SPY AGENT keygen

Riskware Definition

Riskware defines any legitimate programs that pose potential risks due to security vulnerability, software incompatibility, or legal violations. Typically, risks pertain to malicious cyber criminals exploiting programs that handle sensitive data or admin-level processes. Misuse of riskware is done to steal data, hijack computer systems, or cause disruptions.

These programs are not designed to be malicious — but they do have functions that can be used for malicious purposes. When used with bad intentions, the riskware program can be viewed as malware. This grey area of safety makes riskware an especially challenging threat to manage.

Unfortunately, cyber security protections cannot simply manage these threats for you. Antivirus solutions leave the decision-making in your hands to avoid damaging your system and taking away tools you’d like to keep. As a result, it’s up to you to be aware of the risks from software on your system.

In this article, we’ll help you understand the dangers of riskware.

Along the way, we will answer some common questions around this cyber threat:

• What does riskware do?
• How can malicious parties manipulate riskware?
• What are some typical types of riskware?
• How does riskware compromise your devices or safety?
• Are there ways you can spot riskware threats?
• How can you prevent riskware attacks and other problems?

To begin, let’s start with why riskware exists and explain how it works.

How Riskware Works

Riskware is best understood as programs offering access to special functions at the cost of security or legality.

Generally, a computer program will have some level of system access to function properly. Other software has to have more extensive access to data or functions of a computer device.

Software with deeper functionality can provide many valuable tools and features to endpoint users and technical support staff. Namely, some benefits might include user monitoring, personalization, and modifying applications to bypass tedious aspects of use.

However, risks come with the use of particularly sensitive data or unethical practices.

This risky software usually leaves systems or users vulnerable in one of two major ways.

1. Data and program exploits — due to vulnerability of program misuse or data breaches.
2. Legal risks — due to blatant abuse of privacy or illegal attempts to modify programs.

Riskware will typically use some of the following functions:

• Access to system kernel — data at the system’s core
• Access to vital system operation areas — registry, internet functionality protocols, etc.
• Access to data-gathering hardware — GPS, microphone, camera, etc.
• Modifying programs — changing code, disabling features, etc.

In many cases, riskware can only be explicitly defined as “compromised” or “misused” if it is truly being used in an illegal, unethical, or unintended way.

For example, weather apps use GPS location data for real-time weather updates at your current location. If exploited via a security vulnerability, malicious criminals could hijack your app and spy on your location. Since weather apps are not illegal or malicious but the abuse of them is — they could be considered by some as riskware.

Due to the wide variation in the types of riskware, levels of risk vary. Learning more about riskware types will help you gauge the scope of threats posed by your software.

Common Types of Riskware

An exhaustive list of riskware types is impractical since many programs can pose risks. That said, riskware malware has been known to often include the following types of programs:

1. Remote support utilities
2. Internet relay chat (IRC) clients
3. Dialer programs
4. File downloaders
5. Computer activity monitoring software
6. Password management utilities
7. Internet server services – such as FTP, web, proxy, and telnet
8. Auto-installers (on mobile platforms)

Rather than focus on specific types of riskware, it’s more effective to label them by the types of risks they introduce. Riskware can generally be grouped based on several types of risks they introduce to your computer and mobile devices.

Software that Creates Unneeded Vulnerabilities

Modifying software or using external programs to circumvent the original design may disable built-in safety features.

For example, fraudulently licensed copies of paid operating systems like Windows will not receive security patches. To keep the illegitimate license from being voided, this type of software disables all interaction with the software vendor’s servers. This prevents all updates, including fixes for security issues that the vendor has discovered.

Poorly designed software or outdated software can also create gaps in your device’s security. If it has not been coded and tested with security in mind, the program may make an easy target for hackers. Outdated software may no longer be supported with security fixes, also making an ideal target for malicious criminals.

Software that Violates Laws

Software that breaks the governing laws of your region can also be placed in the riskware category. However, many types of software tread a fine line of legality depending on their use.

Alias is an American actionthriller television series created by J. J. Abrams, which was broadcast on ABC for five seasons from September 30, 2001 to May 22, 2006.^[1] It stars Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow, a double agent for the Central Intelligence Agency posing as an operative for SD-6, a worldwide criminal and espionage organization.

The main theme of the series explores Sydney's obligation to hide her true career from her friends and family, even as she assumes multiple aliases to carry out her missions. This theme is most prevalent in the first two seasons of the show. A major plotline of the series is the search for and recovery of artifacts created by Milo Rambaldi, a fictitious Renaissance-era figure with similarities to both Leonardo da Vinci and Nostradamus. This plot, and some technologies used in the series, place Alias into the genre of science fiction.

The series was well received among critics and has been included in several "best of" lists, including the American Film Institute's top ten list for television programs in 2003.^[2] The show also received numerous awards and nominations.

Plot[edit]

Season 1: 2001–2002[edit]

Seven years before the first episode, Sydney Bristow was an undergraduate student. She was approached by someone who claimed to work for the Central Intelligence Agency and offered her a job as an agent. Having accepted, she was assigned to a unit called SD-6, which she was told was a secret "Black Ops" section of the CIA. She became a field agent. In the pilot, she tells her fiancé Danny Hecht (played by Edward Atterton) that she is a spy and as a result of her revealing SD-6's existence to an outsider, Danny is murdered by SD-6. She discovers that her father Jack Bristow is also an SD-6 agent and that SD-6 is not part of the CIA; instead, it is part of the Alliance of Twelve, an organization that is an enemy to the United States. Sydney decides to offer her services to the real CIA as a double agent. Having learned that her father is also a double agent for the CIA, she begins the long and arduous task of destroying SD-6 from the inside.

Major plotlines from season 1 include Sydney hiding her triple identity from her friends, both in her personal life and in her SD-6 job, Will Tippin's investigation into Danny's death, and the past activities of Sydney's mother. Sub-plots include Sydney's friendship with Francie, Francie's romantic relationship with Charlie, and Sydney's developing relationship with her CIA handler Michael Vaughn, of whom she is skeptical at first but grows to trust as her life becomes increasingly stressful. Season One focuses on the development of Sydney's character, and allows the audience to become familiar with her.

Season 2: 2002–2003[edit]

The second season begins with the introduction of Irina Derevko, Sydney's mother, who soon becomes a key character in the series. Midway through the second season, the series underwent a "reboot" of sorts with Sydney successfully destroying SD-6 and becoming a regular agent for the CIA, still in pursuit of former SD-6 leader Arvin Sloane, his associate Julian Sark, and the Rambaldi artifacts. Sydney's friends at SD-6, Marcus Dixon and Marshall Flinkman, are finally made aware of her dual identity and recruited into the CIA. Sydney also begins a romantic relationship with Vaughn, now that their relationship will not endanger them.

In the second half of the season, it is revealed that Francie Calfo, Sydney's best friend, was murdered and replaced by Allison Doren, a woman who was transfigured to look exactly like her. Allison was then in a position to spy on Sydney and Will. The end of the season saw Will possibly murdered and Sydney killing Allison and then falling unconscious. Sydney awakens two years later in Hong Kong, unable to remember the two years that have passed. She soon learns that her friends and the CIA believed her to be dead, and Vaughn found a new love and is now married.

Season 3: 2003–2004[edit]

The third season takes place two years after the events of season 2, with Sydney having been missing and presumed dead. DNA evidence in a badly burned body confirmed her death to her family and friends. The truth, however, is that Sydney was kidnapped by a terrorist organization called The Covenant, who tried to brainwash her into believing she was an assassin named Julia Thorne. Eventually Sydney voluntarily had her memories of the two years erased in an attempt to forget some of the deeds she was forced to undertake as Julia and to ensure that one of Rambaldi's most dangerous artifacts would never be found.

As Sydney recovers, she begins investigating her absence while reintegrating into the CIA. There she deals with the facts that Arvin Sloane had become a world-renowned humanitarian after being pardoned, and that Michael Vaughn had married NSC agent Lauren Reed. Reed is later revealed to be a member of the Covenant and a lover of Julian Sark. The National Security Council plays a role as a government organization that holds massive unsupervised power, with a Guantanamo-like detention facility, considerable influence over the CIA, and driven by questionable motives. Sydney later discovers that her mother and Arvin Sloane had a child together, the result of an affair between the two years earlier. She locates her half-sister, Nadia, and rescues her from being killed by the Covenant. At the end of the season, Sydney goes on a mission and encounters Lauren. After they battle, Lauren begins to taunt Sydney by saying she has information about her past. When Vaughn shows up, Sydney goes to him, leaving Lauren a chance to attack again. Vaughn shoots Lauren, and she dies, but before she does she gives Sydney the number of a security deposit box where she can find information about her past.

Season 4: 2005[edit]

Season 4 begins where season three ended: with Sydney uncovering a shocking, classified document called "S.A.B. 47 Project." It is explained that the document authorizes Jack Bristow to execute Sydney's mother, who mysteriously placed a contract on Sydney's life (this was apparently something of a retcon to cover for actress Lena Olin presumably not returning to the series). The first page refers to Sydney as the "active" subject of a "project" that began on April 17, 1975, a possible reference to Project Christmas, and also setting up Jack as either the real head of (or somehow involved with) the Covenant and/or being a descendant of Rambaldi or Rambaldi himself. Sydney joins a black ops division of the CIA, patterned after SD-6 and run by her one-time nemesis Arvin Sloane. The new division is dubbed "APO": Authorized Personnel Only. Members of APO (all hand-picked by Sloane) include almost all of the recurring characters from previous seasons, including Jack, Vaughn, Sydney's former partner (and third-season CIA director) Marcus Dixon, the computer and technical genius, Marshall Flinkman, and Vaughn's best friend Eric Weiss (brought in after having to be rescued by Sydney and Vaughn, who he previously believed to have left the CIA). Sloane's daughter and Sydney's half-sister Nadia Santos also eventually returns to join APO.

During the season, an Arvin Sloane impostor, jokingly identified as "Arvin Clone", acquired the technology to implement a Rambaldi-predicted apocalypse. Using Omnifam, the real Sloane had polluted the world's drinking water with chemicals that caused feelings of peace and tranquility. However, these feelings can be reversed with the Mueller device. The third Derevko sister, Elena, had built a giant Mueller device in Sovogda, Russia, which drove the residents to insanity. Sydney, Jack, Irina, Nadia, and Vaughn parachute in, destroy the device and kill Elena. But Nadia is injected with the tainted water and driven insane. She battles Sydney until Sloane is forced to shoot his own daughter. Nadia is later put into a coma while a cure is sought and Irina is allowed to escape. The season concludes with Sydney and Vaughn becoming engaged. On a trip to Santa Barbara, Vaughn confides a shocking secret: his name isn't really Michael Vaughn; their initial meeting wasn't coincidental; and that his allegiance may not be to the CIA. Before he can divulge any more information, another car crashes into theirs and the season ends.

Season 5: 2005–2006[edit]

As season five begins, Vaughn is abducted. Sydney learns that Vaughn is under suspicion of being a double agent and that the crash may have been a cover for his extraction. Vaughn later escapes and explains to Sydney that his real name is André Michaux. He reveals that he is investigating a secret operation known as Prophet Five, which at one point involved his father. During a mission in recovering a Prophet Five book, Sydney receives a phone call from her doctor with some untimely news – she's pregnant. (This development was created to deal with the actress' real-life pregnancy.^[3][4]) Vaughn is later shot, and apparently killed, on orders of Prophet Five operative Gordon Dean. Four months later, as Sydney continues to investigate Vaughn's murder, she works with an assassin and associate of his, Renée Rienne, in order to unearth the inner workings of Prophet Five, while at the same time trailing Dean and his criminal organization "The Shed", disguised as a black ops CIA division, very much like SD-6.

Two new members are added to APO to replace Weiss, who moved to Washington, D.C. for a new job, and Nadia, who is still in a coma. Thomas Grace is a brash young agent with unorthodox methods who often butts heads with Sydney. Rachel Gibson is a computer specialist who, like Sydney, was deceived into thinking she was working for the real CIA and briefly works as a mole within The Shed, as did Sydney within SD-6, before The Shed's destruction by Dean. Sydney's mom and dad help her deliver her baby girl while under attack in a high-rise in Vancouver, Canada, on a mission in season 5, episode 11: "Maternal Instinct." In an ongoing subplot, Arvin Sloane follows his own personal obsession, finding a cure for Nadia. Sloane is jailed for his actions during Season 4; however, he is released after the sentencing committee is manipulated by Dean. In exchange for his freedom, Sloane is now working for Dean as a mole within APO. Unaware of Sloane's new allegiance, Jack agrees to let Sloane rejoin APO and use its resources to seek a cure for his daughter.

With the series' end, it emerges that Sloane's ultimate goal is that of immortality, for which he sacrifices his daughter Nadia's life. However, he is trapped in Rambaldi's tomb by a critically wounded Jack, who sacrifices himself via a bomb to avenge all the pain Sloane caused Sydney over the years. Thus moments after Sloane achieves immortality he is trapped for all of eternity in a cave, where even Nadia's ghost deserts him. Sydney tracks Sark and the Horizon to Hong Kong, finding Irina. After a final battle between them, Irina plunges to her death. The series ends with a flash forward to several years in the future. Sydney and Vaughn are semi-retired and married, with a second child named Jack in honour of Sydney's father. Daughter Isabelle exhibits the same ability to complete the CIA test that marked Sydney's inborn skills to be an ideal agent at that age. After completing the puzzle, Sydney calls to her from outside, asking what she is doing. She responds by saying, "Nothing", as she casually knocks it over before running outside to join everyone.

Cast[edit]

Main characters[edit]

Alias featured an ensemble cast portraying the various people in Sydney's life. During the course of the series, every main character becomes involved in the world of espionage in some form or another.

• Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) daughter of Jack Bristow and Irina Derevko is a graduate student in English in Los Angeles. She moonlights as an operative for SD-6, which she initially believed was a black ops division of the CIA. Her fiancé was murdered in the pilot episode, and she then learned SD-6 is actually a branch of an international criminal organization known as the Alliance of Twelve. She then becomes a double agent for the real CIA. She would later become a member of APO, a black-ops division of the CIA. Sydney has 41 confirmed kills through the series.
• Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) was the head of SD-6 and APO, the show's main antagonist. Originally a loyal CIA officer, he is obsessed with the work of a 15th-century prophet, Milo Rambaldi. Though sometimes showing a genuine affection to the Bristows, he is always ready to hurt them and even kill them, and vice versa.
• Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan) was Sydney's CIA handler and later partner. He and Sydney share a mutual attraction, which eventually leads to a relationship. At the end of Season 4, it is revealed that it was not a coincidence that he met Sydney. Despite departing in season 5 as a series regular, Vartan's character was still credited as a main cast member in the first episode then special guest star in the latter part of the season.
• Will Tippin (Bradley Cooper) was a reporter for a local newspaper and is one of Sydney's two best friends. After the death of Sydney's fiancé, Will begins to investigate and eventually learns of the existence of SD-6. The discovery threatens his life but he later is recruited as an analyst for the CIA. He is put into witness protection at the beginning of Season three. The character makes occasional guest appearances in later seasons.
• Francie Calfo (Merrin Dungey) is Sydney's other best friend. When Season 1 begins, she is Sydney's roommate and fellow graduate student. In Season 2, she drops out of her graduate program and opens a restaurant in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. She remains largely unaware of the spy world until the middle of season two when she is killed and her identity is stolen by a doppelgänger. She (and her double) also dated Will during the second season.
• Marcus Dixon (Carl Lumbly) is Sydney's partner and friend at SD-6. He is the first one to notice signs of Sydney's betrayal, but dismisses his thoughts as foolish. During the two-year gap between the second and third season, he became a director at the CIA. However, he later resigns as he thinks the office job just is not for him. Dixon later joins APO.
• Marshall Flinkman (Kevin Weisman) worked in tech support at SD-6. He takes up the same role in the CIA and at APO. Even though he is not field-trained, he has participated in missions on several occasions.
• Jack Bristow (Victor Garber) is Sydney's father and also works for SD-6 but is actually a double agent for the CIA. In Season 1, his relationship with Sydney is strained. He was devastated by her mother's "death" and kept Sydney at arm's length for the rest of her childhood. As a CIA agent, he is exceptionally ruthless and skillful as evidenced by his CIA call signRaptor. After Sloane left, Jack took over as head of APO.
• Eric Weiss (Greg Grunberg) is a friend of Vaughn's and also a CIA agent. He later forges a relationship with Sydney's sister, Nadia. Against his over-the-top colleagues, he keeps a more human and gentle demeanor.
• Julian Sark (David Anders) is originally introduced as an operative working for Sydney's mother, but later proves to be an antagonist on his own. He has an instinct for self-preservation, thus making his loyalty flexible. During the third season he becomes the partner-in-crime of Vaughn's wife, Lauren, and eventually begins a relationship with her.
• Irina Derevko (Lena Olin) was a former Russian spy and is also the mother of Sydney. During the 1970s, she was sent to United States with the objective to seduce and marry Jack Bristow in order to steal information from him about a project he was working on. She also assassinated several CIA officers, including Vaughn's father.
• Lauren Reed (Melissa George) is a NSC liaison at the CIA, and marries Vaughn during the two-year gap between the second and third season. She is later revealed to be a mole sent by The Covenant to watch over Vaughn should Sydney contact him during her involvement with them and also to steal crucial information from the CIA.
• Nadia Santos (Mía Maestro) is Sydney's half-sister, and the daughter of Irina Derevko and Arvin Sloane. Introduced at the end of the third season, she is "The Passenger", a person who provides a direct line to Rambaldi. Prior to joining the CIA, she worked for the Argentine Intelligence.
• Rachel Gibson (Rachel Nichols) is a computer genius and introduced at the beginning of season five as an operative working for an organization that poses as the CIA known as The Shed. Unaware of this, she indirectly helps to apparently kill Michael Vaughn. After the truth is revealed to her, she joins the CIA in order to take down the organization that lied to her, much like Sydney did years before.
• Thomas Grace (Balthazar Getty) is an operative who is hired by Jack to join APO after the apparent death of Michael Vaughn. Years ago, his wife was shot and killed by an assassin who was intending to kill him.
• Renée Rienne (Élodie Bouchez) is an international terrorist known as "The Raven" who worked years with Vaughn in order to investigate a group of people known as Prophet Five. After Vaughn's assassination by the Prophet Five, she allies with Sydney to take down the group.
• Kelly Peyton (Amy Acker) is a friend and former colleague of Rachel's. She works for The Shed, and later directly for Prophet Five. Together with Derevko sisters, or maybe more, she is the most ruthless character of the show.

Recurring characters[edit]

Characters are listed in order of appearance on the show.

In addition, Alias also featured many other famous actors in roles ranging from single-episode guest appearances to semi-recurring characters, including Jonathan Banks as Frederick Brandon, Raymond J. Barry as Senator George Reed, Tobin Bell as Karl Dreyer, Peter Berg as Noah Hicks, David Carradine as Conrad, David Cronenberg as Dr. Brezzel, Faye Dunaway as Ariana Kane, Griffin Dunne as Leonid Lisenker, Vivica A. Fox as Toni Cummings, Ricky Gervais as Daniel Ryan,^[5]John Hannah as Martin Shepard, Rutger Hauer as Anthony Geiger, Ethan Hawke as James Lennox,^[6]Djimon Hounsou as Kazari Bomani, Richard Lewis as Mitchell Yaeger, Peggy Lipton as Olivia Reed, Sir Roger Moore as Edward Poole,^[7]Richard Roundtree as Thomas Brill, Jason Segel as Sam Hauser, Christian Slater as Neil Caplan, Quentin Tarantino as McKenas Cole, Justin Theroux as Simon Walker, Keone Young as Professor Choy, and Danny Trejo as Emilio Vargas.

Production and crew[edit]

Produced by Touchstone Television and Bad Robot Productions, film production primarily took place in the greater Los Angeles area. Studio shooting primarily took place at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, along with some outdoor shots near some of the studio's famous buildings (such as the original Animation Building or the ABC building, which appeared as a building in Hong Kong in the season 1 episode "The Coup"). Despite its worldwide locales, only one episode was ever filmed outside the Los Angeles region, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Themes[edit]

• Family: Describing the family aspects of the show, Garner stated that Alias is about "this woman and her father and trying to figure out what is always a complicated relationship in the context of life and death at work."^[8]
• Prophecy: A good deal of Alias revolves around the prophecies of Milo Rambaldi. The viewer is first introduced to a prophecy about a woman who will "render the greatest power unto utter desolation".^[9] Later, as Sloane completes part of the Rambaldi prophecy he has received his own prophetic message. The Rambaldi storyline seemed to come to a close with the conclusion of Elena Derevko's endgame at the end of season four, but the fifth season introduced its own "prophet" (also in pursuit of Rambaldi) in the form of the mysterious organization known as Prophet Five, which ended up being a reference to Rambaldi and the final part of his endgame, immortality, which had been set up in the first season, though this was only one part of his plan. The first part was world peace, which Elena Derevko perverted and attempted in Season 4.^[9]
• Trust and betrayal: Much of the first three seasons of the show revolved around issues of trust and betrayal. Most obvious is the betrayal of Sydney by SD-6 which starts the show. However, the show includes numerous other examples of betrayal including Irina's betrayal of Jack, Sloane's betrayal of the Alliance, Sydney's betrayal of SD-6 and Sydney's lying to her friends. The first season can be viewed as a story of Sydney learning to trust her father and the second season can be viewed as Sydney struggling with trust issues relating to her mother.^[9]
• Clandestine operations: The government agencies that Sydney works for are conducting secret operations in various countries regularly. The same applies of course to the mentioned illegal agencies which are battled against. Those clandestine operations deal with collecting the sought-after Rambaldi artifacts, but also with aspects like illegal arms trade or blackmailing. To further their objectives, the CIA or APO, respectively, arrest criminals from other countries and bring them to interrogation facilities of the CIA.^[9]

Credits, logos, and graphics[edit]

Alias is unusual for an American drama series in that the opening credits do not run until the end of the first long act, sometimes as late as 19 minutes into the episode. In some respects, this mimics the James Bond films, which likewise feature sometimes-lengthy pre-credits sequences. Depending on the demands of a particular episode, the credit sequence is occasionally dropped as the actor credits play over a scene; on those occasions, the series title does not appear on screen until the final fade out.

As the opening credits appear, the letters in the Alias reference flash in negative form one by one. The "S" is the last letter to appear, this time in permanent negative. In virtually every episode, the title of a city or town location will slowly zoom in, with one letter being shown in negative and a specific scene appearing within that negative. As it usually does with the "S" in the show title at the very start, this letter eventually takes up the entire screen and gives way to the scene itself.

The first three seasons used a minimalist credit sequence consisting only of the actors names appearing as the title Alias gradually forms in one corner of an otherwise black screen. For one frame in Seasons 1 and 3 during Victor Garber's credit, the Rambaldi "eye" symbol ( <o> ) flashes over the Alias title, accompanied by a short "whooshing" sound; In Season 2, it flashes during Lena Olin's credit. In season 5 it flashes during Balthazar Getty's credit.

For the fourth season, a shorter, flashier credit sequence was introduced that used a new, remixed version of the theme. As the cast names appeared, 52 images of Sydney in 47 various disguises appear in rapid succession, ending with a shot from the third-season premiere of her shooting a miniature grenade launcher.

For the fifth season, another credit sequence was designed, as the previous version was criticized for making it difficult to read the actors' names (since the eye was drawn to the many images of Jennifer Garner) and for focusing exclusively on Garner. Now for the first time, the actors are shown on screen as their names appear. The same remix of the theme music from the previous year is utilized. Also, the flashing of the letters when ALIAS is spelled out is actually in Morse code. The flashing translates to AGENT KANE (who was a character in the 2nd season played by Faye Dunaway). During the first half of the season, Elodie Bouchez appeared in the opening credits, but beginning with the episode "S.O.S." her credit was changed to a "special guest star" credit outside the opening sequence and Amy Acker was added to the opening credits in place of Bouchez.

Most episodes in the first season included a prologue narrated by Sydney Bristow, setting up the premise of the series. In the first half of season two this was replaced by a voiceover by Greg Grunberg (who plays Agent Weiss) and later in season 2 was dropped entirely.

Timeframe[edit]

The events of the first season of Alias begin in 2001, the same year the series first aired. A reference to Homeland security midway through the first season suggests that the series begins not long before, or not long after September 11. (The series premiered 19 days following the 9/11 attacks.) Though there was reference to such a part of government, the federal Homeland Security department was not established until 2003. (Aside from the Homeland Security reference, there is no explicit reference to 9/11 in the first season; however, there is a reference to Osama bin Laden and a reference to the War on Terror in two episodes in season 2.) In season 1, each episode covers roughly the events of one week in Sydney's life; thus, each episode is said to take place a week apart, although this pattern is not maintained throughout the series. In several episodes, references were made to actual real world events. For example, in one episode, Sydney suggested to Vaughn that they should catch an L.A. Kings game and that they'd be taking on the Islanders. This actual game took place roughly around the same time that the episode was broadcast on January 20, 2002.

The season 2 finale, which sees Sydney lose two years of her life, suggests that the series as of the start of season 3 takes place two years ahead of "real world" time. However, the series was not always consistent in maintaining this. For example, in season 3, episode 17 (airdate March 28, 2004), the date March 26, 2004, was shown on Lauren's event calendar. For most of the episodes in Season 3–4, the writers avoided mentioning any current calendar dates. The one fact that contradicted this was the date on the tombstone of the supposedly dead Irina Derevko, which, when calculated, suggests that the show was still running on "real world" time rather than 2 years in the future. However, a statement made by Sydney in the fifth-season premiere "Prophet 5" regarding the length of time since she first went undercover at SD-6 is in keeping with the established timeline. And finally, the timeline seems to jump back one more time. In the season 5 episode "Out of the Box", character Renee tells Dr. Desantis, the genetic double of her father from the cryogenic box, that it is currently 2006. This appears to be the first direct reference to the actual date of events. In another episode in the same season, a hockey magazine received by Sydney indicates the date to be November 2005. Also in season five, Nadia Santos' hospital admission bracelet following her recovery in the episode "30 Seconds" reads "04-23-05," and she mentions that it has almost been a year since she was hospitalized.

No time elapses between the end of season 1 and the beginning of season 2, and there are two years, one month, and several hours between seasons 2 and 3, 3 and 4, and 4 and 5 respectively (in addition, the events of the season 5 premiere episode take place over the course of 4 months). Given that there were roughly three to four months between the airing of the first few seasons, an 8-month interval between the broadcast of seasons 3 and 4, and a 4-month hiatus in the midst of season 5, by the final season, Alias would be only months ahead of real-world time, making the 2006 statement plausible in the timeline. The series finale makes a further jump forward of several years (c. 2014 based upon the age of Sydney's daughter).

Costumes, hair and wigs[edit]

The program was renowned for the vast array of hair styles adopted by the characters. Head Hair Designer Michael Reitz was nominated for Outstanding Hairstyling for a Series at the Emmys 5 years in a row (2002–2006); as well as 3 nominations and 1 win at the Hollywood Makeup Artist and Hair Stylist Guild Awards.

Notable contributions to the hair stylist team include:

• Karen Bartek (3 Emmy Award nominations)
• Julie Woods (1 Emmy Award nomination)
• Grace Hernandez (1 Emmy Award nomination)
• Kathrine Rees (1 Emmy Award nomination)
• Yesmin Osman (1 Emmy Award nomination)

Alias was also known for the variety of its costumes. USA Today wrote that the show "features the most outrageous array of sexy costumes since Cher went off the air".^[10] Laura Goldsmith was the costume designer^[10] and she received one Costume Designers Guild Award nomination.^[11]

Reception[edit]

Critical response[edit]

The New York edition of Time Out listed the show in their top 50 TV shows of the decade 2000 – 2009.^[12]Alias also appeared in UGO.com's list of Top 50 TV Shows of All Time.^[13] In 2010, Kristin dos Santos of E! ranked it number 4 on her list, "Top 20 TV Series of the Past 20 Years".^[14]

U.S. television ratings[edit]

Seasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of Alias on ABC.

Note: Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.

Although Alias was never considered a major "hit", its series run began during a time when the ABC television network was in decline, after Who Wants to Be a Millionaire saw its ratings plummet. In fact, Alias was one of the first shows to be placed in one of the old Who Wants to Be a Millionaire timeslots, which were Sunday nights at 9:00 p.m. in late 2001. For its first two seasons, family-friendly program The Wonderful World of Disney served as Alias' incompatible lead-in.^[20] Unlike many of the programs on ABC from 2001 to 2003, Alias was a series that garnered critical buzz,^{[citation needed]} a cult following,^{[citation needed]} and decent viewing numbers in the advertiser-friendly age 18–49 demographic. This led to ABC keeping the series on its schedule for 5 years.

The season 2 episode "Phase One" aired as a lead-out for Super Bowl XXXVII. Despite earning critical acclaim from USA Today,^[21] and achieving series-high ratings of 17.4 million viewers, it was unable to fully benefit from the post-Super Bowl timeslot due to ABC airing an 40-minute post-game show (unusually long even by Super Bowl standards), which pushed its start time past 11:00 p.m. ET.^[22] The episode retained only 19 percent of the Super Bowl audience, and has the dubious distinction of earning the lowest overall ratings for a program airing after a Super Bowl since at least 1987, and the lowest rating ever (8.3 rating) in the age 18–49 demographic for a post-Super Bowl program,^[22] until Elementary in 2013.^[23]

Its ratings peak was reached in its fourth season, when ABC moved the program to Wednesday, in a 9:00 p.m. time slot following another (yet more successful) J. J. Abrams' drama, Lost,^[20] while airing the season's episodes in (almost) consecutive weeks beginning with the January 5, 2005, 2-hour season premiere (watched by 15.8 million viewers;^[24] the second most-watched episode in the series) and ending in May 2005. However, the fourth season was the only season in which this near-consecutive-week schedule was used, and the increase in audience numbers was minimal, as it faced competition from the results broadcasts of season 4 of American Idol, then nearing the peak of its popularity.

Coming off its most-watched season, Alias was moved to Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. in the fall of 2005 by ABC in an effort to invigorate the network's weak Thursday-night lineup. However, the move proved unsuccessful for the series, receiving the lowest viewership in the show's history. Alias became another scripted show in the history of ABC to not survive more than a year in this timeslot since Mork & Mindy was cancelled in 1982.^[25] In November 2005, ABC announced that the current fifth season of Alias would be its final one.^[26][27] ABC then temporarily aired Alias on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. in December, receiving the lead-in support of Lost.^[28]

ABC gave the show a 4-month hiatus (to allow Jennifer Garner to give birth to her first child) and when it was brought back in April 2006, its new timeslot was Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. However, the viewer numbers remained dismal, culminating in a 2-hour series finale airing on Monday, May 22, 2006 (against the season finales of the hit dramas, Fox's 24 and CBS' CSI: Miami) which attracted 6.68 million viewers.^[29] In comparison, the first season averaged 9.7 million viewers.^[30]

Awards and nominations[edit]

Awards won[edit]

Golden Globe Awards

• Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama Jennifer Garner (2002)

Saturn Awards

• Best Network Television Series (2003)
• Best Actress in a Television Series Jennifer Garner (2003)
• Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series Victor Garber (2003)
• Cinescape Genre Female Face of the Future Melissa George (2004)

Screen Actors Guild Awards

• Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series Jennifer Garner (2004)

Awards nominated[edit]

Emmy Awards

• Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series Jennifer Garner (2002–2005)
• Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series Victor Garber (2002–2004)
• Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series (2002) J. J. Abrams
• Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series Lena Olin (2003)

Golden Globe Awards

• Best Television Series – Drama (2002)
• Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama Jennifer Garner (2003–2005)

Saturn Awards

Screen Actors Guild

• Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series Jennifer Garner (2003)

Cultural influence[edit]

In August 2003, the actual CIA enlisted Jennifer Garner to appear in a recruitment video, which would be shown at fairs and college campuses. A CIA officer said: "Jennifer and the character of Sydney Bristow both reflect a lot of the qualities we look for in new career field officers."^[31]

Parodies[edit]

The Alias production team has participated in at least two spoofs based upon the series and featuring cast members.

• The first was produced in 2002 for a segment of ABC's Monday Night Football in which Sydney (Jennifer Garner) is ordered by Sloane (Ron Rifkin) to infiltrate the locker room of the Washington RedskinsNFL team in order to steal the coach's playbook. Syd disguises herself as a cheerleader and distracts the "Hogettes", a group of Redskins fans, with a glass of beer before stealing the book. Upon returning to SD-6 headquarters, she is horrified to find Sloane wearing a pig mask and oinking. This skit was advertised as being included in the season 2 DVD box set, but it was dropped from the set at the last minute, presumably due to copyright reasons. Another specially filmed MNF segment featuring Garner was included in the season 3 DVD set, but this was not, strictly speaking, a spoof.
• Another faux Alias "episode" was produced for a 2003 TV special celebrating the 50th anniversary of ABC. Featuring most of the regular cast of the series, the skit began with Jack Bristow preparing Sydney and Vaughn for a mission, and informing them that they will have a new partner – Detective Columbo (Peter Falk). Columbo, in his usual eccentric behavior, proceeds to wreak havoc at CIA headquarters, accidentally shooting Vaughn with an anesthetic dart and volunteering to wear a skimpy bikini intended for Sydney during the mission. Columbo reveals that his mission is not to aid the CIA but rather to help Walt Disney Company/ABC head Michael Eisner better understand the show. His work completed, Columbo departs, leaving Jack to utter a confused, "Dear God, that was strange."

Other spoofs and humorous references include:

• In an episode of Bradley Cooper's sitcom Kitchen Confidential, Michael Vartan guests as a rival French chef. Cooper's character makes a quip along the lines of, "it's almost like we used to work together".
• MADtv created a season 1 spoof.
• In episode 23 of Robot Chicken, the series is re-imagined with the part of Sydney being played by a killer whale ("Whalias"), complete with red hair and lipstick. The sketch features Sydney undercover in a glamorous party at SeaWorld, pretending to be a prize-winning cellist. A fight scene occurs in typical Alias style.
• In episode 57 of Kim Possible the characters (due to the use of a Pan-Dimension Vortex) find themselves appearing in various fictional television shows similar to the main plot point of the movie The Last Action Hero. Each of these television shows is clearly a spoof of a real world television show. During one such "appearance", Kim lands in a night club where she is confronted by a character with bright red hair. The character orders Kim to "Tell me what I want to know." In response, Kim addresses the character as "Miss Tries Too Hard." and adds "Nice Wig." A brief Alias-like hand-to-hand fight sequence then ensues. The end of the segment involves characters talking about "The Device." In the context of the episode, the device is "The Pan-Dimensional Vortex Inducer", but asking about a "device" would also track with the plot of many Alias episodes.

Reboot[edit]

In May 2010, E! Online'sKristin dos Santos reported that ABC was toying with the idea of rebooting Alias, but getting rid of the mythological Rambaldi elements to make the storylines more accessible for a mainstream audience.^[32] Subsequently, Entertainment Weekly columnist Michael Ausiello confirmed that ABC was in the early stages of developing a reboot, but that the potential series probably would not make it beyond the development phase.^[33]

Merchandise[edit]

Soundtracks[edit]

Varèse Sarabande

The is a helper program that keeps track of user's identity keys and their passphrases. The agent can then use the keys to log into other servers without having the user type in a password or passphrase again. This implements a form of single sign-on (SSO).

The SSH agent is used for SSH public key authentication. It uses SSH keys for authentication. Users can create SSH keys using the ssh-keygen command and install them on servers using the ssh-copy-id command.

Starting

On most Linux systems, is automatically configured and run at login, and no additional actions are required to use it. However, an SSH key must still be created for the user.

If is not automatically started at login, it can be started manually with the command

The command outputs commands to set certain environment variables in the shell. The commands output by default are compatible with and . To output commands for the C-shell ( or ), add .

The easiest way to check is to check the value of the environment variable. If it is set, then the agent is presumably running. It can be checked by

Also, to allow key-based logins to servers, public key authentication must be enabled on the server. In OpenSSH it is enabled by default. It is controlled by the option in sshd_config.

Adding SSH keys to the Agent

By default, the agent uses SSH keys stored in the directory under the user's home directory. The ssh-add command is used for adding identities to the agent. In the simplest form, just run if without argument to add the default files , , , , and . Otherwise, give it the name of the private key file to add as an argument.

The following command will list private keys currently accessible to the agent:

SSH Agent Forwarding

Furthermore, the SSH protocol implements agent forwarding, a mechanism whereby an SSH client allows an SSH server to use the local on the server the user logs into, as if it was local there. When the user uses an SSH client on the server, the client will try to contact the agent implemented by the server, and the server then forwards the request to the client that originally contacted the server, which further forwards it to the local agent. This way, and agent forwarding implement single sign-on that can progress transitively.

A wonderful feature of the single sign-on provided by SSH is that it works independent of organizational boundaries and geography. You can easily implement single sign-on to servers on the other side of the world, in cloud services, or at customer premises. No central coordination is needed.

To use agent forwarding, the option must be set to on the client (see ssh_config) and the option must be set to on the server (see sshd_config).

Running

The command is usually run from initialization scripts at login, such as from on Linux Mint LMDE. Alternatively, any user can configure it to be run from, e.g., the user's file or .

The agent outputs environment variable settings that this puts in place. The environment variable is set to point to a unix-domain socket used for communicating with the agent, and the environment variable is set to the process ID of the agent. To get the environment variables set in the user's shell environment, the agent is usually run with something like the following:

The command accepts the following options:

-a bind_address

Forces to bind the Unix domain socket to the given file path, instead of the default socket.

-c

Forces generation of C-shell commands on stdout. By default the shell is automatically detected.

-d

Enables debug mode.

-E fingerprint_hash Specifies which algorithm to use for generating SSH key fingerprints. Valid values include and .

-k

Kills the currently running agent.

-s

Forces generation of Bourne shell () commands on stdout. By default the shell is automatically detected.

-t life

Specifies a maximum number of seconds that identities are kept in the agent. The value is in seconds, but can be suffixed by for minutes, for hours, for days, and for weeks. Without this option, the agent keeps the keys in its memory as long as it runs. This can be overridden when running the ssh-add command.

Further Reading