Thread by @JoeUchill

I AM GOING TO CONTINUE TO WATCH CSI:CYBER

https://twitter.com/JoeUchill/status/1342864723482697730

By the end of the first season, over the course of several investigations, the FBI had hacked into Boston's transportation system, an online casino that was cooperating with the investigation and the camera on a teenage girl's home computer.

Where will they CSI:CYBER next?

Interesting notes from the intro to episode 1:
-Peter McNichol (Ghostbusters 2) has been replaced by Ted Danson.
-They've taken out the part where someone whispers "It can happen to you."

Episode 1 starts with the FBI racing radio-controlled cockroaches.

"Found blood and tissue in the [phone's] shattered screen and housing."

"Definitely suggests violence."

Within the first 10 minutes of the episode, Patricia Arquette suggests that a case may not be right for the FBI Cyber team, points out that hacking a target seems like a little much for petty larceny and smiles.

She did none of those things in Season 1.

It's like a completely different show.

They're using traditional forensics in addition to computer forensics!

If this show doesn't get dumber, quick, my plans for the day might change.

Rather than focus on cybercrime vectors like season one, they seem to be focusing on using IoT device telemetry to aggregate evidence. Which seems...prudent.

So far, in this episode, they've used a TV-generic-brand Roomba, an XBox Kinnect, a Barbie that chats and a GPS enabled golf club.

The GPS doll instructed a girl to help the hacker break into a house.

The CSI: CYBER FBI suspects this means this is a proof of concept to extort the dollmaker.

It's a bug bounty murder.

The trail of bodies left by @caseyjohnellis is immeasurable.

@k8em0 once stabbed a guy to prove the danger of cross-site scripting.

Bow Wow is not wearing a vest in this episode.

This is a much better episode from a screenwriting and technology perspective than season 1 had.

But Bow Wow without a vest is ignoring what the fans want.

It'd be like changing the name of great-name-having character Elijah Mundo.

In defense of the hacker in this episode, when this was shot in 2016, IoT devices were still skittish about having responsible disclosure programs, let alone bounty programs.

Clearly, murder was the only option.

Episode 1 of season two ends with FBI Cyber talking about the top cybercriminal in the world, whose hacker name is "Python."

I'm assuming he's a script kiddy.

I should have made the joke more obvious.

I'm assuming he's a *script* kiddy, a term whose traditional meaning of hacker using novice, commodity tools is turned upsidedown by the knowledge Python is a scripting language.

Season 2, episode 2, begins with reformed hacker Raven drinking at a bar, using a Tinder-like app.

It's the most time she's had on the screen so far.

She's now getting swatted.

Unrelatedly, they're investigating a revenge porn site.

And, as I typed that, Raven's friend is now a victim of several malicious, hacks from a jilted guy at a bar.

On the plus side, they've given Elijah Mundo his own office.

So, the premise of this episode is that men who are terrible get investigated by the FBI, while the perfect man gets a private office.

It's an episode with a message.

As I typed that, the hacker was murdered. It's a message that stands up.

They haven't given Raven enough of a personality in previous episodes for me to evaluate how Raven her actions in this episode are.

The scale would have been between "That's not really Raven" and "That's so Raven."

The stalker hacker is named Holden.

Serves him right.

Raven just prevented her friend from stabbing someone.

That's more than 75% Raven.

Episode 3 begins with a body cam chase that ends with a shooting.

The police department claims the video is fabricated.

In retrospect, this is potentially a regrettable episode.

For reference, the term deepfake wasn't coined until 2017 (this season was in 2016).

The George Zimmerman shooting was in 2012.

The gunshots in the bodycam footage are fake, which with the benefit of hindsight, isn't a great look for this show.

Vulture did an interesting story this year about what it's like to have been a cop show writer in light of recent civil unrest.
vulture.com/article/police…

This appears to be a disaffected white man inciting a race war episode? Which is pretty precient.

Wait, he's inciting a race war to prove his doctoral thesis.

I'm not sure if this is specifically covered in any research methods class.

I'm checking. It does not appear to be on the application for Stanford.

Episode 3 ends with the victim not actually being the victim.

They never addressed how the video was faked.

Episode 4 begins with FBI cyber asking for more money to catch the notorious hacker Python. It only took me like 30 seconds.

The premise of the episode is that two kids ran away to chase a Slenderman type figure using an AR app.

This episode aired 2 years after the Slenderman murder.

There's only a passing reference to any hacking in this episode. It's not a lot of cyber in this CSI: Cyber.

I think this episode marks a realization in this series that hacking-related crime is limiting for a TV series and that treating the show more like a crime lab allows them to do more interesting things.

Episode 5 starts with a hospital ransomware attack. In 2016 this was more speculative.

The ransomware kills a patient with a bandage on her head.
Her husband says "This can't be happening, she just has a broken leg."

Not the most attentive husband.

The ransomware shows a picture of five guys in hoodies.

That's like five times the hacking power of anything we've seen before.

The first reported ransomware related death was this year in Germany. But a later investigation found that the woman who died would likely have died without ransomware.

The husband continues to insist it was a broken leg.

The image of the five guys in hoodies is actually a video of five guys in hoodies.

I'm checking to see if there are actors credited for their hoodie work.

The FBI is working on patching the hospital computers, with an 87-minute deadline before the ransomware kills again.

It's the wrong people, working too quickly.

This episode is directed by Eriq La Salle! He was Dr. Benton on ER!

They have zeroed in on a suspect based on his repeatedly warning hospitals about vulnerabilities.

The killer is @beauwoods.

Product placement.

Episode 6 begins with a Fast and Furious-style street race, ending in a fatal crash. But the racecar in the crash was hacked and had no driver.

Bow Wow is in the Fast and Furious universe. He was in Tokyo Drift.

I'm assuming this is going to be the episode with @0xcharlie's cameo.

When I did season one last week he promised this was "not the worst" episode, and said this was his original pitch:

https://twitter.com/0xcharlie/status/1343013257334968324

This episode aired about a year after the (in)famous Jeep hack (via @a_greenberg)
wired.com/2015/07/hacker…

The episode establishes that the crash was intentional, confirming one of my long-held suspicions: Criminal hackers are jerks.

It's a street-racing, automotive hacker, serial killer. Many hats.

The episode ends with battle bots.

Episode 7 begins with someone who is murdered near a computer. This is the first episode this season where I'm not sure it's appropriate for Cyber to get involved.

I mean, not entirely

All the episodes start by giving you a definition of a word.

The premise of this episode is that someone hacked a murder victim's sex toy.

The sex toy was not the murder weapon. I'm not sure what the connection is between that and murder.

The sex toy shipped with malware. It’s a supply chain attack.

The sex toy hacker is not the murderer.

It was a completely unrelated hacking of sex toys.

Episode 8 starts with the notorious hacker Python drilling a hole through the knee of an FBI agent.

He's really more of a Perl.

CSI:CYBER is investigating a hacker who sells personal data at real-world meet-ups.

There's a chance they are going to catch Python based on birdwatching notes in his junior high livejournal.

Episode 8 ends with the Python case incomplete.

Probably missing a semicolon.

So far, the inciting crimes this season on CSI: Cyber have been only tenuously connected to a Cyber angle.

Episode 9 is the murder of a hacker.

They are trying to find the murderer based on a Post Secret type website.

I was kidding before when I said it was product placement, but I think this is the third mention or appearance of Cellebrite this season.

Episode 10 starts out an ATM jackpotting with no one around to collect.

This is the "universally stupid" hack that everyone makes fun of Joey for in HACKERS.

We also find out that Raven's hacker name is Eclipse.

Her real name is Raven? That's so Raven.

The hacker behind the ATM jackpotting scheme goes on to refund unfair bank overdraft fees to consumers, leading jealous people who didn't get refunds to murder those who did.

This is, in a roundabout way, the argument against forgiving student loans.

This is where the hacker lives. Based on what I know from the TV, the FBI could save like a third of the investigation time with a national database of people who live in apartments that look like this.

One hacker brags: "We've got $5 million, tax free."

It's the taxes on the free money that will get you.

Episode 11 begins with someone hacking air traffic control.

Then Emmitt Smith shows up, unrelated, on the street outside the FBI.

They didn't make him a witness, or anything. They're on the street and Bow Wow says "Hey look, it's Emmitt Smith," and it's Emmitt Smith. They say hi and then Emmitt Smith is done.

This is the second airplane hacking episode in CSI:Cyber history.

They haven't cut back to Emmitt Smith. Maybe he's still outside the FBI. Maybe he's stuck.

The plane has disappeared. The only suspect that is accounted for is Emmitt Smith.

Hijacking a plane by hacking multiple systems is an apparent smokescreen for a needlessly complicated murder.

Episode 12 begins with 911 hacking in New York.

I'm trying to think of all the things I was writing about in 2016 to compare them to what types of crimes are actually on this show. All episodes aired pre-DNC.

We haven't seen:
-A DDoS targeting a video game network
-IP theft
-An argument about encryption
-Any nation states

-The WiFi Cactus guy
-A vulnerability with a cute name like "DeathBleed" or "SnakeMurder."
-No one hacked a pacemaker

We have had:
-A darknet market
-Hacked products for children
-Cyberstalking
-Multiple Arquettes

So it evens out.

It's cell phone malware blocking 911
Raven: "Software updates through the vendors will take days."

Finally, a technical thing to harp on. Android updates schedules were set by vendors -- and ranged between right away and never.

According to the most recent data I've seen, around 40% of users have an operating system Nougat or earlier.

Nougat was released the same year this episode aired, 2016.

This is one key advantage Apple has with a bespoke operating system. There are no vendors to fragment installations and customers are more current with the OS.

Add the Amber Alert system to the list of weird things the CSI: CYBER FBI hacked.

Wait: They're going to hack the Amber Alert system as a vector to hack every cell phone in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Just hours and hours of Negativland recordings and a Psychic TV album.

Bow Wow, listening to a recording, says he hears an elevated train. A federal agent being able to do this is a plot point in THE FUGITIVE

Episode 13 is titled "The Walking Dead."

I've been waiting a season and a half for them to introduce ghosts, zombies or frankensteins. Fingers crossed.

The premise of the episode is that someone has reported Patricia Arquette's ex-husband as being dead despite his not being dead.

According to the episode, someone has hacked into the electronic death registration system.

Back in 2015, when I was writing about the movie hackers, I spoke to Chris Rock (not that one) about his research into more efficient ways of bureaucratically killing someone.

I don't have a joke for this screen cap. But I do feel like it needs to be available for everyone to use.

The hacker, in the end, is using that Chris Rock method to kill people, but hacking victims' systems beforehand.

This episode has the same ending as The Usual Suspects.

Episode 14 starts with someone taking a job with an Apple watch.

I mean, obviously, save the person with the Apple Watch, but don't push the rules or anything.

FBI Cyber found spyware on a wearable of a murder victim. They're assuming the spyware and the murder are connected, which I assume means FitBit has a hardcore incentivization mode for that 1000 steps.

The husband has smart shoes.

Are smart shoes a thing?

The killer is targeting people by blood type, which I didn't think wearables could detect.

This show almost never has an explanation for how people learned how to do what they're doing.

If hacking was easy, hackers would be better at it.

The FBI hacked another criminal's cell phone, but at this point, that's old hat for this show.

Episode 15 is titled "Python's Revenge," which is, all things considered, a much catchier name than 3.0.

Python's Revenge begins with Patricia Arquette receiving a package with a note saying "You couldn't save your daughter. Can you save me?" And a severed head.

The answer is no.

Python - the season's main bad guy - has kidnapped a college-aged woman and is broadcasting her captivity on the dark web.

At this point in CSI lore, this can't be considered too abnormal behavior.

Python is now giving riddles.

We've slipped into Batman.

We've never heard from Emmitt Smith again. Python, whatever - Emmitt Smith is truly the greatest riddle of the show.

The FBI Cyber people are interrogating someone named Asher who cremates evidence for criminals. It's sort of the crime equivalent of a weatherman named Stormy.

FBI Cyber is using Shodan for the first time in the series.

Episode 16 and FBI Cyber is being sent back to Boston.

This is their third trip to Boston.

Boston is extremely cyber.

The killer has placed a QR code on the victim, the one piece of evidence no one would bother to follow through on.

There's only two more episodes of this show left for someone to let out cyber pathogens.

The premise of this episode is that someone is murdering people who have content filtered on social media sites.

This is the most 2020 episode yet of this 2016 show.

The content monitor is killing people.

It's section 230 reform fan fic.

This season has had an episode ripping off THE USUAL SUBJECTS and one ripping off SEVEN.

Big Kevin Spacy fans.

Episode 17 begins with someone getting shot. But is the bullet really a backdoor exploit virus network? CSI: CYBER is on the case!

Criminals are using TV-brand Waze to re-route shoppers into secluded crime scenes. And posting about it on TV-brand YouTube.

This is the first episode in CSI cyber where hackers with different expertise sets to fill different roles for a heist.

Episode 18 is the last episode of CSI:CYBER, presumably canceled after cybercrime ended in 2016.

The episode begins with OPM being hacked, which - in 2016 - would have capped off a really busy year for OPM being hacked.

Someone in the executive branch meeting says that, if there's evidence a foreign adversary is behind the attack, they will consider it an act of war.

No, they didn't.

FBI office lamps

We still haven't established why Emmitt Smith was outside the FBI during that one episode.

Did Emmitt Smith hack OPM?

In the world of CSI CYBER, the FBI CYBER unit was responsible for red teaming OPM computers.

Which appears to have gone swimmingly, as the hacker is immediately revealed to be a 13-year-old.

The FBI is now hacking every WiFi hotspot in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington DC.

Now the FBI is hacking the DC police.

The vast majority of crimes on this show have been committed by the FBI.

In the last two minutes of the episode, Bow Wow gets his vest back.

And the series ends.

CSI:CYBER is over if you want it.