Saga R2 D2 the Master Hacker

R2, our beloved smart and loyal droid also seems to be an expert at hacking into almost any computer system. Whether it be the Death Star , Cloud City, a bunker on Endor he seems to have little problem breaking into systems that must have firewalls and other defenses against intrusion.

I suspect that much of this is the result of the fact that the OT was released in the 1970s and early 1980s when real world computers were far less advanced than today so it never really occurred to GL to think about this at the time.

Has anyone come across any in universe explanations for how an astromech repair droid gained such good hacking skills ? Anakin ,almost definably, tinkered a bit with R2 but he tended to focus on mechanical upgrades and not programing. Or did R2 get a software update during the Clone Wars ?

 

I was reading something recently (can't recall what it was) that said R2 had abilities beyond those of a normal astromech droid since his memory had never been wiped.

Edit - it might have been in the ROS Visual Dictionary.

 

He's just an extremely well-put-together little droid.

 

The Rebel Alliance was very resourceful, and had some great master hackers. They re-programmed R2 to be able to infiltrate any system. He's practically a walking Trojan!

 

I too suspect it's the result of ANH being made in the '70s. And, hellooooooo, network segmentation?



(Also, why does R2 need to rotate his plug while he's plugged in? )

I guess network security just isn't a thing in the Star Wars universe.

 

Palpatine's overconfidence always was his weakness. Plus I hear his password was Sith12345

 

Are you trying to hack my luggage?

 

when is the first time we canonically see Artoo "hack" something, is that in Episode II when he stops the lava thingie from falling on Padme? (Artoo does take lil'Annie's Naboo starfighter off autopilot but that seems like something an astromech should do) So by that time he's been Obi-Wan and Anakin's employ for a decade so he probably picked up mad haxorz skillz and since he never got memory wiped he just got better and better over the decades.

 

In the Last Jedi, all they needed was R2, not the "master codebreaker". sheesh.

 

Remember, he knew how to hack into Imperial networks, he never got programmed for hacking the FO stuff - he had been shut down all the time that Luke had gone missing.

 

good point but I would think R2 could be able to hack anything at by then.

 

Not if the FO had a semi-decent security team that took better precautions than the old Galactic Empire. I mean, even in our reality, cybersecurity is an evolving area. New stuff comes along constantly.

 

Ooops

 

I was always under the impression that those maintenance terminals were simply all access. The idea seems to be that droids aren’t closely monitored in their activities because they’re bound by their programming and can’t act of their own free will. Now critical systems like the main super weapon or apparently the tractor beam controls might be off limits but simple things like doors and manifests don’t seem to be that hard to access. Then again it takes some time to open the Bunker door on Endor so there is apparently some level of hacking required after all. Maybe he knows all of Palpatine’s security questions from his time on Naboo lol.

 

I just figured that, with all the memory and data R2 collected over the decades-which was never wiped-he simply was able to use that data to adapt and "learn" new skills that he could then integrate into his own circuitry. Kind of like how we all learn new skills and gain knowledge based on our experiences. I know it sounds a little "Star Trek-y," but I just figured that's why R2 could do so many more things than any other astromech droid.