By
Bhushan Akolkar
August 29th, 2022
The 12th episode of the American crime drama television series “CSI: Cyber” has cryptocurrency and the blockchain technology as main themes throughout the plot.
The latest episode of the CBS crime drama television series “CSI:Cyber” is featuring the theme of the virtual currency, entitled “Bit By Bit.” According to the plot of the show, the team is conducting an investigation of the power outage in Detroit, which was just a mask for a bitcoin robbery.
The episode begins with an intriguing opening, which leaves viewers with lots of questions. At first we see Agent Krumitz, who is running up to the unknown house, get upstairs and goes to the computer. After typing something, he quickly runs downstairs and while rushing to leave the house he meets an unknown boy with Avery who asks him to stop. When Krumitz is about to take out his gun, we see a gun trained on him out of the frame.
Then the episode returns us 36 hours back, as the downtown area of Detroit was blacked out as a result of a hacker attack. The team suspects that the dark was just a mask for a jewelry shop heist, which results in the robber killing Ben, the son of the shop’s owner. The theft appears to be a virtual one, as nothing was missed physically.
While investigating the case, the team finds out that the thief was not looking for jewelry, but for the digital currency. The robber took a laptop with $500,000 in bitcoin and stole the cryptocurrency stored in it. The money was transferred to a new digital wallet with two passwords.
Fortunately, they managed to quickly find a robber’s wallet, as Krummy assured the team it’s not very difficult to trace bitcoins. Ryan, Nelson and Mundo managed to find the theft, but he appears to be dead. Sadly, there were no signs of who killed him, but the indications of torture mean the killer wanted to know the passwords.
Later, it becomes clear that the oldest son of the shop owners, Stephen, has hired “Bitcoin bounty hunters” to help him to return the stolen bitcoins.
The problem was that killed theft didn’t have the passkeys, instead, he passed them to two computers controlled by a botnet, a network of computers infected with malicious software that is used without the knowledge of its owners.
However, the bounty hunters discover where the passkeys are hidden and after getting the first one they are heading for the other one. But, accidentally, they made a classic mistake by sending an email from a computer with parental control software.
After the team found out that the bounty hunters mistakenly went to Denver, they headed to the real location where they plant a fake passkey in order to fool the bounty hunters.
Still, their plan went wrong as the fake passkey failed and Krumitz went to the house to fix the problem before the hunters come. Then we return to the moment where the episode started as Krumitz went back downstairs.
Meantime, a boy who lives in that house returns back from a friend’s home and Ryan rushes to protect a boy saying he is her son. One of the brothers, who holds a gun to Krumitz’s head, takes him upstairs to obtain a passkey.
While Krumitz decides to pretend he is bad at computers, Brody helps him remotely. The brother then decides to check the password, but the Internet doesn’t work. The things are getting intense and Krumitz takes the moment and disarms the brother.
After getting all the evidence against the brother, the team finally returns the stolen bitcoins. The program also features some personal character moments. Each episode of the show begins with Avery giving a backstory of how hackers destroyed her life by leaking data about her patients.
And now, Avery finds out that the hackers returned as they released an audio of one of the therapy sessions. Nelson discovered it information on her FBI laptop using a Bluetooth sniper rifle.
Then we discover that it’s her former patient who became a hacker, as he was in love with Avery. Luckily, all ends up with the hacker going to jail and her backstory resolved.
This episode is a good example of how the bitcoin technology can be applied in an investigation process and is definitely learning people about how the digital currency can be used.
