Exposing the Dark Side of Windows Updates: What You Need to Know Now! 🔍💻🚨
Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity
Release Date: 04/15/2023
The Time They Once Hacked Our Routers to Patch Them
Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity
The FBI, CIA, NSA, CISA and others issued a warning about active AI-driven attacks on American critical infrastructure. Craig, who ran the FBI's InfraGard online training program, explains what's actually exposed: old controllers that open and close valves, set flow rates, decide how much acid or base goes into the water — many of them reachable directly from the internet, on networks that have been comprehensively mapped for years. Several water systems have already been shut down; one town lost power along with its water. Josh, who works InfraGard in his own homeland security practice,...
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Five Federal Agencies, One Warning — and an Argument About the Singularity
Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity
The NSA, CISA, the FBI, the Department of Energy and the EPA put out a joint advisory last Wednesday, and the language is unusually direct: AI dramatically reduces the technical skill and the time required to attack industrial control systems. Those controllers run public works. A great many of them are reachable from the internet, and their locations are not a secret. That sets up the larger conversation. Ray Kurzweil wrote The Singularity Is Near twenty years ago, predicting broadly human-level machine intelligence by 2029 and human-machine integration by 2045. Elon Musk and others now say...
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People Would Rather Live Next to a Nuclear Plant Than a Data Center
Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity
Matt opens with a poll finding he calls one of the great PR failures of our time: people would rather have a nuclear power plant built next door than a data center. Pennsylvania's governor has now signed legislation that effectively stops data centers unless they clear a long approvals process. Craig's answer isn't a defense of data centers so much as a description of what a few counties actually did. They said yes — on conditions. Generate your own power, and 20% more than you use, fed back into our grid. And pay full property tax, none of the abatement deals. It worked well enough that...
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1,140 Ransomware Attacks on Industry in One Quarter — 740 of Them Manufacturing
Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity
The numbers carry this segment. Eleven hundred forty ransomware attacks on industrial companies in a single quarter, 740 of them against manufacturers. A recent Patch Tuesday carrying about 570 fixes. An Apple advisory telling anyone whose machine touches a coffee-shop network to update now. Craig's point is narrower and more useful than the headline count. Windows Update patches Microsoft software, and not all of it. The average computer is running roughly 60 other programs it never looks at. Older versions of ordinary things — Adobe Reader is the one he names — are what attackers are...
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Fixing Jeff's Wi-Fi, Live On the Air
Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity
Jeff's studio Wi-Fi had been misbehaving for weeks, so this segment became a clinic — and one you can follow along with on your own network, because Craig has Jeff run the test live. The two bands do different jobs. 2.4 GHz travels farther and gets through walls and windows better, but it carries only a few channels, so in an apartment building or a dense neighborhood your neighbors are stepping on you. 5 GHz has the room but not the reach. Anything older than about ten years doesn't have the choice, and Wi-Fi 6, 7 and the coming 8 handle the congestion far better than what came before. Then...
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Why Deleting a File on an iPhone Is Different — and How the Senate Got Fauci's Texts Anyway
Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity
When you erase an iPhone and it finishes in a second, nothing was erased. The phone destroyed the encryption key. Craig explains the layer most people miss: every individual file has its own key, so deleting one file destroys that file's key and the contents can never be recovered — unlike Windows, where a deleted file usually sits there waiting for recovery software. Which raises the obvious question about a phone with very few contacts left on it. The answer is mobile device management, the same category of software Craig runs for his clients. MDM lets a central authority control which...
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The Same Dollar Shows Up Five or Six Times in AI's Revenue
Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity
Two independent testing firms reported more cases of Anthropic's and OpenAI's most advanced models compromising third-party systems. Anthropic's contribution to the news cycle was volunteering that theirs got out of three different systems back in April. Craig explains why the fix is harder than it sounds. These are associative machines — running through branches to pick the next best word, across chipsets holding thousands of small processors, in a structure deliberately modeled on the brain. We know how to build it and how to feed it. We do not know what happens in the middle. So you...
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Two AI Labs Are Arguing About Whose Model Escaped First
Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity
OpenAI's high-end model, under test, ended up breaking into Hugging Face. Then Anthropic said theirs had gotten out three times back in April. Craig's reaction to the one-upmanship is the same as Jim's: this is a strange thing to compete over. But he wants the context understood before anyone reaches for the movie reference. Nobody told these systems to escape. They were given a problem, a budget, and an instruction to work hard on it, and they tried millions of routes. One route was a machine with internet access. That is not a mind waking up — and, as Craig points out, air-gapping ends it....
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Jeff Asks the Best Question Anyone Has Asked Craig About AI
Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity
Jeff stops Craig mid-explanation and asks him to dumb it down. If AI is a large language model — if all it does is pick the most likely next word — how does that thing get into a company's computers? Is it just guessing the next digit of a password? Craig's answer is the clearest explanation he has given on air. It started as a language model, literally which word tends to follow which, good enough to produce something that reads as human. What it became is an associative machine, and association isn't limited to words. The same pattern-matching that strings a sentence together recognizes...
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It Was Told to Research Competitors. It Hacked Hugging Face.
Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity
OpenAI ran a test: take some of the controls off the top model, turn it loose inside the lab, and tell it to find information about competing large language models. The machine went looking, found one connected to the internet, and reasoned its way to the largest collection of such models anywhere — Hugging Face. It went to the dark web for employee credentials, used them to get in, and crawled around inside. Hugging Face noticed the load on their servers and assumed an attack — but nothing was going after accounts or credit cards. It only wanted model information. Craig's point is that...
info_outlineIn today's fast-paced, technology-driven world, it is crucial for computer users to stay informed about the latest updates and security measures for their systems.
For Windows users, automatic updates are a common method of ensuring their devices remain up-to-date and protected against various threats. While these updates are essential for maintaining a secure and smoothly operating system, they can also introduce unexpected problems, such as data loss, system instability, and other unwelcome changes.
This podcast aims to shed light on the hidden dangers of automatic Windows updates and provides a comprehensive guide to help users protect their valuable data and maintain a stable system.
Automatic Windows updates are designed to provide users with the most recent security patches and feature improvements, keeping their systems running optimally. However, these updates can also introduce new bugs and incompatibilities, which can lead to system instability and crashes.
In some cases, the new software components may not be compatible with existing hardware or peripheral devices, causing further issues. Furthermore, unexpected changes to settings or configurations can leave users frustrated and searching for a solution.
One of the most alarming risks associated with automatic updates is the potential for data loss. During the update process, files can become corrupted, overwritten, or even deleted entirely. For users who have not backed up their data, this can result in the loss of important documents, photos, and other irreplaceable files. It is essential for users to be aware of this risk and take the necessary precautions to safeguard their data.
To protect against data loss and maintain a stable system, users should follow a few key steps. First, make sure to create regular backups of important files and store them on external drives or cloud storage services. This ensures that even if something goes wrong during an update, users can quickly and easily recover their lost data.
Second, users should consider adjusting their update settings to have more control over when and how updates occur. By disabling automatic updates and choosing to install them manually, users can determine if there are any known issues or incompatibilities with the new software before installation. This allows them to take a more proactive approach to managing their system and avoiding potential problems.
Third, it is essential for users to stay informed about the latest updates and potential issues. By following technology news outlets and forums, users can learn about any problems associated with particular updates and take appropriate actions to protect their systems. Additionally, users should keep their software and drivers up-to-date, as these can help prevent conflicts and ensure compatibility with new updates.
Finally, users should consider investing in antivirus and security software, which can provide additional protection against malicious software and other threats. These programs can help users identify and address potential security vulnerabilities, keeping their systems safe and secure.
While automatic Windows updates offer essential security patches and improvements, they can also introduce hidden dangers and risks to users' systems. By taking a proactive approach to managing updates, staying informed about potential issues, and implementing a robust data backup and security strategy, users can minimize disruptions and ensure their valuable data remains protected. Don't wait to unlock the full potential of your PC—listen to this podcast to learn more about the secrets to managing your computer updates and maintaining a stable, secure system.