Thread by @JoeUchill

I AM GOING TO WATCH CSI CYBER.

There's two seasons of this? Jeepers.

Amazon knows something.

As you already know, I found out earlier this year I owned the premier episode. So I'm starting with episode two.

https://twitter.com/JoeUchill/status/1321215036975648769

Right away, four FBI agents take an airplane from Washington D.C. to Richmond, Virginia.

They've hacked the federal budget.

CMND:\CRASH is the name of the episode.
Apologies to Amazon.

So the premise of the episode is that a roller coaster crashed, and the FBI's first theory is that a hacker has done this for fun.

In 2015, when this was shot, this actually sort of seemed like a thing to be afraid of. In 2015, the ransomware market was still emerging; crypto miners didn't start up until 2017.

There's a limited pool of motives for attacks on roller coasters.

If you look at the list of things the FBI were doing in 2015 - or even now - and the list of things that create neat visuals, murders, and domestic arrests at the end of an episode...they aren't very similar lists.

"You ready for the scariest part? A single board computer can be found anywhere for about $50."

We just jumped from finding a raspberry pi to
"I believe our [suspect] as part of a deviant peer group on a forum that encourages violent urges."

The FBI has now flown to Boston to stop a subway crash. The FBI is hacking the subway, writing bespoke software to stop the train.
No one has suggested just pulling the electricity.

They have found the malicious raspberry pi.

They figured out which one it was because it was the one with the bright blue LED.

Episode 3 starts with someone hacking Uber to pick up a government contractor outside his office to murder him.

That's a really complicated way to murder someone when you already know where they are.

Now they're arguing about whether or not rideshare is good.

Again, the rideshare firm was hacked. The murder wasn't really within scope.

"He got in through a simple phishing attack?"

(governments use simple phishing attacks. they're pretty great!)

"I checked out [rideshare firms] firewall. It stopped 15 (!) attacks in the past two weeks!"

They - the FBI cyber crimes unit - are now arguing how to investigate a malicious USB drive, because if they plug it into their network, it will hack them.

FBI Agent: "We just hacked into the Boston SCADA system and we now have complete control over the Boston traffic system."

The FBI has changed all the lights in Boston green, because "that causes the most chaos."

"What happened to your son was tragic. But killing random, innocent people is no solution."

It sounds funnier when Roseanna Arquette said it.

James Van Der Beek plays a guy named Elijah Mundo.

No joke here. That's a boss name.

He should end every episode by saying "You just got saved by Agent Elijah Mundo."

"Sir, this is a..."
"YOU JUST TOOK A FROSTY ORDER FROM AGENT ELIJAH MUNDO."

Episode 4 begins with someone flickering on and off all the smart devices in someone's house. And then... arson.

A normal arsonist would cut straight to the murder. "If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets."

The FBI just recommended a printer company recall their product even if they could update the firmware to remove a vulnerability.

If you’re wondering what this show is like, here’s Patricia Arquette’s interview strategy (of not having a suspect talk while spouting buzzwords)

So far, we've heard that two different FBI agents (the director; the reformed hacker) drive Teslas.

That's a lot of Teslas for any branch of government.

Comey earned a salary of $172,000 a year.

Episode 5 begins with a bomb with a timer that counts up instead of down. Like soccer.

I assume the bomber is European.

I'm not sure why you'd call a cyber team to deal with this.

Maybe it's a very quiet day on the internet.

I guess they just send the FBI's elite cyber unit to the scene of every crime, just to be sure? They're like the fire department.

The bomb was set to detonate when it made a certain number of Bluetooth connections - it isn't a soccer thing. I'm still not sure this is a cyber crime, so much as it is a stupid crime.

The killer has a website. Either they catch him, or Wix's ad strategy is going to get dark.

The website will detonate a bomb when 1,000,000 people log on. This is also the plot of Untraceable, which I liked.

The FBI can't figure out how to take down the website. They have not tried calling the host or sink holing it.

The only solution they've come up with is to hack the website. I really think they should call the host.

"Even the malware's got malware"

The characters don't have personalities, but Bow Wow always wears a vest.

As I told my mom in middle school, me wearing a vest was a lot like me having a personality.

"I knew that encryption coding on the internet relay chat looked familiar!"

Just play the hits!

The bomber is going to take out an EDM night.

I mean hurry, but don't super hurry.

After a lot of panicking, it occurs to the FBI, that if the tablet connected to the bomb has no battery, the bomb won't explode. That's..technologically debatable?

But rather than remove the battery, they hook the tablet battery up to an SUV to drain it to zero.

The best part of the show is the introduction, where suddenly the video drops out and the narrator drops to a whisper to read this on the screen:

This is a show where someone hacked a rollercoaster to cause a crash.

How many people do they think own rollercoasters?

Surely, my rollercoaster is safe from cyber attacks.

Episode 6.
Not to diminish the importance of the work of the hardworking agents in an important division, but the FBI Cyber office seems like a weird place to put the "Fallen but not Forgotten" wall.

"They probably discovered a vulnerable protocol and used a rootkit to gain access."
"Nah, that's doing it the hard way. There's a known exploit in the authentication credential."

The agents were told that a hotel wifi system was hacked and given no other information.

The set up for this episode is that a woman was murdered in a hotel and the murderer remotely hacked the hotel to erased the surveillance footage to cover it up...

...while leaving the woman's body in the hotel room with the radio on, loud enough to wake other guests.

The murderer also tried to flush the victim's cell phone down the toilet, which is weird for hackers or murderers, or anybody else, really.

The FBI has now also hacked the hotel.

The FBI in this show is jerks.

The hacker worked out of a bar called "Evade," with a big sign that says "Evade," and didn't use an intermediary server.

This show has had at least one bearded suspect in each episode.

And no (?) female suspects I can remember.

I'm not saying having David Arquette instead of Patricia Arquette would be a better show. But it'd certainly be a more interesting show.

Shouldn't this show just be C.S.-YBER?

Now the FBI has tracked someone who was tracking someone else to the bar named "Evade."

It says Evade in capital letters all over the place.

Elijah Mundo just made a daring save, catching someone jumping off a roof.

He did not say the line.

https://twitter.com/JoeUchill/status/1342893018618224645

That wasn't the tweet I meant to cut and paste. I'm going to leave it, see how this plays out.

Episode 7: The FBI cyber division is investigating a...runaway teenage girl?

Their definition of cyber is broad.

"Does your son, Aaron, know her?"

In the universe of this show, you need to remind someone who their son is.

Hey! It's a cyberbullying episode.

The cyberbullies bought a web domain for the bullying. GDPR isn't in effect for another few years (show is in 2015).

This should be a very short show.

It is not a very short show. Once again, CSI Cyber doesn't call the web host and just ask.

This is actually kind of fascinating because shows usually make things cyber-easier than they are rather than cyber-more-difficult.

Episode 8: A killer has been posting on a victim's social media in order to throw the police off the scent.

Only, no one reported the victim missing at any point. So the killer overthought it a little.

One weird thing with CSI:CYBER is, throughout the show, wherever in the country the body is, they use comedically large bugs.

I'm not sure if it's a metaphor. Like, if you get cyber-murdered, you get extremely murdered. You are so murdered that the bugs are huge.

[The FBI notices that the killer has tattooed "765" on the victim, with strikes through 7 and 6]
"7 and 6 are crossed out. Could be a numerical progression."

I'd be fascinated about the explanation where the three numbers are not a numerical progression.
KILLER: "She just kept changing her mind about what number she wanted."

The FBI has noticed that the victim is 5'2". They are now discussing whether this could be a serial case based a 1926 Gene Austin song with the lyrics "5'2"/ with eyes of blue."

They are playing the song.

THIS EPISODE HAS A BONUS ARQUETTE.

Rosanna Arquette is in this episode. It does not appear to be set up for an Arquette fight of any sort.

It took eight episodes, but someone has finally said "Enhance the image!"

The killer stalks his victims wearing a mask designed to deter facial recognition.

In other words: a mask. Literally any mask.

https://twitter.com/JoeUchill/status/1342959734358487040

Maskmaker: "We sold out at Black Hat."

This episode has 12 female characters, 11 of whom are victims of traumatic crime (2 are dead), stemming from three different criminals.

The other one is the manic pixie FBI hacker named Raven.

This is not the easiest episode to make jokes about.

I'm hoping for a really jarring tonal shift back to technobabble.

Like, a scene that goes:
DOCTOR: The healing process will be long and hard, but if we work together....
CSI CYBER: WE'VE CRACKED THE ENCRYPTION ON THIS TOASTER

VICTIM: I hated my sister for leaving me with my father, but I've grown to....
CSI CYBER: WE HAVE PUT A FIREWALL AROUND STEVE. NO ONE IS HACKING STEVE.

Episode 9: The FBI Cyber team is...investigating the loss of inflight wifi on nine passenger aircraft.

No, really.

And it's super intense.

The planes landed safely. And they arrested a ton of people.

This was an elaborate credit card cashout scheme. A hacker DOSed the plane so no one on it would know he was maxing out their credit cards.

This seems like a ton of work for 80 credit cards.

The hacker is famous. And "he's only surfaced twice. Both times at DEF CON in Vegas."

This has turned from a credit card heist to an extremely personalized ransomware case.

And now there's murder.

This is going to be one of those TV episodes that looks like a criminal is playing 4D chess until you try to describe to someone who hasn't seen the episode what the original plan was supposed to be.

I have spent the last fifteen minutes trying to type out what that plan is into a tweet. Because every time I finish, there's just more diversions that have unfolded, and I need to start again.

I'm just going to throw some elements out there, and you can come up with a cohesive master plan that works for you.
VECTORS: Juice jacking, denial of service, blunt force trauma
DIVERSIONS: Credit card theft, downing airplane wifi, ransomware, fake purchases to frame patsies

I'm not sure what the endgame is supposed to be. But I'm confident this is all covering for something else, like fixing the score of a basketball game or someone needed cover for being late for work.

Rather than type it out each time, for expediency, I'll just mention each time there's a new layer to the send the cops running in circles plan.

Got one.

Got one.

James Van Der Beek is giving an encouraging, half-time talk speech to someone about how they should give up.

That intro...

I'm going to start every story I write, from here on out, with "Another super juicy scandal for us to sink our teeth into today."

I'm pretty sure this is a new diversion, by the way. So that's three since I gave up trying to summarize what the plan is.

The plan turns out to be: "I was bored."

They are now discussing how hacking laws are too lenient.

Episode 10 opens with someone who has been poisoned.

But has he been cyber poisoned? Only time will tell.

This episode starts with a malvertising campaign diverting people from a legit online pharmacy to a fake one that sends oxycontin instead of your prescription. To murder you.

This is a mass murder scheme that requires someone to go to the store and buy postage.

The pills have been designed to look identical to real prescriptions. There's a lot of backroom work going into this scheme.

I hope it's murder. There's no way that this is less work than a comparably paying job.

It really is remarkable how many hit Who songs can be repurposed for crime shows.

This episode hinges on the FBI being able to access DOT's store of automotive tracking data.

MUNDO: One problem. DOT only keeps the problem for 20 minutes.

NOT MUNDO: (Laughing) You really believe that?

I wonder if they'll remember inventing this terrifyingly useful (and invasive) crime-solving tool in future episodes.

This episode has a dramatic, real time sequence where the FBI watch a guy lose intentionally at online poker to launder funds.

This is the type of thing you could do with logs.

The online poker site has given them access to everything but the banking data.

The FBI just decided to "infect the firewall with a virus" to get even more access.

Episode 11 is titled GHOST IN THE MACHINE.

There better be real ghosts.

Patricia Arquette starred in MEDIUM.
Peter McNichol starred in GHOSTBUSTERS II.

All I'm saying is, if the CSI franchise was going to add some ghosts, these are the trained professionals.

So far, we've seen a kid accidentally shoot himself with a nailgun while, it looks like, geocaching.

At the 3 minute mark, that's a maximum of one cyber and one ghost.

Cut to ELIJAH MUNDO burning eggs in the kitchen while making out with his wife.

THIS IS THE KIND OF MUNDO ACTION THE FANS WANT.

Okay, we're being told the powertool was a handgun in disguise.

The gun was bought on a black market website. Keep in mind, this was just after the Silk Road takedown, so it's at least 50% scarier in the show's era.

The FBI has an epiphany that the kid may have done the criming on his video game console.

This was four years before Kim Dotcom infamously said

https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1117308086362890241

This being a legit mode of secret communication is a pervasive myth.

It is worth noting that the dead kid's handle is ghost. He's a double ghost.

Around that time, news outlets were promoting the idea that terrorists used in-game communications because they were more private than encrypted chat apps.

I can't speak to what terrorists do. But here's CSI:CYBER era Duo debunking the security claim. duo.com/decipher/debun…

NOT MUNDO: "The online gaming world is a haven for predators, pedophiles, sex offenders and radicalizers."

The dark web gun broker only operates in Chicago. Which seems limiting.

A teenager is trying to outrun Elijah Mundo on the rooftops.

In his defense, James Van Der Beek identified himself as "FBI," and not as "Elijah Mundo."

It's a name that paralyzes criminals with fear and wonderment.

This is an image of James Van Der Beek wearing a bulletproof vest that says "FBI" in bright yellow letters, asking someone else wearing a bulletproof vest with "FBI" in bright yellow letters if the suspect might have made them.

Episode 11 is titled "Bit by Bit."

I really, really hope it's paced a little better than that.

FBI CYBER: Hey, Steve? We got another. It's zero.

This episode appears to be the one I didn't know I was waiting for: Someone has hacked the power grid.

Power grid guy: You sure this is a case for the FBI?

I'm not sure why the answer isn't "I mean, who did you want?"

Or they should just say no and leave.

This takes place in darkened Detroit, where they are worried about rioting.

If you'll remember, this is the premise of The Crow.

"SCADA systems like this should be impenetrable, but someone remotely hacked in."

"A hacker's goal is usually to affect as many people as possible."

The power outage was to conceal a bitcoin heist. This is a 2015 cyber-Yahtzee.

"Most people don't go to a bar after they find out their brother is murdered."

I dunno. That seems like a valid move.

"These bounty hunters specialize in bitcoin retrieval."

"We embedded a decoy passkey [on the computer], one infected with our own malicious code."

Episode 13.

This is the end of the season.

Then there is another season.

Time is a flat circle.

In episode 13, someone has hacked an Arquette.

In a bafflingly reckless movie, Patricia Arquette intentionally spreads the RAT through the FBI network to open up a line of communication with the hacker.

The brunt of this episode is exposition on Patricia Arquette's backstory. She's the character I'm least emotionally attached to.

Backstory Patricia Arquette has an incredible wig.

It's as if they wanted her to look like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, but grossly overestimated how big the wig had to be.

If you want to imagine my past, imagine me in that wig.

And, with that wig, the season has ended.

Season II to come.