Tweet Archive - CSI: Cyber - S01E06 - "The Evil Twin"

Quote of the Week: "I will gladly take the poop phone if you will just do me one favor and stop talking."

What the audience is thinking, every episode.

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I'll be honest, I didn't completely hate this week's episode. I mean, the acting is still bad, the story is still bad, and the general premise is bad, but they actually had some honest to goodness, real cyber attacks in this episode. Like, totally realistic things that can, and have, been done and are real threats to cyber security.

I had to stop at least twice and make sure I didn't accidentally change the channel to a different show.

There were some problematic bits as far as ome of the technology went and they're still using some iffy terminology, but the show might be coming back down to earth.

Because, clearly, with last week's holodeck, they certainly must've been on the Enterprise.

I wish more of my peers at SANS 2015 would've popped in with some comments, but they seemed to all be off either having fun, or doing real cyber security work. Can't really blame them. Only self-hating masochists would stay cooped up in a hotel room watching bad TV.

Tweet Archive - CSI: Cyber - S01E05 - "Crowd Sourced"

Quote of the Week: "Send all the media you have to the Cave."

And then, I s**t you not, they ran a 3D recreation of a crime scene on a HOLODECK using a bunch of photos and videos from cell phones.

And you thought the roller coaster episode was ridiculous.

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Well, if you still held any belief that they were going to try and keep this show at least partially rooted in reality, this is the show that should break you. Doofus terminology, implausible plot points, and, I just can't get over this, a flippin' holodeck have jumped this show over that shark and right off a cliff.

Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.

Tweet Archive - CSI: Cyber - S01E04 - "Fire Code"

Quote of the Week: "Someone figured out how to set a fire through the Internet."

Well, this puts a new spin on flame wars.

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OK, honestly, I'm not sure how much more of this I can take. It's just plain... not good. I could barely even muster a handful of tweets this week.

This shepisode is actually based on a real vulnerability, albeit one that can't actually be reproduced except under specific, controlled circumstances. I almost gave the writers credit for a more plausible (if not probable) premise, but then they also remotely hacked an alarm clock to display random numbers and a Keurig to shoot coffee everywhere, so they blew whatever props I was going to give them.

Tweet Archive - CSI: Cyber - S01E03 - "Killer En Route"

Quote of the Week: "So, let me get this straight. You jump onto moving trains, you kick down doors, and you know computer forensics?"

Brody Nelson, vocalizing the question that incredulous viewers ask every week.

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I managed to miss my first "deadline" and have not yet finished the set of discussion articles for the prior episode. There was a LOT to talk about and I was a little short on spare time this week. I'll try to get those up soon.

The good news is that for this episode there won't be as much to talk about, as there was very little cyber stuff going on. It's was still just as silly, though.

Tweet Archive - CSI: Cyber - S01E02 - "CMND: \CRASH"

Quote of the Week: "I need you to get me into a black hat forum on the deep web."

Pretty sure this is going to become the new "Zoom and enhance".

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Sadly (?), I missed the pilot episode of CSI: Cyber last week. Apparently I had something better to do, like count paperclips or alphabetizing my spice rack. I may loop back around and watch it at some point, who knows. For now, I'll just jump straight into the second episode...

An Introduction to OopsSec

I was content to never lay eyes on CSI: Cyber.

Just from the previews and blurbs in the entertainment and InfoSec blogs and alone, I knew it was going to be pretty bad. It was guaranteed to be full of stereotypes, terrible and misleading information, and general nonsense, much like every hacker movie and CSI series before it. It would be for cyber security folks what CSI: <cityname> would be for every forensic scientist: a persistent thorn in their side as people would have a highly unrealistic perception of what their work was about and what they could do. Whenever somebody would bring up CSI: Cyber in passing, you'd hear a heavy sigh and then see every OPSEC and InfoSec person in the room facepalm simultaneously. Then, there would be that one guy who would froth at the mouth and launch into an hour long diatribe about all the things the show got wrong and how much he hates it. And of course, that guy would know, because he watches the show every week, even though he hates it. No, he watches it BECAUSE he hates it. He hates it with a passion that is rivaled only by the satisfaction of he gets from his job and watching bad TV shows.

Hi. I'm that guy.

Every week (time permitting and as long as my resolution holds out), I'll be live tweeting episodes of CSI: Cyber. Then, in the days that follow, I'll post deeper analysis of the episodes here: what they got right, what they got wrong, and what was just plain silly. You'll get to watch me slowly go insane over the course of the season, perhaps culminating with me having an aneurysm in the middle of the finale. Hopefully it'll be fun for everyone involved and maybe we can all learn something along the way, like what real Cyber Security is and the upper limits to the human threshold for torture.