2021-03-22-wgir-why is the biden administration changing tune about foreign hackers

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Good morning, everybody Craig Peterson here. And I was just talking with Mr. Chris, Ryan about some of the impact that we are beginning to feel with the remote hackers, right? Was this China was this Russia. And I thought it was interesting because Chris was obviously going online and. Doc going some of these different topics that we were talking about and 19 administration officials that were saying things that I don't think were true, frankly.

[00:00:36] So here we go with Mr. Chris Ryan.

[00:00:39]Chris Ryan: [00:00:39] The program right now, Craig Peterson, host of tech talk here on news radio 610 and 96.7, which airs on Saturdays at 11:00 AM, actually 1130, Craig, how are you?

[00:00:52] Craig Peterson: [00:00:52] I am doing fine. And yeah, there's only one right lane.

[00:00:55] Chris Ryan: [00:00:55] Thank you. Thank you at score another one for Chris.

[00:00:59] He's not just sucking up to me because I'm the host. He is legit in this circumstance. Craig, I got a lot of important things to talk about with you and I want to start with what the United States is doing in regards to cyber attacks reportedly against Russia and retaliation for what Vladimir Putin has done in regards to election interference.

[00:01:17] And also. Some of the cyber attacks that they've perpetrated against this country. What's the latest on this. And what do you see as being the state of play?

[00:01:25]Craig Peterson: [00:01:25] There have been outages of course, here in the us and a lot of them attributed to just us making mistakes. So a lot of people businesses that are running parts of the internet that.

[00:01:37] Did the wrong thing. So remember, again, the internet is not run by one organization. It isn't run by the federal government. It is a whole bunch of networks that are connected together. Now that said, we have seen some major strikes against outs here in the U S from both. Russia. And from China, frankly, China has been much, much worse at this, but the Biden administration has decided to really try and single out Russia.

[00:02:07] In fact, president Biden came out and criticize them and said, we are going to retaliate. We had a problem in Russia where the Russian main Russian government websites were shut down and they went off the air is that as he sent them down on purpose and we've seen similar things before. So Chris, I suspect we have been involved.

[00:02:30] Chris Ryan: [00:02:30] Yeah, the Biden administration, according to Yahoo news is preparing a series of aggressive cyber attacks on Russia. I'm in a major shift in tactics designed as a warning shot to rival powers. They are saying that they're not going to target civilian structures or networks, but the hack will instead serve as a direct challenge to Vladimir Putin and his cyber army, according to the telegraph.

[00:02:56] Craig Peterson: [00:02:56] Yeah, but the one to really worry about is China. I, there's this whole Russia thing has really gone overboard here. All of the. Real cyber experts are saying that China's the big one. We just had two major attacks that attacked and compromised tens of thousands of businesses here in the United States, as well as government agencies, as well as our schools, stealing our information, grabbing bank account information, personal information, personal health information.

[00:03:26] And none of that is attributed to Russia. It is entirely including the federal government Homeland security and the FBI it's entirely attributed to China. But yeah, it looks like we've done a little saber rattling, according

[00:03:41] to what the American government has said, the agencies believe that the attack was the solar winds attack was actually perpetrated and they have traced.

[00:03:50] Back to the Kremlin and this is going to be retaliation for that. So you do not believe that's the case. You believe it is China.

[00:04:00] Yeah. Most of what we're seeing with solar winds is actually originated with Microsoft and Microsoft office three 65 system, and more particularly with Microsoft exchange servers and apparently. Both countries, there's all, some others have been involved in this. No, I don't say that it was not Russia at all, because there is some evidence that they were involved in it, but the most dramatic stuff has been caused by China has been coming from China.

[00:04:29] Now I've got to explain one other thing here. Sure. The reason there are questions about this isn't because people are trying to hide things or cover up or blame a country that had no involvement. The reason it's so hard to figure this out entirely is we don't know where it really originates. No, we can track down a little bit.

[00:04:50] We know, okay. There's an IP address that came from, but that IP address was someone's home computer that had been compromised and as part of a bot net, and then that home computer, if we get our hands on it, we can see, Oh, that was compromised from this machine in India. Oh. And that compromise came from here or there, the way we tell.

[00:05:10] Whether or not a machine has been compromised from a certain place is by looking at how it was done. And I've worked with the FBI on these cases before. And so I can tell you what we're looking at is a fingerprint. What tools did they use? How did they use them once they got into the network?

[00:05:29] How did they spread? And it is easy enough. For the Russians or the Chinese or the North Vietnamese now to come in and do something just as though they are someone else. And it's much like these people that commit crimes and they, the police look at it and say, okay, this has the same ammo.

[00:05:52] Motorcyle Rhonda, is this other crime? Therefore they're probably related. That's what we're doing here, Chris. So there's no hard and fast rules that this was, or was not Russia on. And you're talking about one specific part of one specific tack. We do know most. Countries were involved. And we do know that China has been doing most of this over the last really 15 years,

[00:06:20] Chris Ryan: [00:06:20] U S national security advisor, Jake Solvan who's from New Hampshire was a part of the delegation that met with the Chinese in Alaska.

[00:06:27] And that wrapped up over the weekend. It began with a very tense. Standoff between the two nations, which was supposed to be a photo op and instead they engaged in, as you referenced before, or some saber rattling between the two sides. And I'm interested in what your takeaways were from that. As Mr.

[00:06:46] Sullivan has continually. Said that traditional sanctions are not going to be what the Biden ministration uses in these circumstances. And there's going to be different elements as the United States. Again, looking at the cyber side of things in regards to attacks and and following up from previous attacks, perhaps perpetrating new ones in a new type of response.

[00:07:11] Craig Peterson: [00:07:11] Yeah, there are many options available. We do in every branch of the armed services, have people who are not just there to defend, but to attack. And we are continually looking into that. Of course, the NSA we've seen before for tools that were offensive. Cyber warfare tools we've seen them used. And we just saw China here last week, how Tesla, but it cannot be selling cars in China because it has seven cameras and it has all of this other computer equipment.

[00:07:44] And they think that we might be using it to steal information. Of course, Elon Musk came out and said, no, that's not the case. But that's the sort of thing we really could be doing. If we wanted to do it, you can be sure we're probing their networks. You can be sure we're into them as much as we can be. So how we resigned, it's hard to say, but there are a lot of options available and we have been shooting around the corners in shutting down power plants in Russia, in shutting down some of the infrastructure in China an hour.

[00:08:20] Fingerprints are all over those things, just like it was in Iran with those centrifuges that were being used reportedly to make nuclear fuel for bombs. We have a record of doing this sort of thing. Preston. So in saber rattling might well be backed up by something. That's a very, obviously from the UK.

[00:08:41] Chris Ryan: [00:08:41] And I think it has to be, I think that talk particularly in the current world, climate only goes. So far and it has to be followed by reciprocal action where we'll be seen as just being talk. Craig, thank you so much. And I look forward to chatting again next week. Take care, Chris. That is Greg Peterson.

[00:09:01] He hosts tech talk on news radio six, 10 and 96, seven Saturdays at 11:30 AM.