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A New Direction for Hackers plus more on this Tech Talk with Craig Peterson Podcast

Craig Peterson - America's Leading Technology News Commentator

Release Date: 10/02/2020

The Truth About ChatGPT and A.I. - Discover the Secrets of Internet Anonymity and Protect Your Privacy show art The Truth About ChatGPT and A.I. - Discover the Secrets of Internet Anonymity and Protect Your Privacy

Craig Peterson - America's Leading Technology News Commentator

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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Protect Your Business and Home from the Most Dangerous Cyber Threats - Uncover the Risks and Steps You Can Take to Stay Secure show art Protect Your Business and Home from the Most Dangerous Cyber Threats - Uncover the Risks and Steps You Can Take to Stay Secure

Craig Peterson - America's Leading Technology News Commentator

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...

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Artificial Intelligence Search Engines You Can Use For Free Today - Robot Kicked Out of Court - CNET and BuzzFeed Using AI show art Artificial Intelligence Search Engines You Can Use For Free Today - Robot Kicked Out of Court - CNET and BuzzFeed Using AI

Craig 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...

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A Step-by-Step Guide to Clearing Your Browser History and Wipe Away Your Online Footprint - Generation Z is the least cyber secure - Security and the Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Failing US show art A Step-by-Step Guide to Clearing Your Browser History and Wipe Away Your Online Footprint - Generation Z is the least cyber secure - Security and the Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Failing US

Craig 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...

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ChatGPT's Technology Will Be Part of Everything This Year - How AI chatbot ChatGPT changes the phishing game - Microsoft Looking to Invest $10 billion More show art ChatGPT's Technology Will Be Part of Everything This Year - How AI chatbot ChatGPT changes the phishing game - Microsoft Looking to Invest $10 billion More

Craig 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...

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Google Ads Were Weaponized - Identifying Criminals Using Cell Phone Location Data - WhatsApp Was Hacked By an Israeli Company – US Supreme Court Allows WhatsApp to Sue NSO Group - Identity Thieves Bypassed Experian Security to View Credit Reports show art Google Ads Were Weaponized - Identifying Criminals Using Cell Phone Location Data - WhatsApp Was Hacked By an Israeli Company – US Supreme Court Allows WhatsApp to Sue NSO Group - Identity Thieves Bypassed Experian Security to View Credit Reports

Craig 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...

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The Newest Artificial Intelligence Is About to Change Your Life! And It's Code Red for Google. show art The Newest Artificial Intelligence Is About to Change Your Life! And It's Code Red for Google.

Craig 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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Ring Cameras Hacked - LastPass finally admits crooks stole your info - How to use Password Managers - Which are the best for you? show art Ring Cameras Hacked - LastPass finally admits crooks stole your info - How to use Password Managers - Which are the best for you?

Craig Peterson - America's Leading Technology News Commentator

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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Slave Labor in China - Apple Moves Out - Spyware posing as VPN apps - Darknet markets generate millions in revenue by selling stolen personal data - Voice-scamming site “iSpoof” seized show art Slave Labor in China - Apple Moves Out - Spyware posing as VPN apps - Darknet markets generate millions in revenue by selling stolen personal data - Voice-scamming site “iSpoof” seized

Craig Peterson - America's Leading Technology News Commentator

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...

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Can't Trust Amazon.com Any More show art Can't Trust Amazon.com Any More

Craig Peterson - America's Leading Technology News Commentator

It's not your imagination: Shopping on Amazon has gotten worse [Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post] Sure, Google and Facebook are chock full of ads, too. But on Amazon, we're supposed to be the customers, not the eyeballs for sale. We're paying Amazon to buy a product and probably paying for a membership in its Prime two-day shipping product. When you search for a product on Amazon, you may not realize that most of what you see at first is advertising. Amazon is betraying your trust in its results to make an extra buck. I call it the "shill results" business. Even when they...

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Welcome!

Craig discusses problems that businesses can face when using VPNs and why you should be looking to a Zero-trust network if you are running a business today.

For more tech tips, news, and updates, visit - CraigPeterson.com

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Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] What is going on with malware? There've been some major changes just over the last few months. That's what we're going to talk about right now. What do you need to watch out for? What should you be doing in your business as well as your home?

Hey, you're listening to Craig Peterson.

 We know that they're here. I have been a lot of attacks over the years. That's what we're trying to stop. Isn't it with our businesses, with our home users? That's why we buy antivirus software or why we have a firewall at the edge. Maybe we even upgraded your firewall. You got rid of that piece of junk that was provided by your internet service providers. Most of them are frankly, pieces of junk, maybe you're lucky and have a great internet service provider that is giving you really what you need. I have yet, by the way, to see any of those internet service providers out there, that are really giving you what you need.

So there is a lot to consider here when we're talking about preventing and preventing malware. What we have found is that malware attacks declined this year in the second quarter, but here's what's happening. Right? They are getting through more.

Historically, we had things that have hit us that have been various types of malware. I remember when I first got nailed back in 91. I had a Unix server that I was running, as you probably know, I've been using Unix since the early eighties, 81, 82.

I was using Unix, and I had my own Unix machines because I was helping to develop the protocols that later on became the internet about a decade or more later.

The Unix world was on rather an open world. Was everybody on the internet was pretty friendly. Most people were involved in research, either government research or businesses doing research online, a lot of smart people and we actually had some fun back in the days', puns, and everything.

We weren't that worried about security, unlike today, where security really is a top of mind thing for so many people. We weren't worried about who's going to do this to me or that to me.

I had a Unix server that I was using, actually at a few of them that I was using for my business. Now, one of those servers was running emails, a program called Sendmail. That's still around today. It was the email package that was ruling the internet back at the time.  I got nailed with something called a worm. It was the Morris Worm. In fact, it got onto my computer through no act of my own.

I didn't click on anything. It got onto my computer because it came through the internet. That was back in the days when we really didn't have much in the line of firewalls so it just talked to my mail server. One of these days we'll have to tell some stories about how we really trusted everybody back then.

You could query to see if an email address was good. You could get onto the machine and say, Hey guy, I noticed that you had this problem so I went in and fixed it for you, and here's what I did. Much, much different world back then.

But that's how malware used to spread. It was something, it was just kind of automated. It went out and they just checked everybody's machine to checked firewalls, to see what they were to see if they were open.

We've been doing that for a very long time, haven't, we? We have been nailed with it. That's what the viruses were and are still. Where it gets onto your computer.

Maybe you installed some software that you shouldn't have, and that software now takes over part of your computer. It affects other files. It might be something that's part of a Word macro or an Excel macro. And it now spreads through your sharing of that file and other people opening it.

Worms are like what I got nailed with, just start crawling around through the internet. So they run some software on your machine and that looks for other machines and today things have changed again. 

They are changing pretty frequently out there. What we have seen so far here in 2020 is a decrease in malware detections. Now, just because there's been a decrease in malware detections, I don't want you to think that the threat has diminished because it hasn't. But the signature-based antivirus system is real problems.

Now, what's a signature-based antivirus system. That's any antivirus software, like your McAfee's like your Norton's, the Symantec stuff, any antivirus software, that is working like your body's immune system.

What happens with your body's immune system? You get a virus and you're your body says, okay, what's going on here? It starts to multiply. Eventually, the body figures it out. It develops antibodies for it. So the next time it sees that particular virus, you're likely to be pretty much immune from it. Your body's going to say, Whoa, that's a virus and it goes in and kills it pretty darn quickly.

That's the whole idea behind trying to stop the WuHan virus that is spreading out there. How do we stop it while we stop it, by just developing antibodies? Right? That's herd immunity. We could also develop antibodies by an antivirus shot that is designed to stop that virus from spreading and prevents you from coming down with COVID-19 symptoms.

In the computer world, it's much the same as most of the software signature-based antivirus software is exactly the same as the way your body's immune system has been working. In many, many ways.

Here's what happens. Someone gets infected with a virus and they reported to Symantec or Norton, or maybe the software reported itself. Usually, it's a third party that reports that and they look at it and they say, okay, so what does this virus look like? There is in this program the developers' names embedded or the name of the hacker group is embedded in it. So we are going to now say any piece of software that it has this hacker group's name in it, we're going to ban. Right?  It recognizes it. So when the file comes onto your computer your computer looks at it. It looks at the signatures. These are called signatures. To say, okay, how does it match? Or it doesn't match at all and it might be through a string that's somewhere embedded in there. So it might be through a name. It might be through a number of other things. That's signature-based.

The malware, that was not detectable by signature-based antivirus systems jumped 12%. In the second quarter of 2020. That is amazing. Amazing, absolutely amazing. Seven in 10 attacks that organizations encountered in the second quarter this year. In fact, involved malware designed to circumvent anti-virus signatures.

Most cyber-attacks last year and this is probably going to be true in 2020 as well as we get into the fourth quarter. But most cyberattacks in 2019 came about without malware. That means that there were hackers behind this.

We're going to talk about that. What's going on some of the data also from CrowdStrike and what they have found CrowdStrike is an anti-malware anti-hacker company. They've got a lot of great people working for them as well. What they have found.

It's like the bad old days of hacking and they're back on us right now.

So make sure you stick around. Cause we're going to get into that when we get back. And of course, we got a whole lot more, including a major windows bug that's now under exploit and how does this all fit together?

You are listening to Craig Peterson.

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