Jul 14, 2018
How do you protect your data from leaving with Employees? Listen in as Craig discusses what happened at Apple this week and how the lost some significant data.
Can anyone break into your iPhone? Well maybe, but today Craig explains how Apple is trying to make it harder with their newest iOS release.
Do you shop at Walmart? Did you hear about the patent they were awarded this week. Craig will fill you in on what they are trying to do and why you need to be concerned about it.
Are you worried about Ransomware? Craig talks about revealing news from Sonicwall and what they found.
You know the NSA has been collecting data. But you might find what Craig has to tell you today about what the NSA is now doing and what it means for your privacy.
How valuable is your Face? Craig will explain how large databases of Facial recognition data is going to be used.
Craig is putting up a new membership site (Yes, it is free, but you have to sign up) On it will have all his special reports that he puts out and you will be the first to get them.
These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com
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Transcript:
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.
Airing date: 07/14/2018
Apple Self Driving Tech Stolen. Facebook Still Abusing Privacy. NSA Deleting Phone Records. Malware Attacks Skyrocket. Walmart Eavesdropping
Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hi, Everybody Welcome to Tech Talk with Craig Peterson. We've got a lot of stuff to cover today. We're going to be talking about an Apple employee who's been charged with stealing their self-driving cars secrets. Apple has a new mode. You got the iPhone's latest security update. It's called USB restricted mode. We'll talk about that Wal-Mart boy. Do you work for Wal-Mart? You know someone who does well they have a new patent that is really starting to concern some of Walmart's employees. We've got a new stat here from the guys over at Sonicwall about malware attacks and guess what? Surprise, surprise, they are skyrocketing. NSA is deleting millions of phone call and text records over privacy violations. Facebook is still abusing your privacy. So here we go.
[00:00:51] On the front lines and ahead of the trends in business and consumer technology speaking with the top minds and creators behind the products and ideas that help to drive our everyday lives.
[00:01:01] Dean Kamen is joining us now. He's the inventor of the Segway and the founder of us first Steve Forbes I appreciate what you do with Forbes magazine for all these years it's one of my first go to places or talk right now with the guys and gals behind Siri. We're joined right now by the director of Kirkendall technology. We're joined right now by the CEO of Ebates Kevin Johnson on the air for more than 15 years.
[00:01:25] Over 20 million podcast downloads. This is Tech Talk with Craig Peterson
[00:01:34] Well you know the bottom line here we have an autonomous cars coming and they're coming at us really really fast. We're going to talk right now about what's happened at Apple and what might happen with your business. Frankly, if you're not really careful. An Apple engineer was just charged with criminal offenses he apparently had been working in Apple's secret autonomous car business and while he apparently might have done something wrong. Now you know President Trump has been talking about the Chinese and how they're trying to steal our technology in fact how they have stolen our technology. We already know that's the case. We already know that some of these laws about privacy about some of the things we take for granted here, patents and things just are not enforced over in communist China.
[00:02:25] Well, apparently what he did was he decided he was going to resign. So, how does he resign? Well, he is told to turn in all of his Apple gear. He's walked out the door. Now Apple has a really great policy that you should probably implement as well in your business and that policy is they walk them out the door. They take the equipment and then they do forensic analysis on that, equipment. When was the last time you did a forensic analysis of equipment for people that were leaving your business? Well, they found that he had done a few things wrong. First of all the activity of copying stuff on the network to and from devices had increased dramatically in the days before he resigned. They also found that he used Airdrop to drop some of these files from his computer to a non-Apple owned computer, apparently that of his wife he was going to take a job over in China. And apparently, he was going to take the secrets with him. So, remember whether you're talking about an employee who might have access to your accounting records or maybe it's an employee who has access to your client records. There's a lot of information you don't want walking out of the door. Can you look back in time to see what an employee has been doing? Can you erase a laptop that just doesn't get returned from an employee? Erase it remotely. Do you want your salespeople or others who have access to this information to walk away with it? And then on an everyday day to day basis. The big question is do you really want all of your employees to have access to everything. I hope you don't. I suspect you don't want that either. So, lock it down keep tabs on it and let's really try and keep this world and our businesses a bit of a safer place. I'll let you know what ends up happening with the charges here. Maybe he's convicted maybe he won't be but we'll see. This is industrial espionage of the highest degree top secret information
[00:04:44] Of course, you've heard about what's been going on with the FBI trying to get into iPhone's, local police department also trying to get into iPhone's.
[00:04:53] These things are locked down pretty well but there are a couple of companies that allow you to get into the iPhone. Employers have been using them, let's say someone leaves their employ, say they move on to a new job. What do you do with the data that's on that iPhone? Because sometimes the employees will just go ahead and lock it up and forget. I'm not going to open it up for you. All the information in there is not only lost to a business but on top of that what's happened is that iPhone has become unusable. If it's not locked to your Apple account. Now there are some ways to deal with that with employee devices reach out if you'd like to know a little bit more. But what we're going to talk about right now is Apple and law enforcement a little bit of the battle going on here. And I I don't know kind of which side they absolutely come down on with this because I don't want the bad guys to have access to complete privacy, right because then they can conduct their bad deeds their evil deeds and deeds in private. But I also don't want to have this problem of having my information available to some bad guy that just grabs my phone and walks away because I'm sitting in a coffee shop. And then they can hook it up and they can hack it.
[00:06:11] Right, do you want that. I know I don't. So Apple introduced in their latest release here in OS it's eleven point four point one. They introduced a new feature which is called USB restricted mode. Now what that does is it locks down your iPhone. You a little port at the bottom of it so that you cannot you or a bad guy, in this case, cannot access the information or the data that's on it. So they can't just plug it in and download everything from it. So, what Apple has done, is they've put a delay in if you haven't unlocked that phone for at least one hour that port is turned off. Now in my case we're talking about this coffee shop obviously, the guy if he has his little apple iPhone copier device there with him he's going to be able to take that information and he's going to be able to hook up your phone right away because you probably opened it up in the coffee shop, right. You probably had it right there so that you could use it. That's why you had it open in the coffee shop. So, it's opening in the coffee shop. He has access to it. He just takes it over to his table and puts it in a bag right. With a little battery powered device that offloads everything from your iPhone and tada he has all of your data.
[00:07:33] Now the same thing is true when we're talking about law enforcement. Obviously, if you are at a border crossing you probably already know or within 50 miles of a border. We're talking about international borders here. They can open up your devices have a look inside them make copies of them just do all kinds of things with them. And that one-hour timer obviously is not going to be, in fact, in effect. But if you lose your phone it's found on the side of the road. This will stop most people from being able to get into it. Law enforcement they're going to be able to gain access to quickly. There are some workarounds in fact that you can use to keep that port alive. We're not going to get into that right now but keep an eye out if you have an iPhone. Obviously, take the latest software update they tend to be very stable, in this case. I have it already. It is stable and I like the idea of trying to block that USB port and the ability for the bad guys to be able to get your data here, Bottom line. But if you don't have a good passcode on it. You're not paying attention to security at all. Well, you probably don't care. Check it out online. Craig Peterson dotcom
[00:08:57] If you worked for Wal-Mart you might want to listen up here right now because they've got a new patent in place. If you compare the two big retailers who are you talking about while you're obviously talking about Wal-Mart because they've got physical retail store out there. But you're also going to be talking about our friends over at Amazon and when we're talking about Amazon and Wal-Mart you're talking about two behemoths who are fighting for your business and my business. Wal-Mart. Great place to go shop you can save a lot of money. Amazon same type of thing. So, how are they going to compete? Amazon has this great advantage when it comes to costs. They don't have to maintain a retail store. They don't have to stock all of those shelves. They don't have to move the merchandise on time for you to be able to buy it. They don't have to have the people at the checkout registers or the checkout registers, right. They don't have to have all of the doors in and out they don't have to have the air conditioning. Think of all of the overhead of retail. And that's the reason why frankly Amazon has killed so many small retailers out there. So, when we're talking about the big battles ahead, Wal-Mart has to find some way to become more cost effective. So, how can they do that? Well, we already know from local Wal-Mart that they have some pretty big self-checkout areas. My local Wal-Mart has eight checkout areas. I've seen them with much bigger check out errors for you to do it yourself. So you scan it. It weighs it when you put it down so that it gets an idea. Making sure you're not trying to steal something.
[00:10:36] So you are not trying to put in something way too heavy or way too light in there and depending on where you live sometimes those scales are really picky sometimes they're not so picky but Walmart's done that helped save some costs who hasn't been to a store whether its Wal-Mart or Target or you name it where you haven't had to wait for a long time in line and that can be a very big deal. Well in this case what we're talking about is Wal-Mart being able to track you and their checkout people in the store and the patent applies to sound technology. We're talking about Wal-Mart now using sound, to figure out what youre doing in the checkout line. It's listening for things potentially like the the crinkle of the bag as a bag is used or the movement of the cart. So they know hey there's a lot of people in line I need to do something about it and even record conversations. Now that's a little bit scary, for both the consumers and for the Wal-Mart employees as well. Whether or not Wal-Mart is actually going to take advantage of this patent or if it's something that they might just license. We'll see. Time will tell. So far it's just a patent that was just awarded this week and it has to do with using sound, to track you in the store while you're buying things and that in conjunction with these RFID tags these radio frequency identifiers that Wal-Mart is already putting into most of the products, that's really going to give them a bit of a leg up, in fact, a huge leg up over other retailers. But, I don't know if it's enough to beat our friend over at Amazon
[00:12:28] We have all kinds of reports that come out about cyber security. Verizon's a real big one. They released reports quite frequently but so do many others WEBROOT. We've talked about on my radio show before there is a new study out right now that is I think there's a little bit of a surprise here. It's from our friends over at Sonicwall and it's talking about what they have been seeing. Sonicwall is a provider of VPN services, you know where you have the hardware there in your business that you want to use. They also have some firewall techniques and some specialized security software that they run. And what they're showing is that in the first half of 2018 ransomware attacks are on the rise again. Now, ransomware attacks are very scary. They're kind of nasty frankly and they're on the rise because they work. If you get hit by ransomware you have to follow a few rules here some bottom line rules. First of all the FBI strongly recommends that you never pay a ransom. However the business realities might dictate that you have to pay the ransom. But if you do pay that ransom for ransomware, remember that you may never actually get your data back up 50 percent of the time according to the FBI your data is never recovered. So remember that the other big problem when it comes to ransomware payments is if you pay and the bad guys receive it. Right. So assuming this transaction happened they now know that you pay ransoms. So, many cases ransomware perpetrators have attacked again and again at the exact same business. So be very careful.
[00:14:22] The best ways to help prevent ransomware and the best ways to help prevent real high cost when it comes to being hit by ransomware are the following. First of all, make sure you have a very good backup. Make sure that backup is tested. Test your backups. Test them frequently to make sure they're working. The next thing is you need to have not just anti virus anti virus does not cut it anymore. I can't emphasize that enough. It is just not enough. You need frankly you need kind of like an onion you need something where there are multiple layers you're you're guarding your DNS. You've got an endpoint piece of software looking at every file on the machine as it's open. You have something that the edge in your firewall. These next generation firewalls and some are better than others obviously. Now my personal preference is Cisco. That's what I sell. But I have something at the edge that says wait a minute here. This is an infected file and hopefully can go ahead and grab it and scrape it back. You know the average time it takes a small business or any business in the United States to be able to find out that it has been hacked is a good six months sometimes even longer. So, you got to be careful you've got to watch that. You have to be prudent when it comes to ransomware because as our friends at Sonicwall just told us ransomware is on the rise and ransomware can kill a business. Most businesses that get hit with ransomware or a good hack are out of business.
[00:16:00] They're out of business within six months. Not good by the way.
[00:16:04] Mystics 6 billion malware attacks during the first six months of this year compared with 3 billion attacks over the last half of 2017. We're talking about a 100 percent rise in ransomware attacks. By now everybody worldwide knows who the NSA is it's no longer. No such agency. It's the National Security Agency and the guys and gals over there have been sweeping up data. We've certainly talked about it before on my show. But did you know what they're doing now. This is a big surprise to pretty much everybody out there. The NSA has been collecting not just metadata but all kinds of data. And we've heard about FISA warrants in the news recently as it appears President Trump's campaign was monitored due to one of these FISA warrants which are designed really to help to catch spies and other foreigners who might be trying to do harm here in the U.S. Well, apparently a number of these FISA warns were flawed. And the new management that was put in place by President Trump over at the NSA has been looking at what's going on not obviously just maybe what went on with the Trump case but they are looking at all of the data what's been captured what did the Obama administration orchestrate when it started capturing all of the data on all Americans dealing with all of their communications.
[00:17:49] Well, its turned out now that under the Trump administration the NSA has started purging i.e. deleting billions of records yes those records that they were recording that are now under questionable jurisdiction are being deleted. What they're saying is they think that they may have intercepted communications between people that frankly they were not really authorized to do so instead of trying to play games with it or just try and keep it secret. They have come out and have officially announced that they did capture data. They probably shouldn't have. And rather than go through it all and try and figure out what's what what's where they're just deleting it. They're calling it technical irregularities and we're talking about a purge right now of over 685 million phone and text records records. Now that's really really huge. You know is the NSA to blame. They certainly have collected billions over the years but seeing that they are getting a little bit of oversight now makes me feel good in knowing that the NSA has identified some of these records as records they should not have and they're deleting them. So kudos. Good on you guys over there. The NSA
[00:19:18] Well, if you're a Facebook user and you've been paying attention you know that Mark Zuckerberg about three months ago agreed to stop tracking much of the information online. To be more transparent about it and to of course allow you to control some of your data. But we have some questions for Mark Zuckerberg right now due to some more information that's come out. First of all how are you making things more open and more transparent when the European Union introduces new laws about privacy. California has almost the exact same laws going into effect in 2020. So when those laws went into effect about you keeping data private about you at Facebook not only keeping the data private but letting people control their own information how is it that you try and move and that you did over a billion records from the European Union to the United States hopefully out of reach of the European regulators at least that's what it looks like to me. That's what it looks like to a lot of people who have had closer looks at it than I have. Well, now FaceBook they're facing yet another problem, because what they're also doing is they are using specialized facial recognition software. Now this software is designed for them to be able to figure out who's who in which pictures.
[00:20:50] Bottom line. What Facebook is saying is they're using it to protect your identity online. I'm not sure how much protection there is by having Facebook capturing my face and measuring all of the coordinates on my face and taking all of that data now and and putting it on to a bigger database which now becomes a database they can sell so that if I'm recognized down the street who knows what's going to happen. You remember Tom Cruise, walking by a billboard and the billboard greeting him with a new sale at the store has on just for him. You know that could be great. All right. As a marketer my marketing hat here I have that hat on and I'm thinking wow this is great. I don't have to bother people or not to interrupt people who might not be interested in my product. So, if I know who they are and I know what they've been looking for I can target them better and they're going to have a better experience overall.
[00:21:53] But the reality is some of this data is already being used elsewhere. We know in China they have a new whole new way of classifying people. They are doing kind of a social media trick over there where you have a social cred. This is what they're calling it your social cred. So if you jay walk across the street it recognizes your face because they have it on a database. It then uses that data now to lower your social cred. Doesn't that sound like something from a sci fi twilight zone type episode. So, it lowers your social cred. And then there are things you won't be able to do if you have a low social cred. So having a low social cred could stop you from getting on an airplane from opening a bank account. Obviously getting a loan. That type of data has already been used here in the U.S. for well more than a decade we've been protecting things like the Super Bowl using facial recognition technology where we have our federal databases of the bad guys of the known criminals. When you walk into that venue it looks at your face and it says Okay you're clear it's hundreds of others today anyways a gate that comes down so no you can't enter. But the police will respond if you are spotted in a stadium and you are thought to be a terrorist. So, today there is some false positives as time goes on there probably be fewer of them but maybe not, right. It depends on on how strong the state gets and whether or not it continues to move towards a socialist or communist type fascist state right. We've certainly seen that progression in the last 50 years. So, how could this possibly go wrong.
[00:23:44] Mark Zuckerberg having our information about our faces that's a biometric piece that could be used in a lot of different ways. Now, remember an iPhone 10. Right, what does that have on the front of it. It has a sensor that reads your face. And we have Android devices that will be coming out with it and more and more. So, if you can read someone's face what do you think's going to happen with the facial recognition software. What kind of value do you think there will be in a database of people's faces, Yeah. We've already seen where some of these facial recognition programs can be faked and fairly easily frankly so as time goes on as those those databases are hacked and stolen or sold, will the bad guys be able to get into my iPhone 10 or other device. Right. Will they be able to get into this thing and be able to use the this to excuse me in my face to get into this. We've got 3-D printers. If you've got a really good face print if you will because you've captured my face from the front from the side aren't all of the photos I've uploaded to Facebook all of the family photos on me and that it's it is automatically tagged me and I've noticed that by the way the auto tag thing where it's using facial recognition technology and saying hey listen we think we found this person in your picture. You want to tag them. How do you think that's working? So, will they be able to use this technology that you may not even know you're giving Facebook the permission to use, Right. Your face. Will they be able to use that technology to hack our devices.
[00:25:34] Almost certainly at least that's my bottom line.
[00:25:37] Visit me online. Hope you have a great week ahead.
[00:25:41] Craig Peterson dot com. Take care guys. Thanks for joining us today.
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in the first half of 2018: SonicWall
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Walmart’s Newly Patented Technology For Eavesdropping On Workers Presents Privacy Concerns
Apple’s USB Restricted
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