Team Cyber Dives into a Dark World of Secrets
In this week’s episode of CSI: Cyber, Team Cyber uncovers a series of deep, dark secrets, including one that a local university tries to hide to protect the school’s reputation. The episode begins with Agent Ryan meeting Grace for dinner when a girl under the influence of alcohol ascends the stairs. The scene then shifts to a hooded figure dousing the remains of a woman with gasoline, lighting it on fire with a book of matches, and watching the body burn. Agent Ryan receives a notification on her phone stating that a hacker named Quinn Elliot, aka QueenofHearts, has been killed, leading her to postpone dinner with Grace.
When Agent Ryan and Agent Krumitz arrive at the morgue, the latter is a bit uncomfortable seeing the body of Quinn lying on the table with half of her body burnt. Agent Krumitz semi-complains that D.B, who is testifying in Vegas, should be the one dealing with Quinn’s remains, not him. Agent Ryan reassures the cringing nerd that he’ll be just fine and instructs him to get everything he can off of Quinn’s phone and send it to CTOC. Agent Ryan’s right, Krummy. It’s not like there’s going to be an iZombie crossover anytime soon.
Unraveling the Mystery of Quinn’s Double Life
It’s soon revealed that Quinn’s phone is actually a phone within a phone, as it has normal applications and black hat-centric applications hidden within the phone’s interface, which can be accessed through the calculator app. It’s amusing to see that neither Nelson nor Raven know how to access Quinn’s partition. Agent Krumitz to the rescue!
As the episode progresses, more information about Quinn is discovered. The woman was living a double life, using the name Lexie to cover up the fact that she was a hacker for hire and married a man named Louis James, who is beyond devastated to hear the news about his wife’s murder. The Ashley Madison reference comes when it’s discovered that Quinn/Lexie was hired to hack into a confessions site called Miafina but didn’t reveal the names of the site’s users.
Turns out, Quinn was deleting a secret that wasn’t posted by her, but by someone else. Using a site called Lookback Machine, the team is able to find out when the secret was posted onto the Miafina website: on the campus of Paxton University on November 18, which is known as the Red Zone, a time frame between new student orientation and the Thanksgiving Parade where young female students on campus are at risk of being sexually assaulted. This then leads to an even darker secret: the rape of a young woman named Shelby Lockhart, who is nowhere to be found.
Raven and Nelson’s Interesting Exchange
The scene with Raven and Nelson is interesting. The latter is looking into what SOT stands for while the former asks if Nelson misses being a Black Hat, to which Nelson replies that he misses the rush and the feeling that comes with not knowing what will happen next right before hitting the Enter key on a computer or mobile device. Raven then asks Nelson what his greatest hack was, and Nelson tells his co-worker/girlfriend that he once hacked into a New York Thai restaurant’s financials to see what kind of money the restaurant was raking in given that there were no customers besides Nelson. He then found out the hard way that the restaurant was a front for the Thai mob. Can I be the first to say “oy vey”? Nelson then tries to find out what Raven’s greatest hack was, and all she says is that she only reads other people’s secrets. Yes, Raven, a magician never reveals her secrets.
Uncovering the Truth and Seeking Justice
Back to the case, Shelby is finally located after learning that she got a new phone and number when her old one was shut off, by Quinn, who acted as the young woman’s guardian angel after finding out Shelby’s secret that she was gang raped by the members of the Paxton University rowing team. It’s sickening that young women on college campuses are often victims of rape. I know that this is only fictional, but hearing Shelby’s story of what happened to her brought tears to my eyes. She told her attackers repeatedly to stop, but her words fell upon deaf ears as she was continually assaulted.
I also applaud Quinn/Lexie for being Shelby’s virtual guardian angel, offering the young woman links to support group websites using her hacking skills. Perhaps all the other hackers out there can use their powers for good and not for evil and monetary gains. It sure would make the world less paranoid about being watched.
As the hour comes to a close, Shelby’s attackers are arrested and the person who killed Quinn, who turns out to be Julian Perkins, the University’s Athletic Director, is also brought to justice. Agent Ryan then tells Shelby that she’ll help her get back into the school and that she’s not alone; there are other victims who survived their ordeals and will understand Shelby’s emotional and physical pain. Agent Ryan then promises to be there for Shelby as she begins the road to recovery and to make sure that the people that did this to her will get what’s coming to them.
Back at Cyber, Nelson and Raven show Louis Quinn’s confession on Miafina, that she was going to leave her past behind and live her life as Lexie James, the woman that Louis married. Nelson then gives Louis a USB flash drive containing the bug that she found on Togglefly while being hired by the social media site to find bugs, which, according to Raven, is worth a lot of money. Hopefully, the flash drive will help give the grieving widower some consolation.
[Photo credit: Michael Yarish/CBS]
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