Mr. Robot's Co-Producer and Writer - Kor Adana

Okay, so Cor, how did you get into hacking?

Well, when I was younger, I always took things apart. I'm the son of an engineer, so I always had tools around the house, soldering iron, stuff like that. I took apart TVs and VCRs and just figured out how things worked. I remember my dad had this old 486 66 PC; you know, it's like the first PC that I started working with and learning, like just messing around with. That kind of evolved into building my own machines. I was fascinated by just ordering the different components: motherboard, RAM, the hard drive, putting it all together. It was a very painful process of like, "Oh, I accidentally reformatted the wrong partition and lost all my files," or "I have to reformat because I infected myself with some [ __ ] virus." So, it was a great learning experience of just learning how hardware and software worked.

By the time I was in middle school, I was more interested in like breaking into systems and learning how. I wanted to be the cool hacker that was portrayed in the media.

What was the media that you're consuming at that point that you're like, "Oh, that's me"?

All right, I'm not ashamed; it's a great movie. Hackers was a big influence. WarGames was a big influence, yes. So, I wanted to be that cool hacker guy that knew more than you did when it came to technology and computers. That was like a driving force in my stupid adolescent mind.

Yeah, okay, and it was cool though because I had that kind of mindset of like how do things work. I wanted to figure out how things work, and I wanted to, you know, use systems in a way that they weren't supposed to be used for, which is a definition of hacking, so to speak.

I remember I would like get in trouble on purpose in middle school so I could go into the principal's office because the secretary's in the principal's office when I waited there, we used the computers to log into this AS400 system. So, I would talk to them; I would look at their screens, I would hover over their shoulders and I'd get as much information as I possibly could.

My first real hack since peak was in middle school when I broke into this AS400 system.

So, is this like through the school's intranet?

Are you doing this from home?

Through the school's intranet, okay. The only thing I didn't really do anything from home until I started dialing into our library. We had a public library that had a dial-up service, so I could dial into those servers. But I did it from the school intranet which was fun; which was awesome. Didn't really cause any major damage.

Okay, but what's interesting, what were you trying to do? Like, change your grades?

I just wanted to get in. I don’t want to change anything. I didn’t want to get caught. I was really paranoid and nervous about getting caught; I just wanted to get in.

Getting in was enough, and it was awesome because years later in the writers' room for Mr. Robot, and you'll see this in season two, I think it's the fourth episode, fourth or fifth episode, in the beginning where there's this VO of Elliot talking about his first major hack. He's like, "I broke into my library's," or "My camera was a library," or "I broke into this AS400 system using a vulnerable FTP service." I'm like, "That's his first hack," and it was my first hack, and it's just fun to kind of incorporate that into the show in that way.

So around that time, I would say middle school, high school, I also really got interested in prank calls. I would get together with my friends and call different businesses and impersonate different people. It was a really terrible way to spend your time. Not really thoughtful, but it was honestly a boot camp for social engineering. I think my writer brain was attracted to the character side of it and the narrative side of it, building out a story, getting the person on the other line to buy whatever [ __ ] story that you're feeding them in this kind of weird twisted sense of manipulation.

But that was kind of my foray into social engineering.

And was it like social engineering for comedy's sake? Like, prank anchors for comedies?

Yeah, I was a huge fan of the Jerky Boys, Alvars, and yeah, Crank Yankers came out around that time too. So, it was just like getting a laugh, or humiliating the person on the other line, or getting them to have a funny response or a funny reaction.

Which, in hindsight, is stupid, but it taught me a lot because you could use it. I mean, when you're looking at it from a social engineering perspective, you could use it for the goal of obtaining information or obtaining any kind of protocol that, you know, the person on the other end is engaged with, whatever business they're at.

So, it really did help, and it helped me in two ways: helped me within the hacker sense, and it helped me in the writing sense because it was kind of like early improv classes, where just like developing character and getting to the point, getting your information across in a short, you know, three minutes span. Like why are you, you know, you have a short amount of time to achieve this goal, so how are you gonna spend it? Like, what's the dialogue you're gonna use? What's the plan? What's the game?

Yeah, so it was interesting; it was a lot of fun.

And at that point, do you realize you know maybe I have a greater aptitude for storytelling and like this is my passion?

Well, it was weird. I kind of, around – I didn't run a lot of my childhood; yeah, I still am kind of. It's weird, but ever since I was 11, I knew that I wanted to write and direct. I was a huge film buff, massive movie collection, was obsessed with, you know, just classic cinema, and I told my dad like this is what I want to do. I want to go to film school after I graduate. I had it all planned out. I go to NYU Tisch, nice School of the Arts, and going to learn how to really become an auteur.

And he was like, "No, waste a bunch of money for you to end up some starving, you know, bum on the street; you're never gonna make it."

Yeah, usually, I mean, he was – and I understand where he's coming from. Both of my parents are fairly conservative, so he was like, "I'm not gonna help pay for college for a film school. You're good with computers. You've always been good with computers, so go get a computer engineering degree."

At the time, it was a huge rift between my father and me because I really resented him for that, and I hated the idea of that. But I went down that path; I studied computer engineering for two years, first few years in college. Then I got really specific focus on network security, which was great. I remember taking classes just learning how to work with router configurations and switches, and there was this one Linux security class where we did like real Red Team Blue Team simulations where like half the class were the defenders and they had a Linux box that they had to lock down, and they had like an hour to do so, and then the rest of the class were the Red Team. They gave us a couple systems and a Knoppix live CD and he was like, "Go to town! You have an internet connection and you have this CD. Try and break in."

Okay, so we would do this, and then afterward, we’d share notes and talk about different tactics, what worked, what didn’t work. So it was a lot of fun, and it really helped because shortly after that, I ended up getting a cybersecurity job for a major corporation.

At that point, I was developing security policies and, you know, working with like enterprise-level servers and doing penetration testing and doing all that stuff. Yeah, while at the same time, in the back of my head, I always knew like I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life doing this. If I had to do this for the rest of my life, I would kill myself.

Like I don't want to be a corporate drone; I never wanted to be. So my plan was just like live below my means, save up enough money – I'm making good money working in IT – keep writing, keep making short films, try and make your own independent films on the side, learn as much as I can, and when the time comes, pull the plug and quit and switch jobs and get a job in the entertainment industry.

How did you know when the time came? Because this is like a very common thing across tech; people are like offered a great job, you know, it's a cool company, they're interested in the work, but maybe it's not like their calling. How did you know it was the point where you're like, "All right, this is it, I'm doing it"?

When it actually came to finances. Okay, I had a spreadsheet, and my girlfriend helped me put this together, where, you know, if you save this amount of money every single month, this is how much you'll have in your bank account. And like, it's really a question of how long could you go in the entertainment industry and like how much would you have to dip into your savings?

The way we calculated all the numbers was like, "Hey, I could take an unpaid internship for three years." So I saved up enough where I could work for three years with no income; I would be fine. In my mind, I was like, "All right, if I can't make this happen in three years, then I'm not cut out to do it."

And had you been in LA already?

I was already in LA, so I was working full-time. I was working full-time doing cybersecurity in LA, moved from Michigan to California knowing in the back of my mind like, "All right, it's gonna happen; it's gonna happen" in LA. So I should be closer to LA, and I was working out of Torrance and I was living in Santa Monica at the time. I just knew that I always knew that in the back of my mind I wasn't gonna stay there.

Yeah, and it was weird; it gave me this kind of freedom, this kind of apathetic attitude, which was, I guess, perceived as confident. You know, like, "I really know my [ __ ]," because I don't care about what the hell this job is or whatever. And it did really well for me; I ended up doing really well and moving up the corporate ladder relatively quickly in like five or six years because of that attitude, which is really weird.

But it did teach me a lot about just like how you present yourself, how you present your ideas, and helped a lot in the writers' room and in different aspects of my life. It was a huge help, but yeah, like once I realized like I could, I could, I could, I didn't give myself some time; I’ll do that.

And were your rear side projects finding traction while you're working full-time?

Well, here's the thing; I had a lot of content. I had a lot of spec scripts. I was entering competitions; I was entering these fellowships. I had zero contacts; I didn't know anyone in the industry. I didn't know any assistants, I didn't know any managers, and I didn’t know any agents. So I was thinking like "Alright, I have all this stuff that I want people to read, maybe good, maybe bad, a lot of it's bad, but I don't know anyone; so the only way I'm gonna meet people is if I make good jumps and start doing this."

So that's what I did, and I made it a goal that wherever I worked, I would try and expand my network as much as possible. Something that's challenging for me because I'm an introvert; I don't really love to go out and grab drinks or, you know, go to social gatherings. But I made it a point like, "Hey, every other assistant that I meet, every other intern that I meet, every other, you know, anyone working in this industry, I want to get to know them, what they're working on, what they want to do."

And it really helped because it helped me navigate this new kind of uncharted territory of like where am I gonna, like, what my next job is gonna be. And like if I look back on my career in entertainment, it's based on, you know, some of those early relationships that I made when I first made the jump.

And as a fellow introvert, what were the most effective tactics for getting, like transitioning into that media space? And yeah, what are your pro tips?

Okay, so this is super nerdy and weird. There's something oddly transactional about the relationships in the entertainment industry, and if you go into it kind of understanding that, like it's not to say they're insincere because you obviously have friendships, but there is this kind of notion of we're gonna grab drinks because at some point I can help you accomplish your goal and you can help, you know, you can help me accomplish my goal. Something transactional in that nature, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

So have that expectation going into it, and that's kind of what other people are looking for in the exchange a lot of the time. I had this spreadsheet, and I have a terrible memory, but a lot of spreadsheets; I have a lot of spreadsheets and charts. So I had a spreadsheet of like, "All right, here are all the people; here’s where they worked; here's what we talked about; here are the projects that they're working on." Just so I can solidify it in my mind so I don't embarrass myself because it has happened to me before where I meet someone and then like six months later, I run into them again and I introduce myself like, "Oh no, we already..." and then I feel like a terrible person.

So I was trying to avoid that, and it's really just about making yourself indispensable wherever you're at. So whether it was an internship for a production company or whether I was an assistant for a producer, right?

So, okay, so wait, yeah, to step back a little bit. So you're just some nerd and you're like, "I'm gonna make movies." Then what do you start doing?

My first job was an unpaid intern at a production company where I, along with a bunch of other unpaid interns, sat in the basement all day and read script submissions and wrote something called coverage. Okay, which is basically a book report on a screenplay.

So instead of an executive having to read the entire screenplay, they read coverage that was written by an intern or an assistant. It's basically like a two-page summary of the entire story and then like a page of comments and critiques.

Okay, so my first day doing that, I'm like, "This is great. This is awesome! I get to read and critique scripts all day and judge them; it's awesome!" And then like after a couple weeks, I'm like, "This is getting old; this is exhausting." But in a weird way, it motivated me to because I’m like these guys are working writers, and some of this is complete crap, and it was validating even though I was at the bottom of the ladder.

It was validating in some weird way that, you know, if they can do it, they can get representation; if they can make a living doing this, then it gave me some hope like I could do it too, right? So I did that for a couple months, and I was able to turn that into an assistant position. So I finally started getting paid even though I wasn’t getting paid money, and that took like four months, three or four months, which is a lot less than three years, which is great.

And I kept this whole thing secret from my parents, by the way. They thought I was still working cybersecurity, making six figures; amazing. And I was making nothing! And then shortly after that, I was making like 600 dollars a week; my first job, no benefits, nothing.

And oddly, it was very weird because when I told them both, my dad's reaction was acceptance. He was like, "Fine. You already did; you already have a degree. You can fall back on you. You have contacts and, you know, in information security; you can always go back to that. You're single; you're young; you don’t have a family. You don't have many people depending on you like this is the time to go try this."

And my mom was super pissed. But the best quote from that conversation, when I finally told her, was me saying, "Mom, stop stressing about this; you're making yourself miserable."

And then she goes, "I'm not making myself miserable; you're making..." She’s like, "Why would you leave six figures and a, you know, a wish?"

You like the puppet master when you were a kid, you didn't realize it. I don’t know; it was weird because she was always, when I was younger, she was always supportive of like my art projects or anything creatively that I was passionate about, like whether I wanted to buy a musical instrument or whether I wanted to go do a short film; she was always on board. My dad was always like, "You know, don’t waste your time too much; you're not gonna make a living. Like, go down this sensible, logical path."

And then it was weird how they flip-flopped. Okay, but now she’s fine.

Yeah, exactly! Yeah, success is like, "Yeah, all right, fine; it's okay."

And so you eventually become this assistant, and then you worked on a show that didn’t work out, right?

Okay, I worked on a couple of shows actually just as assistants to producers, assistants to showrunners, and I ended up becoming the showrunner's assistant to Adam Fierro and Gina Matthews and Grant Sharbo, who were producers of a show called Rush that only lasted for one season on USA.

But through that experience, I got to know the executives and the assistants at USA really well. Shortly after that show kind of died, I grabbed drinks with one of the executives at USA; his name is Jake Stig Leone, great guy.

And he was telling me, like, we were just talking like you and I are right now, and I told him a little bit about my history and, you know, my previous career and that whole thing, and he was like, "All right, I want you to read this thing that we have that's coming up from Sam Esmail, Mr. Robot, and let me know what you think."

So he sends me this script, I read it, I love it, and they gave him my feedback. Within a month, he sets up a meeting with Sam and me because Sam was looking for an assistant at that time, and Sam didn’t know that I had a previous life as like a cybersecurity guy. Basically, what Elliot did on the show was my old job.

But this is what I'm trying to piece together now because I knew some of your history before we went up, but like so much of the show is just mirroring your life, right? You're just this awkward guy.

It's a weird serendipitous thing that like, because he wrote a pilot – he wrote the pilot and shot the pilot before I met him. So I didn't work on the pilot. Okay, so he had already had the pilot done and he had just got the series pickup, so USA ordered a season of television, so he had to staff a room and get a whole team together.

So, that was around the time where I met him, and I hadn’t seen the pilot at that point; I had only read it. Even reading it, I'm like, "All right, this feels like the perfect show for me."

And it's weird; we were kind of talking about this before. I spent so much of my life trying to leave the IT job, and I don't want to be known as the guy, like, "Don't call me with your IT problems; I don't want to be that guy. I'm a writer! I want to go pursue my passion."

And it was weird with Mr. Robot; those two worlds just collided in the coolest way possible because when I was talking with Sam on it and I'm like, "Hey, I have done all this before. I can help you figure out we can make it Corp realistic; we can do all these things, and we can have these different types of attacks."

I think he – we were both really excited at the prospect.

Were you worried about coming on too hot when you like you read it and you're like, "Oh my God, this is the thing"?

Nah, not really. I was. I mean, of course, with any meeting, you always hope for the best. Personally, I leave second-guessing everything I said; like after this, I'm going to go home, like, "What happened with that?"

But with that, it was pretty quick. I got the news shortly after that meeting that we were gonna move forward, and that was really exciting. It was great; it felt like I knew about this magical thing that hadn't been released to the world yet.

In hindsight, that is an even more kind of important observation for me because I knew that like, based on my taste, my history, I was working on something special. All throughout season one, when we were writing season one, when we were producing season one, like I knew that it was something that was creative, that was unique, that was something that hasn’t been done before.

So it was just so validating and satisfying to have it be released and get the kind of recognition that we got, that like other people got it, and they were craving this kind of hacker thriller story.

Did you get a sense? Because I, like, I've worked on, I mean, even personally, creative projects that you're like, "Oh, this is good," but it turns out it's good for like a hundred people that are super into it.

Was there anything that signaled to you before it came out that this would be interesting to like a larger audience of folks?

That's why I'm so captivated by this, because most of the time, that's the case. Most of the time I'll write something or I'll work on something and I'll be like, "This is awesome," and then it doesn't get the reaction.

Yeah, like people don't feel the same way about it that I do, and then I start second-guessing myself like, "Is my taste off? Was something wrong? It's just not the right timing?"

Or, you know, where was the mishap?

Right, with Mr. Robot, it was one of those rare cases where like I knew it was good. Had it not been successful, I would have started to like second-guess myself in a way; it’s kind of like where you get into arguments with people about like what their favorite movies are, and you know, you start second-guessing their tastes a little bit.

But I knew that there were people out there like me who wanted like a very cool kind of stylistic character piece about someone like Elliot, with the technology portrayed in a realistic fashion, which is something that I knew the community was thriving for.

And to be honest, I'm kind of surprised that hadn’t happened earlier; there are so many opportunities for it.

It always seems like a challenge, like making programming and even just being in the terminal interesting. That in and of itself is a difficulty.

One that I want to talk about, we were talking about before, is how you guys use flash. Like, because even just typing is like unbelievably boring to watch sometimes.

Why do you guys use flash, and how do you do the on-screen stuff?

So, we shoot everything practically on Mr. Robot, meaning we don't shoot green screens; we have to burn anything in post. Me, I like to put in plain terms—in plain team—you’re like, you have a laptop and like you're shooting over someone's shoulder; you see in the camera what they see in, really, okay?

Exactly, real code on the screens ready to go on the day of filming, yeah. Now, in order to achieve that we have to do suite. We can't put Rami in front of a terminal and give him a list of commands he has to type, you know, risk spending the whole day waiting for like him not to make a syntax error.

You know what I mean? Just one typo is gonna basically ruin the shot. And we don't have the time; our schedule is already crazy and you're like, every minute, I don't know how many thousands of dollars you're wasting of just waiting for other things to happen on set.

So my goal is to make sure everything is as seamless as possible and as foolproof as possible on the day we're filming.

And the way we achieve that is through flash animation, so I work closely with an animator to create an interactive demo basically, where everything looks legit; like it looks like a real desktop environment, it looks like a real terminal window, but it’s not.

It's all pre-programmed and you can hit any keystroke you want and the right code will show up on the screen, the right command will show up on the screen, and the only trigger to move forward to the next screen is a special keystroke.

So I'll be, you know, we'll make sure we'll frame out the hands for this specific shot and we'll set Rami down in front of the computer and I'll just say type. I'll be honest; it'll be like type, and then I'll watch the screen and when it's right, when it's time to hit enter, I'll say scream, "Hit enter!" And he hits enter, and then the next screen shows up, and that screen has the pound sign in the prompt because he ran some script and he ended up getting root on the box.

That's the moment I'm like, "All right, you're in. Let's wait here for a couple of minutes, a couple of moments," so it's really—it's a necessity for just being able to film like that, yeah.

I know people have complained before like why are you using flash? And flash is so outdated, and it's just, it's what's available to us in terms of the crew and, you know, the video playback department and the animators who are on the crew or who are on the show.

It's just, it's a close collaboration with them to achieve a realistic-looking copy.

Well, it makes sense. In the interviews I've heard from you in the past, you're spending weeks getting a lot of these things done, and, you know, if you're sick one day and you're not there to watch him, if you had to do this in real life, obviously it wouldn't—like you would shut the whole thing down.

Yeah, 'cause you just be over a shoulder saying like, "Ya know, put a slash there; put three dots there."

There are times where I can't be on set. Yeah, I try and be on set as often as possible, but there are times where I'm prepping for the next week's animations, so I can't be on set for this day. And I know it's only an easy, it's an easy app.

So he opens a laptop, and it's a lock screen; he has to put in a password and hit enter to unlock it and then maybe one other action, like he'll open the terminal or oh, he'll open Mozilla Firefox with the mouse.

And if it's something that easy, like I know that he can figure that out; he doesn't need hand-holding for that one.

And then on the flip side, there are super complicated ones that took like three months to build.

What's the most complicated one?

So far, season three had a very complicated one, which I don't want to talk about.

Yeah, I should have said, but in season two, I think it was the first scene in episode 204; so that would be 2.3, and it's the one I referenced earlier of him talking with the voiceover about his first hack, and he has four terminal screen windows open up. He has exploit code in one window, he has an IRC chat with Darlene, he has, you know, he has a bunch of things going on.

I think he's connecting to an onion site using Tor. That one took probably about two months.

Wow, and I have an amazing—I don't do all this by myself; yeah, I have an amazing team of consultants that work with me: Ryan Kazan, Andre McGregor, and James Plouffe.

So oftentimes I'll work with them to just really iron out the details of what we're gonna see, what steps of the hack are we gonna see, 'cause I don’t want to—we don’t have time to show everything; we can only pick certain beats.

And like, to your point earlier, I try and choose the most interesting and most visually appealing aspects of whatever attack—whatever the attack is.

So I’ll work with them to make sure the syntax is all correct and get screenshots or video recordings, and we'll do it in a virtual machine, like a virtual machine environment and like try and create it ahead of time so I have as much content as possible that I can take to the animator and be like, "Alright, just copy this; mimic this."

And then it's a whole—it’s just like a script, there's a whole revision process with the animations of like making sure there aren't typos, making sure the cursors are in the right place, making sure the behavior of the screens looks realistic because none of it’s real.

Sure, yeah; but the code compiles, right? Like for all this stuff?

I mean the code that we're using, yes. But we're not going to show enough for you to—it’s not instructive.

It's not— you wouldn't be able to watch the show and be like, "Oh, I can hack into a prison if I compromised the PLC and opened up the prison doors." Like, it's not gonna be like that.

But if you do know, if you are familiar with a certain exploit or, like a good example is, I think it was 207 last year, early in an episode, one of the teasers we had Trenton hacking Mobley's phone and she's off stage fright, and for a moment we show just a little bit of stage fright.

What is that?

So for people who don’t know, stage fright was a very popular Android phone—a huge vulnerability disclosed a few years back. Luckily, it worked for our timetable in the show, which is a whole nother thing we can talk about.

So like for something like that, you would know if you looked at it—if you just took some of the lines of code and put them into Google and searched that you would find like some exploits for stage fright, and you would be able to like compare that and see that that's legitimate.

But there's no way that you're gonna watch that scene; like you don't have enough time and we don't have enough like material to show you in the show that you can go off and do this yourself.

Okay, yeah, because I've been... I think you mentioned in one of the podcasts that you were just watching old like DEFCON talks for inspiration, yeah.

Because you know, as I've I'm up-to-date now, I was wondering like are you guys getting exhausting figuring out new ways? Like inventing the wheel?

Well, here's the thing. Ryan and I talk about this all the time; it’s something that we struggle with because we don’t want to keep reusing what we've already done. And there are new disclosures and new vulnerabilities and new attacks that come out all the time, and there are new exciting things and get showcased at DEFCON or other conferences, and we want to have a chance to use those.

So the way we kind of get around it and justify it in our heads is like "Alright, maybe this wasn't disclosed till 2016; maybe it wasn't disclosed till 2017.” That doesn’t mean that the hole wasn't there, the bug wasn’t there. That doesn’t mean the bug wasn't there to begin with, and it doesn’t mean that someone like Elliot could have had access to the tools or the scripts or created them himself, whatever we need to service the story and to use it.

So in that sense, we kind of get around or digital but kind of fudge it a little bit. But in terms of like, I don't think there’s ever a concern of "Oh, we're gonna run out of ideas."

It just forces us to be more creative about how we’re going to achieve this and what are the different layers of the attack and what are the attack vectors, and like you know, there are a bunch of different ways to skin a cat and we can change one aspect of it to make it feel fresh and new.

And you know, a great example of that is like depending on, you know, choosing which character we want to use to do certain acts, like Angela dropping a femtocell at Evil Corp and then, you know, running a command like that's not a big deal for someone like Elliot or Darlene, but we were able to build a tense scene out of it because it was Angela who was doing it.

So it's always like there are different ways to approach the scene and build out the tension to make it feel fresh, and that's, I mean, it’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s something that we struggle with.

Because then you're trying to balance it out, like creating some weird MacGyver-type scenario where just like artificially introducing these conflicts to work around?

Yeah, it's a little bit—it's a little bit of both because sometimes it's sometimes it would be an artificial conflict workaround. A great example of this is episode 105, okay? And Elliott needs to get into Steel Mountain and do the whole raspberry pi hack.

Like there are a bunch of roadblocks that we put in front of him, and it was fun to kind of see how he figures out to, you know, to get around those and how Mobley and Romero are helping him from the sidelines.

Like that's all fun stuff to mine, right? So it can come from a bunch of different places. Like is it gonna be MacGyver-like situations or is it going to be a character conflict?

Or is it gonna be some kind of wound that the character is dealing with that like is making it very, you know, difficult to get past this particular roadblock and how are they gonna react? And how are they going to treat the situation?

Like that's what's fun about drama is like, you know, punching your characters and putting them in these really difficult situations and seeing how they react.

Yeah, and then how have you dealt with these hacks over time, because again, like the show starts in 2015, right? And so how are you managing to even like acquire old versions of software at this point? It's becoming more and more difficult every season.

Super easy season one because we were like, pretty close to our timeline. Season two was more challenging; season three was very challenging. Luckily we work with different companies. The company that we're working with to create our cellphone animations has our mobile apps; they have a whole library of old ROMs and old versions of software.

So all I need to know is like, "All right, this thing exists in 2015; I can find screenshots of it; hopefully, I can find a YouTube video of it—that's what it looked like." So I can give them as much information as possible, okay? Find this old ROM and just copy back; like, make sure it looks exactly like that.

I mean, we use Signal on the show, yep, and you have Signal on your phone now; you'll see it looks completely different than the way it looked in 2015.

So, I mean, it becomes—it's kind of a pain, but it's fun to like stay authentic to the time. You know, I do use flash videos on the phone as well.

Are they interfacing their flash apps on the phone?

Oh really?

Yeah, okay, man, I need to get into flash.

The only thing that you would ever want to use flash for is working on a television show like, like Mr. Robot, but yeah, it's helped us immensely in terms of just making it easy for actors to like put the device in the actor's hands, and the phones are easier because, you know, these guys have worked with phones before.

So when I say like, "All you're gonna do is reject the call," like they know what to do. All you're gonna do is reject the call, then you're gonna open up this app, look at it, scroll through it, and then lock the phone, okay. Like that's a much easier conversation than sitting next to Rami when he has like a very complicated set of commands that he needs to type into a terminal, you know, terminal screen and right.

So, they’re different; they’re varying degrees of difficulty there, you know?

Yeah, but it seems like you have it; you have an added advantage as the writer-producer because previous technical advisors I’ve talked to are like they're like the hired gun that comes in either in the beginning or the end, where it seems like at least you can push a little bit more weight.

I've been wondering if there were certain hacks that were just too technical that you were trying to push through all the time.

Okay. All the time! We have examples of that you talk about.

Here's the weird thing about examples is there are things that I’ve thrown out there that either will get rejected outright or get saved for later. So, like I don't want to get too descriptive about something because I know that there are things that we're gonna—if we didn't use them in season three, we're gonna use them in season four; we're gonna use them in season five.

But being a writer-producer is definitely a huge advantage on a show like this because I'm there while we're breaking the story. I'm there pitching out ideas, I'm helping to write the scripts and giving notes on the scripts, and so I can always come at it from a place of like being technically accurate and saying like, you know, I'll let this slide, and I'll choose my battles.

But something else like I won’t let this slide, and I'll fight to make this slightly different so keep it true to, you know, how it would be staged in reality.

So, and it's great because I'm there for every day in the writers' room; I’m there on set working with the animators, working with the whole crew and production. And just like right now, I mean I’m gonna go back to our post house to just where we’re editing season three. So, it’s like, it’s cool to see it from inception to completion and be a part of it, being able to kind of like make sure that the technology and the accuracy is still threaded through the narrative at each step of the way whether that’s working with the actors to make sure they’re interacting with it correctly or with the editors to make sure that they’re cutting it together in a way that makes sense.

You know, what that being said, season three is coming up October 11 on USA, yeah that’s the plug!

Okay, so I’m trying to order these questions mentally; kind of went through; we jumped around a lot. I think we hit a lot of them.

But I think so too, maybe we should just like go off on a tangent then and talk about the alternate reality game, derp, that there's a very active subreddit about.

Yeah, explain it.

Yeah, so basically—and we really started going crazy with this in season two—have any URL, web address, IP address, host name that you see on any of our screens, any QR code, any barcode that you see anywhere on the show, in the frame of Mr. Robot will lead you somewhere.

And it will lead you to a puzzle; possibly it will lead you to an experience that may mimic what you see on the show or in that scene. It'll lead you to something that feels like it's a part of the story, and more often than not, that puzzle is part of a larger meta puzzle, which is our ARG.

And it's really—it’s a really fun aspect of my job; it takes a lot of work to prepare, and the folks at USA Digital are our great collaborators with me on this. We just added Ryan Clark and his team at Curious Codes, who does the badge challenges at DEFCON.

He’s been a puzzle master for years, so we brought him on board, and okay, during season two, which has been a great collaboration between all of us, and it's really satisfying to see the response on the subreddit, response on Twitter, and just watching them like watching them figure out these puzzles and working together and sharing information.

It's like this open-source hacker mindset at work, but it's all about our show, and it's this level of interaction between us and them, which is fantastic. It's great; and it's just, it's one of the most satisfying aspects of my job just watching that play out. It's so much fun!

I once heard that the writers of Lost were actually—I mean, I think Lost is before Reddit, maybe exemplary? I think so, I'm not sure. Regardless, they were going on forums of some kind and reading about the conspiracy theories and then including elements of that in the show later on.

Are you guys getting involved in that way?

Like, it’s a baby me; it’s about as much as I can say. Okay, maybe all I know, and they know this because I've seen them post about it, I read all that; I read almost everything.

Okay, so whether or not it’s being incorporated, the only time will tell, but we definitely read it. So we are watching and listening.

Well, is—so I've never interacted with the show in this way—are the puzzles cumulative? Like first season - for example, was it working towards some goal?

At first, it didn't feel like that. When you start playing, so you'll solve a puzzle and you'll get a password or you'll get a quote, and that'll be the end of that kind of puzzle, right? Does he tell you it's the end?

It doesn't. Sometimes it does, sometimes it depends on what you're doing, okay? And then at the very end, there's this kind of grand puzzle that kind of hints at like, "Hey, you need to go back, find whatever the quote was for that you found at the end of this puzzle from season two, and put that in here," and do the same thing for a bunch of other pieces of the puzzle that were spread out, like peppered throughout the season, okay?

To unlock this greater meta puzzle. So that's about as descriptive as I want to get with it because part of the fun is just having them figure it out, because these guys are brilliant, guys and girls, of course, and you know, it’s just so much fun to see them work on it.

Well, they do have a couple questions for you, so we will see what you can answer, yeah?

Yeah, yeah, no comment on all this.

Okay, so Rou asks, "Where do things stand with the season two ARG winners? Did we miss a clue to continue or things still being put in place for them?"

The season two ARG winners, we have something in store for you guys, and that's about as much as I can say.

A short pause for this part of it: were there any moments where you felt that the ARG wouldn't be solved?

The moment that sticks out to me is the kernel panics; we should explain—

They seemed like they would never get to the bottom of them.

It's funny that he mentions kernel panic because that was one that I thought would get solved a little bit earlier than it did. Okay, and it was just the sequence where we flashed like a frame up a piece, like a bunch of different screens, like crash screens of like a Linux system crashing.

If you found the right character on each of those screens in order, it would lead you to another URL.

Oh my God!

Okay, so there's a very subtle hint about where that character was like over many spaces across and however many lines down you had to go in order to find that character on all the screens and then put it all together.

But it’s just white text on a black background. Yes, it's not okay.

Yes, but a bunch of different screens flash, so that's what he's saying; it took them months to figure that out.

But it was cool because like I was asked about it when it was going on too, and I'm fine with it taking as long as it is; long as it’s gonna take.

Like even if, even if it takes a year, I think there’s something fun about that and something like immensely satisfying when it finally does happen, right?

Yeah, and the day that it got solved, like, we were celebrating too! It’s fun for us; it was so much fun too, and sometimes we’ll go on Twitter and like drop little hints here and there, or we'll go on the subreddit and we'll drop little hints, but not often.

And on the flip side, there are some that we were like, "Alright it’s gonna take them forever to figure this out," and then they crack it in like two hours.

It's hard to gauge, but the kind of volatile nature of it is fun!

Yeah!

Well, because I mean, have all any admit? You're probably not gonna answer this one, but have all the Easter eggs been found in even season one?

Season one—yes.

Okay, season two and season three I cannot talk about for now.

Next question: how did you feel about our progress through the season two ARG? Give a report card.

I feel very proud and happy for you guys, and I don't want to say too much, but I’ll say that an update is coming fairly soon about this season two ARG.

Okay, that's all; that's all I'll say.

It’s very unclear answers; you’re like wading through all this like "We don't want to hear the boring [ __ ] about his background; get to the ARG stuff," and then now they're cursing my name!

Yeah, and then meanwhile, the other people are sending up, telling the opposite way.

BK - an apple, I could guess that means Brooklyn Apple—asks how is the ARG 3.0 meaning for season three begun or are we jumping the gun?

Maybe, maybe it has begun!

Alright, let's get the other questions.

There's a strong possibility, but maybe not; who knows? If it hasn't begun, it'll start soon, yeah, October 13th.

No, October 11th!

That's October 11th, season three, what time?

I believe it's at 10:00 p.m.

Not sure; you can stream online.

Yeah, you can see remind—two, okay, so on USA, sorry!

Oh, yeah, King of the Wild Front has any new attack method giving you ideas for things that could be incorporated into the show?

Um, similar to what we were talking about earlier; it's like we're always on the lookout for new attack methods and new tools and tool sets, and you know, we're keeping an eye on different disclosures and exploits.

And the real only challenge that we have is that whole timetable. That time table—yeah, which I guess you sort of fudge because it could be like private.

Exactly, we sort of fudge because, okay, maybe it was not disclosed at that time, but you know, hackers were still aware of it, or the community—look at certain members of the community; we're aware of it, and we can just say that Elliott and F society, you know, were aware of it at that time because they're awesome hackers!

Yeah, so in that sense, we try and incorporate some of the newer developments in that world—in the tech world—into the show, and then that way, are you ever jealous of shows like Black Mirror that get to play with near-future technology all the time?

Just…it's weird! I have a—I'm conflicted about it; it's like a love-hate relationship because it's such a pain in the ass to like get all this right real, then do it real, but it's so satisfying when you see that these details are being noticed and people are tuning in and they're excited about the realistic portrayals we have on the show.

So that's extremely satisfying; that makes it all worthwhile. But when you're in the thick of it, when you're doing it, you're like, "Wasting—not wasting, but then like three months on this, like, trying to build out this desktop environment in the sequence and making sure every last character is legit. You're thinking like, 'Oh, it'd be so much easier if we were in, like, you know, 2099 and like we could play with whatever we wanted and add some kind of [ __ ] to the screen.'"

I still based in reality, but not—it doesn’t have a reference point; it doesn’t have something that people can go look up and be like, "Oh, you screwed up!" Right?

You know, this is not what this looked like, so that's another fear I have all the time whenever we're airing episodes; I'm watching Twitter and I'm watching ourselves and I'm like, "All right, what are they gonna catch? What are they gonna do? Is always gonna be something? Is there always gonna be something? Did my team screw up? Did I screw up?"

Most of the time, it's positive; most of the time, it’s good, like our fans are awesome, yeah, and the fact that they're nitpicking on that level is a testament to like where we are, which is great; so like if you're nitpicking like just a line of syntax or a line of code, but everything else is kind of alright for you, like that's fine, at least it's not, you know, some of the other offenders of like hacking into the Department of Defense in under 60 minutes or under 60 seconds, you know, something like that.

So it's not—it’s nothing compared to what people have been used to for the past, you know what, two decades now easy.

Yeah, I think it for me, it always feels like someone cares about you, like if they're gonna go to that level of nitpicking and they like the show and they're, you know.

Yeah, yes! And there are core fans, and they want to, I mean they want to, but also I get it because part of like the hacker psyche and part of just IT people in general because I have a little bit of this too, is like, "Alright, you think you guys are good, let me show you where you're wrong."

Right, I'll show you what the real case is.

Like what the real situation is, yeah, which is fine!

Okay, a couple more questions. So Rohan saw, no Hwanhee, I'm mispronouncing people's names every single time, is the code used in the show actually functional in real life? If someone were to be hacking into something.

Kind of talked about yet earlier to a degree, yes.

And again, it’s just snippets of code; we're not going to show you every single step, but if you were to look up, if you were to just screenshot a bit of our code or a bit of source code that's on one of the screens and research it, you'll be able to find it on GitHub; you'll be able to find it somewhere in its entirety.

But then again, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you're not gonna be able to really use it.

Yeah, so it's—it’s not like we're ever gonna show every single line of code for an exploit on screen, but we'll show, you know, we'll show we always have characters running custom-made scripts. We show the output of those scripts; we show, you know, different tools on the phone.

We should—we like showing pieces of hardware that can be used in a certain way to either compromise the system or, you know, get data off of a card, whether it’s like an RFID card or RFID chip, something like that.

So we try and make sure that everything is based in reality as much as possible.

Okay, do you ever, um, Jerry a jealous when like certain things come out now, and you're just like, "Man, I wish we could just jump like two years ahead and have this technology so we could use this exploit"?

Yes, happens sometimes! And the most recent thing in my memory isn't even an exploit; it's just technology in general, wearables and Internet of Things, and the Apple Face thing.

Yeah, okay; all these things like that would be so much fun to incorporate in the show and play with that we are kind of off-limits until our timeline catches up!

Yeah, definitely, definitely, but again, back to our back to that earlier thing, like if it's something that could potentially like really be reasonably sold as 2015, then I'm all about exploring it, you know?

Oh yeah, this one was just kind of a random random question: John Coogan asks, "What precautions do you take when using devices?"

So I'm super paranoid all the time. I enable two-factor authentication on all my services whenever it's available. I would advise people to use password managers. I use a VPN religiously, regardless of where I am; I'm always using the VPN on my phone as well.

But definitely regardless of what you use, make sure it's a—like do some research and make sure it's, you know, usually though the ones that you pay for are the better ones. Some of the free VPNs are kind of, or not—they're not so great.

I think people have difficulty with this stuff because so many companies have figured out how to game SEO again, so they’re like, "I don't know what's legit. Let me download some crazy malware on their computer!" Totally, it's already so—I mean, that's why I'm like, there is a level of research that has to go into it before you decide to invest in one and to use it, but it's totally like I don't—whether I'm at a coffee shop, or at an airport, or even if I'm at home or the off, I'm always using one.

Okay, um, you take your camera?

I don’t!

Oh, it was interesting; I don't because I think it's annoying. I don’t think that I'm not—I want to dissuade other people from doing it because I think it's a good practice, but my mindset is like, "If someone has access to my camera, they already have access to my microphone; they already have access to my files."

So I'm already [ __ ]! Right? So I have a process running an app that just tells me whenever any other program on the machine is trying to arm the microphone or is trying to use the webcam, so I get an alert at least.

Okay, what are you concerned about in terms, you know, like everything, software?

No, right? Like are you concerned about your microwave being hacked, your self-driving car, you have a Tesla?

So I'm not concerned about that. I am most concerned about companies that have my private information, my personal information, yes, and how they store it. Like the Equifax example is a great one, like they have a duty to ensure that the security around that information is sound and is very robust, and I think that's kind of just a contract that you enter with any kind of business when you're giving up that kind of level of personal information, so that's what I'm worried about.

I’m worried about other companies not patching their software and having just security holes and vulnerabilities that get exploited and those data leaks happen.

Okay, you will, then you're in a perfect position, Evil Corp, right?

Yeah, so with every podcast now we have a crypto question. Alchemist Prime asked just what you think in general, but I think it’s somewhat related, right? Because people talk about coins and distributed file storage and all that kind of stuff.

Do you guys pay much attention to that? I know Evil Corp has a coin.

Evil Corp has a coin, yeah, which we'll learn more about when you watch the show.

We talk about Bitcoin a lot on the show. So cryptocurrencies are part of one of the plot lines along with the whole Evil Corp Phillip Price storyline.

Yeah, personally, I think blockchain is unbelievably exciting, and I think it's the future, so I am all for people investing in cryptocurrencies, investing in Bitcoin and Ethereum.

It is a volatile market right now, and you have ICOs coming out every day, and that takes some research as well; make sure that you have a good team behind it and that they're actually working hard and doing what they need to do and it's not just a scam, like a pump and dump scam, but I am all for it.

I think it's I think it's the wave of the future, and just just the blockchain technology itself is exciting to me, so I'm all about it, and I love that we incorporate some of it into the show, if anything, just to put the question out there and lay the lay person's mind like, "Oh, what is Bitcoin, or what is a cryptocurrency?"

And if they want to go online and research it and whether they think that it's something that is hearsay or not, like I just love that it’s creating a conversation out there, so I'm proud of that.

Yeah, I mean it seems that like you guys are you doing the job of transferring this idea of like the hacker community to I mean millions and millions of people it just hope so!

I hope so, that’s—I mean, part of the challenge that I always run up against is like how can I make something like this digestible for millions of people and how can I make them understand it?

And if they don’t understand it, how can I make it still entertaining for them and still service all those people who do understand it?

So it’s just this is—it's this give-and-take of like how much tech jargon are you gonna put into the scene, how much time are we going to spend explaining this stuff, and how much are we just gonna kind of gloss over and just assume that you know our viewers are really smart can put two and two together and we can just move on?

Yeah, so yeah, that’s why you never have someone on Mr. Robot explaining exactly what Bitcoin is, but you have Phillip Price talking about Equine and talking about how they’re in control of the ledger and how it differs from Bitcoin because no one's in control; it's a big one because it's completely decentralized.

So we try and find a way to make it work for the narrative without kind of spoon-feeding exposition.

Do you have a challenge how do you keep your chops meanwhile? Like obviously, you're all consumed with this show.

Yeah, it seems like we're 11 months of the year. How do you keep your technical chops?

I do my best to try and read up on tech blogs, go to conferences, and try and read as much as possible, but at some point, I can't keep up, and that's where my team comes in.

Like, that's where I talk to Ryan or James or Andre, and I call them up or text them and be like, "Hey, we want to do something for this situation. What do you think?

Do we have any grand ideas?" And a lot of times they do.

Well, then I have kind of two more questions to wrap up; a lot of people who listen to the podcasts are just getting started. A lot of other people who listen to the podcast are thinking about transitioning their career at some point.

If someone wants to get started in hacking, what should they do? And if someone wants to get started in writing for TV, what should they do?

Okay, for hacking, I would definitely watch YouTube videos, listen to the hacking podcasts out there, read as many books as you possibly can. Like right now, it's such a prime time for just getting access to information.

Yeah, it's easier than it's ever been, so you can read about it, you can watch videos, you can go to conferences, go to DEFCON, or if you can't go, watch the videos on YouTube, and just try and educate yourself.

And it’s a lot of like, you know, self-motivated problem-solving! So once you figure out once you learn more about it, generally you can kind of focus in on, you know, what about it is appealing to you.

Is that web application security? Is it perimeter security? Is it, you know, whatever really floats your boat in the hacking world? Once you get involved in it, you'll be able to kind of, you know, decide that for yourself.

And for writing, two things: write as much as possible.

Are you doing like a daily session or how do you—

I used to, but ever since I worked on the show, I don't anymore because a lot of my time is devoted to the show. But figure out whatever your process is; everyone's process is different.

Whether you write late at night, early in the morning, and what's important is like even if you don't feel like it; it's the last thing you want to do; just force yourself to do it.

It’s not like, "Oh, I'm only gonna write when I'm inspired." It's like, "I'm gonna force myself to do this every single day."

And so, human king's book—a highly recommended one:

On writing—yes, great. Avoid adverbs because they're terrible!

Yeah, and then in terms of just like getting a job in the industry as a television writer, I would say look into internships and try and get an internship, try and learn as much as you can, try and make yourself indispensable at every company that you end up at.

Try and just try and get your work out there and try and hone your craft and get better. Move to LA; would you recommend that?

Definitely, I would move to LA if you want to be a TV writer, yes. If you want to be a novelist, you can stay wherever you're at, but if you want to be a TV writer, I would say move to LA.

Okay, all right, any teasers for season three?

I can say this: that season three—a major theme of season three is disintegration! So we are going to see Elliot and Robot separated in some—in a very cool way that we haven't seen before.

So that'll be interesting just watching this battle play out between Elliot and Mr. Robot. So it's a wild ride, man; these episodes are coming together, and I'm really excited for everyone to see it!

That's so cool! All right, thanks.

Thank you!