Local FBI Agents Take WJZ Inside The Plot Of 'CSI: Cyber'
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Cyber crimes. Hackers are hitting everyone from Fortune 500 companies to your home computer. It's now the plot of the newest CSI show.
Marcus Washington finds out from local FBI agents what it takes to get the job done.
When you think of FBI agents, you think of action packed investigations, knocking down doors to catch the bad guy. But their job is so much more than that.
The dangers of your personal information getting into the wrong hands in cyber space is real.
"Hackers are hitting the United States pretty hard these days," said Daniel Gray, FBI Cyber Task Force.
WJZ spent the day with Baltimore's FBI cyber experts, who hunt down hackers all over the world.
"We go where the investigation takes us. Sometimes it's in the states, sometimes it's overseas," said Gray.
The youngest is just 15 years old. Recently, they tracked down a 17-year-old sitting at his computer in his bedroom in Australia.
It's such a hot topic, cyber crime is the focus of the latest CSI franchise. CSI: Cyber stars recent Oscar winner Patricia Arquette, premiering Wednesday night on WJZ.
"I think probably what you will see a lot of, you'll see a lot of breaking in doors and the things that people normally see in Hollywood," said Gray.
Gray tells WJZ his cyber division is less glitz and glamor and 80 percent paperwork and waiting for search warrants.
Washington: "Just because it's cyber doesn't mean it can't get dangerous."
Gray: "It's probably one of the most dangerous things that we as an organization do is when we go into a unknown environment with guns drawn trying to do a search warrant or trying to do an arrest."
There is no true timeline on how quickly agents can solve a cyber case. Supervisor Special Agent Gray says in his 15 years his longest case took five years to solve.
"Hackers in general are very smart people and they only make mistakes sometimes and we have to be there when they make those mistakes so that we can actually track them and get attribution in these intrusions," he said.
Much like the hackers, FBI cyber agents work 24 hours a day, seven days a week--a lot different from TV shows like CSI: Cyber.
You can watch the premiere of CSI: Cyber at 10 p.m. Wednesday on WJZ.