How realistic is it to become a cybersecurity specialist, and then moonlight as Mr. Robot?

The cyber security specialist part probably only requires a few online courses and certifications. The Mr. Robot part requires a rough childhood, intense mental illness, and of course, the most important thing, Kali Linux.

do you have a dissociative identity disorder? if so - pretty realistic I'd guess!

If not...well...

Do it.

Not possible unless you work for security contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton, which means you’re basically joining the NSA and depending on the competency of the managers, you may or may not get access to anything important for decades or when some shit like 9/11 happens.

Your average anti virus company probably isn’t going to have any access to clients’ sensitive components, unless you pull some fsociety shit and plant yourself deep into the servers.

You can also do the army intelligence route, but that’ll probably get you killed or tortured, or you’ll be doing the killing and torturing.

In real life cases, those who moonlight as criminals tend to sell bug bounties to companies while also selling them (or variants) to the black market. But nothing too extravagant that you have the Chinese and American deep states tailing you.

Elliot is also a huge lib and so is everyone else, maybe except Tyrell (despite how shitty he was as an individual, he was the only person who understood that revolution isn’t just LARPing as cyberpunks and was willing to go all the way), and the show is just a less shitty version of Evangelion.

But also Elliot’s success is very unrealistic. He somehow manages to social engineer his way through several obstacles despite constantly dressing up like a sketchy drug dealer or mass shooter. If you want to gain trust and secrets the easy way, you have to be personable and friendly. Otherwise you have to rely on your technological hacking skills.

tbh that sounds quite doable

To become a cyber security specialist is just a few certs, maybe a masters in Security and Network Admin.

Realistically your career path is likely just being a slightly paranoid sysadmin.

Becoming Mr. Robot is probably the more difficult part of that. Doing something cool like that, and getting away with it, is generally kinda difficult.