“White Hat/Black Hat” (S02E08)

Richard returns home and discovers Russ Hanneman waiting for him to celebrate Richard’s victory over End Frame. Gavin Belson attends a board meeting where he tries to urge restraint on Nucleus publicity without admitting that Nucleus is in trouble. The meeting ends with Gavin realizing that he may need a scapegoat. In the next scene, he convinces Davis Bannercheck to return to Hooli to head up the Nucleus project. Richard learns that Seth Lee, the network security engineer for End Frame had been fired, presumably due to Gilfoyle’s breaching of End Frame security in episode 7. Richard feels bad and reaches out to Seth. Richard tells Seth that the break-in had not been his fault. Seth becomes enraged and threatens to hack into Pied Piper and get revenge. Richard becomes very concerned about Seth’s threats. Gilfoyle is unconcerned, assuring Richard that Pied Piper’s security is solid. Dinesh stresses that Richard should not be admitting to anybody that Pied Piper had broken into End Frame, explaining that Richard is now a “black hat” and needs to be careful. Bannercheck interviews the Nucleus team to assess the state of the project. In the next scene, Gavin learns that Bannercheck has quit Hooli and left as fast as his car would take him. Gavin realizes that he has lost his scapegoat for the upcoming Nucleus fiasco. Richard’s increasing paranoia about Seth annoys the Pied Piper team. Richard reaches out to Seth again and they mutually apologize. Richard tells Seth that Gilfoyle hadn’t been worried at all and Seth feels insulted and issues fresh threats. Pied Piper begins transferring data from Intersite for the bake-off. Russ Hanneman arrives to celebrate and Richard becomes angry at the interruption and begins shouting at Hanneman. Suddenly Pied Piper receives a frantic phone call from the CTO of Intersite informing them that Pied Piper is deleting all of Intersite’s data. In the ensuing panic, they conclude that Seth has made good on his threats and has hacked into their system although Gilfoyle can’t figure out how. Eventually it is discovered that Hanneman had put a tequila bottle down on the “Delete” key of one of the laptops. The episode ends with Intersite angrily dismissing Pied Piper.