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Mr. Robot Revisited - Season 2

September 14, 2016

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Last year, I was one of the many viewers transfixed with Mr. Robot, USA networks' hybrid IT-science-thriller show. Both the realism of the character Elliot Anderson as coder/hacker/vigilante and the controlled panic of how cyber security teams defend against attacks.

Recently, I was fortunate to be interviewed by Tom's IT Pro regarding season 2 of the show. 

Read on to see, "What Can Mr. Robot Teach IT Pro's?"

Last year, we wrote our Mr. Robot season 1 blog on Lesson's Learned from Mr. Robot: Advanced Persistent Threats we discussed the DDoS attack against Evil Corp and Elliot's Achilles heel of curiosity and not deleting the "Don't delete me" file that opened the backdoor for the attackers to return.

Writer Sam Dunn and the good folks at Tom's IT Pro took another look at Mr. Robot - season 2, but from the perspective of "What Mr. Robot Can Teach IT Professionals." 

Please, click on over to their site and give it a read. Warning: Spoilers in article!

Disclosure: 
I'm a binge watcher and am not at the last episode of season 2. My preference is to tap a cold one and dive into about three episodes at a time. 

 

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Heartbeats Packets Inside the Bypass TAP

If the inline security tool goes off-line, the TAP will bypass the tool and automatically keep the link flowing. The Bypass TAP does this by sending heartbeat packets to the inline security tool. As long as the inline security tool is on-line, the heartbeat packets will be returned to the TAP, and the link traffic will continue to flow through the inline security tool.

If the heartbeat packets are not returned to the TAP (indicating that the inline security tool has gone off-line), the TAP will automatically 'bypass' the inline security tool and keep the link traffic flowing. The TAP also removes the heartbeat packets before sending the network traffic back onto the critical link.

While the TAP is in bypass mode, it continues to send heartbeat packets out to the inline security tool so that once the tool is back on-line, it will begin returning the heartbeat packets back to the TAP indicating that the tool is ready to go back to work. The TAP will then direct the network traffic back through the inline security tool along with the heartbeat packets placing the tool back inline.

Some of you may have noticed a flaw in the logic behind this solution!  You say, “What if the TAP should fail because it is also in-line? Then the link will also fail!” The TAP would now be considered a point of failure. That is a good catch – but in our blog on Bypass vs. Failsafe, I explained that if a TAP were to fail or lose power, it must provide failsafe protection to the link it is attached to. So our network TAP will go into Failsafe mode keeping the link flowing.

Glossary

  1. Single point of failure: a risk to an IT network if one part of the system brings down a larger part of the entire system.

  2. Heartbeat packet: a soft detection technology that monitors the health of inline appliances. Read the heartbeat packet blog here.

  3. Critical link: the connection between two or more network devices or appliances that if the connection fails then the network is disrupted.

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