AS HEARD ON - The Jim Polito Show - WTAG 580 AM: Firefox Vulnerability, Ring Vulnerability, IoT and Segmenting Home Networks and More
Craig Peterson - America's Leading Technology News Commentator
Release Date: 01/14/2020
Craig Peterson - America's Leading Technology News Commentator
First up, I have some sobering news. Almost all of our personal information has likely been stolen at one point or another. This could include our names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and even passwords. Cybercriminals are constantly searching for vulnerabilities in systems where this information is stored, and unfortunately, they often find them. However, there are steps we can take to protect ourselves. One tool that can help is called "haveibeenpwned." It's a website where you can check if your email address has been compromised in any data breaches. If it has been compromised,...
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Welcome to this week's episode of The AI Revolution! In this episode, join us as we explore the world of Artificial Intelligence and its potential to revolutionize business and life. We'll discuss how to use AI for free, what it can do well, and when and where you should never use it. We'll also talk about how to generate emails, blog posts, and content for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube live! Tune in now to learn more about how AI is transforming the world. Discover the Secrets of Internet Anonymity and Protect Your Privacy The best way to protect yourself from...
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Cyber security is no longer an option for small business owners – it's a necessity. Cyber threats are rising, and small businesses must stay ahead of the curve to protect their data and networks from malicious actors. This show will uncover the most dangerous cyber threats to small businesses and what steps you can take to stay secure. Ransomware Attacks Ransomware attacks are one of the most dangerous cyber threats to small businesses. Ransomware is malicious software (malware) that's typically delivered via malicious links or email attachments. Once installed on a network, the...
info_outlineCraig Peterson - America's Leading Technology News Commentator
Artificial Intelligence Search Engines You Can Use For Free Today Robot Kicked Out of Court CNET and BuzzFeed Using AI Biden Signs Go-Ahead to Use Child Labor to Make E-Car Batteries The Biden administration has issued a 20-year ban on new mining claims in the upper Midwest's famed Iron Range, and it is turning to foreign supply chains as it pushes green energy projects. The move comes as the U.S. continues to rely on foreign suppliers for critical minerals used in wind turbines and electric vehicles. The ban is part of a broader effort by the White House to reduce reliance on imported...
info_outlineCraig Peterson - America's Leading Technology News Commentator
A Step-by-Step Guide to Clearing Your Browser History and Wipe Away Your Online Footprint The process for clearing your Internet browser history can vary depending on your browser. However, here are the general steps for removing your browser history on some popular browsers… Generation Z is the least cyber secure because they are the most tech-savvy generation but also the least experienced in cyber security. They are likelier to take risks online, such as clicking on suspicious links or downloading unknown files and are less likely to use strong passwords or two-factor...
info_outlineCraig Peterson - America's Leading Technology News Commentator
ChatGPT's Technology Will Be Part of Everything This Year ChatGPT is a new text-generation tool trained on 40GB of Reddit's data. It can generate long passages of text virtually indistinguishable from human-written prose, which could have enormous implications for everything from customer service chatbots to fake social media accounts. The company behind ChatGPT is also working on ways to detect if the text was generated by ChatGPT or a human—though some experts worry about how bad actors could misuse this technology. The technology has generated random plot descriptions for video games to...
info_outlineCraig Peterson - America's Leading Technology News Commentator
Google Ads were weaponized in a way that made them appear like any other ad – Allowed hackers to infect computers with malware via a single click. Hackers have weaponized Google Ads to spread malware to unsuspecting users by disguising them as regular ads. They do this by cloning the official websites of popular software products, such as Grammarly, Audacity, μTorrent, and OBS, and distributing trojanized versions of the software when users click the download button. This tactic allows hackers to infect users' computers with malware through a single click. Google Ads, also known as Google...
info_outlineCraig Peterson - America's Leading Technology News Commentator
Artificial Intelligence is changing the world. Right Now! In just a few years, it's possible that you might be chatting with a support agent who doesn't have a human body. You'll be able to ask them anything you want and get an answer immediately. Not only that, but they'll be able to help you with things like scheduling appointments, making payments, and booking flights—without any human intervention necessary. This is just one of the many ways that Artificial Intelligence will change our lives this year. We will see more businesses using AI technology to make their processes more efficient...
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Privacy… Ring Cameras Hacked in 'Swatting' Scheme Critics and researchers say the Ring cameras are used to surveil gig economy drivers and delivery people and that they give law enforcement too much power to survey everyday life. The pair would hack people's Yahoo email accounts, then their Ring accounts, find their addresses, call law enforcement to the home with a bogus story, and then stream police's response to the call. Often, they would harass the first responders at the same time using Ring device capabilities. ++++++++ LastPass finally admits: Those crooks who got in? They did steal...
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Craig Peterson Insider Show NotesDecember 5 to December 11, 2022 China… Apple Makes Plans to Move Production Out of China In recent weeks, Apple Inc. has accelerated plans to shift some of its production outside China, long the dominant country in the supply chain that built the world’s most valuable company, say people involved in the discussions. It is telling suppliers to plan more actively for assembling Apple products elsewhere in Asia, particularly India and Vietnam, they say and looking to reduce dependence on Taiwanese assemblers led by Foxconn Technology Group. After a year...
info_outlineWelcome!
Good morning, everybody. I was on with Mr. Jim Polito this morning and we discussed all about Canada and some of the things going on there. We talked about the Ring doorbell vulnerabilities and the big vulnerability in the Firefox browser and why you must patch this. Then we talked about why it is important to segment your home network. So, here we go with Mr. Polito.
For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com
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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:
Craig
Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jim little this morning, and we got into Canada for some odd reason. It had to do with the death of that sports broadcaster who was from Canada. We talked a little bit about Canada, my family, and the problems with socialism up there. Isn't that always the case with socialism the problems are married. Then we got into the whole thing about ring doorbell safety, security, and privacy. So here we go with Mr. Polito.
Jim Polito
He has Canadian Heritage, but he denies all of the rumors that Harry and Megan will be staying with him, in Canada, or with his relatives in Canada. Joining us now is our tech talk guru, Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.
Craig Peterson
Good Morning.
Jim Polito
Yeah, I told everybody he's an American now, there's no truth to the rumors. He was not part of the team that convinced Harry and Megan to come over to Canada and then eventually, you know, the United States, North America. I said, Now, Craig Peterson has nothing to do with that. I didn't even bother to call you to ask whether or not the rumors are true.
Craig Peterson
I don't get why people even care, right. When I lived in Canada. I had an aunt who was totally into the Royals. She tracked everything they were doing. If you've seen the show "The Crown", you know, she knew every little thing that every member of the family was doing. I know some people are really into it. Personally, not me. I prefer Doug and Bob McKenzie, but they haven't been performing for very long time.
Jim Polito
Hoser. One of your countrymen, just passed on and I'm not joking, it is sad Neil Peart died from brain cancer at 67 years old. He was an incredible drummer, whether you like Rush's music or not. He was just an incredible musician and lyricist, just an incredible guy.
Craig
Well, you know, in Canada, they require broadcasters, anyone, with a broadcast license or radio or television to play a certain amount of Canadian content? I think it's like 40%, at least usually. The reason they did that is to help build the Canadian industry. So if you wondered why so many musicians and bands come out of Canada, that is the reason. A lot of them are coming out of the US, too. Did you ever wonder why half of the news anchors are from Canada? It just goes on and on. It is because the Canadian federal government is forcing businesses to find people who are good, like me, I know, and then pushing the stations to play their stuff.
Jim Polito
You didn't catch it on this whole thing when you were Canadian.
Craig Peterson
Oh, man, that was so many years.
Jim Polito
I know, but you should have you should. I mean, if they had that kind of, first of all, I don't agree with those type of things, government involvement. However, if they had that down here, like, wow, I'd be trying to figure out a way to cash in on it.
Craig Peterson
Well, I had to leave Canada because of the creeping socialism. You know, in Canada, when I was in my teens, I was already in a 50% tax bracket.
Jim Polito
At 19 years old, half of what you earned was going to the government.
Craig Peterson
Exactly, and my driver's license again back in the 70s, in Quebec was $300 a year. Car registration for the family, for the family station wagon, was almost $3,000 a year. These are not adjusted numbers I've given you. It was 1970. Registration $3,000 a year! But you know what? Insurance was free. There was no-fault insurance. The province paid all the bills, and I've got horror stories of almost every member of my family dealing with the Canadian healthcare system. Yeah. It's terrible. My dad has a heart attack, and he's in the back of an ambulance in Toronto. He's in Toronto, big, big city.
Jim Polito
Toronto
Craig Peterson
Having a heart attack and they're driving around hospital to hospital for three hours before they find a hospital that will finally admit him. Then he's admitted, and they say they'd keep him overnight and do some blood work. They did a cardiac test and found sloping t-waves. Yes, you had a heart attack. Take aspirin. Now he's having mini-strokes, and they won't treat him. My mother had a pancreas attack - pancreatitis, which is quite painful, right. She found a hospital in Montreal that would take admit her. Well, if you call admission being put on a gurney in a hallway for three days where they don't feed her or anything. They just gave her water and told, she would feel better soon.
Jim Polito
Oh boy. You know, we should do get to this video doorbell thing, but we should do a segment one day just to give folks a good eye-opener from an actual Canadian. As to how things operate up there. That would be an exciting segment, but let's get to this. So you've got a video doorbell which technology I think is incredible. You know, it's great, except when used against you. So now what you're saying is that video doorbell that supposed to keep the bad guys away is inviting the cyber hackers into your home.
Craig Peterson
Yes, this is an exciting technology. The story behind Ring, this company, is fascinating. These guys that started it, they sold it for apparently a billion dollars to Amazon a couple of years ago. Yeah. And the whole idea initially was, "Hey, listen, you replace your doorbell with this little camera," and you can be in like you are all the time and Bermuda on the beach, right? Someone rings your doorbell, and you can answer the door from there right, and you know when there's good guys and bad guys. Well, it turns out rings been doing a couple of things. One is that they shared themes from these ring doorbells with specific police departments that have applied for this. Now again, it is a double-edged sword. Now the police can look through a neighborhood to see if an abduction occurred. If there is an amber alert, oh my gosh, having a camera accessible to the police on every door. Senator Markey came out and got upset about Amazon making deals with law enforcement agencies that could expose these customers' private personal information. Because it can also show that woman that you brought home a night that wasn't your wife? What's that about? Right? So it's very concerning. But the part that concerns me more than all of that, frankly, because as a tool for law enforcement, I think it can be good. But I'm I am not for a London style surveillance system or Chinese-style surveillance where they watch everything. But the thing that concerns me is that Ring got designed by a couple of kids and bright kids. They use building blocks, and the way you build things nowadays gem is different than it used to be. Nowadays. It's like let's say you want to make a car. You can buy an engine and a crate, right? You've seen these things before? Yeah, of course. You get a crate engine, you can buy a transmission, and that engine has all the parts in it as you're ready to go. That transmission has all the pieces in it. Ready to go? So you make the frame, or maybe you use an existing structure and put a body on it and slam that engine, and you slam that transmission on then add a few little parts, buy the seats, etc. Now you've got a car. Did you design that car? Did you make that car? Well, yes and no.
Jim Polito
Yeah.
Craig Peterson
Yeah, exactly. The same thing is happening with software development nowadays, and even hardware development because frankly, this is the same thing. That is, you are not writing all of the software to do everything right. You are going to write an internet protocol stack. You're just going to use an existing one. You're not going to design an operating system, you're going to grab Windows Embedded or Linux or something else and put that in, and then you're not going to create the camera module. You're just going to buy that one from China. And you're not getting design the website, software, etc., etc. So what happens is that guys like green, go ahead and say, hey, I've got this great idea for this camera, here's what we're going to do. And they go out, and they buy a crate engine. They buy a transmission and a great, then they purchase old, and they bolt them together. And they don't realize that Wait a minute. Now, this transmission doesn't quite fit. So we're just going to make this little adapter make it fit. Well, it turns out that those transmissions' were burning out after 10,000 miles because they were never designed to use the amount of power from that engine. However, these guys don't know that. And building something, they're prototyping something, and then they build up a significant market value, which they did a billion dollars in colossal market value. Then they sell this company and more often than not, the company that bought these little guys just goes ahead and puts a turbocharger on the engine and says, Okay, we're all set without really investigating. And that's what it looks like happened here again. It is happening all the time. These systems have not been designed with security in mind. Now, not only is the hardware in many systems not designed with security in mind, but the whole development process does not keep security front and center. So we now have surveillance videos of young kids in their rooms with their ring camera talking to them because of a hack, right? Yeah, we've got login credentials last month of more than 3600 ring account holders breached, reportedly. Their data is sitting up there in the cloud, and accessible by the bad guys. Devices like this, mainly, and over 90-95% of security cameras are built with backdoors by China and are used to lunch attacked out square. So So what do I do?
Jim Polito
So what do I do? What do I do?
Craig Peterson
Well, it's scarce to find a home security camera that is not insecure out of the box. In other words, all of them are insecure and kind of the bottom line on this thing, according to Krebs on Security, Brian Krebs. He is a security guy like me, but here's what you do. You have a second network for those devices. That's number one. A lot of the routers that we buy allow you to segment your network. The better routers have this capability, and you can send me an email if you have any questions about this. Now any of these Internet of Things devices, such as cameras, refrigerators, or any other gadget and appliances, can be on a separate network. That's what we do at our house. So we have multiple Wi-Fi networks. So that stops the bad guys from being able to attack or get information from your computer.
Jim Polito
You have given us advice on this before for other things, as you've said you must protect yourself from being hacked by the Internet of Things.
Craig Peterson
Exactly right. And then what can you do about the hacker getting into it? Well, then it gets a little bit more complicated. You have to use specialized software and things but bottom line, make sure your security cameras, your ring doorbells, etc., etc. Make sure they're updated when they say there's an update. Okay, no question about it up, and we got two big problems right now. Real quick. Firefox has a known zero-day vulnerability. Make sure you upgrade your Firefox browser. It has a horrible vulnerability. Here's more from good news department over 200 million cable modems are vulnerable to a new hack out there. The bottom line we've got to change the way the systems are designed, and we've got to change the way these systems are maintained. Even Samsung only supports their top model phones for two years, and that's why I keep saying use the never use Samsung, never use Google Home. By the way, it is the least secure.
Jim Polito
Danny has that.
Craig Peterson
The elections are a lot safer, at least at this point. But yeah, make sure everything is kept up to date as best you can update your modems (routers/firewalls) and update everything. Its the only way you're going to stay safe. You got to become a bit of an IT expert. All right, you heard it
Jim Polito
Now, if you want to know more from Craig Peterson, it's straightforward. All you have to do is text My name to this number. Go ahead, Craig 855-385-5553. That just Jim to 855-385-5553 standard data and text rates apply. Craig will not hack you try to sell you stuff. He only provides you with all the information you need. Craig, thank you so much. We'll talk with you next week.
Craig Peterson
855-385-5553. That just Jim to 855-385-5553 standard data and text rates apply.
Jim Polito
Craig will not hack you try to sell you stuff. He just provides you with all the information you need. Craig, thank you so much. We'll talk with you next week.
Craig Peterson
All right. Thanks, Jim Bye-Bye.
Jim Polito
All right. We'll be back with a final word
Craig Peterson
Hey, everybody. I want to tell you something that's coming up. I am so excited about this. I have never seen anything like this before. We have the most incredible thing for you. I really can't tell you much about it right now as it is embargoed. About this, probably starting next week a little bit, but I have. Man, if you are kind of the de facto IT person, right? Maybe you got your Microsoft certification some years ago, and you're the person responsible for the computers in the business. I think I have something that's going to make your life a lot easier. You're now going to be able to sleep-at-night, you're going to be able to take vacation days. Oh, doggie. My wife and my team and I've been working on this now for months. We are getting close, so I got my fingers crossed. We'll do it next week. But keep an eye open and ear out. And also, of course, make sure on my email list, so you find out about it. Craig Peterson, calm slash subscribe. Hey, I also want to make sure that you guys know I am posting videos on The radio show my content online at both Facebook and YouTube. So you can find those, please watch them, please subscribe, please like them, please share them. A lot of work goes into this. It's it is a lot of great information that we're putting together that helps you know what's going on right now. So that when you're at the water cooler, you can be the expert at that water cooler and at the business to help everybody out. All right. So have a great day, and we'll be back tomorrow. Bye-bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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