S01.E04: Fire Code

[ottoDbusdriver]

Episode Description:

 

A cyber threat that allows arsonists a less traceable method of starting fires in homes is investigated. Meanwhile, Elijah's ex-wife informs him she is starting a new job out of town and wants to take their daughter with her.

 

[henripootel]

What's up with Lil Bow Wow being told he's all 'one of us' - I thought he was press-ganged into service, as in 'work for us, up to and including snitching your old friends, or go to directly jail'.  And why did he bother to punch the Justic5 guy in the nose or track him if he knew his real name, why not just walk away and tell Dead Face?  She could just send Dawson over to pull him out of his mom's basement.

 

The hacker chick who works for the FBI - her whole character starts and ends with 'blonde'.  Which is still one word more than Peter MacNicol got.  At least Even Fatter Neil got some backstory last week.

Edited March 26, 2015 by henripootel

[ottoDbusdriver]

And I thought the roller coaster episode was stupid, this one gets even stupider.

 

Oh noes ... the clock radio in my living room is haunted .... correction ... been hacked.  That's so scary. </sarcasm>

 

I get that the printer in the room caught fire and set the curtains on fire, but how exactly did the fire jump across the room to the head of the bed.

 

That whole chase scene was just filler to offset the complete lack of plot.  And the Blackhat that Mundo is chasing just happens to have the software code for a case they haven't even been contacted about yet.  And how did they happen to have the exact printer that the printer firmware hacked code was designed for -- before they had even analyzed the code and knew what it did ?

 

One minor nitpick -- for the printer firmware change to take effect, you would need to reboot the printer.  It even said that on the firmware updater app.  Once again I ask how did Krumitz know that what the app was going to do was to the printer if he had never seen the code before ?

 

Blah, blah, blah, Mundo is having child custody issues with the ex. -- no one cares.

 

I'm sure the folks at Keurig are going to be none to happy that a coffee maker that looks remarkably like one their models appears to be easily hackable.

 

If the crook accessed the wifi network in the apartment, why would he need access to Kate's computer ? He could just update the printer firmware directly.

 

A full 11 minutes into the episode before the intro appears.  If they shortened that extra long chase scene, they could have probably put a better story into this episode.

 

Lil' Bow Wow tracks down some of his Black Hat buddies in Baltimore under the guise of seeing what's up, all to get a flash drive hidden behind the toilet tank in the bathroom.  Which seems kind of random, but it turns out that Lil' Bow Wow wrote part of the code being used to set fires.  Oh noes !!!

 

During gratuitous chase scene # 2, they track down some guy named Donald who caused the fire in the apartment -- and he claims he got the code that starts the printer fires in a forum on fire prevention.  Oh, the irony.

 

4 printers catch fire at a college computer lab in Atlanta -- seriously, these FBI guys get around a lot.

 

As many a court case has confirmed, a public IP address does not translate to a specific person or even a specific device most times.

 

Are there really wifi enabled slow cookers and bread makers and mini-stereo systems ?

 

Lil' Bow Wow: "Like you said, we didn't start the fires"  Of course not, they were always burning since the world was turning.

 

Who the fuck is Tobin ?  I guess he's yet another Black Hat that they captured and tried to reform, but apparently bolted from the FBI.

 

How the hell did Lil' Bow Wow even know that Justus would steal the flash drive from around his neck after the fight ?  Such that he preemptively put a tracking chip on it so the FBI could track him.  WTF ?

 

Wow -- this is two episodes in a row that Mundo didn't save a child from danger at the end of the episode ?  He's due, probably next episode.

 

Mundo pleads with his ex to forget the job in San Diego and they should get back together.  And she kisses him hard.  Which just seems to come out of nowhere.

Edited March 26, 2015 by ottoDbusdriver

[mnfe]

My husband and I watched this together so we could laugh at it.  And there was plenty to laugh at.

 

"You know how many black hats are using leet speak now" was especially laughable, given that it all started with the hackers in the first place.

Edited March 26, 2015 by mnfe

[solotrek]

The opening seemed like one hell of an alien abduction more than a hack job. The way the episode went, it might as well have been one.  The Beek certainly got to run around a lot though.

[Cranberry]

I can't decide what I enjoyed more, "You know how many hackers are using leetspeak now" or the super scary fire-starting code literally being the source code of the Wikipedia page for Firmware with the word "Wikipedia" taken out (source).

 

[ottoDbusdriver]

I can't decide what I enjoyed more, "You know how many hackers are using leetspeak now" or the super scary fire-starting code literally being the source code of the Wikipedia page for Firmware with the word "Wikipedia" taken out (source).

 

That's too funny -- and extraordinarily lazy on behalf of the production team.  Almost like they can't really be bothered to put in the effort.

[thuganomics85]

I just found it this episode to be boring, which is disappointing in it's own right.  I honestly thought the script must have been shorter then normal, and they were filling time by just finding different ways to run James Van Der Beek around.  At least he's getting his exercise in.

 

For some reason, it really bugged me that the first victim look like she was going back to bed after the initial hack, without cleaning up the coffee that was poured in the attack.  I get that getting your rest is important, but maybe clean that up, before it gets everywhere.

 

Some run-of-the-mill back-story, I guess.  Bow Wow does the whole "maybe he'll go back to his old ways, but he really won't", while The Beek wants to rekindle the flame with his ex.  Who wants to same thing.  Because, who wouldn't want to be "Mrs. Elijah Mundo."

 

The opening monologue will never get old.  It's just so awful.

Edited March 27, 2015 by thuganomics85

[henripootel]

The opening monologue will never get old.  It's just sow awful.

The whole 'it could happen to you' thing could only be made more ridiculous if a blackhat hacked the Lincoln Memorial and Abe himself pointed at the camera and said it.  That could happen, cuz ... hackers.

 

And why an opening monologue and a title sequence?  I refuse to ff through the latter cuz the Hero Walk shot always cracks me up, enough cheese for a dozen pizzas.

Edited March 27, 2015 by henripootel

[MelinaBallerina]

The coffee pot cracked me up.  It's not wi-fi enabled.  Its basically on/off, set a clock and timer type.  Plus - engorging coffee?  With no one putting a pod in the top?  And there's only a small amount of water in there, so it won't be spilling for very long.  Took me out of the story right at the beginning!

[Scott]

Even with all the other cheese floating around, the part that literally made me guffaw out loud was the shot of L'il B.W. looking all cool in his new FBI windbreaker ($29.95 on fbiwindbreakers.com, I'm sure) as Ju5tu5 is being dragged away.  Five minutes ago, they all had thought he'd gone rogue (except for Ryan, of course), and then he's there looking more smug and agent-y than any of them at the arrest.

[Driad]

 

The opening monologue could be worse -- it could be done as a song like "The Brady Bunch."

 

(Thinking about how this show could be worse is much less to consider than thinking about how it could be better.  It airs late when I'm tired.)

[Yeldarbe]

The coffee pot cracked me up. It's not wi-fi enabled. Its basically on/off, set a clock and timer type. Plus - engorging coffee? With no one putting a pod in the top? And there's only a small amount of water in there, so it won't be spilling for very long. Took me out of the story right at the beginning!

Same here! Even if it had WiFi, the resovoir only holds so much water And without a pod in place the water would be clear.

Of course given the fact that the fire code was from Wikipedia (lol, I'm not computer savvy enough to notice that but come on!) I shouldn't be suprised!

I'll give the girl a pass on turning around and heading back towards bed Because if that shit happened to me I'd probably be doing the same. Sleep trumps most everything.

[Kromm]

Yeah, we were somehow supposed to believe that not only the coffee pot, but also the clock AND the TV are all Wifi enabled.

There actually IS a wifi enabled coffee pot, but it's rare anyone would actually own the thing. 

 

Similarly there are a few wifi clock radios.  I suppose they are more common since the advent of digital music.  But frankly people tend to only have those by their bedsides, and more often than not they're going to be simple iPad docking stations, with a clock part under that.  The clock part by itself won't have any wifi.

 

Wifi enabled TVs of course exist, although most often it's through the cable box--which might indeed include a programmed remote control that's aware of the TV on-off RF frequency.  But it can't send that on-off code by itself--someone on the other end of a remote control would be doing it.  They can usually turn the screen on and off on a TV, but if the TV is actually turned off like we saw done, the cable box should just be cranking away, maybe hacked to flip channels or something, but with the TV STILL off.

 

Ah fuck. Why try to make sense of anything on this show?

[henripootel]

Five minutes ago, they all had thought he'd gone rogue (except for Ryan, of course), and then he's there looking more smug and agent-y than any of them at the arrest.

Well, see, that's the thing - L'arger Bow Wow did go rogue.  He tipped off a suspect about an active FBI operation, and even if he had a 'plan' to catch the guy anyway he'd still have plenty of 'splaining to do.  Which will happen in court so even if Dead Face is willing to give him a mulligan (and a windbreaker), her superiors won't be so generous.

 

And L'BW's 'plan' was a pretty crap, as it depended on Ju5tu5 doing something he couldn't be sure Ju5tu5 would even do.  If Ju5tu5 hadn't grabbed the necklace/thumb-drive, L'BW woulda ended up in cuffs himself, looking less smug.  And not for nothing but they'da caught Ju5tu5 anyway as L'BW would have just told his boss Ju5tu5 real's name.

Edited March 29, 2015 by henripootel

[TV Anonymous]

So if the roommate was not in her room, would she not turn off the power of her computer and printer before she left? Was the fire code able to turn on the printer AND the computer? If so, how? Remember that the computer also needed to be on to be able to process the code.

[Kromm]

So if the roommate was not in her room, would she not turn off the power of her computer and printer before she left? Was the fire code able to turn on the printer AND the computer? If so, how? Remember that the computer also needed to be on to be able to process the code.

Actually that's not that hard.  Many people don't totally turn their computers off.  They put them in low power states and the network cards still get power (for example, if its a laptop, closing the lid for example, on a lot of laptops by default just puts them to sleep and not "off").

 

As long as your Internet router has proper logging, and a hacker can see it (to know the proper address and port), then they can send a signal along your network to wake the computer up.  As for the printer?  Most of them have network cards these days as well and would probably be directly wakeable/hackable from the Internet router, but if not and they're simply connected by a printer cable to the computer, then the printer usually is just in a sleep state as well and the computer can wake it up.

 

Besides, the bulk of the code was already ON the printer.  Every printer has a layer of built in software called "Firmware".  We were told that the fire code was in a firmware update that had been sent out to the printer. Some printer installations automatically update (from the PC usually, as part of the printer drivers on it) every printer firmware update a manufacturer puts out.  So all that's left is the "trigger" signal to start the fire. That's all that has to be sent through the Internet, through the local router, waking the PC and/or printer up, then running the code that's already on it.

 

Of course none of this makes what we saw any less totally silly and impractical. It is.  It's just that the actual part about getting code on the device, waking it up, and triggering it is possible (even if the "making themselves catch fire" part is beyond dubious).  For the printer or a computer. For a wified clock radio, wifi-enabled coffee pot, or Internet connected TV? Well, again we'd have to presume they'd already gotten and had applied hacked firmware updates of their own (a very problematic assumption since consumer electronic devices, while having firmware updates, usually need them MANUALLY applied), that the router logs information to identify where they are on that network, that they can be remotely "woken up" or contacted if they aren't always on, and controlled.  Possible?  Sure.  But kinda of weird and stupid to think someone would waste the time hacking them.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Kromm