Dec 23, 2020
Welcome!
Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito. We discussed the current Cybersecurity Pandemic and Phishing and what happened to Jim Polito, the host, this past week and then hit on travesty to the American worker through the H1B Visa program and how Facebook and other Big Tech is front and center with it. Here we go with Jim.
For more tech tips, news, and updates, visit - CraigPeterson.com.
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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:
Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hi guys, Craig Peterson here.
I meant to post this and we managed not to. So this is from last week, actually. It's a week old now. It's my explanation of what happened with this nasty, big hack with Mr. Jim Pollito. Here we go with Jim from about a week ago. Oh, there's Velma barking. What does this all mean?
Jim Polito: [00:00:26] Oh, yeah, this is the guy, everybody, especially after what happened yesterday. Massive security problems affecting thousands of businesses and government agencies and who was on top of the whole thing. Our good friend and tech talk guru. Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.
Craig Peterson: [00:00:46] This is pretty bad news.
Jim Polito: [00:00:48] Yeah, very bad news.
Danny yesterday at one point said to me, Hey, Google's not working, then it came back. YouTube was down, then it came back. Then we found out, Oh, it's almost like the matrix when there's a little bit of Deja Vu in the matrix, you notice it, that means they changed something.
Craig, so what's going on? What happened?
Craig Peterson: [00:01:08] This is really, really big for the fifth time. Only the fifth time in five years we've got an emergency security order coming out from this new national office for cybersecurity. This order is for all government agencies, as well as ordering federal civilian agencies to power down any of these SolarWinds devices, that are out there in their networks. Power them down.
Now SolarWinds is something that over 300,000 businesses use. It includes all 499 of the Fortune 500 companies, includes 22,000 managed service providers. What happened here was really tricky.
It was discovered by this company called FireEye, who found out that they had been breached. Now, FireEye is one of these big cybersecurity companies and they were using SolarWinds software.
Now this real quick, if you are really trying to be secure and you can't really do this yourself. If you're a smaller company, like under about 200 employees.
You have what's called Red team-Blue team trials. This, if you're in the military, you know what that is. So you have a red team attacking your computer systems and a blue team defending your computer systems. It's a drill. It's a really good drill. Fire Eye's red team tools, the tools for attacking businesses and government agencies, which is what they do all day long, were stolen from this hack.
They looked a little bit further and they found out is that what came through was this SolarWinds technology, which is used by almost every fortune 500 company.
It's been out there for, I think it was since May, this year. They managed to get their malicious code into SolarWinds product that they were shipping out to people. They even got them signed properly with the proper checks.
So now the US cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, called CISA issued this directive on Sunday. Specifically, we're talking about SolarWinds Orion products.
Now my company, I am a master managed security services provider. That's what we do. We are the top of the heap, right? We went through all of these warnings. We got them from the FBI and every other three-letter agency that exists. We went through everything that we had. It looks like the problem was they had misconfigured the software. Not follow the manufacturer's instructions. Thank God we had done it. None of our clients got compromised.
This couldn't be bigger.
Jim Polito: [00:04:14] We're talking with Craig Peterson, our tech talk guru, about a massive hack, yesterday. Who did it?
Craig Peterson: [00:04:20] That's the question, right now? Fingers pointing at Russia. But.
Jim Polito: [00:04:25] What a surprise.
Craig Peterson: [00:04:27] Yeah. Russia. It could be almost anyone it's so hard to tell. I don't think we'll ever know, definitively. We've seen the Chinese hack into systems through Russian servers and we've seen the opposite happen. Now even, Vietnam has gotten into this game. Let me tell you, this was some serious hacking that happened here. People that really knew what they were doing.
So we don't think it's a cybercriminal gang. We think it's a nation-state.
Jim Polito: [00:05:01] That's the thing. They're not looking for credit card information. Isn't it interesting that they went after? Infrastructure, which would be the power grid. We all know what could happen should the power grid be hacked and shut down.
Was this simply either the Chinese or the Russians, whoever, basically an act of war, but testing out and trying to figure out a way to shut down our utilities.
Craig Peterson: [00:05:32] Absolutely. Absolutely. Our utilities use this software too, but you know what? They're going to get even more out of this than just control of the utilities. Federal agencies have now been compromised Gar-on-teed.
That means that they've got whatever information on FBI criminal cases. I'm not saying for sure, we know the FBI was hacked, as part of this. But I'd be shocked if they weren't, right. All the way through everything in the Department of Justice, everything in our military, you name it. Okay. Our power grid, our water control systems, these things are controlled by the software.
It drives me crazy because there are so many companies out there that hang up a shingle, saying we are a managed security services provider. They've got this flashy website and they've got some really cool looking seals on the site. People fall for it. We get called in. Every one of our clients that we have today had previously had a managed security services provider that failed them.
Now we're seeing the federal agencies, these people that we're paying top dollar to. They are supposed to protect our information and our government appears to be incompetent. Yes, I said that, incompetent. If you got hacked by this, you didn't even read the freaking directions.
Jim Polito: [00:07:03] We're talking with our good friend, Craig Peterson, tech talk guru.
This is not to get everyone concerned the sky is falling. But something has to be done here.
Let me go in the opposite direction. Please tell me, Craig, that we're doing exactly the same thing in China. In Russia. In Vietnam. In North Korea. Please tell me that we have, look, we made the vaccine, we're smarter than them. Please tell me that we're smarter than them and when they turn around, they'll realize, wow, there's been a gun pointed at our head the whole time. We didn't even realize it. Is that mutually assured destruction. What kept the peace in the cold war?
Tell me that's happening.
Craig Peterson: [00:07:47] It is happening. Every branch of the military and our Justice department, have hackers that are breaking in. In fact, I'm glad you brought it up because there was an unprecedented major leak quote, unquote of official records of 2 million members of the Chinese communist party, many of whom are now living and working all over the world, including Australia, the UK, the United States.
We now have and its public information, now, because I'm guessing we leaked it. The data has the names, the party positions, date of birth, National identification number, ethnicity telephone numbers of communist party members that have been set up inside Western companies, as well as our Congress and our military infrastructure and our federal government.
So the answer's yes. We now have details of 79,000 communist party branches as well.
So yes, we are fighting back.
Jim Polito: [00:08:54] Now, I want to bring you to another portion of this. I know you're not big into the James Bond stuff, but we have a James Bond type situation. We had Christine Fung, a spy, a student who was a spy from China with a member of Congress. We find out this is not an isolated incident. That they are cozying up to young and up and coming politicians. And she did with Swalwell, probably slept with him. Although he won't say, he says it's classified. That's a very good excuse. The bill Clinton should have used that one. I'm sorry, it's classified. That she slept with other, mayors or whatever, that this is going on quite a bit.
Yeah. Diane Feinstein had a driver who was a spy for years.
Now, isn't it time to say, Hey, no more students from China? At least to pause it. To send a message, because obviously we're letting them come in and to our faces, they're slitting our throats.
Craig Peterson: [00:09:53] They absolutely are. Detailed analysis of these records revealed that Pfizer and AstraZeneca. You've probably heard of those companies lately. Those companies employed 123 Chinese communist party loyalists. More than 600 party members across branches working at British banks, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Rolls Royce.,Airbus, Boeing. Yes. They come to our schools. They learn from us, which is all well and good, typically speaking. Then they take it and they try and replicate it in China and compete with us.
We are funding these schools. In so many States, a hundred percent and we're training them. We are teaching them. They are then moving up through the ranks.
So look, Swawell. Look at him. This little honeypot when he was mayor. You get about up and coming. And so they're taking our technology. We are losing our place in the world, right now. One of the biggest up and coming technologies is artificial intelligence. Guess where Google moved their AI research? To China.
Jim Polito: [00:11:05] Don't say it. That's a great place to be.
Craig Peterson: [00:11:08] In China. It's a great place to be. It's up and coming. Isn't it? Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Chinese get a leg up on the rest of the world with artificial intelligence technology? To do the types of things we are seeing them do now, and I keep pounding on the table, I'm gonna hurt my hand, but it absolutely ridiculous.
Jim Polito: [00:11:26] I just don't know, without getting into politics. I just don't know-how. First of all, I feel like knowing all this, I wish Trump had done more. I don't know what he was doing behind the scenes.
The second part of this is, I don't see how Joe Biden has any kind of a policy to deal with this, and secondly, he's compromised. His son is compromised. He's a friend of China. He's compromised.
Craig Peterson: [00:11:51] Yeah, I have to agree with you there. I want to add a nice little word to this. We're talking about Congressmen Swalwell and what happened with him. Senator Feinstein. This information about this unprecedented leak of the 2 million Chinese communist party upper echelon people who have been planted in foreign governments, came out two days ago.
What do you want to bet? Our hacking got this stuff. We started going through it and that how he was exposed with his girlfriend.
Jim Polito: [00:12:22] Yeah.
Craig Peterson: [00:12:23] Intelligence committee. Are you kidding me!
Jim Polito: [00:12:28] Craig, it's just crazy. The fact that Nancy Pelosi covered it up. I'm sorry if you've had any kind of a relationship with someone who was a spy and you're now on an intelligence committee and you weren't taken off of that intelligence committee. You weren't investigated. You got a defensive briefing. General Flynn didn't get a defensive briefing. He got a " we're going to try to catch you in a lie to the FBI" briefing. Swalwell got a "we're going to give you a defensive briefing."
We found out the girl that you're Fang bang your girl. We found out she's a spy. You might want to stop seeing her. =That's it. That's it? No, really? That's it. Oh. Stopped dating her.
Craig Peterson: [00:13:10] We've got to pull up socks. President Trump kept saying that he was trying to clean up the swamp. The swamp is now, definitely including, these members of the Chinese communist party.
We already know, I've talked before. About clients that I've gained. These clients had active Chinese back doors that were stealing their information. Now we find, over the weekend, that we had 18,000 organizations, government agencies, and businesses that were almost certainly compromised in this massive cyber attack.
Jim Polito: [00:13:42] Sickening.
Craig, I appreciate it. Craig Peterson, folks. Craig, what is the website? So folks can always be in touch with you.
Craig Peterson: [00:13:51] Go to Craig peterson.com. I'll send out an email a little later today, going through this. What happened if you were using SolarWinds, or if you're using an IT vendor, the questions need to ask them I'll get that out today.
And probably, maybe not till tomorrow with some of these lists. But I'll keep you informed Craig peterson.com and make sure you subscribe.
Jim Polito: [00:14:14] Yeah, it's good, it's a great thing to do.
Craig, always always a pleasure to have an expert like you, and when something like this happens and we'll catch up with you.
Craig Peterson: [00:14:22] All right. Take care, Jim.
Jim Polito: [00:14:23] You too.
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