In Berlin, young hacker Benjamin is sitting in an interrogation room after having walked into a hotel room full of bodies. He has information to offer about the cyber mafia, but he'll only accept to be interrogated by Hanne, the Head of the Cyber Division of Europol. Hanne accepts the job and asks Benjamin to start the story at the beginning, prompting him to go all the way back to his childhood.
As a kid, Benjamin already wants to do great things, but he is invisible to everyone around him. His father ran away when he was born, which is the same that happened to his grandmother; the only memory she has of her own father is the bullets that killed him during the war. Benjamin's mother ends things when he is eight, so his grandmother has to raise him.
Magic has always been a hobby of Benjamin, and when he grows into a teenager, he changes that passion into computers and hacking, which in his eyes is a form of magic too. He's incredibly good at what he does and on the internet he feels like he belongs, unlike in real life where he's an ignored loser. His hero eventually becomes a famous hacker known as MRX, and from him Benjamin learns to manipulate pharmacy systems into sending him Ritalin.
He also learns the three rules every hacker should follow: no system is safe, aim for the impossible, and have fun on both the internet and in real life. This isn't possible for Benjamin since he doesn't even have friends, only a lame pizza delivery job because he never went to college. One evening, he makes a delivery to a study group that includes Marie, the girl he's been crushing on since high school, but she doesn't recognize who he is.
She comes to his defense when a mistake on the pizzas is found and Benjamin tries to thank her with a superhero quote, but she considers him a weirdo and Benjamin leaves with his tail between his legs. Before he makes it outside though, he overhears Marie mentioning she wishes she could have the exam answers, so he decides to break into the university and hack the central server, that way he could impress her and get her to marry him. His hacking technique is flawless and the answers are acquired, but unfortunately he's caught by a security guard.
Since he has no criminal record, his only punishment is community service, and while cleaning the streets Benjamin gets to meet Max, a very charismatic man that is impressed by his hacking story and invites him to a party later. In the evening, Benjamin attends the party and discovers Marie is there too but doesn't dare talk to her. Max takes Benjamin to a private office and introduces him to software master Stephan and hardware freak Paul, who ask Benjamin to prove his hacking skills.
In a matter of seconds, Benjamin uses the office laptop to cut power in the whole neighborhood, earning the acceptance of the three men. This also gets the attention of the police, so Benjamin brings the power back before running away with his new friends because this isn't Max's house, they just sneaked into an open party. On their way out, they bump into Marie, who recognizes Benjamin as the delivery guy and gets dragged into running with them by Max.
Once they're far enough, Marie finally realizes Benjamin is the loser from high school and quickly goes away after admitting it's been an interesting evening. When Max returns home, he finds the door open and his grandmother gone. Luckily he finds her wandering the streets before she gets hurt, but this is a sign that her Alzheimer's has advanced enough for her to need a nursing home.
A few days later, Max finds Benjamin again and reminds him of MRX's rules, meaning Benjamin needs to start enjoying life. Max considers himself a social hacker because people are the most vulnerable part of any system and is just a matter of deceiving them. To prove it, he picks a donut shop ticket and an empty box from a trash can and uses them to convince the clerk that his order came empty.
Afterward, they meet with Paul and Stephan at a parking lot and they steal a van that they take to a hall where an important political conference is being held. Using fake IDs they made themselves, they sneak inside and Benjamin approaches the main laptop by using Max's advice on social hacking, pretending to be part of the organization team. Once the computer has been hacked, they run back to hide in the van and change the conference presentation for a humorous video of Hitler.
Many of the conference attendants notice the van outside and come after it, but the group gets to drive away without getting hurt, although the poor van does end up destroyed. Back in the present, Hanne is starting to wonder why he should believe everything Benjamin says, so he impresses her by mentioning lots of details about her private life that he's acquired through hacking before continuing with his story. After that successful prank, the group chooses Benjamin's house as their base of operation since he's living alone now.
Their prank is going viral on the internet and while Paul doesn't like the attention, Max loves it and wants to become as famous as MRX. Since Max likes to use a clown mask to post the videos online, Benjamin offers the name CLAY for the group, which stands for "Clowns Laughing At You". From then on, CLAY begins working on all kinds of hacking pranks, which go from changing the graphics on the financial news or the lights on the building of a big pharma company, always displaying rebellious messages.
They don't take anything seriously and stay awake until late thanks to Ritalin, and all this hard work soon makes CLAY famous both on the internet and the news in real life. One afternoon, while they're at the grocery store, the group bumps into Marie again, but Benjamin only manages to say hi to her. This frustrates Max, who quickly takes over the conversation and shows Benjamin how to talk to girls.
Max's mood is unpredictable, he can go from charming to furious in seconds, especially when he gets frustrated every time MRX doesn't acknowledge their success. It's around this time that the German government collaborates with Hanne, who comes over to work with agent Martin and his team. There's been a few important attacks on government systems lately that she thinks were made by FR13NDS, a dangerous Russian cyber mafia group that she's been chasing for three years.
Meanwhile the boys hack their way into a radio contest and win a Porsche that they ride through the city as a symbol of their power. They also use it to pick up some girls that they take to Benjamin's home for a night of alcohol and dancing. However Benjamin can't stop thinking of Marie and decides to look for her in the Porsche.
He finds her at a party and impresses her with the car, so after chatting a bit about her exams, Benjamin decides to be more like Max and kisses her. This isn't what Marie wanted and makes her leave, but when Benjamin tries to follow her, one of Marie's friends hits him and warns him to stay away from her. The next morning, the group is surprised to find a message from MRX making fun of them because in the documents Hanne presented to her colleagues, CLAY was mentioned as harmless and nothing to worry about.
This enrages Max, who is obsessed with trying to impress MRX and be accepted in the big leagues, so Benjamin comes up with an idea: they should hack the main building of BND, the German Central Intelligence. This is their hardest target yet but they start simply by following the truck that picked up the BND's trash, and once everything is in the dumpster, they dive in for anything useful. They end up finding a birthday card with a name on it, and with that name they find the e-mail address of a BND worker.
Through a process known as phishing, they send a fraudulent link pretending it's cute pictures, and when the employee clicks on it she grants them instant access to her computer. They can't access the main server from there, but they do get access to her files and since she's the one that makes the building access cards, CLAY orders four cards for themselves and manage to easily enter the BND building through the front door. Paul takes care of the main power and security alarms, Stephan deletes the security camera recordings, and Benjamin is in charge of doing the actual hacking, although he stays a little longer to do something extra.
As soon as they're gone the prank kicks in and every printer in the building prints dozens of pages with a cheeky message from CLAY. That night, the group goes to a club to celebrate their successful prank and comes across Marie again. Benjamin is finally feeling confident enough to make a better pass at her, but he gets a sour surprise when he finds her kissing Max.
Furious and heartbroken, Benjamin returns home only for Max to show up at his window minutes later wanting to talk. Too angry and betrayed to talk, Benjamin tells Max to go away and insults him, so Max snaps back by reminding him he's nothing without them before leaving. The idea of being nothing bothers Benjamin because he doesn't want to be a loser again, thus he reveals he stole classified data from the BND servers and gifts it to MRX to prove his skills.
The next day, after Hanne visits the BND building for clues about the latest prank, she receives awful news: the agent that had been infiltrating FR13NDS has been killed. Between this death, the prank, and the stolen information, Hanne's position is hanging by a thread. Meanwhile, Max, Paul, and Stephan show up at Benjamin's place, and a fight begins when Benjamin calls Max a manipulator.
Paul makes them stop when the latest news appears on tv, revealing that the double agent was killed because the information that was stolen from the BND servers revealed his name to FR13NDS, which MRX works for, and now CLAY is labeled as a terrorist group. The group freaks out and Stephan wants to leave while Max wants Benjamin to hand himself over to the police since it's all his fault, but Paul is against sacrificing anyone. Benjamin points out that they should deliver MRX and FR13NDS to the police instead, that way they can become invisible again.
Their discussion is suddenly interrupted by the doorbell: it's Marie, who is worried about Benjamin after he disappeared last night. She thinks he's acting weird right now too, and he takes that as an insult and proof she'll always see him as a freak, so he sends her away after accusing her of having come over only for Max and wishing he had never met her. CLAY agrees they should find MRX, but since they've become so paranoid they decide to use a public network at the local library, which allows Hanne's team to track their location.
Faster than expected, Benjamin is granted access to MRX's private channel, where MRX welcomes him officially into the Darknet and gifts him a file with the next job. Benjamin downloads the file just in time before Hanne arrives with a bunch of officers, managing to avoid them by hiding under the table. Failing to capture CLAY again after having them so close gets Hanne suspended.
The job MRX wants CLAY to do is to send malware dressed as real information, also known as Trojan, to the Europol system, and they accept to do it because they have a plan: they're going to hide a second Trojan inside the first one to make it reveal MRX's identity when he accesses the system after the mission is completed. While destroying their hard drives to get rid of all evidence, Max apologizes to Benjamin for everything and admits he doesn't even know anything about computers. Afterward, CLAY travels to The Hague to study Europol's headquarters, but none of their usual tricks work: the trash is dumped in a secured building, nobody falls for their phishing attempts, and all entrances are locked including the sewers, where Max gets his hand hurt by a nail.
The group is ready to give up, but when they're about to leave, Benjamin notices a person leaving the building and dropping their access card, which he steals. It's pretty risky to pull social hacking on a guard working for the government, so Benjamin waits for his friends to fall asleep in the hotel to try it, accepting this is his responsibility. By pretending to be the owner of the access card, Benjamin convinces the guard to give him two minutes inside to find a wallet he lost and manages to plant a box designed by Paul that grants him access to the BND network.
The next morning, Benjamin meets with MRX in his private channel to pass him the hidden Trojan, but MRX already knew about this trick and activates the camera on Benjamin's computer, exposing his face to the entire Darknet. Immediately a group of Russian mobsters finds him and chases him through the city; Benjamin only manages to save himself by hiding in the subway tunnels. Sadly his friends aren't as lucky, and when Benjamin returns to the hotel he finds them all dead.
After picking up the bullets, Benjamin calls the police and asks for Hanne, taking us back to the beginning. He wishes to be invisible again and not to fear for his life, so he's providing all this information in exchange for being accepted into the witness protection program. While Hanne calls her higher-ups to get the deal, Benjamin reminisces about her last evening spent with Marie, during which she thanked him for hacking the exam answers and they kissed, Benjamin also asked her to run away with him.
Martin comes over and tells Hanne not to trust Benjamin because his story has lots of holes, but Hanne makes him change his mind by convincing him that Benjamin is the only one that can bring down MRX and FRI3NDS, who are the real criminals. Benjamin is given a computer to work his magic, logging in to the Darknet pretending to be MRX and confessing he's a snitch working with law enforcement. The real MRX gets so desperate to clear his name that he forces his way in with unsafe methods, allowing Benjamin to expose him as a 19-year-old American guy from New York that immediately gets arrested by the FBI.
Delighted by this success, Hanne informs Benjamin that he'll get his new identity in a few hours while noticing a wound on his hand that looks like a nail did it. Remembering Martin's observation about all the holes in Benjamin's story, Hanne decides to investigate more, starting at Benjamin's house where she finds the empty box of Ritalin. Then she meets with Marie, who denies having seen Benjamin since he delivered the pizzas and calls him crazy.
Lastly, Hanne visits the doctor in charge of Benjamin's grandmother, who explains Benjamin grew up in unclear circumstances and his mother ended things for herself because she suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder, which is inheritable and medicine like Ritalin can make the symptoms stronger. After lab tests confirm that the bullets Benjamin brought from the hotel are the war memories of his grandmother and no bodies have been found, Hanne goes to see him again and explains she knows the truth: Max, Paul, and Stephan never existed, they're Benjamin's other personalities. All the hacking had been solo work, and the nail injury from the sewers has always been on his own hand.
This unsettles Benjamin, who refuses to accept he's like his mom and begins wondering who he really is, but Hanne interrupts him with bad news: people with mental disorders cannot be given witness protection. Overwhelmed by the fear of possibly getting killed by FR13NDS and the news of being mentally ill, Benjamin has a breakdown that makes Hanne pity him and give him one last chance. On their way to court, Hanne gives Benjamin access to a government computer and explains the witness protection program is a literal program he can hack, so he can set up his new identity after promising he'll never hack anything ever again.
Benjamin is legally released and after bleaching his hair, he leaves the country on a Scandlines ferry, where he meets with Marie, Max, Paul, and Stephan. It turns out he isn't mentally ill and this whole deal has been part of a plan by CLAY to socially hack Hanne. After he escaped the Russian mobsters, Benjamin told his friends he was a danger to work with, but they refused to forsake him and decided they needed to trick Hanne.
With the help of Marie's knowledge of the law, they learn people with mental disorders cannot be given witness protection and set up the whole story to have holes on purpose; they also gave Benjamin's hand a wound to match Max's and retrieved the bullets from his grandmother's box as a final touch. Benjamin didn't write his name under witness protection, he actually deleted all his information from the system and did the same for his friends, so now they can start a new life while being truly invisible. Meanwhile during Martin's press conference announcing their success, Hanne realizes she's been tricked but still smiles to herself.
She thinks Benjamin is right: the biggest fish have been caught and now she can have her position again.
![[PART 4] Hacker Deletes All Loans & Debts On Earth, Destroying The World’s Economy](https://img.youtube.com/vi/-FdhN1cgodU/maxresdefault.jpg)
