Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

Are we living in a simulation? Craig is on the Jim Polito show this Tuesday morning as they discuss this possibility.

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

---

Related Articles:

Are We Living In A Simulation? This MIT Scientist Says It’s More Likely Than Not
--- 

Transcript:

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

Airing date: 04/16/2019

Living In A Simulation

Craig Peterson 0:00
Hi, everybody, sorry a little late getting it out today. I had a couple of meetings this morning and just tied me up. Anyhow, I think you're going to love this one. I don't know how much you've thought about virtual reality and its impact on us, where it is going. But Jim Polito and I had a good conversation about it this morning. It's something I've been thinking about for going on 25 years now. Are we living in a simulation? Could this happen in the future? So here we go with Jim.

Jim Polito 0:38
Here he is. The man who knows it all. Our tech talk guru and great friend, Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig 0:45 
Hey, good morning, Jim.

Jim 0:48
Craig, you're scaring me. You're scaring me because you sent the material for our segment. And one of my favorite science fiction movies is The Matrix. The Revolutions and you know, the Reboot. They were okay. I mean Reloaded. But I gotta say you telling me than an MIT professor says that the concept of The Matrix, which is that we're all in a dream world right now, everything around us is all imaginary. It scares me.

Craig 1:29
I read a book years ago, I have this guy on my radio show, I tried to like the concept so much. And he was talking about something that a lot of our kids are really into now. And that's virtual reality, Have you tried any of this VR stuff?

Jim 1:48 
Just a couple of times, I mean, I like it. I think it's gonna I think it has some great applications for us. Yeah.

Craig 1:56 
Yeah. It does. They're using it now for medical care, remote doctors and things. It's just amazing. But you can still tell you know, it's virtual reality, but it's virtual reality kind of like cartoons were in the, in the 70s compared to what they're like today, you know. Today, you see some of the animated stuff like the new Lion King that's coming out. And it's hard to believe some of it just isn't real. You know, it's, it's, it's just amazing. Well, if we've got virtual reality today, that's like this, with the computers that we have and everything else, think of what virtual reality is going to be like in the next 10, 20, 30 years. Ultimately, you know, they're already working on this Jim, it's going to be indistinguishable from your regular life. So you're going to be able to see stuff and it's going to look real. You're going to be able to touch things and you will feel them you'll be able to smell things that are all around you. It's gonna be kind of cool because you can sit there on a beach in Fiji, in your home, in your living room chair. That's where it's all... think of that.

Jim 3:11
Hey, listen, that's all right. I'm all good for that. As long as I'm in control of this, and I know what's real and what's not. What is this MIT professors saying about this what's not real?

Craig 3:29
This is really kind of interesting. And I end the hypothesis is an interesting one too. And, you know, being a tech guy, I've been very interested this for a long time. You mentioned The Matrix came out in 99. There were two other movies that came out in 99 as well along the same lines. Well, this MIT professor's name is Virk, is saying that as well as many other people now including Elon Musk, if we're going to be able to get to a point where we can have virtual reality that is pretty much indistinguishable from the real world,w hat are the odds that we're not going to have simulations? What are the odds that we're not going to have things like you know, lived through World War Two? We've already got video games like that right? What's that called? Danny probably knows where, where you're in there to shoot them up World War Two game and you're you're going around and you just click on.

Jim 4 :28 
The Call of Duty?

Danny 4:29
Probably Call of Duty. Yeah.

Jim 4:30 
Is it Call of Duty?

Craig 4:32
Yeah, yeah. Call of Duty as an example, right. So when you're when you're in the future here, not the distant future, but the nearby future people are going to be playing games like Call of Duty. They're going to be on the beach are going to be having all of these things, and it will be quite real. Well, if you can have a simulation like that, in the future as computing improves, is that new technology coming up quantum computing, morphogenic computing and other things. In the future, we're going to have much more processing capability. So we could have things like The Game of Life. Now this, this goes way back, The Game of Life. And I don't know if you're quite geeky enough to... Oh, you remember that? Okay.

Jim 5:20 
I remember The Game of Life. Sure. We played it all the time.

Craig 5:23 
Yeah. And you had you had cells and they divided and things went on. The Game of Life where you started civilizations with certain parameters. The parameters can include there's water, does ice float or does it sink? Does this have a Game of Thrones world? Does that really exist and create those and spin them up? How about people who are in the school that at MIT and other places? Are they going to want to be able to use that technology to spin up a whole simulated civilization and have that civilization run out to see what history might have been like. So let's recreate our ancestors a hundred thousand years ago. And and start that simulation and see how they acted. Well, frankly, that's inevitable. That is going to happen. So let's crank that clock further ahead, let's crank crank it ahead 100 years 1000 years into our future we will have the capability to do that and have multiple simulations running on the same computer of entire societies. of entire civilizations crossing thousands of years. So if that's the case, if we can get to that point, ultimately what he's saying and many others have been saying is the odds are excellent that the millions to one, Jim, the odds are excellent that what we're living in is a virtual reality. That none of this is real. Because if there will be thousands or millions of these things spun up in the future, what are the odds that we are living in the very first, very initial society that creates this virtual reality?

Jim 7:34  
Oh my god. My mind got blown.  We're talking with Craig Peterson our tech talk guru. And it's like science fiction spilling over into reality and you know, Jules Verne, remember Jules Verne was writing these novels about man on the moon and all these other concepts that ultimately came to fruition and you know, are the novels of today doing that? And now you've got an MIT scientists saying, hey, how do you know you're not living in a, in right now in a virtual reality? Remember when I was young, the big deal was, hey, we could be, our universe could be inside a molecule in the finger of a giant in another universe, you know, like and that stuff used up blow your mind you'd be sitting there in college talking about that stuff. Just blow your mind. And yet this is really blowing my mind. This stuff.

Craig 8:40
It is something. This is like we're in a marble hanging on a cat's collar in Men in Black right? It is highly likely. It's called a simulation hypothesis. There are some excellent books that have been out there now for 20, 30 years about this. And you look at the Wachowski's movie series, The Matrix and some of these others. I'm trying to remember what the names of them were there a couple more in 99 but this guy's name is Rizwan Virk, I assume it's a guy, a computer scientist, video game developer, and he leads the PlayLabs over at MIT, came out with a book and he took he kind of define the, the whole thing called it the simulation hypothesis. And I've thought about this, thoroughly thought about this Jim for more than 20 years. And I don't see any way that it's not a simulation. Now, that doesn't mean that these people that believe this, don't believe in God or the God exists, or the benefits of religion or anything else, because who's saying what's being used ultimately. But if we can, if anyone can get to the point where you can't tell the difference. Even think of the Fifth Day right? That Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

Jim 10:08 
Yeah, yeah. I believe that you could download everything in your brain.

Craig 10:11 
Everything in your brain and his buddy was, and his girlfriend was virtual. She wasn't real. And yet, everything seemed real, you know, these types of things and these hypotheses been  around for a long time. So it's fun to play with. I'm not sure it does any good in any direction at all.

Jim 10:35
Yeah, I know. I know other than blowing your mind and being good conversation. Especially younger.

Craig 10:37
It doesn't matter, right. It's kind of the bottom line. 

Jim 10:41
What difference does it make? If it's true, what difference does it make to me right now? I'm a Duracell battery. That's it.

Craig 10:48
I don't think that's the case.

Jim 10:51
If I am a battery, I'm definitely a D cell.

Craig 10:58
Here we go. Rim shot, please.

Jim 11:00
Here we go. Craig Peterson folks. Always blowing our minds so the great stuff. Now Craig Peterson can blow your mind to outside of the show. He the information that he provides to me and there was a lot of other stuff today butt I just picked this little Matrix like story you can get it to and also get updates when there's a big hack or something going wrong in the IT world Craig Peterson provides this for free to my listeners. He doesn't pester you doesn't try to sell you anything. And all you do is text my name to this number.

Craig 11:37
855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553.

Jim 11:48 
And standard data and text rates apply. But I suggest you do it. And Craig, awesome segment and we'll catch up with you next week.

Craig 11:58
Hey take care. Thanks, Jim.

Jim 12:00
Thanks.

Craig 12:03 
Hey everybody. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow. Bye bye.

---

Don't miss any episode from Craig. Visit http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. Subscribe and give us a rating!

Thanks, everyone, for listening and sharing our podcasts. We're really hitting it out of the park. This will be a great year! 

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Are we living in a simulation? Craig is on the Jim Polito show this Tuesday morning as they discuss this possibility.

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

---

Related Articles:

Are We Living In A Simulation? This MIT Scientist Says It’s More Likely Than Not
--- 

Transcript:

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

Airing date: 04/16/2019

Living In A Simulation

Craig Peterson 0:00
Hi, everybody, sorry a little late getting it out today. I had a couple of meetings this morning and just tied me up. Anyhow, I think you're going to love this one. I don't know how much you've thought about virtual reality and its impact on us, where it is going. But Jim Polito and I had a good conversation about it this morning. It's something I've been thinking about for going on 25 years now. Are we living in a simulation? Could this happen in the future? So here we go with Jim.

Jim Polito 0:38
Here he is. The man who knows it all. Our tech talk guru and great friend, Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig 0:45 
Hey, good morning, Jim.

Jim 0:48
Craig, you're scaring me. You're scaring me because you sent the material for our segment. And one of my favorite science fiction movies is The Matrix. The Revolutions and you know, the Reboot. They were okay. I mean Reloaded. But I gotta say you telling me than an MIT professor says that the concept of The Matrix, which is that we're all in a dream world right now, everything around us is all imaginary. It scares me.

Craig 1:29
I read a book years ago, I have this guy on my radio show, I tried to like the concept so much. And he was talking about something that a lot of our kids are really into now. And that's virtual reality, Have you tried any of this VR stuff?

Jim 1:48 
Just a couple of times, I mean, I like it. I think it's gonna I think it has some great applications for us. Yeah.

Craig 1:56 
Yeah. It does. They're using it now for medical care, remote doctors and things. It's just amazing. But you can still tell you know, it's virtual reality, but it's virtual reality kind of like cartoons were in the, in the 70s compared to what they're like today, you know. Today, you see some of the animated stuff like the new Lion King that's coming out. And it's hard to believe some of it just isn't real. You know, it's, it's, it's just amazing. Well, if we've got virtual reality today, that's like this, with the computers that we have and everything else, think of what virtual reality is going to be like in the next 10, 20, 30 years. Ultimately, you know, they're already working on this Jim, it's going to be indistinguishable from your regular life. So you're going to be able to see stuff and it's going to look real. You're going to be able to touch things and you will feel them you'll be able to smell things that are all around you. It's gonna be kind of cool because you can sit there on a beach in Fiji, in your home, in your living room chair. That's where it's all... think of that.

Jim 3:11
Hey, listen, that's all right. I'm all good for that. As long as I'm in control of this, and I know what's real and what's not. What is this MIT professors saying about this what's not real?

Craig 3:29
This is really kind of interesting. And I end the hypothesis is an interesting one too. And, you know, being a tech guy, I've been very interested this for a long time. You mentioned The Matrix came out in 99. There were two other movies that came out in 99 as well along the same lines. Well, this MIT professor's name is Virk, is saying that as well as many other people now including Elon Musk, if we're going to be able to get to a point where we can have virtual reality that is pretty much indistinguishable from the real world,w hat are the odds that we're not going to have simulations? What are the odds that we're not going to have things like you know, lived through World War Two? We've already got video games like that right? What's that called? Danny probably knows where, where you're in there to shoot them up World War Two game and you're you're going around and you just click on.

Jim 4 :28 
The Call of Duty?

Danny 4:29
Probably Call of Duty. Yeah.

Jim 4:30 
Is it Call of Duty?

Craig 4:32
Yeah, yeah. Call of Duty as an example, right. So when you're when you're in the future here, not the distant future, but the nearby future people are going to be playing games like Call of Duty. They're going to be on the beach are going to be having all of these things, and it will be quite real. Well, if you can have a simulation like that, in the future as computing improves, is that new technology coming up quantum computing, morphogenic computing and other things. In the future, we're going to have much more processing capability. So we could have things like The Game of Life. Now this, this goes way back, The Game of Life. And I don't know if you're quite geeky enough to... Oh, you remember that? Okay.

Jim 5:20 
I remember The Game of Life. Sure. We played it all the time.

Craig 5:23 
Yeah. And you had you had cells and they divided and things went on. The Game of Life where you started civilizations with certain parameters. The parameters can include there's water, does ice float or does it sink? Does this have a Game of Thrones world? Does that really exist and create those and spin them up? How about people who are in the school that at MIT and other places? Are they going to want to be able to use that technology to spin up a whole simulated civilization and have that civilization run out to see what history might have been like. So let's recreate our ancestors a hundred thousand years ago. And and start that simulation and see how they acted. Well, frankly, that's inevitable. That is going to happen. So let's crank that clock further ahead, let's crank crank it ahead 100 years 1000 years into our future we will have the capability to do that and have multiple simulations running on the same computer of entire societies. of entire civilizations crossing thousands of years. So if that's the case, if we can get to that point, ultimately what he's saying and many others have been saying is the odds are excellent that the millions to one, Jim, the odds are excellent that what we're living in is a virtual reality. That none of this is real. Because if there will be thousands or millions of these things spun up in the future, what are the odds that we are living in the very first, very initial society that creates this virtual reality?

Jim 7:34  
Oh my god. My mind got blown.  We're talking with Craig Peterson our tech talk guru. And it's like science fiction spilling over into reality and you know, Jules Verne, remember Jules Verne was writing these novels about man on the moon and all these other concepts that ultimately came to fruition and you know, are the novels of today doing that? And now you've got an MIT scientists saying, hey, how do you know you're not living in a, in right now in a virtual reality? Remember when I was young, the big deal was, hey, we could be, our universe could be inside a molecule in the finger of a giant in another universe, you know, like and that stuff used up blow your mind you'd be sitting there in college talking about that stuff. Just blow your mind. And yet this is really blowing my mind. This stuff.

Craig 8:40
It is something. This is like we're in a marble hanging on a cat's collar in Men in Black right? It is highly likely. It's called a simulation hypothesis. There are some excellent books that have been out there now for 20, 30 years about this. And you look at the Wachowski's movie series, The Matrix and some of these others. I'm trying to remember what the names of them were there a couple more in 99 but this guy's name is Rizwan Virk, I assume it's a guy, a computer scientist, video game developer, and he leads the PlayLabs over at MIT, came out with a book and he took he kind of define the, the whole thing called it the simulation hypothesis. And I've thought about this, thoroughly thought about this Jim for more than 20 years. And I don't see any way that it's not a simulation. Now, that doesn't mean that these people that believe this, don't believe in God or the God exists, or the benefits of religion or anything else, because who's saying what's being used ultimately. But if we can, if anyone can get to the point where you can't tell the difference. Even think of the Fifth Day right? That Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

Jim 10:08 
Yeah, yeah. I believe that you could download everything in your brain.

Craig 10:11 
Everything in your brain and his buddy was, and his girlfriend was virtual. She wasn't real. And yet, everything seemed real, you know, these types of things and these hypotheses been  around for a long time. So it's fun to play with. I'm not sure it does any good in any direction at all.

Jim 10:35
Yeah, I know. I know other than blowing your mind and being good conversation. Especially younger.

Craig 10:37
It doesn't matter, right. It's kind of the bottom line. 

Jim 10:41
What difference does it make? If it's true, what difference does it make to me right now? I'm a Duracell battery. That's it.

Craig 10:48
I don't think that's the case.

Jim 10:51
If I am a battery, I'm definitely a D cell.

Craig 10:58
Here we go. Rim shot, please.

Jim 11:00
Here we go. Craig Peterson folks. Always blowing our minds so the great stuff. Now Craig Peterson can blow your mind to outside of the show. He the information that he provides to me and there was a lot of other stuff today butt I just picked this little Matrix like story you can get it to and also get updates when there's a big hack or something going wrong in the IT world Craig Peterson provides this for free to my listeners. He doesn't pester you doesn't try to sell you anything. And all you do is text my name to this number.

Craig 11:37
855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553.

Jim 11:48 
And standard data and text rates apply. But I suggest you do it. And Craig, awesome segment and we'll catch up with you next week.

Craig 11:58
Hey take care. Thanks, Jim.

Jim 12:00
Thanks.

Craig 12:03 
Hey everybody. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow. Bye bye.

---

Don't miss any episode from Craig. Visit http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. Subscribe and give us a rating!

Thanks, everyone, for listening and sharing our podcasts. We're really hitting it out of the park. This will be a great year! 

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Craig is on with Mr. Jack Heath discussing China's selling high tech software and hardware to monitor citizens to Latin America. They also talked about Amazon employees listening to what you tell Alexa.

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

---

Related Articles 

Amazon Workers Are Listening To What You Tell Alexa

China Selling High-Tech Tyranny To Latin America, Stoking US Concern

3 Technologies That Could Create Trillion-Dollar Markets Over The Next Decade
---

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

Airing date: 04/15/2019

Trillion Dollar Markets - Amazon Workers Listening - China Selling Tyranny

Craig Peterson 0:00
Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here this morning I was on with Mr. Jack Heath and Jack and I had a chance to talk about this whole China selling high tech tyranny to Latin America, three technologies that could create trillion dollar markets over the next decade. I didn't get to that on my weekend show like I had wanted to. And we talked a little bit more about Amazon workers listening to what you tell Alexa, is this a problem or is this just another case of the media hyping something up? So here we go with Jack.

Jack Heath 0:35
Craig Peterson, check out Craig Peterson, O-N.com. Good morning, Craig.

Craig 0:39
Hey, good morning, Jack.

Jack 0:41 
How are you?

Craig 0:44 
I'm doing well. We got a few really interesting articles this week. I don't know if you've heard about more concerns about Amazon workers, listening into what you're telling Alexa. I've seen a number of reports that are wrong, just kind of I think misguided here. Yes, they do listen to some of these recordings. In other words, they're not sitting there listening to microphones live in your house or your office. But the recordings that you are making, when you wake up the device, you know, you give the wake word, and then you ask it a question or give it a command. Those recordings are going up to the cloud, they're being processed in order to be able to do what you ask it to do. So in order for Amazon to get better at understanding what people are saying. They have to have people listen to it as well, from time to time. Make sure it's understanding it properly, and then change some of the programming. So for everyone out there, that's been getting kind of worried because of some of these semi fake news reports out there. It's not such a big deal. We've also got an article up on my site about some technologies, three new technologies that Barron's was talking about last week, that could create a trillion dollar market each one of these over the next decade. Now, you know, I'm not a financial advisor here. So this is not an investment advice, right? But you know, you look back to the 1950s. And you remember course all kinds of technology from then washing machines, vacuum cleaners, cars, TVs, and you go back another 50 years, and you really wouldn't recognize America, that's probably going to be the same going forward 50 years Jack. We're talking about things like CRISPR technology that's being used for gene editing, healthcare is on the brink of major changes. We're going to make custom drugs for people. In computing, we're moving from the digital world, Moore's law that's governed us for so long with computers doubling in speed is going away. We're moving to quantum computing, something called neuro morphic computing, which is mimicking the human mind and material science. You know, we've had, of course, Boeing in the news recently about the Max 8, well, they have a new plane coming out called the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It's a lot like the predecessor, but because they've been using some powerful simulation machine learning, they can develop now, some new materials that they faster, 100 times, literally 100 times faster than they ever could before. So this new Dreamliner, even though it's mostly the same as the last model, it's going to be 20% lighter, and 20% more efficient. So we've got quite a world ahead of us, Jack.

Jack 3:41
Interesting. All right, what else? Any other interesting consumer tidbits or tips?

Craig 3:47
Yeah, yeah, there's been a lot of concern raised about Huawei. And what's been happening with 5G roll out. And I've always been concerned about government and advertisers even monitoring. Well, China has stepped in into this Venezuelan problem where we've got strong men, Nicolas Maduro down there, clinging to power. Remember, China has a software and hardware that's designed to monitor its, I don't want to call them citizens, because they're not it's a communist country, but to monitor the people. So they over in China have social credit, where you get jaywalk, and it dings you, right. Too many dings and you're out of luck. Well, now that they've sold that to Venezuela now, and they're issuing a card down their national ID card. It's a smart card. And it's used for the government to give you money. It's used for your banking, and it's used for your voting. And so now Maduro is allegedly now using this for social credit, where if you don't vote the right way, you will not be able to get money from the government.

Jack 5:00
Makes me want to live in China. Right. I'd be fined if I never go to China for a minute, no offense, but anyway.

Craig 5:06
Yeah. That's the case, and that's unfortunately coming here potentially with 5G. That's been some of the concerns people have been having.

Jack 5:15
Yeah, all right Craig good stuff. on this Monday morning Craig Peterson. http://CraigPeterson.com. His show of course on Saturdays, Tech Talk. Thanks, Craig.

Craig 5:23
Hey, take care Jack. 

Craig 5:28
Hey, if you're not a subscriber to the podcast, and you've been missing my new series that's right here on this same podcast channel. Make sure you subscribe. I would really appreciate it because we end up getting our word out to more people, the more that subscribe, that's what matters. And of course, the 800 pound gorilla in this market is still iTunes. So go to http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. If you haven't subscribed, please take a few minutes and subscribe right there. It would really really help I appreciate it. http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. Have a great day. We'll be back tomorrow and you know it's a security thing and take care. Bye bye.

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Message Input:

Message #techtalk

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Craig is on with Mr. Jack Heath discussing China's selling high tech software and hardware to monitor citizens to Latin America. They also talked about Amazon employees listening to what you tell Alexa.

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

---

Related Articles 

Amazon Workers Are Listening To What You Tell Alexa

China Selling High-Tech Tyranny To Latin America, Stoking US Concern

3 Technologies That Could Create Trillion-Dollar Markets Over The Next Decade
---

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

Airing date: 04/15/2019

Trillion Dollar Markets - Amazon Workers Listening - China Selling Tyranny

Craig Peterson 0:00
Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here this morning I was on with Mr. Jack Heath and Jack and I had a chance to talk about this whole China selling high tech tyranny to Latin America, three technologies that could create trillion dollar markets over the next decade. I didn't get to that on my weekend show like I had wanted to. And we talked a little bit more about Amazon workers listening to what you tell Alexa, is this a problem or is this just another case of the media hyping something up? So here we go with Jack.

Jack Heath 0:35
Craig Peterson, check out Craig Peterson, O-N.com. Good morning, Craig.

Craig 0:39
Hey, good morning, Jack.

Jack 0:41 
How are you?

Craig 0:44 
I'm doing well. We got a few really interesting articles this week. I don't know if you've heard about more concerns about Amazon workers, listening into what you're telling Alexa. I've seen a number of reports that are wrong, just kind of I think misguided here. Yes, they do listen to some of these recordings. In other words, they're not sitting there listening to microphones live in your house or your office. But the recordings that you are making, when you wake up the device, you know, you give the wake word, and then you ask it a question or give it a command. Those recordings are going up to the cloud, they're being processed in order to be able to do what you ask it to do. So in order for Amazon to get better at understanding what people are saying. They have to have people listen to it as well, from time to time. Make sure it's understanding it properly, and then change some of the programming. So for everyone out there, that's been getting kind of worried because of some of these semi fake news reports out there. It's not such a big deal. We've also got an article up on my site about some technologies, three new technologies that Barron's was talking about last week, that could create a trillion dollar market each one of these over the next decade. Now, you know, I'm not a financial advisor here. So this is not an investment advice, right? But you know, you look back to the 1950s. And you remember course all kinds of technology from then washing machines, vacuum cleaners, cars, TVs, and you go back another 50 years, and you really wouldn't recognize America, that's probably going to be the same going forward 50 years Jack. We're talking about things like CRISPR technology that's being used for gene editing, healthcare is on the brink of major changes. We're going to make custom drugs for people. In computing, we're moving from the digital world, Moore's law that's governed us for so long with computers doubling in speed is going away. We're moving to quantum computing, something called neuro morphic computing, which is mimicking the human mind and material science. You know, we've had, of course, Boeing in the news recently about the Max 8, well, they have a new plane coming out called the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It's a lot like the predecessor, but because they've been using some powerful simulation machine learning, they can develop now, some new materials that they faster, 100 times, literally 100 times faster than they ever could before. So this new Dreamliner, even though it's mostly the same as the last model, it's going to be 20% lighter, and 20% more efficient. So we've got quite a world ahead of us, Jack.

Jack 3:41
Interesting. All right, what else? Any other interesting consumer tidbits or tips?

Craig 3:47
Yeah, yeah, there's been a lot of concern raised about Huawei. And what's been happening with 5G roll out. And I've always been concerned about government and advertisers even monitoring. Well, China has stepped in into this Venezuelan problem where we've got strong men, Nicolas Maduro down there, clinging to power. Remember, China has a software and hardware that's designed to monitor its, I don't want to call them citizens, because they're not it's a communist country, but to monitor the people. So they over in China have social credit, where you get jaywalk, and it dings you, right. Too many dings and you're out of luck. Well, now that they've sold that to Venezuela now, and they're issuing a card down their national ID card. It's a smart card. And it's used for the government to give you money. It's used for your banking, and it's used for your voting. And so now Maduro is allegedly now using this for social credit, where if you don't vote the right way, you will not be able to get money from the government.

Jack 5:00
Makes me want to live in China. Right. I'd be fined if I never go to China for a minute, no offense, but anyway.

Craig 5:06
Yeah. That's the case, and that's unfortunately coming here potentially with 5G. That's been some of the concerns people have been having.

Jack 5:15
Yeah, all right Craig good stuff. on this Monday morning Craig Peterson. http://CraigPeterson.com. His show of course on Saturdays, Tech Talk. Thanks, Craig.

Craig 5:23
Hey, take care Jack. 

Craig 5:28
Hey, if you're not a subscriber to the podcast, and you've been missing my new series that's right here on this same podcast channel. Make sure you subscribe. I would really appreciate it because we end up getting our word out to more people, the more that subscribe, that's what matters. And of course, the 800 pound gorilla in this market is still iTunes. So go to http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. If you haven't subscribed, please take a few minutes and subscribe right there. It would really really help I appreciate it. http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. Have a great day. We'll be back tomorrow and you know it's a security thing and take care. Bye bye.

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Are we in the Matrix?  Well, An MIT professor says our whole experience could be a simulation thing. So we'll get into that today

Are Amazon workers to your Alexa conversations? Well if they are it is for only max 30 seconds. They don't have context. I get it. It may be an invasion of privacy but could they tell anything about the context. We will delve into this more today

Why are conservatives (or so-called conservatives) saying we've got to start regulating the internet?  I will be covering the reasons why today.

Is China selling high tech tyranny to Latin America? And it's true, and it's scary and we will discuss it.

Then there is Malware that is attacking our Critical Infrastructure sites.  Today. it's on our list to discuss. 

We've talked about autonomous cars, and about insurance and liability for them before? However, the bigger concern is DATA!  Did you know that a car can generate about 25 gigabytes of data every hour, and as much as four terabytes a day? So, who's getting that data?  Listen in for my take on that

For all this and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

---

Transcript:

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

Airing date: 04/13/2019

Government Regs Killing Internet - China Selling Tyranny To Venezuela - Russian Malware Infecting Plants

Craig Peterson 0:00
Hello, everybody Craig Peterson here. We've got a lot of security and technology to talk about today, including one of my favorite topics, you might not be aware of this. But wow, you're going to love this.  It is from an MIT professor. And he agrees with me about this whole simulation thing. So we'll get into that in just a few minutes. I was watching the news this week. In fact, it was yesterday on Friday. And it was kind of crazy because they were talking about oh, my gosh, Amazon workers are listening to what you're telling Alexa and the, you know, invasion of privacy and all this other stuff? Really? Really? I don't think so. Okay, so we'll talk about that. What's really happening there. Your car? We know we've talked about autonomous cars are about insurance before? Where's the liability shifting? Is it something that you really have to worry about? Well, how about all of the data? It's saying right now, this is an article from Roll Call, that a car can generate about 25 gigabytes of data every hour, and as much as four terabytes a day. So who's getting that data? And what does it mean and what's going to happen? We've had more and more calls for government regulations over the internet. Now, we've seen a lot of those in Europe, we're going to talk about what's happening right now in the US. We've even got so-called conservatives, who are saying we've got to start regulating the internet, because, of course, they feel their voices are being squashed. So we'll talk about that. China selling high tech tyranny to Latin America. This is from the Washington Examiner, in kind of an intriguing headline. And it's true, and it's scary. We've got another piece of malware out there. It's called Triton. And now it is infected a second critical infrastructure site. This is a bad, bad thing. And one more that's in my show notes for this week. And we may not get to all of us on the air today, right. So make sure you visit them online, you're going to have to go to http://CraigPeterson.com. And you can subscribe right there to my weekly show notes. You get all of the top articles that I have found during the week, right there in the daily or the weekly newsletter comes out Saturday morning.

Craig 2:43 
But this particular one's interesting because 16 months ago, researchers were reporting and unsettling escalation in hacks, targeting power plants. This is from ArsTechnica.com. And we talked a little bit about that before. And, you know, we know about some of the compromises that happened, for instance, in Iran that was conducted by the US and Israel. But what's unprecedented in this attack is the use of advanced malware that is targeting the site's safety processes. So it's shutting down all kinds of things that are going to help keep the plants safe. And when you think about gas field pressures, reactors, reactor temperatures rising, it gets very, very nasty, you know. Some of this stuff is designed to automatically close valves to really mess you up. And when we say mess you up, we mean to make that whole nuclear power plant go into a meltdown.

Craig 3;48 
So what's happening with this? There's some researchers over at FireEye who are saying that this same security firm, by the way, discovered Triton, and it ties it to Russia, that they've uncovered an additional intrusion use the same malicious software framework against a different critical infrastructure site. So I guess the big question here is, Does this mean that countries like Russia, for instance, are using malware as kind of a first strike opportunity? Right? It's hard to trace, it's hard to prove that it's them that that attacked you. Right? How can you prove it?

Craig 4:30
Well, frankly, you can't in most cases, it just has fingerprints, like the Russian language, or this is attacks we know, that have previously come from Russia. Those are the types of things that we've got to watch out for. And we now know that Russia has been involved in some this hacking. We know China has been involved in some. North Korea has been involved in some to let me tell you, it's a different world. And the next war we have is going to be a much different war, that's for sure.

Craig 5:03 
Let's talk about this China story here, where China is selling some high tech tyranny to Latin America. This is, as I mentioned, the Washington Examiner. And this is very, very concerning. Because what we found now is China has been working with these companies like Huawei, which we know about, it's been a very, very big deal. And Huawei's devices have been banned from US military bases, and from others, but it's also saying this ZTE, is tied into this. And we know about the concerns with 5G and ZTE and all of the stuff that's going on all this stuff they're doing. And we're getting really concerned now because what's happening is that China is taking these tools that they've developed in order to monitor their people within China and really displace the United States. They're putting all of the surveillance equipment all around the US and the Western Hemisphere. Well, not so much in Canada, although, obviously with 5G rollouts, we do have some of that Chinese equipment going up there. But they're supporting right now Venezuelan strong man, Nicolas Maduro, the current president who's really clinging to power, after the western democracies, I think all of them said, Yeah, you got to be out of there. And recognize the opposition lawmakers, the interim president, China has been exporting technology that helps a South American socialist to monitor and strong arm the Venezuelan people, which is what he's been doing for quite a while. So here's an example of politics being really promoted and expanded the power base due to some of this technology. So think about that now. China is really now intertwined in the Western Hemisphere and things that are going on. And they're able to surveil, monitor, surrounding the US, that's all part of the Asia Pacific influence that they've been building here for a while. And it's very concerning very, very concerning. 

Craig 7:24
Maduro, by the way, paid ZTE as part of this, but to build a $70 million database and payment system for what they're calling a homeland card. Now, what's concerning about this is this so-called homeland card, that ZTE sold the technology to Maduro for is designed to be used to control access to food, to cash, bonuses, social services, a social credit system for a political control mechanism. In fact, it's even used to track your voting. So they know how you voted, it's recorded right there with the card, it goes into the database. This is all part of their smart card thing. And if you don't vote the right way, what's going to happen? It's just like in Chicago, right? If you don't pay the local Chicago thugs in the party that's in control in Chicago, you know, all of the criminal activity that's been alleged there for years, much of it's been proven, in fact, you end up with potholes in your street that won't get fixed, because you've been speaking out against the local candidate for the town, for the city, for the county, for the state. It's just it's still so corrupt in Chicago. It's unbelievable, how bad it is there. Well, it is much, much worse in Venezuela using these Chinese technologies that the Chinese have been building. Have you seen the Black Mirror episode, for those that are sci-fi fantasy, it is a series out of UK, it's a really, really good one. And the whole idea, the whole premise behind this particular episode is that every time you do something, you get social credit, or you get credit taken away from you. And this poor lady just ends up in a downward spiral and, and has no credit left, right? It gets to be really, really bad. Well, in China, now, they have facial recognition technology all over the place throughout all of the major cities. If you jaywalk, you get points taken away, because the computers know who you are. And now you don't have the social credit. And if you don't have the social credit, because you've done things that the socialist, communist government doesn't like, you cannot vote, you can't get on an airplane, you can't get on a train even they block you from those if you don't do what you're told to do. And if you're not politically correct. Free speech is just going down the tubes worldwide and very, very scary. So let's talk about friends speech here for a minute.

Craig 10:01
Here's an article from the Daily Mail. And course they are ahead of us in some of this stuff, right? Free speech is outlawed in the United Kingdom. Now, it's legally outlawed in Canada, you cannot say certain things. You can't even ask legitimate questions, legitimate political questions. You cannot have a dialogue about certain things. You know, if you question about somebody's birth sex, and now they say, well, you have to use this gender when addressing me, or you're supposed to go on bended knee to his or her royal highness and request permission to speak to them what's going on? Because in Canada, and in the UK, if you say something they don't like, you can go to jail. And it's that simple. So there is no freedom of speech there. And in the US now, we've got these fascists running around, who are beating people up, threatening people, yelling, screaming, trying to stop free speech rights. And that is the definition of fascism, isn't it? It's a definition of socialism or communism, they all do it. They all try and stop free speech because they don't want the free exchange of ideas because their ideas are right. And the only reason it hasn't worked before is because of what? Well, because the other people weren't smart enough. We're smart, our generation is smarter than all generations that have ever come before us. Right? That is not what they say. So now we're tying technology into this. We're seeing it in China. Big time, big time. And we're now seeing it in Venezuela, as the current president tries to hold on to his socialist powers to control everyone's lives. And of course, people are dying, they're starving, They're digging through trash to try and find food. Right? A socialist utopia, just like the Soviet Union became?

Craig 11:57
Well, now we're looking at government regulations. In the US over free speech in places like the public square. Is Facebook, the public square? Is Twitter the public square? Obviously not. But we passed laws in the US that said, Hey, listen, we're going to consider you as a public square, all you have is a faucet. And all of these ideas are coming out of that faucet. And therefore, we are not going to allow anyone to hold you liable for the things that your users say online. And that's the sort of thing that you expect from free and open fair discussions from a democracy, right? You expect that kind of free speech, and you don't want to have regulations or restrictions on the people that are providing those free speech areas, just like the public square. You could go get a soapbox, you could stand up in the public square, and you could say anything you wanted, no matter how crazy it was. Right? That that was the idea of the public square. That was the idea behind the laws that are protecting Facebook and Twitter and, and others online.

Craig 13:14 
Well, now we found that they are doing various types of censorship, let's put it that way. Google is being sued. And just this week, a big lawsuit was announced, because Google's showing search results that favor them versus their competitors. Now, I gotta say, if you're writing code that's going to give good search results, of course, you have to discriminate against materials that you don't consider to be, you know, up to your standard that people aren't looking at that aren't, aren't popular.

Craig 13:52
But if you're looking for an unpopular opinion online, you know, remember, the majority isn't always right. Right? Slavery. The majority of people endorsed it, but it wasn't right. It was never right. So just because of the majority says something should be done. And just because political correctness would lead me to believe that that's what you should do. That doesn't mean that it is the right thing. Well, China's walled off a lot of Western services on the internet, you've heard about the Great Firewall of China before. The UK now is planning to hold executives personally liable for posts on social media that they consider harmful or illegal because remember, there's no free speech in the UK anymore. And this came out in the government white paper on Monday this week. They say this would put the country at the far end of internet censorship and further fuel, what they're calling now this splinternet. This is a term circulated for, you know, more or less a decade here, this gained some popularity recently. And this comes in the tail end of Mark Zuckerberg saying, you know, Facebook's chief, that he wants a common global frame that a framework of internet rules, which is never going to happen, right. Tim Burners Lee, you might remember him, he started the worldwide web's, software. And he came up with what he called a contract for the web that establishes an ethical sense of principles for the internet. A whole lot here. The New Zealand Christchurch mosques, massacre, you remember, this was very recent as well live streamed online. It's a heightened sense of urgency in New Zealand. They just knee-jerked, passed laws within two weeks that change the face of what's happening there. Huge debates in the US and the EU on curbing what they're calling incitement to violence. Now, obviously, you can tie this into, can I yell fire in a crowded theater? Right? There's a lot of things that you could do here.

Craig 16:10
In free speech, that would step over lines like that. So how about the line for inciting to violence? What is that? What does it mean? Well, in Australia, there's a law now it's a new one that can jail social media executives for failing to take down violent extremist content quickly. A proposal in Britain that makes executives personally liable for harmful common content posted on social platforms. How do you define this? How do you define harmful content? Where is the line? If someone says, Oh, my feelings were hurt? Is that harmful? Well, of course, it is, because their feelings were hurt. So does that mean we can't say anything that might upset anyone again, refer back to that, that Black Mirror episode of the UK proposal, this is from a White House technology advisor, who's now over at MIT says that it's a very bad look for rights-respecting democracy to do what they're doing in the UK would place the UK toward the foreign the internet censorship spectrum.

Craig 17:19
And the UK culture Secretary says, you like that? They got a culture Secretary over there. The Culture Secretary says the proposed laws will not limit press freedom. Okay, so where's the line on the press? Look what's happening right now, the Ecuadorian embassy in Britain. And you have a guy who is now under arrest, who's claiming he is a publisher, right? He published documents that were stolen by two military members, one was a military contractor and one, another military man who was working with secret information. Was he a publisher? Did he help them steal it by providing instructions on how to sneak classified information out? Was he a co-conspirator? There's just so much right now going on. And you know, when we're looking at free speech, I think free speech is almost absolute.

Craig 18:23
If it can be shown that something caused physical harm to someone, you know, that's kind of where the my you're right to swing your fist stops where my nose begins. Now, obviously, at some point, while that fist is being swung, I'm feeling threatened.

Craig 18:42
But where do you draw the line? Well, I think you draw the line at touching me, certainly at hitting my nose. And this is something that the internet pioneer has never really thought about. Remember, I've been on the internet since 83. Of course, it wasn't called that back then. We had different types of networks and things. But since 83, and free speech was always a big deal. We didn't really get free speech until September of 91 online, because it was still heavily controlled by the federal government. Remember it was a federal government research project that funded it, but then they kind of let loose of it in 91. But man, what a world out there. 

Craig 19:22 
Let's get into this Amazon article right now. I was listening to the news. I was watching a morning news program, in fact, this week, and they were talking about how bad it is that Amazon Alexa workers are sitting there listening to you. Okay, so that's one level. And then they said, Oh, and on top of it now, they won't call the police if they hear something that might be bad. Now, I like it. I like that, right. And I understand the first part. And I like the second part. Because you know, the second part, you don't have the full context, you've got a 3o second snippet. You know, somebody wakes up that that Amazon device, or that Google device, or whatever it might be. You wake it up, it records for up to 32nd, sends it up to the cloud, processes it, and then execute your command. So they're listening to max 30 seconds. You don't have context. You don't know what's going on. And you certainly don't want to destroy people's lives over a vague suspicion. Right. So I like that. I really like that. It's just like as when I spent 10 years in emergency medicine, we were all mandated-reporters. But we did not have to report unless we thought there might be something going on that's reportable.

Craig 20:52
So I think that's a pretty straightforward thing. I think that's pretty simple to look at and understand because it didn't think that something was reportable, then I never reported it. And so different people had different bars, right? How high that was. Now, let's go to the first part of this where they were very upset that Amazon employees were listening in.

Craig 21:17
It's very limited when Amazon employees are listening in and they're not listening to all of the audio coming from your house. So listening to at most that 30-second snippet, when you told Alexa, that you had a command for her. That's it. That's that simple. And what they're doing is they're using your audio to better the speech interpretation, better the machine learning, so that it understands how people are asking questions, what sort of accents they might have, how it works. For instance, when I talked to Alexa, I get great responses, because she understands me. She understands me speaking, hopefully, you guys do too. But my wife has issues with it. I have a son that has issues with it. And that has to do with your cadence, your clarity of speech, right, enunciation. And how do you improve your software? You improve it by testing. How do you test software, that design that's intended to be able to process human speech and understand what it's going for? Understand what the goal is of that human that's asking you to do something? Well, this is the only way to do it. Right? They don't have these employees that hear the audio don't have your name. They don't have your account number, they have no idea who you are, they don't have the email address. All they have is a snippet of sound, and how the Alexa voice processor processed it. So they can listen to what they can see was Alexa correct in parsing much you said? And was it correct in understanding your intention behind what you said? So it's pretty simple, it's pretty straightforward. Don't get too freaked out about this. And there have been court cases where Amazon has been asked for and did provide under court order, the audio that has been captured. But remember, it's very limited audio. And unless that device has been hacked, and you know, it hasn't happened in at least a couple of years that I'm aware of. If it's hacked, it is possible to make it so it's recording. But the way the hardware setup in that Alexa, it cannot record you, unless that little light is on. It's a physical hardware limitation that they purposely built into it. So it's not as though they can just turn on the microphone and life is good. It's like on your MacBook Pro, the hardware that when your camera is active, that light comes on. It's all designed in one piece. So unlike many Windows machines, you can't just turn on the camera and not have that green light come on. The same thing with Alexa. Now, if you have physical access to the device, there may be you know, there's always ways right ultimately, to get into that.

Craig 24:22 
Man, we are almost out of time. Three technologies that could create trillion dollar markets over the next decade. I got that from Barons, but it's up there on http://CraigPeterson.com. Very interesting. And they talk about some genetic stuff and quantum computing and material science. You'd find that fascinating, I'm sure and I have it up again along with all of these at my website http://CraigPeterson.com. And if you go to htttp://CraigPeterson.com/radio-show, you'll see my show notes, but you also get those in the email if you signed up. This is the one that I really am interested in.

Craig 25:03
Are we living in an illusion? Did you notice back in 99, there were three movies that came out that were implying, inferring, opening our minds to the possibility that we are living in a simulation. And I had a guest on my show about that time. He's just a regular engineer. But he had done a lot of thought a lot of research and put together a book that was specifically addressing that question. Very thick book, very convincing book. And he did all the math behind it. And basically, what he said is that, eventually, any civilization will get good enough to be able to have a virtual reality that's indistinguishable from the real thing.

Craig 25:52
And the odds are that within 20, 30 years from now, that'll be true here. You'll be able to plug yourself in one way or the other and live in whatever worlds you want to. Have a vacation in Fiji and just enjoy it and not have any jet lag okay. That's coming. So if that happens, basically he said the odds are millions to one that we are living in that timeline that invented this virtual reality.

Craig 26:28
We may be all running this, this whole world, this universe that we perceive around us, is millions to one likely to be a simulation. We are not likely to be that very first time through. And what's interesting is this ties into a lot of religions as well. Because again, God created the heavens in the earth. He did it in six days. Oh, maybe he did. Maybe we're running in a simulation, and on a computer in somebody's basement? Who knows what we're doing? And are we all just artificial intelligence programs? So this is fascinating. When I get this book, Rizwan Virk, I may try and get him on the radio show. He's a computer scientist. Video game developer, he leads PlayLabs at MIT. And his book's called The Simulation Hypothesis. I love it. I love just the mental gyrations you kind of have to go through to think about this and the potential of being a simulation.

Craig 27:33 
Well, I appreciate everybody being with us today. We will be back next week. And course I've been releasing podcast now, six days a week. Most weeks, it's you know, it's between two and six. But most recent six weeks we have you know, It's A Security Thing where we're talking about current recent security problems businesses have had what could have been done to prevent them what you can do, and then also just talking about all these great articles that we send out in our show notes. So have a great day. We'll see you next week and thanks for listening. http://CraigPeterson.com for more. Bye-Bye

--- 

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Mysterious Safety-Tampering Malware Infects A Second Critical Infrastructure Site

Rise Of The 'Splinternet': Experts Warn The World Wide Web Will Break Up And Fragment As Governments Set Their Own Rules To Filter And Restrict Content

China Selling High-Tech Tyranny To Latin America, Stoking US Concern

Are We Living In A Simulation? This MIT Scientist Says It’s More Likely Than Not

3 Technologies That Could Create Trillion-Dollar Markets Over The Next Decade

Your Car Is Watching You. Who Owns The Data?

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Are we in the Matrix?  Well, An MIT professor says our whole experience could be a simulation thing. So we'll get into that today

Are Amazon workers to your Alexa conversations? Well if they are it is for only max 30 seconds. They don't have context. I get it. It may be an invasion of privacy but could they tell anything about the context. We will delve into this more today

Why are conservatives (or so-called conservatives) saying we've got to start regulating the internet?  I will be covering the reasons why today.

Is China selling high tech tyranny to Latin America? And it's true, and it's scary and we will discuss it.

Then there is Malware that is attacking our Critical Infrastructure sites.  Today. it's on our list to discuss. 

We've talked about autonomous cars, and about insurance and liability for them before? However, the bigger concern is DATA!  Did you know that a car can generate about 25 gigabytes of data every hour, and as much as four terabytes a day? So, who's getting that data?  Listen in for my take on that

For all this and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

---

Transcript:

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

Airing date: 04/13/2019

Government Regs Killing Internet - China Selling Tyranny To Venezuela - Russian Malware Infecting Plants

Craig Peterson 0:00
Hello, everybody Craig Peterson here. We've got a lot of security and technology to talk about today, including one of my favorite topics, you might not be aware of this. But wow, you're going to love this.  It is from an MIT professor. And he agrees with me about this whole simulation thing. So we'll get into that in just a few minutes. I was watching the news this week. In fact, it was yesterday on Friday. And it was kind of crazy because they were talking about oh, my gosh, Amazon workers are listening to what you're telling Alexa and the, you know, invasion of privacy and all this other stuff? Really? Really? I don't think so. Okay, so we'll talk about that. What's really happening there. Your car? We know we've talked about autonomous cars are about insurance before? Where's the liability shifting? Is it something that you really have to worry about? Well, how about all of the data? It's saying right now, this is an article from Roll Call, that a car can generate about 25 gigabytes of data every hour, and as much as four terabytes a day. So who's getting that data? And what does it mean and what's going to happen? We've had more and more calls for government regulations over the internet. Now, we've seen a lot of those in Europe, we're going to talk about what's happening right now in the US. We've even got so-called conservatives, who are saying we've got to start regulating the internet, because, of course, they feel their voices are being squashed. So we'll talk about that. China selling high tech tyranny to Latin America. This is from the Washington Examiner, in kind of an intriguing headline. And it's true, and it's scary. We've got another piece of malware out there. It's called Triton. And now it is infected a second critical infrastructure site. This is a bad, bad thing. And one more that's in my show notes for this week. And we may not get to all of us on the air today, right. So make sure you visit them online, you're going to have to go to http://CraigPeterson.com. And you can subscribe right there to my weekly show notes. You get all of the top articles that I have found during the week, right there in the daily or the weekly newsletter comes out Saturday morning.

Craig 2:43 
But this particular one's interesting because 16 months ago, researchers were reporting and unsettling escalation in hacks, targeting power plants. This is from ArsTechnica.com. And we talked a little bit about that before. And, you know, we know about some of the compromises that happened, for instance, in Iran that was conducted by the US and Israel. But what's unprecedented in this attack is the use of advanced malware that is targeting the site's safety processes. So it's shutting down all kinds of things that are going to help keep the plants safe. And when you think about gas field pressures, reactors, reactor temperatures rising, it gets very, very nasty, you know. Some of this stuff is designed to automatically close valves to really mess you up. And when we say mess you up, we mean to make that whole nuclear power plant go into a meltdown.

Craig 3;48 
So what's happening with this? There's some researchers over at FireEye who are saying that this same security firm, by the way, discovered Triton, and it ties it to Russia, that they've uncovered an additional intrusion use the same malicious software framework against a different critical infrastructure site. So I guess the big question here is, Does this mean that countries like Russia, for instance, are using malware as kind of a first strike opportunity? Right? It's hard to trace, it's hard to prove that it's them that that attacked you. Right? How can you prove it?

Craig 4:30
Well, frankly, you can't in most cases, it just has fingerprints, like the Russian language, or this is attacks we know, that have previously come from Russia. Those are the types of things that we've got to watch out for. And we now know that Russia has been involved in some this hacking. We know China has been involved in some. North Korea has been involved in some to let me tell you, it's a different world. And the next war we have is going to be a much different war, that's for sure.

Craig 5:03 
Let's talk about this China story here, where China is selling some high tech tyranny to Latin America. This is, as I mentioned, the Washington Examiner. And this is very, very concerning. Because what we found now is China has been working with these companies like Huawei, which we know about, it's been a very, very big deal. And Huawei's devices have been banned from US military bases, and from others, but it's also saying this ZTE, is tied into this. And we know about the concerns with 5G and ZTE and all of the stuff that's going on all this stuff they're doing. And we're getting really concerned now because what's happening is that China is taking these tools that they've developed in order to monitor their people within China and really displace the United States. They're putting all of the surveillance equipment all around the US and the Western Hemisphere. Well, not so much in Canada, although, obviously with 5G rollouts, we do have some of that Chinese equipment going up there. But they're supporting right now Venezuelan strong man, Nicolas Maduro, the current president who's really clinging to power, after the western democracies, I think all of them said, Yeah, you got to be out of there. And recognize the opposition lawmakers, the interim president, China has been exporting technology that helps a South American socialist to monitor and strong arm the Venezuelan people, which is what he's been doing for quite a while. So here's an example of politics being really promoted and expanded the power base due to some of this technology. So think about that now. China is really now intertwined in the Western Hemisphere and things that are going on. And they're able to surveil, monitor, surrounding the US, that's all part of the Asia Pacific influence that they've been building here for a while. And it's very concerning very, very concerning. 

Craig 7:24
Maduro, by the way, paid ZTE as part of this, but to build a $70 million database and payment system for what they're calling a homeland card. Now, what's concerning about this is this so-called homeland card, that ZTE sold the technology to Maduro for is designed to be used to control access to food, to cash, bonuses, social services, a social credit system for a political control mechanism. In fact, it's even used to track your voting. So they know how you voted, it's recorded right there with the card, it goes into the database. This is all part of their smart card thing. And if you don't vote the right way, what's going to happen? It's just like in Chicago, right? If you don't pay the local Chicago thugs in the party that's in control in Chicago, you know, all of the criminal activity that's been alleged there for years, much of it's been proven, in fact, you end up with potholes in your street that won't get fixed, because you've been speaking out against the local candidate for the town, for the city, for the county, for the state. It's just it's still so corrupt in Chicago. It's unbelievable, how bad it is there. Well, it is much, much worse in Venezuela using these Chinese technologies that the Chinese have been building. Have you seen the Black Mirror episode, for those that are sci-fi fantasy, it is a series out of UK, it's a really, really good one. And the whole idea, the whole premise behind this particular episode is that every time you do something, you get social credit, or you get credit taken away from you. And this poor lady just ends up in a downward spiral and, and has no credit left, right? It gets to be really, really bad. Well, in China, now, they have facial recognition technology all over the place throughout all of the major cities. If you jaywalk, you get points taken away, because the computers know who you are. And now you don't have the social credit. And if you don't have the social credit, because you've done things that the socialist, communist government doesn't like, you cannot vote, you can't get on an airplane, you can't get on a train even they block you from those if you don't do what you're told to do. And if you're not politically correct. Free speech is just going down the tubes worldwide and very, very scary. So let's talk about friends speech here for a minute.

Craig 10:01
Here's an article from the Daily Mail. And course they are ahead of us in some of this stuff, right? Free speech is outlawed in the United Kingdom. Now, it's legally outlawed in Canada, you cannot say certain things. You can't even ask legitimate questions, legitimate political questions. You cannot have a dialogue about certain things. You know, if you question about somebody's birth sex, and now they say, well, you have to use this gender when addressing me, or you're supposed to go on bended knee to his or her royal highness and request permission to speak to them what's going on? Because in Canada, and in the UK, if you say something they don't like, you can go to jail. And it's that simple. So there is no freedom of speech there. And in the US now, we've got these fascists running around, who are beating people up, threatening people, yelling, screaming, trying to stop free speech rights. And that is the definition of fascism, isn't it? It's a definition of socialism or communism, they all do it. They all try and stop free speech because they don't want the free exchange of ideas because their ideas are right. And the only reason it hasn't worked before is because of what? Well, because the other people weren't smart enough. We're smart, our generation is smarter than all generations that have ever come before us. Right? That is not what they say. So now we're tying technology into this. We're seeing it in China. Big time, big time. And we're now seeing it in Venezuela, as the current president tries to hold on to his socialist powers to control everyone's lives. And of course, people are dying, they're starving, They're digging through trash to try and find food. Right? A socialist utopia, just like the Soviet Union became?

Craig 11:57
Well, now we're looking at government regulations. In the US over free speech in places like the public square. Is Facebook, the public square? Is Twitter the public square? Obviously not. But we passed laws in the US that said, Hey, listen, we're going to consider you as a public square, all you have is a faucet. And all of these ideas are coming out of that faucet. And therefore, we are not going to allow anyone to hold you liable for the things that your users say online. And that's the sort of thing that you expect from free and open fair discussions from a democracy, right? You expect that kind of free speech, and you don't want to have regulations or restrictions on the people that are providing those free speech areas, just like the public square. You could go get a soapbox, you could stand up in the public square, and you could say anything you wanted, no matter how crazy it was. Right? That that was the idea of the public square. That was the idea behind the laws that are protecting Facebook and Twitter and, and others online.

Craig 13:14 
Well, now we found that they are doing various types of censorship, let's put it that way. Google is being sued. And just this week, a big lawsuit was announced, because Google's showing search results that favor them versus their competitors. Now, I gotta say, if you're writing code that's going to give good search results, of course, you have to discriminate against materials that you don't consider to be, you know, up to your standard that people aren't looking at that aren't, aren't popular.

Craig 13:52
But if you're looking for an unpopular opinion online, you know, remember, the majority isn't always right. Right? Slavery. The majority of people endorsed it, but it wasn't right. It was never right. So just because of the majority says something should be done. And just because political correctness would lead me to believe that that's what you should do. That doesn't mean that it is the right thing. Well, China's walled off a lot of Western services on the internet, you've heard about the Great Firewall of China before. The UK now is planning to hold executives personally liable for posts on social media that they consider harmful or illegal because remember, there's no free speech in the UK anymore. And this came out in the government white paper on Monday this week. They say this would put the country at the far end of internet censorship and further fuel, what they're calling now this splinternet. This is a term circulated for, you know, more or less a decade here, this gained some popularity recently. And this comes in the tail end of Mark Zuckerberg saying, you know, Facebook's chief, that he wants a common global frame that a framework of internet rules, which is never going to happen, right. Tim Burners Lee, you might remember him, he started the worldwide web's, software. And he came up with what he called a contract for the web that establishes an ethical sense of principles for the internet. A whole lot here. The New Zealand Christchurch mosques, massacre, you remember, this was very recent as well live streamed online. It's a heightened sense of urgency in New Zealand. They just knee-jerked, passed laws within two weeks that change the face of what's happening there. Huge debates in the US and the EU on curbing what they're calling incitement to violence. Now, obviously, you can tie this into, can I yell fire in a crowded theater? Right? There's a lot of things that you could do here.

Craig 16:10
In free speech, that would step over lines like that. So how about the line for inciting to violence? What is that? What does it mean? Well, in Australia, there's a law now it's a new one that can jail social media executives for failing to take down violent extremist content quickly. A proposal in Britain that makes executives personally liable for harmful common content posted on social platforms. How do you define this? How do you define harmful content? Where is the line? If someone says, Oh, my feelings were hurt? Is that harmful? Well, of course, it is, because their feelings were hurt. So does that mean we can't say anything that might upset anyone again, refer back to that, that Black Mirror episode of the UK proposal, this is from a White House technology advisor, who's now over at MIT says that it's a very bad look for rights-respecting democracy to do what they're doing in the UK would place the UK toward the foreign the internet censorship spectrum.

Craig 17:19
And the UK culture Secretary says, you like that? They got a culture Secretary over there. The Culture Secretary says the proposed laws will not limit press freedom. Okay, so where's the line on the press? Look what's happening right now, the Ecuadorian embassy in Britain. And you have a guy who is now under arrest, who's claiming he is a publisher, right? He published documents that were stolen by two military members, one was a military contractor and one, another military man who was working with secret information. Was he a publisher? Did he help them steal it by providing instructions on how to sneak classified information out? Was he a co-conspirator? There's just so much right now going on. And you know, when we're looking at free speech, I think free speech is almost absolute.

Craig 18:23
If it can be shown that something caused physical harm to someone, you know, that's kind of where the my you're right to swing your fist stops where my nose begins. Now, obviously, at some point, while that fist is being swung, I'm feeling threatened.

Craig 18:42
But where do you draw the line? Well, I think you draw the line at touching me, certainly at hitting my nose. And this is something that the internet pioneer has never really thought about. Remember, I've been on the internet since 83. Of course, it wasn't called that back then. We had different types of networks and things. But since 83, and free speech was always a big deal. We didn't really get free speech until September of 91 online, because it was still heavily controlled by the federal government. Remember it was a federal government research project that funded it, but then they kind of let loose of it in 91. But man, what a world out there. 

Craig 19:22 
Let's get into this Amazon article right now. I was listening to the news. I was watching a morning news program, in fact, this week, and they were talking about how bad it is that Amazon Alexa workers are sitting there listening to you. Okay, so that's one level. And then they said, Oh, and on top of it now, they won't call the police if they hear something that might be bad. Now, I like it. I like that, right. And I understand the first part. And I like the second part. Because you know, the second part, you don't have the full context, you've got a 3o second snippet. You know, somebody wakes up that that Amazon device, or that Google device, or whatever it might be. You wake it up, it records for up to 32nd, sends it up to the cloud, processes it, and then execute your command. So they're listening to max 30 seconds. You don't have context. You don't know what's going on. And you certainly don't want to destroy people's lives over a vague suspicion. Right. So I like that. I really like that. It's just like as when I spent 10 years in emergency medicine, we were all mandated-reporters. But we did not have to report unless we thought there might be something going on that's reportable.

Craig 20:52
So I think that's a pretty straightforward thing. I think that's pretty simple to look at and understand because it didn't think that something was reportable, then I never reported it. And so different people had different bars, right? How high that was. Now, let's go to the first part of this where they were very upset that Amazon employees were listening in.

Craig 21:17
It's very limited when Amazon employees are listening in and they're not listening to all of the audio coming from your house. So listening to at most that 30-second snippet, when you told Alexa, that you had a command for her. That's it. That's that simple. And what they're doing is they're using your audio to better the speech interpretation, better the machine learning, so that it understands how people are asking questions, what sort of accents they might have, how it works. For instance, when I talked to Alexa, I get great responses, because she understands me. She understands me speaking, hopefully, you guys do too. But my wife has issues with it. I have a son that has issues with it. And that has to do with your cadence, your clarity of speech, right, enunciation. And how do you improve your software? You improve it by testing. How do you test software, that design that's intended to be able to process human speech and understand what it's going for? Understand what the goal is of that human that's asking you to do something? Well, this is the only way to do it. Right? They don't have these employees that hear the audio don't have your name. They don't have your account number, they have no idea who you are, they don't have the email address. All they have is a snippet of sound, and how the Alexa voice processor processed it. So they can listen to what they can see was Alexa correct in parsing much you said? And was it correct in understanding your intention behind what you said? So it's pretty simple, it's pretty straightforward. Don't get too freaked out about this. And there have been court cases where Amazon has been asked for and did provide under court order, the audio that has been captured. But remember, it's very limited audio. And unless that device has been hacked, and you know, it hasn't happened in at least a couple of years that I'm aware of. If it's hacked, it is possible to make it so it's recording. But the way the hardware setup in that Alexa, it cannot record you, unless that little light is on. It's a physical hardware limitation that they purposely built into it. So it's not as though they can just turn on the microphone and life is good. It's like on your MacBook Pro, the hardware that when your camera is active, that light comes on. It's all designed in one piece. So unlike many Windows machines, you can't just turn on the camera and not have that green light come on. The same thing with Alexa. Now, if you have physical access to the device, there may be you know, there's always ways right ultimately, to get into that.

Craig 24:22 
Man, we are almost out of time. Three technologies that could create trillion dollar markets over the next decade. I got that from Barons, but it's up there on http://CraigPeterson.com. Very interesting. And they talk about some genetic stuff and quantum computing and material science. You'd find that fascinating, I'm sure and I have it up again along with all of these at my website http://CraigPeterson.com. And if you go to htttp://CraigPeterson.com/radio-show, you'll see my show notes, but you also get those in the email if you signed up. This is the one that I really am interested in.

Craig 25:03
Are we living in an illusion? Did you notice back in 99, there were three movies that came out that were implying, inferring, opening our minds to the possibility that we are living in a simulation. And I had a guest on my show about that time. He's just a regular engineer. But he had done a lot of thought a lot of research and put together a book that was specifically addressing that question. Very thick book, very convincing book. And he did all the math behind it. And basically, what he said is that, eventually, any civilization will get good enough to be able to have a virtual reality that's indistinguishable from the real thing.

Craig 25:52
And the odds are that within 20, 30 years from now, that'll be true here. You'll be able to plug yourself in one way or the other and live in whatever worlds you want to. Have a vacation in Fiji and just enjoy it and not have any jet lag okay. That's coming. So if that happens, basically he said the odds are millions to one that we are living in that timeline that invented this virtual reality.

Craig 26:28
We may be all running this, this whole world, this universe that we perceive around us, is millions to one likely to be a simulation. We are not likely to be that very first time through. And what's interesting is this ties into a lot of religions as well. Because again, God created the heavens in the earth. He did it in six days. Oh, maybe he did. Maybe we're running in a simulation, and on a computer in somebody's basement? Who knows what we're doing? And are we all just artificial intelligence programs? So this is fascinating. When I get this book, Rizwan Virk, I may try and get him on the radio show. He's a computer scientist. Video game developer, he leads PlayLabs at MIT. And his book's called The Simulation Hypothesis. I love it. I love just the mental gyrations you kind of have to go through to think about this and the potential of being a simulation.

Craig 27:33 
Well, I appreciate everybody being with us today. We will be back next week. And course I've been releasing podcast now, six days a week. Most weeks, it's you know, it's between two and six. But most recent six weeks we have you know, It's A Security Thing where we're talking about current recent security problems businesses have had what could have been done to prevent them what you can do, and then also just talking about all these great articles that we send out in our show notes. So have a great day. We'll see you next week and thanks for listening. http://CraigPeterson.com for more. Bye-Bye

--- 

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Mysterious Safety-Tampering Malware Infects A Second Critical Infrastructure Site

Rise Of The 'Splinternet': Experts Warn The World Wide Web Will Break Up And Fragment As Governments Set Their Own Rules To Filter And Restrict Content

China Selling High-Tech Tyranny To Latin America, Stoking US Concern

Are We Living In A Simulation? This MIT Scientist Says It’s More Likely Than Not

3 Technologies That Could Create Trillion-Dollar Markets Over The Next Decade

Your Car Is Watching You. Who Owns The Data?

---

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It's another Security Thing Friday. Craig talks about the new bug that lets criminals in on the photos we share and upload in Google Photos.

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

---

Related Articles 

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

Airing date: 04/12/2019

Google Photos Bug Lets Criminals In

Craig Peterson 0:03
Hi, welcome to the Friday edition of It's a Security Thing. We're going to talk today a little bit about another type of vulnerability that is kind of more potential it is real and it can be done. It's not terribly complex. But you have to be a real target in order for it to really hit you at all. And this particular one has to do with Google Photos. Now, you might use Google Photos. There's a lot of different photo sharing services out there, Flickr was recently purchased. And there is all kinds of data that you have in these different services that you might not realize is there. Now Google Photos is really kind of cool when you get behind the scenes. It knows tons of information about anybody that has uploaded photos to it. And it's automatically tagging the images. Now it takes the metadata from the image. And if you haven't stripped it, that includes things like the date and time it was taken, the actual GPS coordinates, the location that it was taken. And then what Google Photos does, is it has kind of an artificial intelligence engine. And it looks for objects and events that might be occurring in the background of the photo. So might look at the picture and say, wow, this looks like a wedding dress, and the groom is all dressed up. And there's other details that might indicate a wedding. So it says, oh, wow, this is a wedding.

Craig 1:40
Or there's a waterfall in the background, it's at sunset, it figures out just tons of stuff based on the location and time that are in the picture, as well as the picture contents itself. It's a really good, really quite cool. It's also using facial recognition, and using that to tag people who are also present in the photos. So here's what happens with Google Photos search engine. I just love this idea. I'm tempted to upload photos to it because of this. But in the Google Photos search engine, you can do a search like photos of me and Karen from Paris 2017. And Google Photos knows enough information to be able to find it. I could say Google Photos of me in Paris in Google Photos of me in wherever it was I was at or near this or near that. It's very impressive what Google's doing. So a security researcher decided, Hmm, I wonder what I can do here. And he went in, I'm trying to find his name. Its Massas, I think, is it? Yeah, it's Ron Massas. And he went in and he said, I wonder if this data could be hacked? And he found that indeed, it could be but only under some pretty specific circumstances, which people could be tricked into doing. And then it can find out things about, you know, obviously, this would be for very specific type of attack. They're doing spearphishing. And you if you listen to my interviews this week on the radio, you know, a lot about spearphishing, more than you might want to know and sextortions that are going on right now. 

Craig 3:48
So he was able to do a side attack on Google Photos, and was able to figure out what people had done, where they had gone at what they had done when they were there various other things. Again, it's a kind of a complex thing. But it does make me think and probably makes you think about Google and these other sites. All of the stuff we have put out there, and that we've given Google and these other companies access to. Is it legit? Is it something we should be doing? And that's the reason I haven't uploaded my photos to Google Photos. Because I'm not sure I want Google to know about all this stuff. And I most particularly don't want Google to end up selling that information or being hacked, and having that information stolen, because that happens all too often not so much with Google, although it does happen with them. But with information that we upload all the time. Remember, yesterday, we're talking about software as a service. And Apple is very good about not mining data to advertise. Apple makes its money by selling new hardware and some software. Google makes its money by analyze you and trying to figure out everything it can about you so that it can sell your information to advertisers. So up to you what you want to do. But again, here's another risk. And I bet most of us just didn't know, Google was doing all of this with photos we uploaded to Google Photos. I certainly didn't.

Craig 5:20 
Alright, everybody. Have a great weekend. Make sure you tune in on Saturday morning. You should be getting my emails if not go to http://CraigPeterson.com/subscribe. But once you get my emails, you will see all of the articles I talked about during the week. And it's important to keep up on all of that stuff. And also you can listen you can just click and listen right there to this week, Saturday show podcast. All of that stuff right there at http://CraigPeterson.com. So I'll be back Saturday, and then I'll be back to my regular schedule Monday through Friday with podcasts next week. Thanks everybody. Make sure you subscribe. http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. You'll find me right there or /TuneIn. I'm on a whole bunch of sites out there, but subscribing really helps. Because that raises us in the chart and lets people know that hey, they might want to listen to the show too. Take care everybody. Bye bye.

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Message Input:

Message #techtalk

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

It's another Security Thing Friday. Craig talks about the new bug that lets criminals in on the photos we share and upload in Google Photos.

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

---

Related Articles 

---

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

Airing date: 04/12/2019

Google Photos Bug Lets Criminals In

Craig Peterson 0:03
Hi, welcome to the Friday edition of It's a Security Thing. We're going to talk today a little bit about another type of vulnerability that is kind of more potential it is real and it can be done. It's not terribly complex. But you have to be a real target in order for it to really hit you at all. And this particular one has to do with Google Photos. Now, you might use Google Photos. There's a lot of different photo sharing services out there, Flickr was recently purchased. And there is all kinds of data that you have in these different services that you might not realize is there. Now Google Photos is really kind of cool when you get behind the scenes. It knows tons of information about anybody that has uploaded photos to it. And it's automatically tagging the images. Now it takes the metadata from the image. And if you haven't stripped it, that includes things like the date and time it was taken, the actual GPS coordinates, the location that it was taken. And then what Google Photos does, is it has kind of an artificial intelligence engine. And it looks for objects and events that might be occurring in the background of the photo. So might look at the picture and say, wow, this looks like a wedding dress, and the groom is all dressed up. And there's other details that might indicate a wedding. So it says, oh, wow, this is a wedding.

Craig 1:40
Or there's a waterfall in the background, it's at sunset, it figures out just tons of stuff based on the location and time that are in the picture, as well as the picture contents itself. It's a really good, really quite cool. It's also using facial recognition, and using that to tag people who are also present in the photos. So here's what happens with Google Photos search engine. I just love this idea. I'm tempted to upload photos to it because of this. But in the Google Photos search engine, you can do a search like photos of me and Karen from Paris 2017. And Google Photos knows enough information to be able to find it. I could say Google Photos of me in Paris in Google Photos of me in wherever it was I was at or near this or near that. It's very impressive what Google's doing. So a security researcher decided, Hmm, I wonder what I can do here. And he went in, I'm trying to find his name. Its Massas, I think, is it? Yeah, it's Ron Massas. And he went in and he said, I wonder if this data could be hacked? And he found that indeed, it could be but only under some pretty specific circumstances, which people could be tricked into doing. And then it can find out things about, you know, obviously, this would be for very specific type of attack. They're doing spearphishing. And you if you listen to my interviews this week on the radio, you know, a lot about spearphishing, more than you might want to know and sextortions that are going on right now. 

Craig 3:48
So he was able to do a side attack on Google Photos, and was able to figure out what people had done, where they had gone at what they had done when they were there various other things. Again, it's a kind of a complex thing. But it does make me think and probably makes you think about Google and these other sites. All of the stuff we have put out there, and that we've given Google and these other companies access to. Is it legit? Is it something we should be doing? And that's the reason I haven't uploaded my photos to Google Photos. Because I'm not sure I want Google to know about all this stuff. And I most particularly don't want Google to end up selling that information or being hacked, and having that information stolen, because that happens all too often not so much with Google, although it does happen with them. But with information that we upload all the time. Remember, yesterday, we're talking about software as a service. And Apple is very good about not mining data to advertise. Apple makes its money by selling new hardware and some software. Google makes its money by analyze you and trying to figure out everything it can about you so that it can sell your information to advertisers. So up to you what you want to do. But again, here's another risk. And I bet most of us just didn't know, Google was doing all of this with photos we uploaded to Google Photos. I certainly didn't.

Craig 5:20 
Alright, everybody. Have a great weekend. Make sure you tune in on Saturday morning. You should be getting my emails if not go to http://CraigPeterson.com/subscribe. But once you get my emails, you will see all of the articles I talked about during the week. And it's important to keep up on all of that stuff. And also you can listen you can just click and listen right there to this week, Saturday show podcast. All of that stuff right there at http://CraigPeterson.com. So I'll be back Saturday, and then I'll be back to my regular schedule Monday through Friday with podcasts next week. Thanks everybody. Make sure you subscribe. http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. You'll find me right there or /TuneIn. I'm on a whole bunch of sites out there, but subscribing really helps. Because that raises us in the chart and lets people know that hey, they might want to listen to the show too. Take care everybody. Bye bye.

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

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Message Input:

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Craig is back with another Security Thing. Today, he talks about the dangers of using Box, Dropbox, and other cloud storage services.

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

---

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

Airing date: 04/11/2019

Dangers Of Using Box Dropbox

Craig Peterson 0:05
Hey, good morning, everybody, Craig Peterson here. And of course, it's time for our It's Security Thing. Man, I have been so busy the last few weeks delivering on my cyber security course. I have to apologize because I was looking in the logs and it's been like two or three weeks since I got a security thing podcast out. So sorry about that, everybody. But today, we are going to be talking about a real danger that many businesses are facing when it comes to using software as a service. You know, it has been kind of build as a panacea for everybody that, hey, listen, you don't have to worry about your servers, your file servers, your employees, etc. Just use this cloud service. That's what software as a service is. Instead of buying some software and having to run it yourself, all you have to do is stick it up in the cloud. And once it's up in the cloud, my goodness, then you got professionals who know what they're doing that are going to keep all of your data safe, and hopefully keep your data backed up and keep the software up to date. Right? It's just wonderful. In reality, that's not the case. And there's a great article that I put up on my website this week, that's talking about security professionals, IT professionals saying the biggest threat that they have is, drumroll please, internal users. And the reason they're saying its own user basis and biggest threat is because they just are not educated enough. And you know, they're not IT professionals. Well, even if you are an IT professional, what we're going to talk about right now is a problem that dozens, probably hundreds of companies. But now this researcher found dozens, it's called Adversus is the cybersecurity firm, found dozens of companies that had misconfigured their Box account. Now Box is used by many companies, we use it ourselves, we use it for communicating with clients, we haven't set up for other clients. Now, we've kind of switched from Box to Dropbox because I like the integration better. But still, some of our clients are using Box. And these security researchers found that many people who are part of these corporate accounts on Box, Box calls them their enterprise accounts, have been sharing files. Well, you know, isn't that part of the purpose of using Dropbox or Box to be able to share files with other people within the organization and outside of the organization? That I do it all of the time? And the answer is yes. Obviously, that's one of the purposes of using Box.

Craig 2:58
But by default. What are your settings when you create this link to share? Because once you've created this link, if you use default settings, that link can be used by anyone inside or outside your company to be able to access the information. So what you have to do and this is true in Google Docs, have you noticed this before? If you have a Google document or a file in Google Drive, and you share it, you do have the option to change the default. So by default, it's anyone with the link can view for instance, in Google Docs, and you can change it to they can they can edit it. I think that there's a third option to remember what it is right now. But you can change those settings. But by default, it's view. Well, in the case of Box here, and they may be changing this, but they have found that the default in Box allows anyone to be able to view the data that is shared with the link, which is not terrible, right. But here's your problem. We've got now Singapore Airlines that we found online a link to their Box account, and you're able to get in there change reservations that were booked with Amadeus. Apple, with several folders exposed containing what appeared to be non sensitive internal data such as logs and regional price lists.

Craig 4:33
Oh that's not sensitive right?

Craig 4:35
Reading from the article here that you can find on my website down on TechCrunch where it originated. Discovery Network had more than a dozen folders, Edelman. I've worked with them many times it booked many guests on my radio show hundreds. That's a big public relations firm had an entire project proposal for working with New York City mass transit divisions, including all of their detailed proposal plans more than a dozen resumes, a potential staff for the project, including their names, email address, phone numbers, etc. Herbalife left several folders exposed continuing files and spreadsheets on about 100,000 customers, including names email addresses, phone numbers. Opportunity International, this is a nonprofit, exposed a massive spreadsheet list of donor names, addresses and account information amount given. Schneider Electric Pointe Claire, United Tissue Network, I'm not going to go through all of these will just kind of stop there. But my goodness gracious.

Craig 5:38
So how do you stop this from happening because you do want to be able to share, that's part of the purpose of these things like Box and Dropbox? Well, there is a default setting for your business. When you're in there. Make sure the default setting is to share with internal company users by default. So that someone if they want to share it outside of the company has to purposely change the setting to share that file or that folder with someone outside of your company's account, your Box account or Dropbox account. Now this actually now reveals another potential security problem and that is that you could have someone for instance, I've seen this before. A sales guy, I hate to keep picking on sales guys, but sales guy who shared a whole folder of all of the company's customers, all of their contact information, all of their purchases, payment records, everything, he shared it with his personal email address, and then ended up leaving the company within about I think was a week. Isn't that surprising. Well, isn't that special. And so now he had all of the company's information, of course, he ended up getting sued over this whole thing, that company figured out what it happened. Which means, again, if you're an IT professional, make sure these sharing sites are configured to only share by default internally. Make sure also you audit what's being shared and with whom, because the enterprise additions from Box and Dropbox both give you that option. You might even want to tie it in with an API into an internal database where you record the logs, you save them and you analyze them. And then make sure you educate your internal user base about some of the risks of sharing these files. And for everyone out there, remember that just because it's software as a service, and it's a cloud service, whether it's Microsoft, Google, or in this case Box, remember that they are maybe professionals, but their number one concern and priority is not your data. And if you don't get in high enough level of service with them, you might be completely out of luck. And this is something I see all of the time. You know, we'll put a proposal and say okay, here's what we're going to do for you going to provide you because you want to move to the cloud, we can provide you with Microsoft email and, and the Office 365. So you can run all the Office apps on all your devices and link it together. And they come back and they said no, thanks. We're all set. And then we find out later on, they just went and bought a regular subscription to Office 365. And it wasn't doing backups. And it didn't have data locked down. It didn't have restrictions on it. And it didn't have the right kind of filters and they ended up getting compromised because they didn't know what they were doing. And Microsoft just doesn't care about you, frankly, they just don't. You are a number to them. And you think when they're billing you 20 bucks a month, they're going to pay me much attention to you. The answer is No. Of course not.

Craig 9:04
So anyhow, keep an eye out. Be careful out there. Software as a Service, Cloud Services is not a panacea. And most IT department surveyed in this country say that it is right now their number one concern. So take care, pay attention.

Craig 9:24
You know, It's a Security Thing. And I'll probably be back tomorrow I think I'm going to be able to carve out a little time to do recording for you for Friday, because every day there's another security breach. This is another recent one by the way, eighth of March this came out. So about a month old.

Craig 9:40
Take care everybody. Bye Bye. Thanks for listening.

---

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Craig is back with another Security Thing. Today, he talks about the dangers of using Box, Dropbox, and other cloud storage services.

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

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

Airing date: 04/11/2019

Dangers Of Using Box Dropbox

Craig Peterson 0:05
Hey, good morning, everybody, Craig Peterson here. And of course, it's time for our It's Security Thing. Man, I have been so busy the last few weeks delivering on my cyber security course. I have to apologize because I was looking in the logs and it's been like two or three weeks since I got a security thing podcast out. So sorry about that, everybody. But today, we are going to be talking about a real danger that many businesses are facing when it comes to using software as a service. You know, it has been kind of build as a panacea for everybody that, hey, listen, you don't have to worry about your servers, your file servers, your employees, etc. Just use this cloud service. That's what software as a service is. Instead of buying some software and having to run it yourself, all you have to do is stick it up in the cloud. And once it's up in the cloud, my goodness, then you got professionals who know what they're doing that are going to keep all of your data safe, and hopefully keep your data backed up and keep the software up to date. Right? It's just wonderful. In reality, that's not the case. And there's a great article that I put up on my website this week, that's talking about security professionals, IT professionals saying the biggest threat that they have is, drumroll please, internal users. And the reason they're saying its own user basis and biggest threat is because they just are not educated enough. And you know, they're not IT professionals. Well, even if you are an IT professional, what we're going to talk about right now is a problem that dozens, probably hundreds of companies. But now this researcher found dozens, it's called Adversus is the cybersecurity firm, found dozens of companies that had misconfigured their Box account. Now Box is used by many companies, we use it ourselves, we use it for communicating with clients, we haven't set up for other clients. Now, we've kind of switched from Box to Dropbox because I like the integration better. But still, some of our clients are using Box. And these security researchers found that many people who are part of these corporate accounts on Box, Box calls them their enterprise accounts, have been sharing files. Well, you know, isn't that part of the purpose of using Dropbox or Box to be able to share files with other people within the organization and outside of the organization? That I do it all of the time? And the answer is yes. Obviously, that's one of the purposes of using Box.

Craig 2:58
But by default. What are your settings when you create this link to share? Because once you've created this link, if you use default settings, that link can be used by anyone inside or outside your company to be able to access the information. So what you have to do and this is true in Google Docs, have you noticed this before? If you have a Google document or a file in Google Drive, and you share it, you do have the option to change the default. So by default, it's anyone with the link can view for instance, in Google Docs, and you can change it to they can they can edit it. I think that there's a third option to remember what it is right now. But you can change those settings. But by default, it's view. Well, in the case of Box here, and they may be changing this, but they have found that the default in Box allows anyone to be able to view the data that is shared with the link, which is not terrible, right. But here's your problem. We've got now Singapore Airlines that we found online a link to their Box account, and you're able to get in there change reservations that were booked with Amadeus. Apple, with several folders exposed containing what appeared to be non sensitive internal data such as logs and regional price lists.

Craig 4:33
Oh that's not sensitive right?

Craig 4:35
Reading from the article here that you can find on my website down on TechCrunch where it originated. Discovery Network had more than a dozen folders, Edelman. I've worked with them many times it booked many guests on my radio show hundreds. That's a big public relations firm had an entire project proposal for working with New York City mass transit divisions, including all of their detailed proposal plans more than a dozen resumes, a potential staff for the project, including their names, email address, phone numbers, etc. Herbalife left several folders exposed continuing files and spreadsheets on about 100,000 customers, including names email addresses, phone numbers. Opportunity International, this is a nonprofit, exposed a massive spreadsheet list of donor names, addresses and account information amount given. Schneider Electric Pointe Claire, United Tissue Network, I'm not going to go through all of these will just kind of stop there. But my goodness gracious.

Craig 5:38
So how do you stop this from happening because you do want to be able to share, that's part of the purpose of these things like Box and Dropbox? Well, there is a default setting for your business. When you're in there. Make sure the default setting is to share with internal company users by default. So that someone if they want to share it outside of the company has to purposely change the setting to share that file or that folder with someone outside of your company's account, your Box account or Dropbox account. Now this actually now reveals another potential security problem and that is that you could have someone for instance, I've seen this before. A sales guy, I hate to keep picking on sales guys, but sales guy who shared a whole folder of all of the company's customers, all of their contact information, all of their purchases, payment records, everything, he shared it with his personal email address, and then ended up leaving the company within about I think was a week. Isn't that surprising. Well, isn't that special. And so now he had all of the company's information, of course, he ended up getting sued over this whole thing, that company figured out what it happened. Which means, again, if you're an IT professional, make sure these sharing sites are configured to only share by default internally. Make sure also you audit what's being shared and with whom, because the enterprise additions from Box and Dropbox both give you that option. You might even want to tie it in with an API into an internal database where you record the logs, you save them and you analyze them. And then make sure you educate your internal user base about some of the risks of sharing these files. And for everyone out there, remember that just because it's software as a service, and it's a cloud service, whether it's Microsoft, Google, or in this case Box, remember that they are maybe professionals, but their number one concern and priority is not your data. And if you don't get in high enough level of service with them, you might be completely out of luck. And this is something I see all of the time. You know, we'll put a proposal and say okay, here's what we're going to do for you going to provide you because you want to move to the cloud, we can provide you with Microsoft email and, and the Office 365. So you can run all the Office apps on all your devices and link it together. And they come back and they said no, thanks. We're all set. And then we find out later on, they just went and bought a regular subscription to Office 365. And it wasn't doing backups. And it didn't have data locked down. It didn't have restrictions on it. And it didn't have the right kind of filters and they ended up getting compromised because they didn't know what they were doing. And Microsoft just doesn't care about you, frankly, they just don't. You are a number to them. And you think when they're billing you 20 bucks a month, they're going to pay me much attention to you. The answer is No. Of course not.

Craig 9:04
So anyhow, keep an eye out. Be careful out there. Software as a Service, Cloud Services is not a panacea. And most IT department surveyed in this country say that it is right now their number one concern. So take care, pay attention.

Craig 9:24
You know, It's a Security Thing. And I'll probably be back tomorrow I think I'm going to be able to carve out a little time to do recording for you for Friday, because every day there's another security breach. This is another recent one by the way, eighth of March this came out. So about a month old.

Craig 9:40
Take care everybody. Bye Bye. Thanks for listening.

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Message Input:

Message #techtalk

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553