Not a bad 45-48 mins of TV but ultimately anticlimactic. The hack goes off without a hitch, but at this point in the show, that’s not what interests me. The whole episode was Esmail just clearing the table for WTF IDK. Part of me was thinking Esmail would tie the fall of the deus group with the reveal of WR’s project, but perhaps that would have made for a sloppy story. I enjoyed Price finally getting the upper hand on WR.
Im glad Esmail didn’t go for a torches and pitchforks moment with the deus people going outside in view of the crowd. Though, I agree with Aron, that taking all their money doesnt mean they’re broke. Are we just talking about their liquid assets? Wouldn’t they still have names on titles and deeds? Goddamn, now Im TTDABing!!!!!!!
I mentioned Esmail clearing the table, but there’s still the matter of the assistant to WR and The rest of the DA. There’s 4 episodes left which leaves enough room for these variables to make their presence felt. Also we cant presume Zhang/WR is dead when he/she could have just as easily been arrested.
There's no way that's the end of White Rose's project. They keep hinting at ways to undo the past so if she has any tricks or nuclear options this is when she would use them.
It seems more likely than ever that the third persona is the "real" Elliot the way they're talking about losing him forever and how he only comes out for Darlene. Is that hinting that we saw the real Elliot when he was on the phone with her and she said "I'm glad you're back" or was that just for the Elliot we know, or how much difference is there between them to the outside world?
Not a bad 45-48 mins of TV but ultimately anticlimactic. The hack goes off without a hitch, but at this point in the show, that’s not what interests me. The whole episode was Esmail just clearing the table for WTF IDK. Part of me was thinking Esmail would tie the fall of the deus group with the reveal of WR’s project, but perhaps that would have made for a sloppy story. I enjoyed Price finally getting the upper hand on WR.
Im glad Esmail didn’t go for a torches and pitchforks moment with the deus people going outside in view of the crowd. Though, I agree with Aron, that taking all their money doesnt mean they’re broke. Are we just talking about their liquid assets? Wouldn’t they still have names on titles and deeds? Goddamn, now Im TTDABing!!!!!!!
I think if the hack had gone through without the fsociety video and file leaks, it would have been hard to believe that stealing all his/her money could destroy Whiterose. The files being mentioned by that reporter felt like reasonable setup for what happens to Whiterose at the end of the episode. The twist for me was that improvised move by Darlene, which got me really pumped.
Side note, these last few episodes have felt like the rollercoaster ride Breaking Bad's final season was. I find it hard to believe that the final 4 episodes will be just as good, but perhaps Esmail cleared the table this episode for Elliot to really deal with his trauma, third personality and Whiterose's project...
Do you think Esmail has no understanding of how wealth works or is he just choosing to feign ignorance? It's ludicrous to think that deleting a bank account from the top 1% of the top 1% would be anything more than a minor annoyance. The Deus Group members would be so wealthy that money would literally be meaningless to them. There's no chance that the majority of the wealth would come from a single bank account. The only thing harmful from the hack was the audible Darlene called to expose them.
The show even demonstrated this very point when they showed us how the wealthy weren't affected at all by the 5/9 hack.
Is White Rose's project the exact same project that Kingpin had in Into the Spider-Verse?
The show even demonstrated this very point when they showed us how the wealthy weren't affected at all by the 5/9 hack.
I don't think it implied all of those people are broke now, those are just the funds that were dedicated to whatever the Congo project is. It also wasn't a single bank account, it's 100 spread across people who are supposed to be extremely difficult to connect together on accounts they had to break into a physical location to get the info on even with the help of a series of insiders. There were a lot of steps to make this happen, it's not like they swiped WRs debit card from an Applebees or something.
The show even demonstrated this very point when they showed us how the wealthy weren't affected at all by the 5/9 hack.
I don't think it implied all of those people are broke now, those are just the funds that were dedicated to whatever the Congo project is. It also wasn't a single bank account, it's 100 spread across people who are supposed to be extremely difficult to connect together on accounts they had to break into a physical location to get the info on even with the help of a series of insiders. There were a lot of steps to make this happen, it's not like they swiped WRs debit card from an Applebees or something.
Well, Price did say, "We're all broke." It was a single bank account for each of them, which really would affect anything on any kind of meaningful scale. The 5/9 hack would have probably had a bigger impact on the Deus group than the Cyprus Bank hack.
Always seem to have these one or two pieces that just don’t fit together quite right. Are we really supposed to believe that Whiterose or an associate isn’t going to have a serious talk with Wellick about what’s what’s prior to unveiling him at the apparently remarkably fragile Deus group meeting? The Dark Army has multiple sets of people on Don’s family, but Tyrell Wellick is in the wind and Whiterose doesn’t know or care and just expects Wellick to be there improving his way through the meeting?
Always seem to have these one or two pieces that just don’t fit together quite right. Are we really supposed to believe that Whiterose or an associate isn’t going to have a serious talk with Wellick about what’s what’s prior to unveiling him at the apparently remarkably fragile Deus group meeting? The Dark Army has multiple sets of people on Don’s family, but Tyrell Wellick is in the wind and Whiterose doesn’t know or care and just expects Wellick to be there improving his way through the meeting?
I think that meeting telling Wellick what's what probably did happen. It's easy to forget because it's been over a month for us, but Wellick hasn't even been missing for 24 hours yet. Remember, Wellick was at Elliott's because he thought he was finally getting the power to be able to actually do something.
Wellick wasn't really important for anything. He was just being installed as a figurehead.
If the Wikipedia synopses are to be believed, Wellick hadn't even been told he was going to be CEO of E-Corp for more than a few hours before he disappears. Meanwhile, we get shown more planning and more handling for a rinky dink press conference in Succession compared to someone ascending to such a critical component of the Deus conspiracy that the entire Illuminati has to be assembled, in person, on Christmas to deal with the issue.
If the Wikipedia synopses are to be believed, Wellick hadn't even been told he was going to be CEO of E-Corp for more than a few hours before he disappears. Meanwhile, we get shown more planning and more handling for a rinky dink press conference in Succession compared to someone ascending to such a critical component of the Deus conspiracy that the entire Illuminati has to be assembled, in person, on Christmas to deal with the issue.
Wellick not being briefed all that much is the most plausible part of the entire scenario. He was already a White Rose puppet in place at E-Corp. They just needed to tell him that he's still a puppet, but he's getting a promotion. He's had years of experience schmoozing rich assholes already.
What doesn't make a lot of sense was why the move to the Congo couldn't take place without a CEO in place at E-Corp. White Rose tells Price that all he had to do was nothing, so he obviously didn't have a critical role. Also, why was the in-person meeting necessary? Weren't we led to believe that White Rose was in control of the Deus group?
Wellick doesn’t need to be deeply briefed, but he needs to be handled and he needs to know the message he’s supposed to send to all these grandees who are gathered for essentially the purpose of Wellick being installed.
What doesn't make a lot of sense was why the move to the Congo couldn't take place without a CEO in place at E-Corp. White Rose tells Price that all he had to do was nothing, so he obviously didn't have a critical role. Also, why was the in-person meeting necessary? Weren't we led to believe that White Rose was in control of the Deus group?
Apparently the Illuminati has rules about the board seats being full at all times.
I think part of this of a not wholly successful retcon. I reckon that going back to Season 1-3, you’ll find Price is an antagonist and competitor to White Rose. Even in private dealings he’s only going along because of mutual benefit or needing injections of Chinese financial support to back E Corp. He seems to have a lot of power. So much so that Whiterose has to slap him down with the hacks.
Really, only this season do we find out Price is supposedly kowtowing to Whiterose and a glorified puppet. If Price is such a toadie, why didn’t Whiterose just clear the 5/9 hack with him and have F Society succeed on an easy playing field? Supposedly Price wasn’t even in control of most of E Corp’s financial assets, he had to rely on Susan Jacobs (who I don’t think will come off as that powerful on a rewatch) and without a Susan Jacobs Price is twisting in the wind.
I’d guess they weren’t quite certain of the relationship between Price, Whiterose and E Corp when they started, and so price is imbued with a power in Season 4 that Whiterose is telling us he doesn’t actually have. Price is supposed to feel important, even though we’re told he’s a servant now.
yeah, there are many shortcomings with this hack, and the general plotting (they really all used SMS based 2FA when it's already been demonstrated that Cyprus is hip to TOTP tokens?)
But whatever, I thought it was pretty great. The way Price was kicking back getting drunk lol, loved it.
Cyprus
National Bank host several of their servers in Virtual Realty's
datacentre in NYC. It's possible that the Deus Group instructed the bank
to do just this.
When
Elliot and Darlene broke into the Virtual Realty datacentre, they used a
system administrator's credentials to encode a smartcard that would
allow them to log into the server. It's common in high-security
environments to use smart-cards instead of passwords (for instance, the
NHS in the UK use smart card authentication to access patient records),
and Windows directly supports this. This entire hack would have been
unfeasible without physical access to the card printer.
At
some point in the day, Darlene changes the administrative password for
the database user 'sa' (server administrator). It's revealed that the
bank is using Microsoft SQL Server as a backend. It looks like this
particular server might not be the central client database, but a
secondary database used by the banking application software. This is
because the phone numbers are stored as a one-way hashed string in the
database, so given a row from the database it would be very difficult to
find the original phone number. This would be very unusual in your live
customer database, which probably can't be accessed physically at the
Virtual Realty datacentre.
In
a previous episode, Elliot asks Darlene to get access to the SS7
network. SS7 is the signalling network that is basically the backbone of
mobile networks. Data sent over the network is not encrypted except
between cell towers and phones, so any provider on the network can read
any data sent over it. It's safe to assume Darlene didn't have time to
do this, which is why we see Elliot panicking over the cell tower access
and why he phishes an employee for their login. This gives Elliot
immediate engineering-level access to the provider, and this particular
cell tower, which allows him to view all the traffic that passes over
it. This gives us a list of phone numbers and IMSI numbers in the local
area, allowing him to get whiter0se's cell number and IMSI.
Darlene
drops a collection of devices outside the building in NYC. This
contained a Raspberry Pi, and either an ISMI catcher or a Software
Defined Radio. This effectively creates a fake mobile base station.
Because the signal of this station is (reportedly) stronger than the
'real' base station, devices start to connect immediately. What makes
this hack particularly effective is that mobile devices will always
connect to a base station with the strongest signal, as they are
required to by the GSM and LTE specifications.
To
identify the Deus Group members, Darlene runs a script that takes every
phone number connected to the fake cell tower and checks to see if it
exists in the "Accounts" database of Cyprus National Bank. This allows
her to determine every account controlled by a member of the Deus Group,
and then store the IMSI number needed to intercept calls and SMS. The
IMSI number is essentially the identifier used by a SIM card to prove
its identity. Without high level engineering access to a mobile firm,
it's very difficult to recover an IMSI for a subscriber. As Elliot
gained SS7 access after his phishing attack, the pair can now spoof
their phones.
Darlene's
code to initiate bank transfers is interesting. Essentially, it is a
looping script that emulates a browser connecting to an online banking
website. What's interesting is that every time the script runs, it uses
the same browser cookie, which is essentially the security token used to
identify the logged in user. I think it's implied that they have
authenticated to the online banking system as a member of banking staff,
which probably bypasses the internal security. This is probably
Olivia's boss, as it's confirmed that the boss has permission to make
transfers on those accounts.
As
Darlene has full employee-level banking access, the account she used
had the permissions to transfer these huge sums provided that the client
provided a MFA token.
We
only see one interaction of Darlene's code run on screen, and it
transferred at least $140 billion from a single account. This looks like
an internal transfer, as the account numbers shown are relatively
simple (transfer from 1292829 to 1918893).
We
only see one interaction of Darlene's code run on screen, and it
transferred at least $140 billion from a single account. This looks like
an internal transfer, as the account numbers shown are relatively
simple (transfer from 1292829 to 1918893).
Is that a typo? Should that be $140 million? I get these are in the shadows bad guys, but one account with $140 billion might be the least plausible thing yet on Mr. Robot.
Just for reference, there isn't anyone even close to the $140 billion mark in net worth, let alone cash in the bank. Bezos is worth around $111 billion and only a small fraction of that is cash. Alphabet is the company with the most cash on hand, and they *only* had $117 billion in August. Apple is down from $167 billion in 2017. Still, $140 billion is an absurd amount from one account.
I feel like a dumbass, but Darlene “called an audible” on the doxing, right? How’s that possible? The video would have to have been made in advance...
I believe she both filmed and uploaded it from the costume store (?) she ducked into... she sees an fsociety mask hanging on a rack which presumably gives her the idea.
I feel like a dumbass, but Darlene “called an audible” on the doxing, right? How’s that possible? The video would have to have been made in advance...
I believe she both filmed and uploaded it from the costume store (?) she ducked into... she sees an fsociety mask hanging on a rack which presumably gives her the idea.
God I gotta stop drinking / surfing during these episodes.
Rewatching Ep 2 from S1. The Elliot in this time has no idea who Darlene is. So this can’t be the persona he grew up with. Something happened that made him forget her. And it isn’t Mr. Robot that forgot her. And he remembers Angela. So yeah, there has to be another personality and I am leaning towards this loop/momento/reset theory.
Same episode, Vera says the meaning of a name is important. Fernando Vera = Journey of Truth
Comments
Side note, these last few episodes have felt like the rollercoaster ride Breaking Bad's final season was. I find it hard to believe that the final 4 episodes will be just as good, but perhaps Esmail cleared the table this episode for Elliot to really deal with his trauma, third personality and Whiterose's project...
The show even demonstrated this very point when they showed us how the wealthy weren't affected at all by the 5/9 hack.
Is White Rose's project the exact same project that Kingpin had in Into the Spider-Verse?
Wellick wasn't really important for anything. He was just being installed as a figurehead.
What doesn't make a lot of sense was why the move to the Congo couldn't take place without a CEO in place at E-Corp. White Rose tells Price that all he had to do was nothing, so he obviously didn't have a critical role. Also, why was the in-person meeting necessary? Weren't we led to believe that White Rose was in control of the Deus group?
Don’t fuck this up, Esmail.
But whatever, I thought it was pretty great. The way Price was kicking back getting drunk lol, loved it.
Just for reference, there isn't anyone even close to the $140 billion mark in net worth, let alone cash in the bank. Bezos is worth around $111 billion and only a small fraction of that is cash. Alphabet is the company with the most cash on hand, and they *only* had $117 billion in August. Apple is down from $167 billion in 2017. Still, $140 billion is an absurd amount from one account.