This episode is a bit of a think piece. First, you must understand game theory; in particular, that area of game theory which deals with zero sums. As well, you need to have street smarts, when it comes to finding a USB laying around in a parking lot. Moreover, this segment demonstrates how the police get hacked. Finally, Elliot discovers a dead Shayla. If you connect all the dots, you might enjoy this segment.



It should be said first, this episode mirrors reality. To start, we see Elliot and Shayla in a cafe. All of a sudden, Shayla and Elliot are grabbed by two thugs. The cafe is filled with staff and customers, but nobody gets involved in order to help them. Today, too often, people are kidnapped in broad daylight and nobody cares.

As it turns out in this episode, Vera has found out about Elliot- that Elliot put him in jail. Now, being impressed, Vera wants Elliot to jailbreak him, or Vera dies in jail. Vera decides to kidnap Shayla as an incentive for Elliot to do the prison break.

Fsociety decides to do a little police laptop hacking. This time it’s the old USB parking lot hack where they dump infected USBs in a parking lot in hopes of some naive police officer popping it in his police car laptop. When inserted into a computer, Fsociety gets a ssh connection. This is a quick and dirty way to install malicious software a.k.a rootkit on a corporate network to gain privileges.

How about this: Fsociety pulls code from Github. Of course, they refer to Rapid 9 a.k.a Metasploit in the episode. Github is a repository where you can publish, update, and collaborate on code with users around the world.

As well, in this segment, Darlene is a serious computer science student. She reads white papers. Plus, she does her research. However, she is a script kiddie when she feels lazy.

In this one, too, Mr. Robot advises Elliot to let go of Shayla. When it comes to Vera, Shayla, and Elliot, Mr. Robot tells Elliot that it’s simple game theory a.k.a zero sum game, where it’s in Vera’s best interest for Shayla and Elliot to be dead. However, Elliot thinks he has all the angles covered, so Elliot continues to play his game of “chess” with Vera.

Elliot hacks the jail network to break Vera out, in this installment. He does so by leaving his cell in the security desk area where the cell is running a sniffer to pick up all wireless signals. If you remember the Dark Knight, Batman did the same hack when he flew to China to kidnap the kingpin. When Elliot leaves the jail, he will control the jail network.

At the same time, Elliot hacked Isaac’s phone. Elliot got a hold of all Vera’s drug shipments, banking information, and data. Elliot owns Vera; however, Elliot will use this data as leverage over Vera in hopes of saving Shayla.

Elliot straightens Vera out, too. Elliot created a program where if he does not stop as 24 hour auto send, the program will delete all Vera’s money. Elliot created this program as life insurance for Shayla and him if Vera gets any ideas to kill them.

As the installment continues, Elliot must crack a WPA2 password, which is considered borderline unhackable. However, Elliot could do it if he rented out a server farm, or Elliot could borrow a quantum computer. As it stands, it would take days to do the social engineering to get the WPA2 password.

At the end of this segment, Vera and his brother, Isaac, are the ones playing a zero sum game now. Vera’s brother must kill him if he wants to survive. However, Vera has a new crew, so Vera isn’t worried about being killed. That being said, Vera’s brother is scared shitless, since he realizes he lost a.k.a he’s dead.

At the end of this broadcast, Elliot understands what Vera knows: the world is a savage place. Essentially, it’s the devil’s world. Elliot and Vera have come to an understanding.

The episode ends with Shayla’s death. Vera had Shayla killed and stuffed into the trunk of his brother. Unbeknownst to Elliot, Shayla was always with him in the car.

To sum up this installment, it was ok. We learned some game theory. As well, we got to see the USB hack trick. But sadly, Shayla died, and Elliot is that much wiser about the world. It was a decent episode.

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