AS HEARD ON - The Jim Polito Show - WTAG 580 AM: Firefox Vulnerability, Ring Vulnerability, IoT and Segmenting Home Networks and More

Welcome!

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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