WATCH ABOVE: High profile cases, including the Ashley Madison hack, reveal that what we do online is often vulnerable. Peter Kim reports.
TORONTO — Christian Slater plays “Mr. Robot,” the leader of a renegade group of hackers who enlists the help of a talented programmer suffering from social anxiety, in a new show premiering Friday night.
“Elliot (Rami Malek) is a young computer hacker with some great skills and Mr. Robot wants to recruit him into his organization called ‘fsociety’ and take down this huge corporation, and give the power back to the people,” said Slater.
The subject matter is timely given two recent high-profile hacks that have left major companies, and their PR departments, scrambling for damage control.
READ MORE: CEO of Ashley Madison’s parent company stepping down after massive data hack
“After we made the pilot, the Sony hack happened and I think that brought certainly the subject of hacking to the forefront of everyone’s minds,” said Slater. “It’s been in the president’s State of the Union address, and it’s been in story after story.”
More recently the Ashley Madison hack underscored the reality that much of what we do online is never truly private.
“Even though most of us think we’re not big enough to be the target of a hacker, the truth of the matter is there’s never been a more dangerous time to be online,” said independent technology analyst Carmi Levy.
“In the digital age information is currency and hackers are stealing whatever they can to launch identity theft attacks, financial attacks, ruining our reputations — anything they can do to take us down.”
Within the fictional world of Mr. Robot, Elliot grapples with complex moral questions surrounding his skills and how he chooses to use them; but in reality, high-profile incidents of hacking have, in part, made celebrities of the real-life hackers behind the data breaches.
“It’s definitely a culture that is worth investigating and paying attention to, and one that is extraordinarily powerful,” said Slater, who revealed he can sometimes sympathize with hackers.
“On the one hand it’s great they’re taking on an organization that is corrupt and abusing people and taking advantage of people. That’s when I’m really supportive and feel like I can be a fan of an organization like that. But in the wrong hands it could be very dangerous.”
Mr. Robot premieres on Showcase at 10 p.m., part of parent company Shaw Communications.
Comments