical version of the key would be far too slow. So instead, she swipes it through what kinda looks like one of those square purchasing devices. No, do not put one of your magnetic cards through this reader in real life. That is a mag's booth device, developed by security researcher, Samy Kamkar. And onscreen, it works the same as it does off. A max booth uses an electromagnet, and copies the pattern on the maid's key, that it would give the card reader, and transmits that data to lock. If you have a strong enough electromagnet, you don't even need to be near the door. Just as the Northeast runs on a certain brand of caffeine, internet commerce runs on a certain brand of deal-making, affiliate links. We've all seen them. Whether you're purchasing takeout or a new pair of shorts, your shopping set of choice offers you a discount or coupon, if you can get your friends to shop, using your code. Darlene, obviously, does not have any time for this corporate BS. She is one of the anti-capitalism chaos actors at F Society. You may have heard of them.

- Greetings, brothers and sisters! We are F Society.

- So in one of the subtlest, yet admirable tech moments, she reveals how she, quote, "Hacked the Postmates proxy "that supports the APN for my boyfriend's cell carrier. "Now it does a URL rewrite and sends every Postmates.com "request to my affiliate link."

- Meaning, I get $10 coupons every time sucker orders anything.

- For someone like Darlene, this hack is totally plausible. Most internet users don't even realize there are unique codes attached to the deals their friends are using. But these strings essentially act as a handshake between retailer and consumer. If you can manipulate these in transit, suddenly it's running deals to your inbox. So, as others pointed out at the time, there's only one thing fake about this Postmates.com hack. They tend to offer affiliate links for app downloads or referrals, not for straight up mail orders. Our security editor, Sean Gallagher, might still salivate at the mere mention of a Pwn phone. As he reviewed one of the earliest units available, just like the Mags booth, this device, quote, "A phone loaded with a 103 networking, "monitoring and attack tools. "A dream device for pen testers and hackers." As Elliot notes. It's as real as your latest security update on your phone. In fact, if you're comfortable with ROMs, you can use some of the company's own open source software, to build your own Pwn phone. To use it the way Elliot does, however, requires a little bit of creative license. Which, if you're familiar with the Dark Omri on the show, you probably need that creative license. First, the program Elliot uses to eavesdrop on a phone call, called crackSIM, is pure fiction. However, it is based on real life research that shows it is possible to break encryption on a SIM card. That research was presented at Black Hat 2015, and it kinda works like a law enforcement stingray. It downgrades cellular connections, which weakens the encryption, it makes it easier to monitor phone calls. That process doesn't happen in seconds, though. Yet, Elliot seems to go from loading crackSIM to eavesdropping on phone calls instantly.

- [Man] It's a lot of safe-on.

- [Man With Deep Voice] We're up, I've got a connection.

- So the next time you're facing opposition from one of the career dark web hacking collectives, I really hope creative license is on your side. Mr. Robot has been one of the most inventive shows on television, these past two years. Whether we were talking about the artistry of its camera angles, the prescience of its story lines, or its honesty in depicting things like mental illness. Of course, we love the show for its incredibly accurate depiction of tech, as well. All we need now, is for USA to let Elliot and company do some IT consulting for the precinct next door during all those Law and Order reruns.