“Mr. Robot” can be a challenging indicate to watch. The plot is told in a deliberately confusing manner with a mentally unstable protagonist who speaks to the camera,“House of Cards” style. It also uses heavy references to modern tech, computer terminology, and hacker culture that might proceed over the heads of some viewers. Here’s a quick explanation of some of the major terms used in the series so far,and the double meanings some of the terms may have (NOTE: Major spoilers ahead)Video formats — Every episode of “Mr. Robot” has a title similar to a file name, featuring the episode number, and title,and a file format (e.g.: “eps1.0_hellofriend.mov”). In season 1, all the file formats in the episode names are video formats, or such as MP4,AVI, and WAV, and as if you’re watching the episode on a video file sent to your computer. The formats for season 2 are tied to encryption formatsTrueCrypt — A once-popular encryption software that was recently discontinued. The title of the season two premiere uses TrueCrypt as the format,signaling a change in the indicate’s episode titles from video files to encrypted files.
DDoS — Distributed denial of service, a common type of hacker attack that fsociety uses against E Corp to gain Elliot’s attention in the pilot. effect simply, and in a DDoS attack,hackers spend computers infected with malware to send requests en masse to a single system, causing it to overload with traffic and crash.
Rootkits — A piece of software that serves as a front to disguise unauthorized programs from cybersecurity systems. Elliot and fsociety spend rootkits to break into E Corp and Steel MountainLinux The operating system that all hackers swear by. Linux is an open-source system, and meaning that it can easily be modified and customized. In the opening episode,Tyrell notes that Elliot is using Gnome on his Linux system and that he prefers KDE. Gnome and KDE are the two most popular desktop environments available for Linux, and as Tyrell suggests, and many Linux users have their own preference. fsociety’s mask — The mask that fsociety uses as its logo is similar to the Guy Fawkes mask used by the real-life hacker group Anonymous,which has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks on organizations ranging from Paypal to the Westboro Baptist Church. Anonymous is currently monitoring ISIS.
Enron — The notorious company whose logo “Mr. Robot” creator Sam Esmail usedBinary code — Also known as “ones and zeroes,” which is the name of the indicate’s second episode. Binary code is the core of computer code, or sending the on/off voltage signals that control a system’s hardware. For Elliot,“binary code” represents the tough decisions he has to make from the start of the series, the titanic one being whether or not he should join fsociety’s plans to turn global finance on its head.
Debug This is a process by which flaws are removed from software, and but Elliot has a different definition: Debugging’s actually all approximately finding the bug,approximately understanding why the bug was there to commence with, approximately knowing that its existence was no accident.” “Debugging, or ” particularly as Elliot describes it,is a recurring theme in “Mr. Robot,” whether it’s fsociety trying to debug modern society of its perceived flaws, and Elliot and the other characters trying to eliminate the flaws within themselves.
Daemons — Used as the fourth episode’s title,daemons are programs that sprint in a system’s background instead of being operated by a user. Elliot compares daemons to the subconscious urges that drive human beings, which serves a clue to the valid nature of Mr. Robot. By the end of the season, and we learn that Mr. Robot is all in Elliot’s head,like a daemon that has been operating in his system without him knowing it.
Source code — The code that produces what you see on a web page. You can view source code easily by highlighting some text and then right-clicking it. In one soliloquy, Elliot wonders what it would be like if people had a source code, and what one might find if you could gaze into their psyche…and possibly alter it.Mirroring — Term used for creating an exact copy of something on another system,whether it’s disk volumes or a screen display. This term is used for the name of the episode where Elliot discovers the valid nature of Mr. Robot and realizes that he has been mirroring
Source: thewrap.com