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A Critical Look At CSI: Cyber
Trailrunner7 writes with the introduction to a Threatpost article (best read without coffee near your keyboard) about the new CSI: Cyber: The show centers on the Cyber Crime Division at the FBI, a perfectly focus-grouped cast headed by Special Agent Avery Ryan. She is a former behavioral psychiatrist whose practice fell apart when–spoiler alert!–all of her case files were stolen by a hacker who then murdered one of her patients. Now she is on a mission to "turn" hackers one at a time to the path of righteousness. She is aided in this noble quest by the guy who played Dawson, former child rapper Lil Bow Wow, and the two h4x0r caricatures: a bearded, wisecracking guy named Daniel Krumitz who is the "greatest white hat hacker in the world", and Raven Ramirez, whom we know is a hacker because she has dyed hair. Also, because her name is Raven.
As a public service, the Threatpost team, Mike Mimoso, Dennis Fisher, Brian Donohue and Chris Brook, watched the first episode of CSI: Cyber and kept a running chat log of the "action."
As a public service, the Threatpost team, Mike Mimoso, Dennis Fisher, Brian Donohue and Chris Brook, watched the first episode of CSI: Cyber and kept a running chat log of the "action."
"What the fuck did I just read?"
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
...wanna cyber?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
What's him name?
"This makes Swordfish look like a documentary."
... nuf said.
but seriously folks!
Really.... It is OK Sabu has this under control:
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/sabu-hacker-review-of-cs-cyber-hector-monsegur-/
Apparently none of the shows producers looked up the urban dictionary definition of "cyber" or thought of it as a verb. It sure means something completely different to me.
me: This show sucks, wanna cyber?
significant other: uh... no.
me: DAMNIT I still can't get any!
Every time I hear or see the title of "CSI: Cyber" I hear another cyber cherry pop.
I didn't see any gaps in the chat to suggest there were commercial interruptions.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I stopped watching those shows after I saw an episode where the found the killer because he had a black eye from the recoil of a recoil-less launcher.(sic)
Systemd may make your comp more secure against... Teh Cyber
Needs to happen!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Nah son, it ain't even sideways.
I forget which one it was, but I read one of Tom Clancy's Net Force series. The one scene - among many - that stick out was when an agent, tasked with finding the contents of an email, hops into a freakin' VR suit and enters a freakin' simulation of the Wild West so he can mosie on down to the local post office (a metaphor for the mail server under investigation) and literally (that is, within the virtual world, with his virtual hands) rifle through their stored "telegrams" (emails).
There's another scene that sticks out for very different reasons. There's a heavily muscled psycho killer in the story, and in one scene he heads to the gym to work out. A couple of other guys come over and compliment him on how ripped he looks.
And that's it. That's the scene.
Oh, yes, I almost forgot. There's a subplot involving one of the agent's kids, who at first seems to have links to the cyber-attackers, but then just completely doesn't, and throughout the book we're treated to his personal journey which culminates in him filling the gap left by his absentee father by playing Frisbee, or something. Weird.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It sounds like this show is just screaming out for a drinking game.
www.wavefront-av.com
Remote Acess Trojan. Has anyone ever heard this acronym used before?
Every investigative drama franchise must employ, at a minimum, one former rapper.
(My wife watches pretty much ALL of these shows. I can't stand them...)
#DeleteChrome
like asshats.
These shows do nothing but lobotomize the public into believing the current government's agenda of spying has a moral high ground.
Regarding computers and the internets:
1. Everything is connected to the internet. Refrigerators, traffic lights, mailboxes, lightbulbs... everything. And it all can be hacked and controlled remotely.
2. Hackers do not use mice or trackpads. They only use the keyboard, even when opening, moving and resizing windows in a GUI environment.
2a. Hackers only use LOUD keyboards. Even their laptop keyboards are buckling spring action so you can hear them go TAPYTAPYTAPYTAPY
3. Hackers are capable of accurately predicting anything. The trajectory of a car going over an open drawbridge, the food someone buys at a grocery store, which entrance someone will use at a shopping mall - ANYTHING. Because they have computers.
4. Any computer can be easily broken in to and controlled. Except for when you have a light plot and need to eat up time, in which case you have to physically break into a highly secure office building and do some technical thing to gain access. Hackers are good at doing that too. Because, you know, hackers.
5. Hackers can tell exactly what a program does by looking at a screen of hex code and random plaintext.
6. Hackers can pull signal out of noise floor in ANY SITUATION. Sharpening blurry photographs, pulling intelligible voice out of a noisy recording, un-deleting files, doesn't matter.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
They'll sort this lot of imposters out! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00... (in a tragic side note, the T-800 ran over and killed the Whiz Kids while trying to pursue and kill Sarah Connor)
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
I just lost any interest once they used the cheesy flying toilet paper in the wind with Matrix-style print to Cyber-ize stuff. That shit's was ok for kids 20 year ago, not for adults.
The sad thing is I just know they will keep this program on air for its true purpose: Scare the shit out of technophobes so that the government can pass more laws to spy on us.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
not another spinoff!
when did he stop?
I like how NCIS (the original anyway) works closely with the actual NCIS on stories(there is a web articular talking about NCIS TV working with NCIS, but I can't find it at the moment). I do get tired of how they get computer speak wrong (or at least irrelevant), but that is the case with every show.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
CSI's target demo is women 41 years of age and older. it seems to work for CBS. hand over fist.
IRL there is a Real Name policy. Nobody goes around and calls themselfs Anonymous Coward or Raven.
I wonder if it was harder to write the commentary or to watch the show?
I can't stand TV cop shows that even show a computer - because 99% of the time it's complete bullshit.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Reading the chat log was far more enjoyable than watching the show.
They canned stalker for this! Give me a break!
I suspect that If the producers maximize profit by some combination of good writing/acting, product placements, syndication / iTunes / Google Play / etc. fees, it's a win.
I don't see technical accuracy as an explicit factor anywhere in that formula. Heck, I loved The Office, and I'm just guessing they weren't realistically depicting life at a paper company.
This reminds me of vehicles traveling at the speed of plot.
Foyle's War* is good. Beyond that, I'm not so sure.
*No BS high tech crap.
Have gnu, will travel.
I have long wanted to know what photo viewing software they have on all the CSI and other style shows. They can take a blurry picture of a big area and zoom into a reflection in a window and tell you the license plate of car in the reflection or zoom into other things that all the software I have can't do.
Obligatory BOFH reference:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
What did you expect?
I was all worried (not really) when I heard about this show. My fear was, that all bright-light-hating, terminal-loving, CowboyNeal-voting, (fill in your phrase to describe me) 'Software Engineers' like me, would have our secrets exposed! Certainly, all these other TV Series labeled 'CSI:*' have been so accurate! Happily I remembered a key detail about 'Hollyweird'. When tasked with creating shows that were 'reality', in all but a few cases, the film makers have utterly failed in presenting 'real' reality. Yes, I know this show most likely was not intended to be 'reality', but like a previous post mentioned, at least get a few of the details right!
"What the fuck did I just read?"
...A synopsis of what is going to be the comedy of the decade. Unfortunately, nobody has told the writers that this is what it is....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
LOST
BN never gets old....Just on the off chance there are people out there than didn't get this joke:
http://www.megalomaniac.com/~a...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The summary is a laugh machine. All I have to do is read the word "little Bow Wow" and it cracks me up every single time.
thats the funny right there.
And just the other day Soulskill was referencing an article on "loser edit". Call this "white hat edit"? Sounds like complete dreck; guarantee you I won't be watching.
Fucking brainwashing. Bernais, met Jung and Campbell, proceed directly to Operation Mockingbird, watch out for falling archetypes, stop off at Gladio for a hit or two of smack or coke. Mind the treasure, limbs, and corpses, and careful to avoid cages.
They're trashing the planet! Trashing!!!
Jesus H Christ on a crutch. And somebody's getting paid to write and produce this shit? It must be true. There is no justice in this world. Guccifer, Snowden, Manning, Brown, etc,, etc. should be getting medals, not prison sentences and exile. Instead it's slimeballs like Sabu. Yai! I'm gonna puke!
I watched this tripe for 5 minutes. Someone 'parachuted in because you can learn all this without cracking a book' is in charge, informing all those silly 'hacker people' how their lives are immensely better by the presence of a non-nerd. 5 minutes of the stereotypical crap, and I shut it off. Nothing that anyone who knows *even a little* would recognise as reality. No consoles with commands, everything is a pre-built app. with someone providing very obvious non-technical guidance leading the way. I stopped watching after 5 minutes. I've worked with dullards like the character Patricia Arquette plays. I don't work for them for long. You get very tired of cleaning up their stupid messes and listening to their uninformed, guess-and-by-God advice, their "Hey! Why did it do that?" questions, followed by sound informed information, followed by more 'great unwashed' commands, followed by "Hey! Why did it do that?" Followed by dumbed-down explanations (sometimes it has to be a lot), followed by "what do I need to do this?" Followed by answer, followed by "but I don't want it to. blah blah" followed by an even longer, more dumbed-down explanation, followed by quizzical looks, followed by the consultant coming in and giving them half of what they asked for, followed by 'see, that second half isn't what the consultant gave', followed by the consultant looking at it, and implementing (all of) it. They get sour if you ask for the consulting fee. CSI Cyber: What your mom or PHB thinks a souped-up high-tech. gee-whiz computer show looks like.
systemd will re-write your hard drive. Not only that, but it will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer. It will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream goes melty. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, screw up the tracking on your television and use subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you try to play.
It will give your ex-girlfriend your new phone number. It will mix Kool-aid into your fishtank. It will drink all your beer and leave its socks out on the coffee table when there's company coming over. It will put a dead kitten in the back pocket of your good suit pants and hide your car keys when you are late for work.
systemd will make you fall in love with a penguin. It will give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will pour sugar in your gas tank and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your girlfriend behind your back and billing the dinner and hotel room to your Discover card.
It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if she is dead, such is the power of systemd, it reaches out beyond the grave to sully those things we hold most dear.
It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't find it. It will kick your dog. It will leave libidinous messages on your boss's voice mail in your voice! It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.
systemd will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the toilet seat up. It will make a batch of Methanphedime in your bathtub and then leave bacon cooking on the stove while it goes out to chase gradeschoolers with your new snowblower.
Let's face it, people: Hacking is boring to watch. At the same time, do you think they weren't going to do a cyber-inspired CSI show in the Internet era?
My wife's (an attorney) gave me another example of something that would be as interesting as a technically accurate "CSI: Cyber":
"Law and Order: Bankruptcy Court"
And that's about right.
I'd like to see a spin-off - CSI:Computer Repair. There's a whole pile of stuff that can go on in that scenario.
Another (non-related) would be 'Lifestyles of the Poor and Mundane'. But back to the story. In the UK and Australia, there is the reality show of reality shows. It's called Goggle Box where they video families watching TV. That is truly pathetic.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Checked using a couple different browsers, different Internet Access routes, different people (in case I am no longer capable of seeing text -- like a reverse vampire) and it looks like they were slashdotted because the page is now blank...
Let's face it, people: Hacking is boring to watch.
I'd concur with that - for most people, IT work is both boring and difficult to grasp. Part of it is laziness and stupidity, but it'd be unfair to place all of it under that umbrella - lots of what we do involves having some understanding of a dozen different other concepts that aren't immediately obvious.
I just watched the episode.(spoiler warnings) For the reasons stated above, I'll cut them slack for having the malware code glow red in their visualization - malware isn't always clear. However, I won't cut them slack for things like saying that game consoles have unique identifiers that enable the console companies to track pedophiles, while simultaneously showing the bad guy being tracked by that system where a bad guy is both smart enough to hack the firmware of baby monitors and dumb enough to use a system that could easily trace him that way, especially AFTER he becomes aware that the FBI is after him. I'll cut them slack for the concept of the baby monitor hack - its got its own list of messes, but y'need a story somewhere. I won't cut 'em slack for having the password tattooed on one of the guys - they're running that kind of operation, and they're never going to change the password? Not even partially obfuscate it by adding zeroes to single digits where everyone knows that you don't type the zeroes? On a more practical note, is that guy guaranteed to be there all the time so they could reference the password? Bonus round: the guy showed a holographic representation of a cadaver...because that was really necessary and couldn't have been done with a garden variety photograph...
At least for me, the general list of things I'm willing to overlook:
-UI mockups. CLI output only makes sense if you know what you're looking at, and the last thing anyone wants is more expository dialogue that doesn't advance the plot.
-Simplifying of IP addresses and their "tracing". I've seen enough Google Maps dots on machines without GPS to know that it's at least "close enough", unfortunately. "inadmissible in court" doesn't necessarily mean "useless", and again, we need a plot device.
-Character tropes. I don't look like a stereotypical nerd (no beard, not overweight, no glasses, don't live in the basement, don't have a game console), but Hollywood's got their rack of characters: If there's a white male, approximately 50 years old, and isn't the father of another male character, he's the bad guy. If there's a good looking white girl, she's probably someone's love interest. If there's a mother, her role is, generally, "mother", unlikely to do anything to truly advance the plot independent of her maternal context. Hispanic guy on a motorcycle = gang member. Dad: clueless and aloof, though sometimes has a single pearl of wisdom. The list goes on, and though I'm not a fan of that being the case, it's not "computer techs at the expense of everyone else", and we've got characters like Skye, Chloe O'Brien, and Jake Foley that were generally positive, rounded characters.
Things I won't give a pass on:
-logic fails, especially if I'm cutting slack for a part of one.
-unreasonable expectations of technology.
-unreasonable expectations of people (i.e. "make the situation dire enough, and time will never be necessary").
-simplistic love triangles (much as I love Fitz and Simmons, the "because they're both science" reason is annoying).
-nonexistent database relations - "show me a list of 40 year old females in Spokane, who are of Irish descent and whose great grandparents came through Ellis Island in 1899 that have bought P90X and are allergic to gluten."
Lots of shows use them. Helps with things like realism, accuracy, etc. I know CSI doesn't use them, else we wouldn't have had gems like that "gooey in visual basic" or airplane passengers experiencing doppler shift in the sound of the plane's engines. They really should though.
In October 2012 I was on vacation visiting an old Army buddy. He is a firefighter/paramedic and happened to be on duty the night Chicago Fire premiered. As a former firefighter/EMT myself, he invited me to the station to watch with his shift. Within 2 minutes we were all howling and how ridiculously bad the show was written. One of the guys was online chatting with some of the other firefighter/paramedics who were watching at home. I think they hit almost every stereotype they could fit in that first episode. I still watch Chicago Fire when my schedule allows, and still shake my head at how badly the show is written. I actually watch for the plot lines that aren't wrapped around fire/EMS situations. True it's fluff but that's what I will expect from CSI:Cyber, terrible hacker/computer writing, maybe a believable personal plot that will all be fluff. My police friends have the same complaints about Chicago Police too, but that's another story...
"If stupid things work...then they are not stupid."