Hacking as Seen on TV
Photo Andres Hernandez
By Charles Warner & Patricia Miller
From the big screen to the real world, Ralph Echemendia, also known as “The Ethical Hacker,” distinguishes fact from fiction in the realm of cybersecurity.
Hacker and multimedia magnate Ralph Echemendia has been cracking code for over twenty years. His versatility and specialized insight into the world of cybersecurity made him an ideal choice to serve as technical supervisor for the Oliver Stone films Snowden and Savages. Echemendia’s expertise was also pivotal to the development of the award-winning TV series Mr. Robot, which he found time for when he wasn’t training security experts at the nation’s top tech companies, such as NASA, Google, and Microsoft. In this exclusive interview, “The Ethical Hacker” reveals his biggest concerns about consumer cyber safety, why apathy is dangerous, and how to prevent corporate spies from hacking your mobile devices. Innovation & Tech Today: After working on movies and films such as Savages and Mr.
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INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | SUMMER 2018
Robot, how do hacking and cybersecurity in mainstream media compare to the real world? Ralph Echemendia: There has been a great deal of attention paid to the fact that we want to make it realistic as much as possible while still entertaining. It’s really about the storytelling, the computers are just sort of the set. Beyond even the press and the media, movies are really the biggest communicator on a global level, so people look at that and they tend to go home thinking they now know something, so it’s very important that it’s done correctly. In the real world, it’s a lot different in the sense that the narrative is different, because it’s not about storytelling. It’s about operations and it’s about making money. It’s about all these different things that really don’t apply to what
