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Television The Media Entertainment

A Critical Look At CSI: Cyber 145

Posted by timothy from the war-games-did-it-better dept.
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."
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A Critical Look At CSI: Cyber More

A Critical Look At CSI: Cyber

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  • I read this and immediately thought (Score:5, Funny)

    by ihtoit ( 3393327 ) on Thursday March 05, 2015 @10:18AM (#49188715)

    "What the fuck did I just read?"

    • So you read the guts but not the intro? If you'd read the intro, you'd know the guts were a chat log.

    • "What the fuck did I just read?"

      Having only cringed at the previews and not actually seen CSI: Cyber, I can only say that what you just read is the the first /. Summary that perfectly described my initial reaction to, and feelings about, something I'm never going to watch. "Perfectly focus-grouped cast," indeed.

    • "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....

  • Hey baby... (Score:3)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Thursday March 05, 2015 @10:18AM (#49188719)
    ...wanna cyber?

  • This is all that needed to be said (Score:5, Funny)

    by Minwee ( 522556 ) <dcr@neverwhen.org> on Thursday March 05, 2015 @10:19AM (#49188727) Homepage
    "This makes Swordfish look like a documentary."
    • Maybe, but it can't be worse than Scorpion, can it?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by VAXcat ( 674775 )
        I don't wanna live in a world with a tech based series that is worse than Scorpion. I hate any TV series or movie where there are characters who are supposed to be extremely smart being played by actors who are, to be kind...not extremely smart..

        • Re:This is all that needed to be said (Score:5, Interesting)

          by chilenexus ( 2660641 ) on Thursday March 05, 2015 @01:20PM (#49190375)
          It's pretty telling that in the starting credits for every episode, he reduces their mathematics and computational genius to "Sylvester's a human calculator", and he implies that because they are smart, they need a "normal" person to translate the world for them - when in reality, people are called geniuses because they are better at translating parts or all of the world than the folks they call "normal". It's a blatant fallacy that people that are smarter in one aspect have to be at least correspondingly dumber, if not more, in the specific aspect of social relations.

          I know it's hard for writers to portray characters that are far smarter than they themselves are in any authentic way, but what this really means is that for this show in particular they need to hire some much smarter writers. The last thing we need is crowds of people living in fear of becoming smart because their social skills will wither and fall off.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            It's a blatant fallacy that people that are smarter in one aspect have to be at least correspondingly dumber,...

            But there is an element of truth.

            For example, consider the question of how fast a human can run. Certainly there are people who can't run at all (or even walk). And, with practice, it's possible for an ordinary human to see measurable improvements. There's also probably a genetic component. But there's also a strict plateau. An ordinary person in a Honda Civic can easily beat even the best Olympic runner at all but the shortest distances.

            There is almost certainly a strict plateau in human intelligence, too.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Need to? Heck no. This is about entertainment, you know, amaze and delight, in this case with "smarts", in feel-good sauce.

            You could perhaps do a "hollywood character ruleset", where for every boon there needs to be a corresponding flaw so that if you cancel each you end up with the basic bland and unthreatening base model non-played character that's too boring to write but that underlies the actually depicted played character variants to help the imagined average, boring, bland tv-watching public identify

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by taustin ( 171655 )

        The first couple of episodes of Scorpion were so bad they were hysterically funny. This show started as an episode of the regular CSI, and it was so bad it was just bad. It surprises me when script writers an even spell the word "computer" correctly. They certainly never get anything else right.

  • Its OK (Score:2)

    by jmd ( 14060 )

    Really.... It is OK Sabu has this under control:

    http://www.dailydot.com/politics/sabu-hacker-review-of-cs-cyber-hector-monsegur-/

  • I didn't see any gaps in the chat to suggest there were commercial interruptions.

  • 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)

    • Re:It's all crap. (Score:5, Funny)

      by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Thursday March 05, 2015 @10:44AM (#49188977) Journal

      I remember that episode. It was CSI:Miami.

      But seriously, if *that's* the thing that put you off then I don't even know how you made it that far. Mostly because CSI Miami departed the land of the firmly ground in reality and wound up tethered somewhere in high orbit far before that episode.

      That said it was certainly my favourite of the CSI series. Possibly because of that. None of the shows were remotely realistic in a wide variety of ways (oh god the pixels please no don't zoom any more!!!11), but since CSI Miami more or less gave up any pretense that it was meant to be and instead was 45 minutes of Horatio being awesome, saving women and children and shooting very heavily armed but remarkably inaccurare bad guys it was actually far more entertaining.

      Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah B-)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Andy Dodd ( 701 )

        "but since CSI Miami more or less gave up any pretense that it was meant to be and instead was 45 minutes of Horatio being awesome, saving women and children and shooting very heavily armed but remarkably inaccurare bad guys it was actually far more entertaining." - or, why I actually LIKE watching Scorpion. :) It's so bad, it's good!

      • Re:It's all crap. (Score:4, Funny)

        by jeffmeden ( 135043 ) on Thursday March 05, 2015 @12:59PM (#49190195) Homepage Journal

        I remember that episode. It was CSI:Miami.

        But seriously, if *that's* the thing that put you off then I don't even know how you made it that far. Mostly because CSI Miami departed the land of the firmly ground in reality and wound up tethered somewhere in high orbit far before that episode.

        That said it was certainly my favourite of the CSI series. Possibly because of that. None of the shows were remotely realistic in a wide variety of ways (oh god the pixels please no don't zoom any more!!!11), but since CSI Miami more or less gave up any pretense that it was meant to be and instead was 45 minutes of Horatio being awesome, saving women and children and shooting very heavily armed but remarkably inaccurare bad guys it was actually far more entertaining.

        Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah B-)

        You could say that this new spinoff

        [sunglasses]

        Is CSI: DOA

        [yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah]

      • I love the episode in one of the later seasons where Horatio is stranded in South America (part of the Mala Noche story arc) and he's given a gun with like 8 bullets in it then proceeds to face off against 10 guys armed with automatic weapons, already drawn and trained on him, and he *still wins* and makes it back to the United States. It was ridiculousness cubed, but it was all part of the fun of that show.

    • The "trial" episode of CSI:Cyber was a regular CSI episode last year. Patricia Arquette's character "confused" a very life-like video stripper bot with non-sequitur, which made the bot's skin fall off to reveal metallic cyber bones. That was the best thing ever. Then I learned that they were going to make an actual show based on that sort of thing.

  • 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 th

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Swistak ( 899225 )
      I liked netforce series a lot. It was a cool idea of what-might-be and I really hope it materializes. The way I understood VR simulaitons is they were just UI, the semi-inteligent software was doing work. But instead of staring at a console as we do, he got to play interactive 'game'. Which is kinda cool when you think about it.
      It was also much more realistic then many other few-years-int-feature cyber fiction. There was for example plot where one of hackers got to do amazing stuff because he still used k

      • I liked netforce series a lot. It was a cool idea of what-might-be and I really hope it materializes. The way I understood VR simulaitons is they were just UI, the semi-inteligent software was doing work. But instead of staring at a console as we do, he got to play interactive 'game'. Which is kinda cool when you think about it.

        Remember that scene from Jurassic Park where the little girl said "It's a UNIX system! I know this!" and proceeded to ssslloooowwwlllyyy fix the system using FSN [wikipedia.org] instead of a reason

  • Drinking game (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Phreakiture ( 547094 ) on Thursday March 05, 2015 @10:40AM (#49188939) Homepage

    It sounds like this show is just screaming out for a drinking game.

  • There's a little-known SAG requirement (Score:5, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday March 05, 2015 @10:42AM (#49188951)

    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...)

    • Well you forgot that to hollywood elite hackers are fat slobs with beards and women in any kind of technology related position have to be edgy with dyed hair. The Raven character has been in how many movies and TV shows and how many basement dwelling fat bearded elite hackers?

       

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by whit3 ( 318913 )

      Yeah, the cliche engine was working hard when this show was designed and marketed.
      A mature woman psychologist in charge of the technical wizards... that's suggesting that the young whiz kids are still living with mom, and/or a bit of therapy is what every tech genius really needs.

      If Snowden wants a fair hearing, he'd better not wait for this show to impact the public consciousness.

  • Great, now we can all act... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    like asshats.

    These shows do nothing but lobotomize the public into believing the current government's agenda of spying has a moral high ground.

  • Important information for TV producers (Score:5, Funny)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Thursday March 05, 2015 @10:49AM (#49189009)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ailicec ( 755495 )
      Critically, all computers must beep and chirp constantly during all interaction. BEEP BEEP. CHIRP.. BEEP BEEP. Imagine using such a system all day long. Glorious.

    • You do realize that your #5 should not be in that list ?
      It's true than less and less developers have a perfect knowledge of various CPU assembly languages, their opcodes encoding and ASCII representations, but (successfully) debugging on hex and/or text dumps was not uncommon on C64, CPC, Amiga, ...
      It still happens on x86 architectures but it's true it's seldom needed nowadays given the profusion of tools.

      I personally know a handful of people able to do that on various architectures (yours truly included).

      • I could find sprites and other graphics on my C64 just by looking at a ASCII dump of the memory. I could also locate music by Rob Hubbard by the looks of the ASCII dump.
        Ah, the memories.

      • I personally know a handful of people able to do that on various architectures (yours truly included).

        Really, you can glance at one screen of hex dump (typically 1-2KB) and know exactly what all parts of a 10MB program are doing?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        True, but it does take longer than 30 seconds to figure out most software that way.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JBMcB ( 73720 )

        And I used to be able to do that with 68HC11, but it only had a few dozen opcodes, and programs could fit into 2K. Unless you're specifically a compiler or bootloader hacker, I don't see someone memorizing the several hundred opcodes in modern x86/64, or being able to follow program flow in multiple megabytes of compiled code using a simple hex dump utility.

        • Are you kidding ? It's very easy to remember.
          The original meaning of my reply is: it's not an impossible exaggeration. That's why I replied "true" to the comment that said it would take more than 30 seconds.
          (Besides, you don't need to know nor read "megabytes" of a program. You just need to look for (all the) the right pattern(s))

    • 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 [tvtropes.org].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bazorg ( 911295 )

      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.

      Spock could do much better. He'd say "this plan has a 4.56% change of getting us out alive" and everyone agreed.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Spock could do much better. He'd say "this plan has a 4.56% change of getting us out alive" and everyone agreed.

        The rest of the crew assumed that Spock didn't account for human ingenuity in his calculations, so they multiplied his reported chances by 10.
        Spock knew this, of course, and deliberately underestimated their chances beforehand, to correct for their adjustment.

    • 7. When diagnosing any computer output by reading an endless stream of slowly scrolling text, hackers never need to reference a line that has already gone off the screen.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      2. Hackers do not use mice or trackpads. They only use the keyboard, even when opening, moving and resizing windows in a GUI environment.

      Why would I need a keyboard when I can just build a GUI interface in Visual Basic to see if I can track an IP address?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jodido ( 1052890 )
      Facial recognition software putting each face on the screen but despite having to go through 100 million faces finding the right face in just enough time to fill out the 44 minutes of the episode

      • Maybe that's more of a progress indicator to show the program hasn't frozen yet. The reality is that such a lookup would be faster than that, since the analyzed facial data points would already be cataloged.

        It's nothing compared to password cracking software solving a password one letter at a time.

        • A progress bar makes far more sense than throwing up random faces on the screen as you search. Does it really make sense to you that you load and blit to the screen a full face shot 20 times sec to show progress, rather that updating a little text and a bar? I know it's used in every single movie and tv show ever made, but I cringe every time I see it due to it's stupidity.

          • Clearly it's not a real GUI, but it's more like expository dialogue - it's there to help tell the story even if it's a bit unnatural.

    • 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.

      I think CSI already knows this.

    • They only use the keyboard, even when opening, moving and resizing windows in a GUI environment.

      You mean like Alt-Space M or Alt-Space S in Windows?

  • They'll sort this lot of imposters out! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00... [imdb.com] (in a tragic side note, the T-800 ran over and killed the Whiz Kids while trying to pursue and kill Sarah Connor)

  • 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.

    • I was going to say people aren't that stupid.

      But then I remembered that old episode of The Wire where they stick a kid's hand on a copier machine, ask him questions like it's a lie detector, and after he answers, a detective presses the copy button and "LIE" on a piece of paper comes out. The kid actually fell for it when the detectives structured the questions to show he was lying and he broke down and revealed the truth of the incident and gave them their lead.

      Found it, apparently based on real life Baltimore PD interrogation techniques:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      So I guess they could make this new CSI Cyber even 10x more stupid, and a few months later you'd probably start hearing from people something like...

      the NSA can use coffee cups to playback conversations from half an hour ago because of reverberating echoes still trapped inside the cup.

      (I just made that up, CSI writing team: give me attribution please.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Straif ( 172656 )

        the NSA can use coffee cups to playback conversations from half an hour ago because of reverberating echoes still trapped inside the cup.

        They already did something similar on Scorpion so you may lose out on a 'prior art' claim.

      • the NSA can use coffee cups to playback conversations from half an hour ago because of reverberating echoes still trapped inside the cup.

        (I just made that up, CSI writing team: give me attribution please.)

        On last week's episode of CSI Las Vegas they had a no-audio web cam quality recording of two guys chatting in a green house and they used (I shit you not) vibrations from the leaves to rebuild an audio of what the two were saying. I face-palmed so hard.

  • No! (Score:2)

    by drolli ( 522659 )

    not another spinoff!

  • I like how NCIS (the original anyway) works closely with the actual NCIS on stories [cbslocal.com](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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      isn't NCIS famous for the 2 people typing fast on 1 keyboard to fight hackers?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by krammit ( 540755 )
      My wife was a big fan of that show. My favorite scene however involved the crew under seige from some hacker and they needed to shore up the firewall - STAT! So one of the characters got to typing away, but it just wasn't enough. The hackers were gaining the upper hand! So another character jumped in and helped the first guy type faster by typing on the same keyboard. That seemed to do the trick and disaster was averted.

    • I haven't watched an episode of NCIS for a while, but don't they all go like this:

      2 min intro, a vignette of a body being discovered
      Cue the show intro
      Office scene, team assemble - Gibbs might whack the back of Denozzo's head
      Stand around murder scene, taking turns at exposition

      At some point in every episode reinforce the very narrow character definitions:

      * Ducky talks to a corpse
      * Abby gets excited, says she loves someone, and does some stupidly hard science thing in a couple of minutes (least 'gothic' alter

  • CSI's target demo is women 41 years of age and older. it seems to work for CBS. hand over fist.

  • 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.

    • My computer tells me that it's bullshit only 97% of the time. The other 3% are regular shit.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I was enamored with the show "burn notice" for a while. They never showed computers.

      Once, the main character came home, felt his computer was warm and said "welp, I guess someone got into my computer while we were out". SWOOON

    • Space 1999 got it more right than any other show on tv since... ...they would type a question into the keyboard, lights on the mainframe sized machine would flash, and then a paper roll tape would print the answer, which a character would read to everyone...

      "Computer says no"

      It's still wrong, but not as wrong as screens of information constantly scrolling...often in the wrong direction. Or fingerprint / facial recognition databases that show random fingerprints and faces as they return the answer. They neve

  • Reading the chat log was far more enjoyable than watching the show.

  • Yikes! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They canned stalker for this! Give me a break!

  • Foyle's War* is good. Beyond that, I'm not so sure.

    *No BS high tech crap.

  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by zaxus ( 105404 )

      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.

      MS Paint.

    • Have you tried writing your GUI in Visual Basic? [youtube.com]

      Actually, Red Dwarf spoofed this one better (jump ahead 20 seconds for the better part):
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      On one episode they pulled up an image from the reflection on someone's eyeball in an old photo. Apparently the word "Enhance" has some magical power over image software.

  • BOFH Has It Covered (Score:4, Funny)

    by rainmaestro ( 996549 ) on Thursday March 05, 2015 @12:29PM (#49189947)

    Obligatory BOFH reference:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk]

  • Law and Order: Bankruptcy Court (Score:3)

    by Theovon ( 109752 ) on Thursday March 05, 2015 @05:10PM (#49191975)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Whiteox ( 919863 )

      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.

    • 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 cu

  • 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 e

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