AS HEARD ON NH Today WGIR-AM 610: Twitter Hack Conviction and Vaccines and Scams surrounding them

Welcome,

Craig Peterson here.  This morning I was on with Chris Ryan on NH Today. I jumped right into a conversation with regards to vaccines. I might disagree a bit with Chris on this subject a little.  Anyway, then we got into the Conviction of the teen Twitter hacker who hacked accounts of celebrities, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Kanye West for Bitcoin.  He will be doing 3 years in Prison for this escapade. Here we go with Chris. 

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here on New Hampshire Today with Mr. Chris Ryan. We talked about a friend of mine who passed some years ago, in fact, quite a few years ago now, and a little bit about vaccines, cause he's talking a whole lot about it. I certainly disagree with him on some of the things he was saying this morning, but there are some interesting effects of that really have happened here over the last one.

When did Jonas Salk come up with that first one? A hundred or so years ago? We chat a little bit about that, as well as that kid that hacked all of these blue check accounts on Twitter, including President Obama's, Kanye West, Joe Biden, and Elon Musk's accounts. Do you remember that? Then he was giving away free Bitcoin? Well, he just got sentenced. We'd talked a little bit about that as well. So here we go.

Chris Ryan: [00:00:56] Craig Peterson, right now, host of tech talk on news radio 610 and 96.7 Saturdays at 11:30 AM.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:04] Hey, I'm doing well. This brings back a memory of a friend of mine. His name was Gordon MacDonald and he died from complications of polio. I remember it ever so well, right around 1970.

This whole thing now with the vaccinations. We have pretty much eliminated a lot of these diseases that were terminal back in the day.

Chris Ryan: [00:01:24] Right. I think that whenever, even before COVID, I would hear anti-vaxxers talking about why people should not get vaccinations and the potential side effects and a wide range of conspiracy theories about why certain things are happening and trying to assign them to vaccines.

You think about Franklin Delano Roosevelt who we talked about earlier in the show. You think about smallpox and other things that were eradicated were such a predominant part of American culture. Where that you did not think that your life was going to go on for a long period of time, based upon smallpox outbreaks, based upon polio and its prevalence.

So. Vaccines have had such an incredibly positive effect on our culture as is the case with everything there are trade-offs. There is no perfect thing. I hate to break it to people, there are trade-offs. At times it's not exactly the way you want it to be, but where would we be as a country? Where would we be as a civilized society?

You think about the AIDS vaccine and how it was distributed in Africa in the early two-thousands and what that has done there. There has been such incredible work that has been done by medicine, and we give so much credence to crackpots who want to come out and talk about various conspiracy theories on vaccines. There are negatives, there are side effects, there's no question about that. There is no perfect thing, but vaccines have had such an important part

Craig Peterson: [00:02:54] Just because you're paranoid, Chris, doesn't mean that they're not coming after you.

Chris Ryan: [00:02:58] True.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:01] Oh my.

Chris Ryan: [00:03:01] So let's talk a little bit about things in your realm here over the last few days.

I want to start with this, We have seen various hackers have success as of late. One individual that hacks the Twitter accounts of Elon Musk, Barack Obama, for Bitcoin. That person has been given three years in prison for hacking into the accounts of Obama, Musk, Kanye West, as well as Joe Biden.

What are your thoughts on that?

Craig Peterson: [00:03:32] Yeah, you might remember this. What he did was, he was able to hack these accounts. He was at 17 years old at the time, so he was a minor and he entered a plea deal. He hacked these accounts, the so-called blue check brigade, right? He was able to post on those accounts and say, Hey, listen because I'm giving away lots of money here. If you send me a thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin, I'll send you back $3,000 worth of Bitcoin and people fell for it and he got more than a hundred thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin for this whole scam. But because he was a minor at the time, and he's entered into a plea deal, he is going to be getting three years in prison for this. It brings up a couple of really good points.

One is we have to be careful if something's too good to be true it probably isn't, even if it might be a Nigerian Prince, right, which is how this whole mess started. So be careful of that.

We're seeing it all of the time. We're seeing it with business email compromises, which is our cost and our businesses billions of dollars. We're seeing that now with ransomware and extortion. Where you have tripled in the last 12 months the number of ransoms we're paying out here in the United States. It's crazy. Stop. Read what it says right now and ask yourself. Does this seem legitimate?

Chris Ryan: [00:05:02] Right.  I think that in those circumstances,  it's very different than when you get an email that says your cousin is being held in the UK, and we need money.

Obviously, those have gone down a little bit with the lack of travel, but there's various scams that are out there. But when you see Kanye West or a celebrity, Elon Musk saying to do this, that's something that really is it would seem to make sense to somebody, right? That's something that they would definitely fall for.  I think In these times, you always need to be cognizant.

Going back to the vaccines again, do your due diligence.  I'm not telling people to get the vaccine or not get the vaccine. I think it's a good idea and I'm going to do it, but you need to do your due diligence and to go through and become educated and to listen to people about the vaccine.  Listen to people about what's taking place in this environment, regards to hacking, and make your own best decisions.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:54] Yeah, absolutely. In this case, he was facing a 10-year sentence. A lot of people fell for this. He entered into that plea deal. Unfortunately, Chris, we're not seeing enough prosecutions of this because so much of, it's hard to prove. Hard to track down. When it comes to hacking these accounts that are very prominent, they showed up the next day at this kid's house and arrested him. He wasn't being very careful about it.

We do have to be ultra-careful. Particularly, now we have hospitals that fell for these scams for personal protective equipment. Where it was being sold supposedly. They paid the bills, it never showed up. We're getting anxious about things. We're even seeing it now with vaccines. Just like this morning, Justin, how much did you pay to get that vaccine registration?

Chris Ryan: [00:06:44] At least a hundred dollars

Justin McIssac: [00:06:47] Yeah. $0.

Craig Peterson: [00:06:50] That's a scam it's happening right now, too. So be careful everybody.

Chris Ryan: [00:06:54] Craig, as always. Thank you so much.

Craig Peterson: [00:06:57] Take care.

Chris Ryan: [00:06:58] Craig Peterson, joining us here on Hampshire day. He hosts Tech Talk at 11:30 AM on Saturday.

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