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May 21, 2019

Craig is on with Jim Polito. Today they discussed hackers getting into medical devices and endangering people. They also talked about Huawei and the problems they are facing.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

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Related Articles:

Hospitals Push Device Makers To Improve Security Following Cyberattacks

White House Cracks Down On Huawei Equipment Sales With Executive Order

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Transcript:

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 05/21/2019

Dangers Of Medical Equipment - Why Huawei Is In Trouble

Craig Peterson 0:00
Hey, good morning everybody Craig Peterson here. I say good morning for a couple of reasons. One, it's morning when I'm recording this, and secondarily, most people listen in the morning. But we have some people that listen on the weekends only, some people when they're at the gym in the evening on the drive. So hello, hello to everybody. It's just good morning is such a nice greeting, I think. Here's what happened today. I was on with Jim Polito, we talked about the latest in the Huawei battle that's going on there, the second largest cell phone manufacturer in the world right now. And we are at war with them. It's a very interesting story. So we talked about that, as well as medical devices. If you're in the hospital, if you're in the hospital business. You gotta listen to this because we talked about what's really going on behind the scenes with some of the cyber issues that are present with our medical devices. So here we go with Mr. Jim Polito.

Jim Polito 1:01
He is one of our most popular podcasts when we put his segment up because people want to know what he has to say. And I am talking about our tech talk guru. And good friend, Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig 1:17
Hey, good morning, Jim. I loved it. I saw the sun yesterday. It was warm. I'm happy.

Jim 1:23
You know, aren't Canadians, the descendants of vampires. I mean, don't you guys have trouble if there's, if there's you know, more than say 12 hours of sunlight in a day? Don't Canadians have a problem with that? When it really impacts their health?

Craig 1:42
You got it backwards actually, because it in the summertime the sun never sets.

Jim 1:45 
Oh that's right.

Craig 1:49 
In the wintertime it never comes up. You see. So yeah, you got it backwards. Yeah. But But I will tell you this, that the veins do migrate deeper into the tissue so when summer comes it's a little much. My ideal summer day, it was always about 72 degrees with the sun out. Right. That was a beach day. 

Jim 2:16
Yeah. That would be a Canadian beach day. Actually, you know, in all honesty, that would be a beach day for me too, because I don't like it too hot. I can maybe I should have been born Canadian because I can't take that temperature a little bit more. And I would like all that sunlight during the day, you know, but I couldn't take it. Interesting.

Craig 2:35
We used to be out playing as kids, you know, back in the day when you had free range kids.

Jim 2:44
Free range kids. Organic, organic, free range kids.

Craig 2:48
Free range, pasture raised. Yeah. And we would be out. You know, we go out in the morning and on our bikes, and whatever we'd like kick the can and hide and seek and a little baseball. And in the winter of course you play hockey, but but because it's the law up there. But you know, going out in the daytime having a good old time. And I remember one night we were out playing and it was it. My mom came hunting for us, which she never did. Right. So she wouldn't see us after about 7:00am. And it was like 10:30, 11 o'clock at night. And it was still light out. Right. And she was out there trying to, where have you been all night? We've been playing, yeah, because you just didn't know. It's such a different world.

Jim 3:30 
It is. it is. Well no, and people this is the time of year that people begin to go on cruises to Alaska, because you have the midnight sun. And no, I would like that. So here's what I don't like, you know, I'm in the hospital, and I'm hooked up to a machine. And all of a sudden Vlad, from Eastern Europe, hacks into the machine. And whatever that machine is doing for me, he decides to change it or I've got a medical device implanted in my body or I use one for myself. It's not implanted me. I mean, these types of things. You You sounded the alarm years ago, that that the the medical information hack was going to be the new battle ground. And now is it medical equipment hacks?

Craig 4:21
Yeah, this is a huge deal a lot of people really aren't aware of there's there's some peripheral, you know, understanding of it. And you've got some too right? You mentioned medical devices, the heart pacemakers for the people have. Those, many of those are hackable and how it's been demonstrated that they have been hacked, or a big study late last year that happened to over in the UK, looking at some of their gear now. And they found CT machines that were imminently hackable, you know, we had Wannacry last year, we're kind of worldwide, it's still out there still kind of floating around. And it costs the UK health service 150 million dollars. But it isn't just hacking the computers on your desktop, because there are computers everywhere. We have clients here that are in manufacturing. And they've got these huge machines that are out on the floor that that do various types of cutting and drilling and different parts of the manufacturing. And people don't really sit there and think well, what's inside that machine? Well, this one client machines they've had now for probably 20 years. And you know, they fix them when something goes wrong. These machines are multiple, multiple, multiple millions of dollars to buy new. And in some cases, you can't even get them new anymore. Like for instance, a big shaft for a ship, there's only one machine in the country that can make these big enough for our larger ships. Well, those machines that this client that called us into to fix their problem, we're running Windows XP, and they had them all hooked up to their networks. And they had a flat network. So things spread across their network. So when we're talking about the medical devices, everything from infusion pumps, biopsy, imaging tables, the CT machines I mentioned, have computers in them. And most of the time, we're talking about a manufacturer of a machine, in this case, a medical machine, not a security company. So if it works, they ship it. So now here's what's happening, the hospitals are starting to freak out. Because these machines, let's say the CT machine gets compromised. The odds are really good that they you know, they're not getting into the CT machine, so that they can you know, empty the bank accounts because the CT machine doesn't have that information in it.

Jim 7:05
Or maybe just as a joke, like I'm getting a CAT scan of my head, and they erase the brain, you know, the doctor gets the results. And it's like, God, everybody was right. There's nothing in here. There's nothing in here.

Craig 7:20
I'm not gonna laugh too much. Because there's there's a classic case of a machine that had software that was bad and killed people.

Jim 7:31
Great. Oh, that's great. I'm going to the CAT scan machine and it basically turns into a microwave is what you're saying. Okay, yeah, so I'm like a bag of microwave popcorn. Great. See, that's why I am actually taking this seriously. Because when I saw this when you sent it to me, I said, this is important. And we're talking with our Tech Talk guru Craig Peterson about hospitals sounding the alarm, you gotta protect devices and equipment from hacking.

Craig 8:07
Remember, the federal government required under the HIPAA law and regulations that we automate so many systems that we move everything to digital equipment, so hospitals and doctors offices have been focused on that trying to get that done, trying to be safe. And let me tell you what a nightmare that still is out there. And they haven't paid attention to this. So now hospitals are demanding from the device manufacturers information about exactly what's inside each one of these machines. Are you using a version of Linux an embedded Linux, an embedded Windows, a full Windows or some other operating system? What are you using inside of these machines? What version of it and the hospitals are now working on tracking what versions of software they have, so that they can demand from the manufacturer when there's a known vulnerability that that vulnerability gets fixed. And hospitals have gone to the next level? And they're going to people like me, saying, Hey Craig we have a potential problem here. We have a machine, we don't know what's in it. And we don't know how valuable it is. And so we do what's called a penetration test against the machines. Are do these machines have any vulnerabilities that are known that can be easily penetrated? So really, what we're talking about now is our hospitals having to become security experts in order to keep their equipment online, at the very least. And secondarily, make sure that these machines aren't compromised in such a way that it could really adversely affect patients health.

Jim 9:48
Wow, we're talking with our good friend Tech Talk guru Craig Peterson. About the well, all the news in tech. But this is one of the big ones protecting us. How about Huawei, I always pronounce their name wrong. They're basically the big Chinese company that, Huawei, thank you, manufacturers. equipment, basically communications equipment. And the President said, Whoa, I've got an executive order here. I don't want these guys producing stuff. Well, one, I think it's part of the terror of war. But the other part of it is, I think the Chinese are sneaking stuff into the stuff that they build. Shall I use the term Trojan horse?

Craig 10:41
Yeah, that's an appropriate one, frankly, because we do have companies here in the US that have received Huawei hardware and have found code in there that is malicious.

Jim 10:54 
Yeah, see? See? Yeah.

Craig 10:56
Now was it put in because Huawei, remember now people forget what a socialist government is. And China is a socialist government. They're communist government, which is a type of socialism. And everybody there works for the communist government, right. And so they are trying to have a leg up on us. They want the first shot over the bow to be fired and the next war to be a cyber shot, because it's just easier to deal with it harder to track down. So President Trump put a bit of an embargo in place against Huawei in the US. Now we've had one for over a year, when it comes to military equipment, even US military bases, they can't sell Huawei. But now it's gone even further. So what happened was Google was the first company to step forward here. And this was just yesterday, I guess it was, stepped forward and say, Hey, listen, we are no longer going to provide Huawei with the Android operating system. Now remember why we just passed Apple to become the second largest cell phone manufacturers, sales in the world. So it goes Samsung and Huawei, so they can't get Android. And if they can't get updates for Android operating system security updates, that anybody that owns a Huawei handset or other piece of equipment, like what you're talking about the stuff that runs some of our networks, is in big trouble. So just late yesterday, President Trump came out and said, Okay, well, Google will let you give Huawei security updates so that they can be dispersed to people here in the US and around the world because everything that's important. But man, we are, we are in the middle, not just of a sanction war here. But this is part of potentially a hot war that could erupt with China.

Jim 12:52
Yeah, you know, like you said it, I've heard it from others, World War Three has already begun. The just, it's just going going on in the cyber world. Not not, it's not traditional warfare. It's going on in the cyber world.

Craig 13:07
It's behind this behind the scenes, but we just got to make sure people back to basics, back to basics, the basics you need to for your security, and you'll be ahead of the game.

Jim 13:18
All right, and you'll be ahead of the game if you stick with Craig Peterson our Tech Talk guru. And if you text My name to this phone number.

Craig 13:28
855-385-5553. Just text Jim to 855-385-5553.

Jim 13:38
All right, standard data and text rates apply. And Richard, I mean excuse me, looking at the name Richard and talking to you. Isn't that great? Isn't that great? I can't do two things at once. Again, thank god Craig Peterson can. And Craig will not try to sell you stuff, hack you, whatever. So anyway, and Craig you are one of our most popular podcasts. And of course, folks if you want to hear anything more out of this, we will podcast it for you after the show. Have a very good day Mr. Peterson. Take care.

Craig 14:17
Thanks. Take care, Jim.

Now back to basics as we talked about in there. Remember what we're talking about when I say back to basics, I am talking about making sure that you have your 123 backup that you have your grandfather grandson, son backup, make sure that you've got also your WiFi secure your network secured, that you have some anti virus some anti malware that you have detection software running on those machines that you keep your machines absolutely up to date with the latest patches. I usually wait a week okay, so not necessarily up to the second. And once that's all done keep an eye on it all those are the basics. And don't forget about it. I have a course. I thinking about releasing a back to basics course. I don't know what you guys think. Let me know, me@CraigPeterson.com. Take care guys. Talk to you tomorrow.

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