 I want to introduce Kim Zetter, who's going to do the Mr. Robot panel. Thank you. It's good that we're at the end of the session or at the end of the day here in case we run off a little longer. Unfortunately, we don't have any clips for you. We wanted to put some of those together and maybe show you some of the hacks in progress as they were developed. But this kind of came together short notice last minute, so we don't have that. But we do have a great panel of experts here who are going to answer all of your technical questions, except anything that involves a spoiler. I'm going to introduce the panel. I'll go through some questions, but we definitely want this to be interactive. We want all of you guys to feel free. I can give you sort of a signal when we're going to be getting ready to take audience questions. And we definitely want your questions. So, we all know that we're in here for the Mr. Robot panel, right? Okay. So I want to make sure you're in the right place. Okay. So I was talking with CORE. I don't know if I needed to give you like a summary of the show, right? You all know the show, right? Okay. Great. All right. So I'm just going to introduce the panelists then. And you guys aren't in the order that I thought you were going to be in. So, well, CORE is in the center. So why don't we start with CORE? So we've got CORE Adana in the blue checked shirt there. CORE is a writer and tech producer of Mr. Robot. But he actually comes from our community. He worked as a network security analyst and forensic manager for Toyota Motor Sales, where he did pen testing, designed security policies, did forensics for the legal and HR departments. That is until he got his big break in Hollywood in 2013. As a production intern initially and then two years later, he got his, he scored his job with the Mr. Robot team. And I'm going to ask him a little bit about how he got there. In addition to writing scripts, he oversees all technical aspects of the show. That's not just about putting the hacks together. But he makes sure that the hardware that's being used is correct, that the set directoration is accurate and all of that as well. CORE put together a core team of consultants, security experts to assist him with that. And that's what we've got here. So I guess I'll start on the far right there and come forward to me. Now I've got to switch gears here. So we've got at the far right there is Andre McGregor. He's director of security for Tainium, managing their internal security, but he's a former FBI agent. And so he assists in all of the FBI forensic stuff on the show. And unlike many feds, he actually has a computer engineering background and knows some of this stuff. So prior to joining the bureau, he worked as an engineer at Goldman Sachs and was IT director for Cardinal Health Advagant. In his work with the bureau, he helped establish the first Cyber National Security Squad for FBI's New York field office and led numerous large-scale cyber investigations involving everything from financial crime to critical infrastructure intrusions. Next, do I need to introduce Jeff? Jeff Moss, everyone, everyone knows him. Dark Tangent, of course. Founder and director of Black Cat, more importantly, a DEF CON, which began in 1993. Former Freaker is now a widely recognized computer security expert who in 2009 was appointed to the Homeland Security Advisory Council to provide advice and recommendations to the secretary on matters related to homeland security. And from 2011-2013, he served as ICANN's chief security officer. You all know Jeff. Next to Core is Ryan... Am I just Kazantian? Did I get it right? Okay. Chief security architect for TANIUM and has 13 years of experience in incident response and forensics, pentesting, and security architecture. Prior to joining TANIUM, is that TANIUM or TANIUM? TANIUM, sorry. He was a technical director and lead investigator for Mandiant where he worked with dozens of Fortune 500 organizations involved in targeted attacks, I assume that E-Corp wasn't one of them. He also helped train FBI agents. And finally, you guys all know CJ. This is Mark Rogers, who all you know is CJ C. Junkie. He's an old school hacker who heads information security at Cloudflare and is a long time goon here at DEF CON. Mark's obviously well known for pioneering some hacks in the 90s and last year he gave that fantastic presentation on hacking at Tesla. So I'm going to start with some overview questions, primarily initially directed at CORE. I want everyone to jump in with any questions that you feel are relevant to you. But just to get us started on sort of the overview I want at CORE, just to give us an idea of how exactly the show came together. Can you guys hear me now? All right, really quickly before I get into that I just want to say that there are two members of the consulting team who couldn't be with us here today, Michael Bezal and James Pluff. Michael, if you're here, put your hand up, because I think he's supposed to be here. All right, inspiration for the show. Our creator and showrunner, Sam Esmail, he is Egyptian and he has relatives who are living in Egypt who had to experience the Arab Spring. And just dealing with that and knowing how a younger generation was able to use technology in a way to thwart internet censorship and get the access that they needed using technology or social media was a huge inspiration for Mr. Robot. That coupled with the fact that Sam, and I believe many people in this room, shared this disdain for how Hollywood has portrayed technology and hacking in film and television up to this point. And upon my first meeting with him, it's like the first thing that we bonded over was how much we hated that and how we would cringe every time we'd see a show about hacking or a movie about hacking. So we wanted to do it right and we thought that doing it in a realistic way would be dramatic and would be enticing and compelling. And that really empowered me to just... And I got into a lot of fights and altercations since that moment and I still continue to do so, even with these guys. But it's all in the name of making it authentic and making it realistic and hopefully we're doing a good job of that and hopefully we continue to do a good job of that. So those are the two main inspirations for the show. So how did Sam get the characterization of Elliott Alderson so spot on? Because it's not just the hacks that Hollywood gets wrong, it gets wrong the hackers and the culture in the community. So Sam dabbled a bit in hacking as a teenager but by no means does he refer to himself as a hacker these days. But it's interesting, having been exposed to both worlds, writing and just the tech community and the hacking community, I see that just the isolation, the stress, the anxiety, the social awkwardness, the amount of time spent alone in front of a computer, problem solving, how frustrated I used to get when I tried to code and tried to solve problems and I couldn't figure it out. It's very similar to the stresses that I experienced breaking story or trying to nail a scene or writing one of these scripts. So I think just the comparison between a hacker and a writer from an anxiety perspective is very, very similar. And the drug usage, the social awkwardness, all of this, I think Sam just infused his experience as a writer and put it into this hacker character and it works because those worlds are very similar and I've been able to make those connections of how similar those two worlds are. And of course you're using different parts of your brain but still I think a lot of that isolation and loneliness is rampant in both worlds. So I think that's why it works because people in this community can relate to Elliot because it's hard dealing with people. I think that's one of the great things about DEF CON is you guys all get together and actually connect with each other in real life. But he also gets, I mean, the other hackers that we see in shows are sort of, let's say Black Hat, let's just call it out, where they're all powerful and they're not human, essentially. And Elliot is very human and vulnerable and basically psychologically messed up and a lot of things, mentally unstable. And those elements all exist in this community. We have suicides in the community and a lot of stuff like that and he gets that and that was unusual, I felt like so. And again, I think that's prevalent even in the writing community as well. It's another similarity that just, it's the engine that makes the show work and I think the character vulnerability and him dealing with his demons in that way is what draws him to him and makes him relatable. He's not a superhero. He's terribly flawed, but he has good intentions and he wants to change the world for the better. Even if, by doing so, he ends up destroying the world. It's just, it's compelling that way. Yeah, you can face them and I think that's the problem is when you turn to me, I can't hear you. I wanted to ask about sort of forming this group of consultants because the first season, the first show, the pilot Sam had done without you. Without me, yep. And then after the pilot, after it got picked up, you came on board. But you only had one consultant at that time for the first year, correct? Yeah, it was me and Michael Bezel working on that first season. And the role didn't really exist. I kind of just fell into it. I was working for Sam. I was in the room, I was pitching ideas and he knew that I had a cybersecurity background so he knew that I could help in that way. So I remember looking at the original Bible for season one and the evil core pack that he had planned out was very fantastical and kind of crazy. And I said, well, if we wanted to ground this into reality, this is how I would do it. And this is where your data targets would be and these would be the different methods of taking them down. And from that, we kind of explored the, you know, attacking the offsite, tape backups and a redundant data center in China for disaster recovery or redundancy. So we kind of formed the network infrastructure for Evil Corp early on and that kind of dictated our trajectory for the season one, the big hack of season one. And it was me and Michael Bezel coming up with a lot of those ideas and incorporating them into the show and I was lucky enough to form your team for season two, which is awesome. So why don't you walk us through... I just want to get to the hacking, obviously. So a lot of the hackings appears to be grabbed straight from the headlines. This is, you know, straight from the headlines and also from Black Cat and Defcon. Let's just admit you're cribbing from us, right? I totally am. The prison hack was Defcon 2011. Defcon 19, I believe. Teg Newman, Tiffany Rad. There was a white paper and there was a great demo I found on YouTube that I studied and that was the inspiration for that last hack in that show. So definitely ripping you guys off. 100%. Now I got one of you guys on my team, which is great. So you've had the ransom... No car hacking yet, though. Ransomware, the IoT hacking, obviously. In the latest episode, we've got the hacking Android phones with a rogue femme to sell and also the affiliate link hack that Darlene does to get free food. So explain to us what is the process for coming up with the hacks. Do you have a hack idea first and then it gets written into the plot? Is the plot written first and then you come up with a hack that suits the plot and then how do you guys work together? Great. So the story ideas come first and story will always come first. We will always act in the best interest of the story. So I'm in the room every day with a group of other very talented writers, pitching story ideas, trying to nail down the structure and the arcs for the season. And in those... There are breaks in those discussions where Sam will say, all right, here we need to have a hack. We don't know what it's going to be, but Elliot's going to hack and he's going to be at this point in the story after we're done. So after that, I'll reach out to my team, these guys, and we'll have a brainstorming session and I'll say we need to work within the confines of this story point. We need to get Elliot from point A to point B and what is available to us and what's realistic and what makes sense and what's efficient and what's smart and what would be cool to see visually on screen. So it's weird that we kind of have two different writers' rooms working in tandem with the story writers' room and then we have our technical writers' room where we throw out ideas, argue with each other, try and find the best option and then once we finalize an idea together, I bring it back to the room and it gets incorporated into the script and at that point it's like really short general description, maybe a couplet in one of the scripts that just describes the hack, big picture. Once we get to production, that's where the nitty gritty detail work starts because we actually have to pull off the hack, so I need to work with the props department to make sure the hardware looks completely accurate and they've never heard of a raspberry pie before, so I have to tell them exactly, where you can buy one. Here's the model we need to work with set dressing to make sure that we don't have a ridiculous amount of cat5 cable all over the arcade when there are only five workstations there. I have to work really closely with an animator and these guys to nail exactly what the screen content looks like. So oftentimes one of these guys will do the hack for real and will send me screenshots or video of it and then I have to take it to a flash animator and we build out an interactive animation based on what these guys did and it's something that we can put in front of Rami or Christian and they don't even have to think about it, they can hit the wrong keystrokes and the right characters will show up on screen and the screen will behave the right way we need it to and we shoot all of these sequences practically. Sam hates using green screen, I hate using green screen, so we don't burn it in after the fact and even that process, how many times I've called them up at four in the morning saying we need to fix this and it needs to be ready by 9 a.m. and then I have to work with an animator and go through like 15, 20 revisions to make sure that there are no typos and make sure that everything's working properly for him to rebuild this terminal sequence or whatever screens we're seeing and then I have to work with the actors to try and get it right and then I work with a completely separate insert unit, a small splinter crew to shoot all the close ups and the inserts that we cut to in building out these sequences so we're filming raked shots of hands on a keyboard and I have to make sure that they're hitting alt tab when they need to toggle windows at the right time. Little things that you don't think about and that no one in production and no one in Hollywood really cares about but on this show is a big deal to us and we want to nail those details and luckily you guys are picking up on those details which I'm really happy about. I will have to say that I've worked some of the largest breaches in the US history and working for CORE is worse than all of those. Because at least when I would go home from the FBI I was at home CORE would still call me at 3 o'clock in the morning and say I need an output I need you to take a video of exactly what the output Elliot would be doing and then send it to me in the next hour but what was cool is if you've noticed that there's some Easter eggs that are there so you get to add that when it doesn't work we have to work through it for several hours or change the hack. There's multiple times which we unfortunately will not go through all of them but we had a hack in place and it was in the script and everything was ready to go and then all of a sudden it was that's not going to work. Actually when we tried to do the hack it did not work. Can you tell us what the hack was and what didn't work? No because we may actually use it again but but I'll allude to the fact that the first episode was not the hack that you saw was not the original hack. He's referring to the ransomware attack on Bank of E in the first episode of season 2. Can you guys hear everyone? But even then you have to think Pick up the mics and hold them in your hand. But even then it goes beyond just the hack. Specifically with that particular episode it was the set design and what we would need to have a bank and the systems that we would need and the type of personnel that would have access to the systems that we would want and how we would portray that on the show to make it realistic for people to say someone with that skill set or someone with that job role would have access to that system and if I plugged in a device or if I accessed that system it could pivot to the next system and then have a cascading effect. That's the level of detail that we're going in because I know that you guys are looking at the same thing and we don't want it to make CSI cyber where screen code is good and red code is malware. You guys all saw that? Yeah. It's also really surprising how disproportionate the amount of work that goes into some of these things. If you look at some of the really smallest things like the affiliate links hack is what only a couple of seconds of screen time Yeah, it's just dialogue. That was days of discussion because the original script the hack that was laid out there we hated it. We wanted to shape it into something that would really work and so it went round and round and we reshaped it into something which ultimately people are dissecting it and writing entire articles on those few seconds. That's when we know we've got it right. What was it originally that you rejected? You can go into it. Are you guys familiar with what he's talking about? The affiliate hack, why don't you describe it? So the affiliate link hack was basically darling's getting free food by using affiliate links that belong to her boyfriend so that she gets credited for whatever clicks that he should have been credited for. The original hack involved DNS cash poisoning in the elaborate system and I looked at it and that's not realistic. There's no way you would expend that level of effort for something as simple as that when there are so many other elegant simple ways in which you can do it and we bounced around the team and came up with multiple different options and the one we went with in the end was actually we would target a specific piece of infrastructure in the telco, the proxy APN and by compromising that it goes through that APN, gets rewritten into whatever we want and the net result is a realistic hack that could be pulled off in the real world and could have real world implications and that's the kind of hack that I want to put myself behind. So this was a hack involving the Postmates website Postmates.com Anytime anyone would order food Darlene would get a free $10 coupon for food Anyone would order food delivery she would suddenly get a $10 coupon for free food. And something else that I should just note the script, if we have an issue with the hack the script changes. I go to Sam or I go to the other writers and I say we need to find another way around this and it's interesting because I always I think the most common argument that I had in the room, especially in season 2 was Sam would want a big hack that's intricate and complicated and he would want to pull this page to turn the scene to get Elliott to this next point in the story and then when we talked about it we'd be like alright it's pretty simple and it's smarter and more efficient if we have him do this but it's not as sexy on screen so if I throw that idea out Sam's like well that sucks I don't want to do that that's boring so we have to strike that balance and we have to look at the solutions of the tech crowd that's analyzing the technology being used and the motivations for the hack and the tactics that are being used. For me it's almost like being in a virtual penetration test where if you've ever done pen testing or red teaming work you always end up in a situation where you're a couple days in and nothing you've tried has worked and you're kind of stuck and you have a set of things you do have access to exactly that you know core will come to us and say so here's the context here's what needs to come out of it and it's awesome that if that requires adjustment and dialogue or tweaks to the scene to make it real they're totally willing to do that the second part of it that's fun is my initial reaction to a lot of these that I worked with core on was wow how are we going to make this technically accurate and it's that same sort of conundrum and so you sit and brainstorm the way you do it doesn't think well if I did this and then this and then this that actually could kind of get the characters there and then it's all about let's do it on screen let's try to use some real tools let's use Cali Linux let's simulate as much of it as possible and then streamline it down to what can maybe fit in couple seconds of screen time here there I want to come back to the oh do you want to I was just going to say what is on the other side of that what's very hard is if you haven't caught up you're going to know that the FBI is about to be hacked having to walk through the technical accuracy of hacking the FBI without disclosing state secrets and national and having implications and being able to do it in such a way where you're able to gain access to the information that will obviously advance F society but not reveal anything that I don't want anyone in this room to be able to also leverage the recipe we must have had I don't know how many hours we've discussed FBI infrastructure and the FBI but a lot of work went into it I know so much about hacking the FBI now and the FBI knows that you know that I wanted to come back to the hacking but I wanted to jump to OPSEC for a second here Jeff wrote a great article for Playboy in which he pointed out some of the OPSEC issues with the hacking group the Melbourne files and all that stuff because I love the show and so I don't want to be that guy on the side of the road I'm picking up oh they forgot a comma but you tell a story about how Sam sits there and at the moment somebody online says something negative about the show it's like Sam calls you did we get that right because he's so obsessed and so it's tough because I want to provide criticism but in insight but I don't obviously want to tell you your job I was talking about surveillance operations and I was trying to guess like well is she being followed or are you trying to show that Darlene is freaking out that she's seen ghosts you know where there aren't any so I just had to assume no she's really probably being followed because there's some dark army action going on there's some FBI action so let's just pretend she's being followed what did she just do wrong and what did the followers do wrong like you would never reveal yourself to the person you were following and you'd only do that if you want them to change your behavior or spook them and then see what their reaction is see how they behave like you reveal that you're following them and you see can you force an error and what does that error reveal right you see this in TV all the time and so I've been having a lot of fun with it because I'm tying it back to other books and I'm trying to think of other movies so I'm trying to you know grab broader picture because surveillance is really really hard to do and at some point you know you're going to have to start criticizing by saying well how do these people who have never done this before professionally they don't have professional training you don't learn how to do like tag team surveillance counter surveillance unless you actually do it so at some point I'm waiting for them to put on VR goggles and say no wait I'm practicing my counter surveillance runs and so we're just assuming that they have all the skill and all this knowledge and the back story of like how do they learn all of this stuff if we ever do that or if we ever drop a cat 5 cable out of an airplane into a car underneath it I want you to all kill me there is something else that I do want to touch on what echoing what Ryan was saying about using real tools can I bring this up can I talk about this let me just let's just introduce this for a second here because one of the things that we've all seen in Mr. Robot we're actually using the tool tools we've seen Dave Kennedy set tool and everything else and CORE is very adamant about making sure not just that the hacks are correct but that the tools are correct but he gets a lot of grief for it so why don't you talk about it so it is a ongoing struggle between me and the legal department at NBCUniversal in an effort to clear real tools on a hacking show especially using the tools in a way where maybe they're helping a hack or they're associated with a hack connected to a hack in some way there's some negative connection and unfortunately our roles are just that's the nature of the beast we're pitted against each other because they want to minimize legal risk and I want to make the most authentic show that I can so it is very difficult for me to convince our clearance department to reach out to companies and to ask for permission to use the tool it's very, very hard I've had so many conversations very contentious conversations around that very topic so it is easier and actually we've taken risks and I've had Mark reach out to members of the community I've reached out to members of the community and we got some great feedback and luckily these people were fans of the show so we were able to incorporate that software, that piece of hardware in the show but it's much easier for me if you guys reach out and say hey I want to showcase my tool or this piece of software in the show I want to hear about it and I know I've read some articles recently about product placement and integration and that's all bullshit a theme of this show is consumerism and consumer culture and from day one Sam and I we've always talked about wanting to use as many brands as possible wanting to showcase as many brands as possible in the world of of evil corp and businesses and how they operate so it helps us it helps us ground the show in reality if we can use real software so if you guys want your tool showcasing the show let me know because it's much easier if you express interest first instead of me having to convince a conglomerate to reach out to you you actually used a real company with Adidas it was Prolexic definitely we used a lot of real companies in the first season there are these instances where we do kind of a knock off where it looks like a specific tool but we can't make it look exactly like it and I just want to stay away from that I would much rather use real tools real solutions Mark you had said that when you're doing the real simulations of the hacks and you're going through the steps you talked about actually consulting with outside experts in some cases with different expertise to figure out reactions kinetic reactions and things like that you want to talk about that second? it's not just me, I think everyone in the team has reached out there are a couple of can I go into detail can I go into details about the thing at the place at the time the problem is I'd love to talk about all this stuff but we can't because we don't want to give away spoilers that will damage the story or spoil any of the illusions coming on but let's just say there are a number of things that happen in different parts of the show and if we have any doubts about the realism if we have any concerns about the physics involved or the science behind it we will reach out to experts professors in some cases and talk to them and say in this hypothetical situation which I can't tell you about and I can't tell you why with this work, is this realistic how would you expect this to happen is there any advice you can give us about what to expect and we take that on board and we use that to shape what we do and ultimately the production team uses that to shape everything that goes on from that point and we do that with everything by the way from an IT perspective or a scientific perspective even from an economics perspective or a psychology perspective we seek out experts in those fields to make sure that we are nailing the accuracy of what would a post-59 world look like what would how would Elliot react to certain situations dealing with these delusions and these inner demons so it's something that we always want to reach out in those fields so what are your favorite hacks so far in the show each of you doesn't have to be one that you worked on or Jeff do you have a favorite that you've seen well the one that kind of hooked me finally I was all in on the show was when I started seeing hacks fail because normally the hack always works just at the right time and I think it was toward the end of season one when they were dropping USB keys and the keys didn't work and then the police department antivirus or something caught something and all of that stuff made me think okay great now are they going to problem solve how are they going to get around that and the failure of the hack was actually more impressive to me than the success of the hack the first thing that hooked me was actually really simple it was when Elliot's in season one guessing people's passwords the fact that it wasn't like conventional TV depictions where it's just guessing something super obvious like password one combinations of pattern password patterns that people often use like last two digits of the year they're born with a really common password phrase and if you've ever done password cracking or looked at the statistical analysis of most common password patterns and dumps you see exactly that so his whole mindset about figuring out passwords for his different targets and how realistically that was portrayed really made me realize like wow they're actually thinking about this in a realistic manner season two episode one where you had the booby trapped computer that lit on fire I've been in so many situations where I've watched my peers not really do the proper chain of custody and evidence collection for an incident response and it's very accurate when you're the local state police departments that are still trying to figure out how to deal with computers and how to deal with digital evidence it was just very accurate and I think you'll see that as the season grows that there's more of an FBI presence and how the FBI would deal with incident response and data breach but that was a pretty cool act this is always a hard question for me because I'm really torn because I love a lot of the hacks that we did in season one and we're doing in season two but if I had to choose one it would probably be episode five when Mobley uses set to spoof a text message to one of the workers to create a diversion this was in the data center where they had to get Elliot was trying to deposit the Raspberry Pi needed to get a worker and he spoofed actually my favorite might be the Raspberry Pi I take it back in that same episode when they edit the Wikipedia page to give Elliot's cover identity some background the amazing part of that is I've seen that scene for the first time it's realistic because like if that's a high profile person his Wikipedia page isn't going to just be editable by everyone but no then the dialogue in the show like one scene later sets credibility for him having spent all those years building up reputation so that he could edit those Wikipedia pages and then I remember watching that scene and I was thinking uh oh Elliot didn't put on any gloves his fingerprints are all over that Raspberry Pi Mark did you have a favorite? I have to say I loved all of them and for me the biggest thing was I watched the whole of season one and I didn't throw anything at the TV you had said when we talked that your goal in going into season two was actually to make the hacks more elaborate than season one and so and you were also concerned that hacking can become very repetitive because hackers tend to when they find something successful they tend to repeat it over and over and over again so how are you going to I mean this show could go on for five years like how are you going to get over that issue of repetition I think the way they're doing it is by widening the team and bringing on new minds with new ideas and it is tough because like in the real world as a hacker you'll have certain things that you do really well and you'll keep using them because if they're successful why change them but that doesn't make for great TV because you know okay so he's going to throw six down again yay much better if we can come up with some more interesting things and by bringing in new characters and by bringing in new experts it widens the palette yeah I've been fortunate to work with a lot of people in different disciplines in InfoSec and one of the things that was fun for me was working in a few of the really elaborate hacks that are to come later the season was trying to draw on a few different disciplines that haven't previously been shown and so you know you think about all the different fields reverse engineering application layer exploits and you know we're just starting to scratch the surface I think of the types of hacks that you can see the types of devices that are targeted the techniques that people are using so yeah hacking can get repetitive but I think there's still this just whole world of different interesting things we can show that are both realistic to the situation and also for people who are pausing the screen and tweeting screenshots I just want to let you know if you guys have questions you can start lining up just so you guys know that's a primary problem that we discuss internally this group up here we're constantly talking about these ideas about what would be the most efficient hack to use for this situation and then someone will throw out an idea and I'll have to say no we did that in episode 3 of season 1 so we can't do that again we have to think of something else that still makes sense so we have to justify why we're not doing that again and why we're doing this new tactic and why that makes sense for this episode so what mistakes have you made sorry go ahead Jeff if you do want to line up for questions the microphone's just right here in the middle what mistakes have you made because Jeff brought up the fact that Sam is basically you are on reddit and twitter you're not watching the shows when they air but you're actually watching the reactions to the show and when people do point out mistakes he makes sure that you know about them so yeah in season 1 there were some screens that had typos and there are things that just slipped through the cracks of just you know at some point if you do a screen capture on one of the pdfs and you see it in episode 4 I think there was a lot of gibberish and it was because of the animator who was working on it just ran didn't fall asleep but just kind of ran the text that I gave him through like this randomizer and just put that into it and it just slipped through so I fixed it for the second time we saw it in episode 6 or 7 I believe but then I think on Elliot's drug report in episode 3 marijuana spelled incorrectly like things like that I got an email from Sam saying why did this happen why are we making stupid mistakes like this you also had a phone in airplane mode or something we did have a phone in airplane mode we had Gideon's phone in airplane mode so it's amazing because now I know who we're dealing with and we haven't had many instances of that in season 2 because I'm kind of a Nazi when it comes to these screens and if there is a mistake or a typo I work with post production to fix it before it airs so hopefully this kind of thing doesn't happen but again it's I'm sure something is going to slip through the cracks again because we have people devoted to screenshotting this and then posting it on social media and then making my job and my life much harder thank you you Andre? yes I'm wondering if you're involved in season 1 you've worked at Goldman Sachs and given like the culture of the show and the messages behind it why and when you left Goldman Sachs and if that had any your bearings on how realistic it is to have someone on the inside in a big bank so I didn't work season 1 but it's an interesting question because Goldman Sachs has a very sharp culture is what I will say when it comes to technology and security and being an engineer in that space in the financial sector in New York and then being an agent investigating intrusions for the financial sector in New York really had a lot of barriers for sort of innovation and imagination that you might get in Silicon Valley where I am now and so I think season 1 at e-corp is almost identical to my experiences when I was at Goldman Sachs when I just graduated college and I could see that exact world today and I've seen it in other situations but I think you're right Goldman Sachs I think it's probably the sharpest of the ones that are there the other question? how did the decision come through can't hear you how did the decision in the writing group come to have Elliott break the fourth wall so often and so frequently to turn to face the audience us and have that active dialogue I thought that was brilliant did everyone hear the question? so the question was how did we come up with the idea to have Elliott break the fourth wall and actually address us as his friend and I can't because he wrote that into the pilot before we ever formed a writer's room and if you read even the early drafts of that pilot when it was a feature it opened with hello friend and him speaking to us and it's weird because it really draws you in and when I read it and when I saw the pilot it really I bought into this connection that I had with this character who is addressing me in this way that I've never seen a show do that before in that way what he the ways in which he's vulnerable with us the ways in which he blames us for certain things and now he's upset with us doesn't really trust us it's fascinating and we talk about that in the room and it's weird we treat the viewer we treat friend as a character in the room when we're breaking the story and when we're talking about it and it's something we really take into account with everything so I think this is an incredible groundbreaking show it's amazing I work in consumer education come a little closer to the mic I work in consumer education and I understand the importance of how it is for us to see that this hacking is right but what is your team hoping for the normal person to get out of the show are you trying to educate people more on the show on the show are you trying to educate people more on the threats that are out there or is it just edutainment well anyone feel free to jump in when I go through this we live in an age where we are more and more dependent on our devices and our technology and there are a lot of people even in the younger generation who know how to use these apps know how to use their smart phones but they don't know the ways in which they're vulnerable and if the show can shine a light on that and make them think about oh shit if I leave my phone you know unlocked this is how long it takes for someone to root it and install a piece of malware I think that that's great if it increases that level of paranoia and awareness I think that's a very good thing yeah I think for me it's unavoidable now to no matter what what walk of life you're from isolated from the hacks that make the news every week that's great from an awareness perspective but it also has a numbing effect and what I love is for that and for the show to really have consumers expect more of the companies that are building the software they use and depend upon that they trust to keep their data private because the reality is if they're not putting that pressure then organizations are always going to take shortcuts and we're going to keep dealing with poorly designed software corners cut and we all have seen the effects of that so I love getting that awareness up I love getting people thinking and caring and changing their behaviors based on that you know it's just refreshing for my mother to know what I've been working on for so many years in life and I say it honestly because you know we spend so many years trying to educate the public and it's not working right I mean finally I opened up CNN this morning and I noticed that seven of the conversations and presentations at Black Pat were on the cover of CNN I mean two or three years ago that was not the case I mean we're getting to a point where people are starting to understand technology and we're getting to a point now where hopefully we get the education in before people have the personal pain that I think we experience with hacks like Sony and hacks like what we're seeing with the campaigns and the iCloud photo hacks we're waiting for that that big cyber 9-11 moment which hopefully never happens but I think we're all expecting it to happen and if we can get to a point where the public understands that password 123 is not good and the point where we should you know have a little bit more understanding of our security and we do it through a show that's fun you know that's a win on my part for me I've been doing DEF CON for 18 years and for 18 years I've watched TV shows portray my community like a bunch of weirdos like a bunch of idiots who don't know anything about computers who have portrayed hacks as these mystical things that happen when you connect magical devices to cars and suddenly remote control them and I'm sick of it I want to see real stuff on TV that doesn't make me rage and I want to see accurate portrayals of people in my community of people I can relate to and so being able to do this and be part of this for me was a gift well it's funny you mentioned that Mark because I always remember this story have you ever seen Die Hard 4 live for your Die Hard where the FBI Cyber Division is kind of focused well I always remember the producer the director came to the FBI headquarters and wanted to see what Cyber Division was like and then as they got a tour they were very disappointed because it looks like a 1960s middle school you know as agents we would watch the movie and we're like man I wish we had all this technology like it's like enemy is a state right you wish you had that and so you know we show something that's fabulous on television like the born identity type of movies when in fact none of that exists and so now we have a show that we're sort of able to slowly work through the technical advances that we have today and ideally like I said this in an interview I want every member of Congress to have watched Mr. Robot to have said oh wow this is possible because we need to have everyone that is in a decision making ability in government to know that everything that we have is vulnerable from a cyber security perspective okay so you've mentioned you have to run things by NBC Universal's legal team I just want to know how it went when you decided it was okay for Elliot to go pirate a movie with you Taurant and have all the scene release groups tagged on it can you elaborate on that at all there are a lot of fun Easter eggs that are hidden in the show and that's one of them and luckily that wasn't a discussion so but now it will be, now it will be thank you for bringing attention to it you seriously you never cleared that I mean we cleared you Taurant I looked into some other tools I didn't actually you Taurant was the only tool that cleared and I will always go with a tool that clears as opposed to ripping off another one or reimagining a design so I can speak to that for the pirate groups I don't know what you're talking about I noticed on that screen too that Elliot is a pretty bad leecher he like lets up very, he shares very little but he takes quite a lot I don't know where he got that tactic from either it's weird so I heard you say that screens are recreated with Flash and that's kind of interesting because most of them are just text based screens either just like for example there's a python script in the last episode I watched why don't you just write it in python to create a mock up of what it's doing or even rather than that just have a server that is literally being you know your own test server that you're literally hacking so we're actually seeing what's happening rather than doing it in Flash what's the idea behind using Flash so we've explored a lot of these options and unfortunately since we're the first I believe we're the first show to even bring this much effort toward this level of authenticity it's only me on set it's only me and a video animator, video engineer so the way to utilize the cruise time you know the actors time the best way to do it in the most time efficient way of doing it at this point is creating a Flash animation only because we have medium shots and wide shots where we have actors sitting at the computer sitting in front of a workstation and they need to walk through the animation and get through the right detail on the screen and the added effort of actually trying to teach them the correct commands and relying on that or standing off to the side with a wireless keyboard and running it myself while they're kind of faking it it doesn't make as much sense as putting them in front of an interactive animation where they can just freely type and the right content will show up on the screen and we can easily reset it and go for take 2 immediately after my hope is in future seasons as I grow this team that we can delve into that more and show that in a more realistic light because mainly because recreating these things in Flash there's so much room for error and typos and just behavior that I spend so many hours with Adam Brustein our amazing animator we go back and forth just really finessing these animations I would love to do it for real but that takes I have to convince our producers and I have to convince the studio that it's worth it to them to bring on a bigger team to really manage that because when you're on set and the crew is trying to make their day and they're behind no one's thinking about the tech and the only person on set thinking about the tech is me which sucks the short answer is as a society we will never get rid of Flash it will survive the apocalypse like Twinkies and cockroaches Flash will never go away the other thing to think about is in terms of the accuracy of what you see on screen you couldn't do that with a python script because if you had a script that would come up on a hack that's not really the hack that's a very artificial simulation of what's supposed to come up what they're doing is they're creating an animation based on the intelligence they get from technical experts in cases where I've put stuff together we've done the hack demoed it, filmed it, sent it to them they've looked at that and then they made their animation so that animation is an accurate with the right timings the right output so it's really as accurate as you can get without doing it I would say there are only two options are do it, or do what they're doing now and what they're doing now is pretty good although it seems it's pretty effort heavy for Gore and the others I'd love to see them do it for real but the reality is I've been hacking for well 25, 26 years of my life I'm probably way better than any actor and I find it hard to do that many of the hacks that I filmed and made and sent over I had to do four or five times to get it right to work out bugs that's a hell of an effort for a production crew to have to take on and even after the fact after they send me that material I'll go back and forth with them because maybe we're working in a different distro or maybe we're in a different I want to nail what the prompt looks like under these circumstances so I'll ask these follow-up questions if my goal is to replace IP addresses with Easter eggs or host names so it's this constant dialogue I have with this team about the hacks that they're creating and how how to successfully recreate them for the show thank you I have one question though for Cora, I guess the team and it's around the timeline and so in my last article at Playboy I noticed that you had a character they walked by and they had a rest in peace, you know, American economy with the date and so I'm trying to figure out well how many months has it been since the hack so what version of the software are we at you know like what Android versions we're using or whatever so unless the show is progressing at current day rate you're going to be in a situation like older and older distros to be time period accurate so that is a whole other level of nightmare fortunately the government will never be using the most up-to-date anything so the government is off XP hey, no more XP no, but to Jeff's point the season 2 starts 30 days after the end of season 1 and the big evil corp hack took place on 5.9.2015 so of all the pieces of software that I clear I need to find the version that was out in May of 2015 which is kind of tough and it's going to make our jobs harder and harder as each season progresses because we're treating that timeline in real time and we're just picking up where we leave off at each season so it's going to get more difficult next question hi, so I was wondering about the season 2 trailer or where that idea came from and whether or not that's going to continue at all in the future so what he's referring to is the phone number that was in the season 2 trailer that led to led you somewhere, which led you somewhere else which set you on this whole code breaking this code breaking game and we have hidden in season 2 every single episode of season 2 there are elements of code breaking and anyone who's familiar with the DEF CON badge contest will get a huge kick out of dealing with what we've hidden in season 2 so my answer to you is yes that will continue I don't want to give you too much information on where to find those little hints and where they are, but I know just based on monitoring the reddit and more are coming could you actually give a little intro to how that idea came to make that arc happen I wanted to do this in season 1 and I bugged Sam and I bugged people at the studio just using real IP it started off, I wanted to use real IP addresses and real phone numbers huge argument, can't use real phone numbers finally convinced them to let me use real IP addresses they gave me a pattern of IP addresses for season 2 that I'm using once the digital marketing team at USA caught on that our fans were this into it and screenshotting every screen and I gave them examples of people attempting to hit these servers that we show in season 1 or complaining about our fake IP addresses that we use in season 1 so the digital marketing team between seasons 1 and 2 were convinced that this was worth their time and effort so now I'm working very closely with them to build out this kind of interaction and it's a goal of mine in season 2 if you see an IP address or you see a URL it will lead somewhere I can tell you that much when I first started working with Cora on the first sequence that I helped out with I had done an on-screen mock-up and then I did a copy-paste of the terminal text to make it easier for the animators and I used because it was all in VMs so that my simulation could have talked to each other but the situation required routable addresses so I just in the copy-paste made up an IP off the top of my head and stuck that in there and I sent the email to Cora and I was like I wonder who owns that IP block so I go into who is on it and it's DOD IP space so I emailed him immediately after I was like hey you guys are probably going to change the addresses but just in case I hit that address because I pulled it out of my ass but it turns out I don't want someone seeing the show and then trying to hit that address so With that being said this gentleman to my left who made a comment about CSI Cyber and the digital marketing so on Monday I'm going to redirect csisiber.com to Mr. Robot because I control CSI Cyber.com and they took my idea in 2008 and I'm pissed at them now I'm going to have to say tough shit because I'm going to forward that to push the show and when people go to csisiber.com it's going to Mr. Robot come Monday Google it, check it out Okay so you've already touched upon the dealing with the legal team a lot but I was just wondering like what kind of stuff have they rejected that you wanted to do like what the negotiation process is kind of like Unfortunately I can't go into detail about what they rejected without naming some of the companies that were involved in those talks but I know that it starts off with me presenting my best case scenario so here's my top three choices of tools to use for this specific hack and we're already working to do that and sometimes if something doesn't clear I'll go back to these guys and be like what other tools can we use that we can get away with so our clearance coordinator will talk to our legal department and they'll ask the risk and figure out is it worth it to approach this company or is it worth it to just kind of stay away and you know do our own thing and make up a fake name or make up a fake design which is 100% of the time what they want me to do and so that's a huge point of contention and I'll go back and forth with our clearance department or our legal department about that and I understand it I understand that that's their job so it speaks to you know it's hard for me to reach out and I did have these talks with these guys and I luckily Mark knows some of these guys so I asked him I remember asking him when we I can't tell you what tool it is but there's a tool that shows up in episode 9 of this season where I asked him like are these guys fans of the show? these guys are hackers right? they dig the show they'd be cool if we reached out to them and asked them to sign a clearance and he was like yeah of course so against what the legal department wanted to do we took that route and luckily it made it into the show I can't say what it is yet but it's great it's awesome hopefully it's something that will get easier and like I said before if you guys reach out to me it makes my job a lot easier I think we can see a lot more in the show if you guys just make first contact thank you hi guys big fan of the show thanks for making it happen my question is I really like to see with the fair day cage and I'm wondering if you have any plans for other consumer products or anything that helps protect mobile privacy and security can you say the last part of that question one more time? anything in the works to help protect mobile privacy and security from either like a hard good yes I thought you were going to talk about the fair day cage that White Rose was in it's one of those things that if you go into it then we sort of expose things I remember talking to Cor about this because at one point we were in a conversation where he did say well we already reused the we used the fair day cage once we can't do it again so as we have more ideas because I have a couple in my head I don't really want to tell you about season 3 it's probably fair to say there's stuff that's going to come up the thing that drives it though is the story we are kind of slaves to the story we're trying to find technology that fits into the story and the main thing I want to see with the tech that I put into it is you put the wrong tech in it can be really jarring you're watching this great story you're getting immersed into it and then someone does something fundamentally stupid and you look at it and you're like it's really not that interesting anymore so what we do has to fit in nicely any opportunity for something that's come up we'll look at it and we'll try and use it because we want it to be realistic and at the same time we want to use it to send a message and the best way to do that is to use cool things yeah and I think you're doing a great job I guess it was kind of a leading question because taking a repeated idea of a standalone fair day cage and making it more mobile with my hand right here so I want you guys to use it it's called silent pocket we're in a placement good shirt thank you how you doing for those who can't see he's wearing an evil corp shirt yeah first of all thank you for putting together a show the hackers that doesn't suck should I speak for everybody that's about the best compliment you'll get from us though sneakers is a great movie sneakers take that out there and war games war scene crew but those are movies not a tv show question about the easter eggs they're starting to get more complicated like what's the thought process around coming up with the easter eggs is it you guys because they sort of seem to be inspired by like cicada 3301 kind of puzzles and shit so is that you guys or is it like the media team and myself working on it primarily sometimes I'll check in with these guys and just ask for advice about where it would lead so you guys ship the hoodie that we got for solving the the American giant hoodie that thing is badass that's awesome I don't want to say too much about it because I don't want to ruin it and I don't want to spoil the fun out there for everyone who's involved in it but it is a back in addition to posting the show and getting through these cuts and trying to finalize everything I'm still working with the digital marketing team non-stop on just the easter eggs alone which is a huge which is a taxing effort but it's amazing how many people are into it and I'm so glad and it's really satisfying just the online response that we're getting from it is awesome and I'm really excited about it thank you I have a question we're talking a lot about American viewers but what's your experience with international viewership from what I can gather I know that the show is not available streaming all over completely internationally so people have to cut some corners to watch it depending on where they live and last I checked we were the number one pirated show within the past month or so um which I'm fine with I know people at the network probably hate me saying this but I'm fine with that so and just the social media response we've been getting internationally from Latin America, from Europe it's been phenomenal and it's really satisfying to see that the show is striking a chord with that Francis here go ahead so I had a really good question but I kind of forgot what it was I guess you can step aside and let the next person if you want to think about it I apologize for asking this one but there's been a lot of speculation online about what Atsu is as a command what can you say that again Atsu in the first season uses a command called Atsu it kind of looks like pseudo or something like that but is it an internal thing to evil core what's the official response on that so the official response and I knew I was going to get this question one day none of us worked on the pilot so the pilot had their own consultant who I don't know how present he was and I don't know what kind of interaction he had with the animator on the pilot from what I have heard he just left him with a stack of code and left him to sift through it so you have an animator who's never even worked in a Linux distro before staring at code and he doesn't know what it means and he has to figure out how to animate it and recreate it for a pilot of a TV show so Atsu is probably just a misstep actually there's a lot of things like that I could point out from the pilot that even I have issues with so luckily we were able to kind of remedy that once we got the series pick up and I was working on episodes 2 through 10 to make sure that that didn't happen cool thank you I think one of the other things you have to remember is these kinds of shows evolve, they're not static and as they move on there are additional dimensions that get added things get better, processes change so I think you can say reliably this show is just going to go from strength to strength that raises the question Cory you and I talked previously when I asked you where do you envision the show going the show is operating on many layers and you've got the basic plot of the hacking, you've got Elliot's mental deterioration and his old issues with his father and things like that you've got the control issues and all of its permutations that now you've introduced this whole thing with White Rose there are a lot of sort of tangents coming and we've seen other shows fail spectacularly when they're trying to juggle too much lost for instance how are you guys ensuring that you guys don't get lost essentially great question Sam and the other writers and I have a roadmap for where we want this season to go unlike some of the other shows that were mentioned I have a feeling they were writing themselves into a corner because they didn't really know what the end beat was what the conclusion of the story was we know where we're headed and we have certain milestones that we're trying to reach on the way so I don't feel like we're ever going to get into that situation as long as we stay true to organically where our characters are emotionally and where the journey would take them so as long as we're tracking Elliot and the other members of F society and organically doing serving the story justice I don't think that's going to happen and I know some people have had some issues with the pacing of season 2 and the first couple episodes being a little slow I've read a lot of reviews and blogs about that and really all I can say is we dropped a huge bomb at the end of season 1 we destroyed the economy Elliot had the realization that he has delusions from that he's basically insane and he needs to work that out he needs to reconcile that and I think the him working out those issues and those inner demons and connecting it metaphorically to things that are common to the tech crowd whether they be infinite loops of insanity or kernel panics organically where the story needs to go and I think it's compelling and intriguing so hang in there I think you'll start to get a bit more explanation as to the history of things as you go through there's a lot of illusions to certain things just happening now let's try to figure out and help you understand why that happened and how the characters grew that does take time but I will tell you this without revealing any spoilers it gets fantastic in a few episodes and then you'll get to the end and you'll be like wow it's there make it through some of the character development you're going to get to that point and say I did not know that I can't tell you which episode but it's coming soon thanks for taking my question I love the show the raspberry pie gag where Elliot got called out for holding one up the timing and I was like that's a raspberry pie that was awesome my question is with the inclusion of the scene from hackers who is involved in that conversation this panel shows that there's a lot of care and effort that goes into making this not give information about hacking but that specific piece of script just calls it out were you part of that was there a discussion like we're really calling the question here how'd that go? I was a part of that and that was just our meta moment of kind of poking fun of ourselves basically and even though it's ridiculous I love that movie I grew up watching that movie I'm sure a lot of people in here are fans of that film and other writers in the room are fans of it as well and it was a fun way of kind of calling out that there's going to be a TV show that's going to fuck it up and maybe we might be we might be that show hopefully we're not but at the time of writing that script it was a little joke that we wanted to incorporate and I think the community loved it and embraced it because I have a feeling that everyone in this room is probably bashed hackers at one point or another and it was a fun scene I for one would love to see F Society on Rollerblades in New York thank you that's why I own Rollerblades so I love your show had to write it down closer to the mic it's a great show and thank you again for teaching our parents what we do so as a woman who codes you mentioned that there was a favorite hack that was failed so I was just any thought to maybe giving an unsuspecting female the role that's kind of on the same same level as Elliot well I think Season 2 we made an effort to really flesh out the rest of our cast and I know that Season 1 is more of Elliot's journey in figuring out what is happening Season 2 is more about dealing with the consequences and repercussions of what happened and it gives us an opportunity for them to deal with it and I think you've seen enough of Season 2 at this point to know that we're spending a lot more time with our female hacker characters and our female cybercrime character and it's a hope of mine that we continue to do that and just keep watching for Season 2 it's something that we are definitely moving forward so thank you I will say this though I look in the room and it's refreshing as well to see the diversity because it's not there all the time in the C-suite of the conversations that we have about this and so as the community is growing and learning to find people that look like me and people that look like her that are in the room it's just very awesome it's funny CORE we had actually talked about this the diversity on the show and how it was very intentional it was intentional it was by design we wanted to make sure we had badass female hackers a part of F society we wanted to have an Iranian hacker we wanted Romero to be the old school of Indian descent so it was definitely by design our hope is that it does inspire that kind of diversity that Andre is talking about definitely the thing is when you look out at the Defconn audience you realize that the hacker community is that diverse which is why it's really great to see a show that actually represents what we look like so we've got just 5 minutes more to take a few more questions I always have a lot of empathy for the the perpetrator or the perpetrator we can't hear you I always have a lot of empathy for the victim and the perpetrator but have you ever thought about having a backstory for Phillip Price I realize their target story is the 99% but more important question is have you thought about the kid's workshops that we have here that only throughout children we will conquer actually Mark and I were just talking about the kid's workshops and I think we're a couple of us are probably going to do a talk at one of those either tomorrow or tomorrow afternoon to answer your Phillip Price question yes we've thought about the backstory and if you keep watching you'll get some more of that go ahead I just wanted a decent photo no I'm just kidding my question has to do with personal security so obviously season one Ellie is hacking social media sites emails for coworkers or whatever I understand people with simple passwords aren't going to be doing two factor authentication or anything of that nature however most services there are services it's going to come from another system it's going to send you an email that notifies you granted if he has access to those other emails it's no one void but he'd have to be doing a lot at one point in time he's just one guy was there ever a conversation about that in the tech world and if so what was the reasoning behind not including login notifications it's a question of it's always a matter of time and how much real estate we have on the page so the mall they always get cut down in the editing process so it is a conversation we've had and it's just us making the decision of what are the important beats we need to see to convey the story about this hack and how he's compromising this account but to your point if I can get that level of detail into the show I think that's all of our goals to get as much detail as possible into those sequences thank you for both of these questions though first of all I'm a really big fan of the show my friends and I just love it my question is so you mentioned that you get feedback from Sam when you get something wrong like there's a typo or somebody points out that the screen is wrong or the command doesn't work right but have you gotten any feedback about the show being used to teach I had an opportunity at my job to introduce some colleagues of mine who are not part of this field which is forensics and I said if you want to know what hacking is who hackers are please go watch the show so and I had people nodding and people have come back to me and said oh my god I've watched the show it's amazing and I'm frightened so my question is have you heard about whether it's somebody in the C-suite or a teacher or just a person saying I was inspired by your show have you gotten the feedback about the show being used for good I guess 100% you have a story I was in meetings all week for work and I don't think a single person be they engineer, practitioner or at the executive level hasn't gotten that out of the show and enjoys the increased awareness enjoys the fact that they it caused them to think about an attack technique or attack vector that maybe wouldn't have come first to mind otherwise I definitely think that's one of the ways that it can be a force for good and one of the most compliments I've ever received and I've received it on numerous occasions is people come to me and say I don't usually watch television I don't binge watch anything I don't watch TV but I watch Mr. Robot because of the hacks that you guys portray and how scared it makes me about using my devices so it's amazing you actually have the leader of the free world as your fan of Mr. Robot I was on set and Sam was super excited and he's like the president loves our show and got contacted by his personal aide and said I don't even know if I should be saying it but I think it's important because he said binge watch the show and loves Mr. Robot and wants to see season 2 and it's like that is the levels that we're getting that's exactly what we're looking for I mean if we can get it there then we're getting others in government and we're getting others in the C-suite and that conversation that I'm hoping that we get and my hope is that's the reason he's interested in the show and it's not because we impersonated him in the first episode of season 2 and he just wants to see what's up and what we're doing so definitely that's good I also don't know when he binge watched Mr. Robot I don't know where he has timed the president I mean okay so my question is as far as getting this on to a network channel like from the network's perspective was it you know here's a hacking show and some they're saying something about maybe it's technically accurate or was the technically accurate part something that they actually cared about the technically accurate part was something that Sam heard about I'm not sure that the network was that invested in it at that point they just saw a great script written by an auteur filmmaker like Sam and they wanted to pursue that project I think once the pilot came out and Sam was able to deliver that level of authenticity it set the bar and the expectation and you have network executives reading you know these articles published by tech journalists talking about technology on the show so I think it was something that was always on Sam's radar that he wanted to pull off and luckily when I met him we were completely in line about that and to his credit he just kind of empowered me and let me fight with whoever I had to fight with to get that level of detail into the show and obviously the fact that I was able to grow the team for season 2 speaks to the point that the network is in the studio are supportive of the network which is great okay I think we're out of time so just join me in thanking the panelists first of all for a great show and their participation today