AS HEARD ON - The Jim Polito Show - WTAG 580 AM: Trojan Targeting Trump Supporters and 5G

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito.  We got into a lengthy discussion about some new malware - a trojan that is targeting Trump supporters, specifically.  Then we briefly hit on 5G. Here we go with Jim.

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] There is a word document attached to that malicious email. That malicious email has in it, in that word document, something called malware. One of the nastiest pieces of malware out there. They're forwarding political information relevant to Republicans.  People are targeting Republicans.

Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Yeah, that was me on with Jim this morning. We went into quite a bit of detail about this Trojan malware. It's an interesting discussion here.

Why is it coming out? What are they saying? What are their subject lines? What's it going to do to you?  Why is it targeting Republicans?

So here we go.

Jim Polito: [00:00:47] Here he is, Oh, everybody waits for Craig Peterson and this is going to be an important visit today. We're going to talk about malware. If you are a Trump supporter, kind of a Trojan horse out there. Well, we'll get to all of that, but first, let's welcome him aboard. Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:09] Hey, good morning.  I've got another little granddaughter who was born just this last week and her parents are both captains and they sent a picture of this little baby girl in a captain's outfit.

Jim Polito: [00:01:23] Now that is that's worthy of a wonderful congratulations there, grandpa again.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:34] Thanks.  I've got 8 kids and I've only got six grandkids. These millennials what's with them.

 Yeah, yeah,

Jim Polito: [00:01:39] yeah.

 Craig, they're just not, I mean,  I finally am going to be a grand or great uncle, whichever way you choose to say it. Yeah. These millennials, come on. Come on, guys. Listen.

Well, listen, before we get to this. I've got to tell you something, that'll make you feel old or it'll fascinate you.

Today. The first cell phones were made available for sale commercially in 1983. They were ridiculously expensive. There weren't a lot of towers, but they were for sale.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:16] Yeah, the big bricks. They were really. Oh, you remember those? I was so jealous when those came out. I've been a ham radio operator. I have an advanced class amateur radio license and land mobile was the thing back then. Right? So you'd have this huge antenna on your car. You drive around and almost could listen to you as you're driving. Now came cell phones, which had a modicum of privacy on them. They were so small compared to the land mobile things.

And now  I've got a cell phone on my wrist. This is like big, crazy time.

Jim Polito: [00:02:49] It is. It's too cool. It just goes to show you, where will we be four decades from now?  I'll probably be dirt napping, but anyway, Where were we? Where will we be? Alright, Craig, I've got to talk to you about this, cause it really caught my attention.

A piece you sent me about Trojan malware targeting Trump supporters. This is something that a good portion of the audience wants to hear about.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:18] Yeah,  I thought you might be interested in this one and for everybody, this will come in my newsletter on Saturday. So make sure you're subscribed to that newsletter so you can get this.

There is a Trojan right now that's being circulated and it's targeting just Trump supporters. I might ask, how does that happen? Right. It's not like the virus only targets people in the white house and Republicans. Well, actually, maybe it does.  But anyways. The way it works, is they are sending emails that are actually forwarded emails from these political action committees that are pro-Trump. These attackers are forwarding perfectly legitimate emails.

It has legitimate links in it that you can click on right to that political action committee.  You can just look at and you think, Oh, it's great. The subject line says forward, and it's got the subject or maybe re the subject.  Those are both things that people have is clues. Hey, this is an email you want to open.

The problem with this is it's entirely Republican PAC. That they are targeting that they're forwarding to people and there is a word document that's attached to that malicious email. That malicious email has in that word document, something called malware. One of the nastiest pieces of malware out there.

They're forwarding political information that's relevant to Republicans. There are people really targeting Republicans.

Jim Polito: [00:04:58] There you go. How do you argue with that? That's shall we say fact?

Craig Peterson: [00:05:07] Right. Its science. I believe in science. It's just, I believe in my science, this is very obvious, right? The researchers are calling it like a Wolf in sheep's clothing. Well, here's what Emotet does once you get it.  Emotet is a Trojan. It's been around a long time. They use what's called a spear-phishing technique and they have for a long time.

So they try and coerce you into opening up by putting something in the email that's of particular interest to you. Then once you've opened that word document and that malware is on your computer and it starts to spread. It actually acts like what we call a worm and it brute force attacks all of the services on your computer and all of the services on every other computer on the network.

Now, you know how I've been warning about using VPNs when it comes to businesses, Jim. This is why. If you VPN in, into the office and that office is not protected from its VPN users, this Emotet will now start spreading to your business as well. We'll start taking over your file servers because it looks for SMB shares.

The window shares, is what it is, a valid local account.  Very, very nasty and it is very sad and scary that it is attacking Republicans. Now Democrats would get this email as well, but the likelihood is they're just not going to be interested. So they're not going to open it.

They've gotten a little more advanced too, for those of you out there that are a little geekier, It does pass email authentication protocols, such as D Mark. So this is a bit of nastiness and it'll be interesting to see if we can figure out who's sending them.

Jim Polito: [00:06:53] It was what I was going to ask. And we're talking with Craig Peterson, our tech talk guru, and about this malware that is targeting Trump supporters.

Now, could this just be an opportunity? They're going after Trump supporters, just because it was easy. It's a segment they are going after and it's apolitical.  their reasoning behind this is not political because maybe the door was left on the lock on this house.

It was a crime of opportunity. It's not particularly against the family who lives there or do you think there's more to this.

Craig Peterson: [00:07:29] Well, back up a little bit and I thought about this and here's kind of my thinking on it is that, um, Sleepy Joe's supporters are not particularly excited about his campaign or

people voting for Joe Biden are voting against Trump for the most part. It's just crazy. So the way I look at it Trump supporters tend to be, you know, man, I'm on top of it. I do want to hear what's going on, you know? That goes right into your target of opportunity theory. I think it's absolutely likely that's what's going on here.

They could be an attempt to kind of influence the election, but I think it's more likely a moneymaking opportunity for them.

Jim Polito: [00:08:11] So they look at it as, Hey, there's more Trump voters engaged. They're going to be more active. Why not go after that big fish? Just like if the Patriots were in the world series, you'd have a lot of people from New England or elsewhere fans looking for stuff online related to the Patriots.

So why not attack Patriots fans?

Craig Peterson: [00:08:36] Hey now I even, I know that the Patriots would never be in the world series because that's baseball. Okay. Come on, Jim, come on. Pay attention.

Jim Polito: [00:08:46] Did I, did I say words that I say world series?

Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Series. It just proves it pages in the world series of the super bowl. Look, if it's not hockey, I trust you only with hockey. Okay. Because you're a Canadian, maybe that and curling. Okay. That's it.

Craig Peterson: [00:09:08] Yeah. There you go. I love Curling actually. I really do. So here's what to look for. If you get a subject, this is the number one out there right now for this.

The subject line has forward breaking President Trump suspends funding to WHO. That is the number one subject these guys are using right now. Breaking President Trump has spending funny to W H O and they're asking you to click a button labeled stand with Trump. They're hiding the sending address and everything else in these things.

So, watch out. Be very, very careful in this political season about opening emails and more particularly about opening Microsoft documents. They've long been used as attack vectors against all of us,

Jim Polito: [00:09:51] You know? I think about my own email and of course, I've got campaigns, pundits, everybody emailing me every single day, and you know, I open most of it and look at it. Just because I want to say, well, what's this, what's that?

 I have not received anything like that, but I'm going to be very careful now going forward because that, the last thing I need is is that,

Hey quickly, because we've only really got a minute. Five G  it looks, it looks like from what you sent me, the download speeds of five G in the US are going to be a lot slower than they are elsewhere in the world. It's going to be an improvement over 4g, but it's still going to be slower than the rest of the world. Why?

Craig Peterson: [00:10:45] This is something that takes some serious time to explain. But getting it down to 60 seconds here's the bottom line. Five G is not the same thing across all carriers. Five G is using some different bands and different frequencies.

Jim Polito: [00:11:01] So here's the problem that we're seeing right now. T-Mobile has the biggest five G network in the country. In fact, you could say it's the only five G network in the country, quite reasonably. However, because the frequency is there.  Using it is not as fast as Verizon's, which is only available in certain cities. In fact, in only available in certain blocks in certain cities.

Craig Peterson: [00:11:25] Here's why. The T-Mobile frequencies will go through glass. They'll go through walls. You can use them in a building. Verizon's will not. You have to be very close to the cell site. Okay. So because of the lower frequency, you also cannot send as much data. On those little frequencies. So look right now, the US average is about two times faster than four G, which is really good in Europe. We're seeing much, much higher.  They have denser populations they're using the higher frequencies like Verizon is. Once Verizon's rolled out further, they will have faster download speeds.

But, with Apple's big announcement today where we're going to have to make some decisions about what carrier we want, based on whether or not we want 5g. My bottom line on that it's not that a big win unless you are hauling a lot of data up and down to your phone.

Jim Polito: [00:12:18] All right. That made sense to me, even in that short time.

So Craig has got a great show Sundays at 11 o'clock and it's repeated at other points during the weekend on TAG and HYN, but Craig, if folks want to get in touch with you, and I know you said you're putting it out in your newsletter, some of this information,

Craig Peterson: [00:12:37] well, just drop me an email. [email protected] M E @craigpetersondotcom Subscribe by going to craigpeterson.com slash subscribe.

Jim Polito: [00:12:47] Alrighty. Very good. Craig, always a pleasure. We'll catch up with you next week.

Craig Peterson: [00:12:53] Thanks, Jim. Take care.

Jim Polito: [00:12:54] You too. Bye-bye.

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