Jan 14, 2020
Welcome!
Good morning, everybody. I was on with Mr. Jim Polito this morning and we discussed all about Canada and some of the things going on there. We talked about the Ring doorbell vulnerabilities and the big vulnerability in the Firefox browser and why you must patch this. Then we talked about why it is important to segment your home network. So, here we go with Mr. Polito.
For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com
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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:
Craig
Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jim
little this morning, and we got into Canada for some odd reason. It
had to do with the death of that sports broadcaster who was from
Canada. We talked a little bit about Canada, my family, and the
problems with socialism up there. Isn't that always the case with
socialism the problems are married. Then we got into the whole
thing about ring doorbell safety, security, and privacy. So here we
go with Mr. Polito.
Jim Polito
He has Canadian Heritage, but he denies all of the rumors that
Harry and Megan will be staying with him, in Canada, or with his
relatives in Canada. Joining us now is our tech talk guru, Craig
Peterson. Good morning, sir.
Craig Peterson
Good Morning.
Jim Polito
Yeah, I told everybody he's an American now, there's no truth to
the rumors. He was not part of the team that convinced Harry and
Megan to come over to Canada and then eventually, you know, the
United States, North America. I said, Now, Craig Peterson has
nothing to do with that. I didn't even bother to call you to ask
whether or not the rumors are true.
Craig Peterson
I don't get why people even care, right. When I lived in Canada. I
had an aunt who was totally into the Royals. She tracked everything
they were doing. If you've seen the show "The Crown", you know, she
knew every little thing that every member of the family was doing.
I know some people are really into it. Personally, not me. I prefer
Doug and Bob McKenzie, but they haven't been performing for very
long time.
Jim Polito
Hoser. One of your countrymen, just passed on and I'm not joking,
it is sad Neil Peart died from brain cancer at 67 years old. He was
an incredible drummer, whether you like Rush's music or not. He was
just an incredible musician and lyricist, just an incredible
guy.
Craig
Well, you know, in Canada, they require broadcasters, anyone, with
a broadcast license or radio or television to play a certain amount
of Canadian content? I think it's like 40%, at least usually. The
reason they did that is to help build the Canadian industry. So if
you wondered why so many musicians and bands come out of Canada,
that is the reason. A lot of them are coming out of the US, too.
Did you ever wonder why half of the news anchors are from Canada?
It just goes on and on. It is because the Canadian federal
government is forcing businesses to find people who are good, like
me, I know, and then pushing the stations to play their stuff.
Jim Polito
You didn't catch it on this whole thing when you were Canadian.
Craig Peterson
Oh, man, that was so many years.
Jim Polito
I know, but you should have you should. I mean, if they had that
kind of, first of all, I don't agree with those type of things,
government involvement. However, if they had that down here, like,
wow, I'd be trying to figure out a way to cash in on it.
Craig Peterson
Well, I had to leave Canada because of the creeping socialism. You
know, in Canada, when I was in my teens, I was already in a 50% tax
bracket.
Jim Polito
At 19 years old, half of what you earned was going to the
government.
Craig Peterson
Exactly, and my driver's license again back in the 70s, in Quebec
was $300 a year. Car registration for the family, for the family
station wagon, was almost $3,000 a year. These are not adjusted
numbers I've given you. It was 1970. Registration $3,000 a year!
But you know what? Insurance was free. There was no-fault
insurance. The province paid all the bills, and I've got horror
stories of almost every member of my family dealing with the
Canadian healthcare system. Yeah. It's terrible. My dad has a heart
attack, and he's in the back of an ambulance in Toronto. He's in
Toronto, big, big city.
Jim Polito
Toronto
Craig Peterson
Having a heart attack and they're driving around hospital to
hospital for three hours before they find a hospital that will
finally admit him. Then he's admitted, and they say they'd keep him
overnight and do some blood work. They did a cardiac test and found
sloping t-waves. Yes, you had a heart attack. Take aspirin. Now
he's having mini-strokes, and they won't treat him. My mother had a
pancreas attack - pancreatitis, which is quite painful, right. She
found a hospital in Montreal that would take admit her. Well, if
you call admission being put on a gurney in a hallway for three
days where they don't feed her or anything. They just gave her
water and told, she would feel better soon.
Jim Polito
Oh boy. You know, we should do get to this video doorbell thing,
but we should do a segment one day just to give folks a good
eye-opener from an actual Canadian. As to how things operate up
there. That would be an exciting segment, but let's get to this. So
you've got a video doorbell which technology I think is incredible.
You know, it's great, except when used against you. So now what
you're saying is that video doorbell that supposed to keep the bad
guys away is inviting the cyber hackers into your home.
Craig Peterson
Yes, this is an exciting technology. The story behind Ring, this
company, is fascinating. These guys that started it, they sold it
for apparently a billion dollars to Amazon a couple of years ago.
Yeah. And the whole idea initially was, "Hey, listen, you replace
your doorbell with this little camera," and you can be in like you
are all the time and Bermuda on the beach, right? Someone rings
your doorbell, and you can answer the door from there right, and
you know when there's good guys and bad guys. Well, it turns out
rings been doing a couple of things. One is that they shared themes
from these ring doorbells with specific police departments that
have applied for this. Now again, it is a double-edged sword. Now
the police can look through a neighborhood to see if an abduction
occurred. If there is an amber alert, oh my gosh, having a camera
accessible to the police on every door. Senator Markey came out and
got upset about Amazon making deals with law enforcement agencies
that could expose these customers' private personal information.
Because it can also show that woman that you brought home a night
that wasn't your wife? What's that about? Right? So it's very
concerning. But the part that concerns me more than all of that,
frankly, because as a tool for law enforcement, I think it can be
good. But I'm I am not for a London style surveillance system or
Chinese-style surveillance where they watch everything. But the
thing that concerns me is that Ring got designed by a couple of
kids and bright kids. They use building blocks, and the way you
build things nowadays gem is different than it used to be.
Nowadays. It's like let's say you want to make a car. You can buy
an engine and a crate, right? You've seen these things before?
Yeah, of course. You get a crate engine, you can buy a
transmission, and that engine has all the parts in it as you're
ready to go. That transmission has all the pieces in it. Ready to
go? So you make the frame, or maybe you use an existing structure
and put a body on it and slam that engine, and you slam that
transmission on then add a few little parts, buy the seats, etc.
Now you've got a car. Did you design that car? Did you make that
car? Well, yes and no.
Jim Polito
Yeah.
Craig Peterson
Yeah, exactly. The same thing is happening with software
development nowadays, and even hardware development because
frankly, this is the same thing. That is, you are not writing all
of the software to do everything right. You are going to write an
internet protocol stack. You're just going to use an existing one.
You're not going to design an operating system, you're going to
grab Windows Embedded or Linux or something else and put that in,
and then you're not going to create the camera module. You're just
going to buy that one from China. And you're not getting design the
website, software, etc., etc. So what happens is that guys like
green, go ahead and say, hey, I've got this great idea for this
camera, here's what we're going to do. And they go out, and they
buy a crate engine. They buy a transmission and a great, then they
purchase old, and they bolt them together. And they don't realize
that Wait a minute. Now, this transmission doesn't quite fit. So
we're just going to make this little adapter make it fit. Well, it
turns out that those transmissions' were burning out after 10,000
miles because they were never designed to use the amount of power
from that engine. However, these guys don't know that. And building
something, they're prototyping something, and then they build up a
significant market value, which they did a billion dollars in
colossal market value. Then they sell this company and more often
than not, the company that bought these little guys just goes ahead
and puts a turbocharger on the engine and says, Okay, we're all set
without really investigating. And that's what it looks like
happened here again. It is happening all the time. These systems
have not been designed with security in mind. Now, not only is the
hardware in many systems not designed with security in mind, but
the whole development process does not keep security front and
center. So we now have surveillance videos of young kids in their
rooms with their ring camera talking to them because of a hack,
right? Yeah, we've got login credentials last month of more than
3600 ring account holders breached, reportedly. Their data is
sitting up there in the cloud, and accessible by the bad guys.
Devices like this, mainly, and over 90-95% of security cameras are
built with backdoors by China and are used to lunch attacked out
square. So So what do I do?
Jim Polito
So what do I do? What do I do?
Craig Peterson
Well, it's scarce to find a home security camera that is not
insecure out of the box. In other words, all of them are insecure
and kind of the bottom line on this thing, according to Krebs on
Security, Brian Krebs. He is a security guy like me, but here's
what you do. You have a second network for those devices. That's
number one. A lot of the routers that we buy allow you to segment
your network. The better routers have this capability, and you can
send me an email if you have any questions about this. Now any of
these Internet of Things devices, such as cameras, refrigerators,
or any other gadget and appliances, can be on a separate network.
That's what we do at our house. So we have multiple Wi-Fi networks.
So that stops the bad guys from being able to attack or get
information from your computer.
Jim Polito
You have given us advice on this before for other things, as you've
said you must protect yourself from being hacked by the Internet of
Things.
Craig Peterson
Exactly right. And then what can you do about the hacker getting
into it? Well, then it gets a little bit more complicated. You have
to use specialized software and things but bottom line, make sure
your security cameras, your ring doorbells, etc., etc. Make sure
they're updated when they say there's an update. Okay, no question
about it up, and we got two big problems right now. Real quick.
Firefox has a known zero-day vulnerability. Make sure you upgrade
your Firefox browser. It has a horrible vulnerability. Here's more
from good news department over 200 million cable modems are
vulnerable to a new hack out there. The bottom line we've got to
change the way the systems are designed, and we've got to change
the way these systems are maintained. Even Samsung only supports
their top model phones for two years, and that's why I keep saying
use the never use Samsung, never use Google Home. By the way, it is
the least secure.
Jim Polito
Danny has that.
Craig Peterson
The elections are a lot safer, at least at this point. But yeah,
make sure everything is kept up to date as best you can update your
modems (routers/firewalls) and update everything. Its the only way
you're going to stay safe. You got to become a bit of an IT expert.
All right, you heard it
Jim Polito
Now, if you want to know more from Craig Peterson, it's
straightforward. All you have to do is text My name to this number.
Go ahead, Craig 855-385-5553. That just Jim to 855-385-5553
standard data and text rates apply. Craig will not hack you try to
sell you stuff. He only provides you with all the information you
need. Craig, thank you so much. We'll talk with you next week.
Craig Peterson
855-385-5553. That just Jim to 855-385-5553 standard data and text
rates apply.
Jim Polito
Craig will not hack you try to sell you stuff. He just provides you
with all the information you need. Craig, thank you so much. We'll
talk with you next week.
Craig Peterson
All right. Thanks, Jim Bye-Bye.
Jim Polito
All right. We'll be back with a final word
Craig Peterson
Hey, everybody. I want to tell you something that's coming up. I am
so excited about this. I have never seen anything like this before.
We have the most incredible thing for you. I really can't tell you
much about it right now as it is embargoed. About this, probably
starting next week a little bit, but I have. Man, if you are kind
of the de facto IT person, right? Maybe you got your Microsoft
certification some years ago, and you're the person responsible for
the computers in the business. I think I have something that's
going to make your life a lot easier. You're now going to be able
to sleep-at-night, you're going to be able to take vacation days.
Oh, doggie. My wife and my team and I've been working on this now
for months. We are getting close, so I got my fingers crossed.
We'll do it next week. But keep an eye open and ear out. And also,
of course, make sure on my email list, so you find out about it.
Craig Peterson, calm slash subscribe. Hey, I also want to make sure
that you guys know I am posting videos on The radio show my content
online at both Facebook and YouTube. So you can find those, please
watch them, please subscribe, please like them, please share them.
A lot of work goes into this. It's it is a lot of great information
that we're putting together that helps you know what's going on
right now. So that when you're at the water cooler, you can be the
expert at that water cooler and at the business to help everybody
out. All right. So have a great day, and we'll be back tomorrow.
Bye-bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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