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

Craig discusses PCI DSS Compliance in businesses and the increasing problem with Android ransomware.

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

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Trojan Malware Targets Trump Supporters

Nmap 7.90 released: New fingerprints, NSE scripts, and Npcap 1.0.0

Tyler Technologies finally paid the ransom to receive the decryption key

5G in the US averages 51Mbps while other countries hit hundreds of megabits

Apple’s T2 security chip has an unfixable flaw

Verizon Payment Security Report is a Wake-up Call: Time to Refocus on PCI DSS Compliance

Android Ransomware Has Picked Up Some Ominous New Trick

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Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] If you have a business that takes credit cards if you. Ever go into a business or use a business online that takes credit cards. There are some special rules that you need to follow called the PCI standards. We'll talk about it.

Hi, welcome back. This is Craig Peterson here.

Verizon. I'm not sure if you've seen these before, but Verizon has security reports. It has a number of different reports and they tend to all come out annually and here within the last couple of weeks, Verizon released their payment security report for this year,. It is an annual report and it's having a look at how organizations are maintaining compliance with something called the payment card industry data security standard, or PCI DSS.

Now we have a client I'm thinking of right now that's a small a doctor's office and they, of course, have to take credit cards and they had their credit card processing suspended by the credit card processor. I'm thinking of another one as well, which is a pizza joint.  They too had credit card processing threatened for suspension. In their case, they had a couple of weeks to clean up their act and both cases. They pulled us in to help straighten things out.

But what was interesting about the doctor's office is they sent a physical copy of the PCI agreement, the payment card industry agreement, so that if they wanted to accept credit cards, they had to sign this agreement. Now,  first of all, in this day and age, that's remarkable in and of itself, right?

We get PDFs, but how many of us just pencil whip, PDFs, or click whip, I guess PDFs, most of us. It's really rare that we read the contract and it's interesting to know too, that not only was it a physical copy, but this thing it was hundreds and hundreds of pages long. It was huge. It was absolutely huge.

So they had to sign a physical copy of this thing. What happens is if you are accepting the payment cards, in other words, credit cards, and someone reports that there is an unauthorized charge on that card. The guys and gals at the payment card industry, start to look at your business. Now we had a case right here by my house.

It was a Wendy's,I think it was and apparently, the manager of the Wendy's and the employees were skimming credit cards. So you'd go in, you'd give them the credit card. They'd run it and give you the card back. Wow. They didn't just run it for your lunch. They made a copy of the credit card.

Okay. Now that's part of the reason we've got these smart chips on credit cards. Europe is way ahead of us on using those smart cards. And frankly, it's a risk, right? It's risk tolerance.

How much risk tolerance does Visa or MasterCard or whoever have and how much risk tolerance do the businesses have that accept the cards and then how much risk tolerance do you have?

In this case with Wendy's, they got a lot of complaints about that Wendy's store, where the cards we're all used at some point over the course of the last number of weeks and were used elsewhere as well.  The owners of the cards had reported some of these transactions at other places as not right being made by them. Now the credit card companies will go ahead and give you a credit on your bill, so you don't have to pay that contested portion.

But then, and they start looking into it a little bit more seriously. In the case of the doctor's office, they did get suspended at least for a short while. The pizza joint,  we got them up to standards within the two week period that they had. So they didn't get suspended. Because what would happen to a business if that card is card processing suspended, it'd be really bad.

Now you and I, we have to deal with the fallout as consumers because we used our card and the card might've been duplicated by someone working in that store. Our card number may be stored on a computer. In the case of another doctor's office, that's exactly what was happening.

The card number was being stored. then that information was then being sent off for processing, and then they would repeatedly enter the card information. Now there are some sites that have these virtual terminals that you can use, which is really great, where you are typing in the card number. But remember if your computer has a keystroke tracker, a key logger on it, and you're typing in credit card numbers. That's easily recognizable and you're going to get in trouble with the payment card industry, It's a very bad thing all the way around. So be very careful.

There are a whole bunch of security instances where this has happened and the Verizon payment security report is showing businesses just are not compliant. According to the data that they gathered here in 2019, less than 30% of organizations achieved compliance during interim compliance validation. That's like the pizza shop I was talking about, all we had to do with them was move them up to prosumer hardware. We had to get them to upgrade some of their software on their computers and change the software they were using because OMG. It was just crazy, the software. I couldn't believe what it was doing, but we got them all in all setup, all taken care of her. But less than 30% of the businesses that had to comply during the interim compliance validation period did not meet the compliance.

My bottom line here is to start now because Man oh Man applying quick fixes instead of creating and executing an overall strategy is really going to affect your compliance with PCI or any of the other standards out there, any of them. Just like the pizza shop and the doctor's office, I just mentioned, in both cases, we had to upgrade their systems, move things around, split up their network, have better encryption on the Wi-Fi, split off a customer network. So there's no way for any of them to get back and forth, and firewall some of their internal systems. So keep that in mind as well.

We're not going to get into the whole electronic voting thing, which also showed up in this Verizon report.

We only have a couple more minutes, so let's get into the Android, part here. this is an important one as well because we're seeing some new tricks.

Wired has an article by Lily Hay Newman saying she's calling them foreboding. Isn't it? here's what's happening. First of all, it's far more common on PCs, but as some of the newer research is showing that mobile ransomware has undergone an, a real evolution here.

We've seen it to the point recently where you go to a website and that website now uses your Android phone to start Bitcoin mining. Remember that? So if your Android phone is getting like really hot. It might be making money for somebody else they're using your computing power, but there's a lot of other things that are harmful.

Now, of course, in Bitcoin mining, it could burn up your Android phone and that's happened more than once. This silly thing gets so hot, it just melts down. But along with all kinds of types of PC malware used in these types of attacks against hospitals, municipal government, and any institution that can't tolerate downtime.

There's another platform that's really getting hit hard recently with ransomware and that's android phones. New research from Microsoft is also showing the criminal hackers are really putting time and resources into refining mobile ransomware tools. So why do you invest money? Because you're making money?

So the fact that they're investing money into coming up with new ransomware tools means. It's making the money. People are paying the ransoms.

There is some new software you might not be familiar with it. Of course, Microsoft has a windows defender. It's been on windows for a bit. Now it's actually quite good.

Microsoft also has released Microsoft defender for Linux, which really shocked me. I haven't tried it yet. And Microsoft defender on mobile. They've looked at a lot of different Android ransomware families, and apparently, they've added some really clever tricks, including a new note delivery mechanism. They've got improved techniques to avoid detection and they've even got machine learning built into the ransomware, that's attacking Android phones. That can be used to really fine-tune the attacks for different peoples android devices. So be extra careful out there, everybody.

We talked about in the first hour an attack that's going on right now, that's primarily directed at Republicans, but I think a lot of Democrats and independents would also open these emails and opening these files it's a very dangerous place out there. Use filters, use some of the anti-malware software. On an iPhone, there really isn't any.  You certainly don't need it as much, at least at this point. On Android, however, there is some great anti-ransomware software and you might just try Microsoft defender, which is a basic stopgap for you.

But, do be careful out there, everybody.

All right. So keep an eye out for my emails.

We've got more coming out here. I'm trying to go up to two a week, maybe even three a week, doing a little training. You might have noticed the last three weeks, my emails have looked different and I dropped some of the information in it because I think it was just visually confusing.

So make sure you are on my email list. Get my newsletter. Get all of this free training. All of this information that you need as a home user or a business user, or a business owner.

Go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Craig Peterson that's SON.com/subscribe and have a great week.

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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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For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Good morning everybody!

I was on WGAN this morning with Matt Gagnon and started off this morning talking about emails that are targeting Republicans with a particularly nasty trojan. Then we got into 5G and why the US speeds are so much lower than the speeds in Europe, and then we wrapped it up discussing the Ransomware that has been infecting local and state governments. Here we go with Matt.

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

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] So the whole goal here of five G is twofold. The first goal is we want to be able to have a billion devices connected to our networks and local networks. Plus we also want to have a speed of maybe a gigabit worth of bandwidth.

Woo Wednesday morning gremlins. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Mr.

Matt Gagnon, this morning and had the weirdest thing happened to me here. I'm on the phone, right? I'm talking to the radio station. I'm being interviewed and all of a sudden the podcast starts playing on my phone. It was very distracting. I'm used to hearing myself. When I'm doing an interview on a radio or TV station, sometimes I hear myself on delay and the delay can be sometimes a few seconds. So I'm used to that. That one I can live with, but having the podcast playing of me on another radio station, while I'm doing an interview with a radio station was just a little too much to handle. I managed to pull my act together, but wow. That was the weirdest thing.

Anyways. Happy Wednesday, everybody takes it for what it is. I suppose we talked about the same things, a little bit, slightly different angles, of course, but some of the same things we talked to Jim Polito about yesterday. So here we go with Mr. Matt Gagnon.

Matt Gagnon: [00:01:29] It is six 36, and it is time to talk to Craig Peterson, our tech guru.

He joins us now as he does every Wednesday at this time.

Craig, how are you?

Hey. C'est nous. Comment ça va ce matin?

Ah, ça va Bien. So Craig is malware targeting Trump supporters? That's a good place to start off. Do you think we're in election season? That's a, it's a nice topic, right?

Craig Peterson: [00:01:51] Yeah. Yeah. Or were you one of these people that pass conspiracy is that

Matt Gagnon: [00:01:56] I am not, of course, a conspiracy theorist, but, but still things like this do happen out there.

So it's worth chatting about.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:03] Well, this is a very big deal. Everybody should pay attention here. We'll get into this for just a minute here, but the bottom line is there is a very dangerous banking trojan is going around right now. It's called Emotet. Emotet has been around for a long time.

The difference right now, Matt is that this Emotet malware is being sent. In a piece of email that is forwarded from a political action committee supporting Trump. So in other words, they take an email, a legitimate email from a political organization that is supporting president Trump and they forward it. For the subject line.

will have a start of FWD or RE just like you would, when you were forwarding something. Forward to re: and it'll have the body of the message that was forwarded from the legitimate group. It'll have all of the links in it that will all work normally, but there is attached to that email, a word document. That word document, if you were to open it up and become infected is horrific.

What it does it goes through your computer. It scans your network. It actually scans looking for other vulnerabilities. If you're misusing the VPN, which is about 90% of businesses that are using the VPNs, they're not set up right now, your computer at home that gets infected because you're open this mailer, the look perfectly legitimate about President Trump.

Now that malware is going to get onto your business network and spread through the corporate network. This is really, really bad. There's speculation about why is this happening? But I think the bottom line is that this is the ultimate in social engineering and phishing, and it is absolutely targeted at Trump supporters.

Matt Gagnon: [00:03:56] Speaking with Craig Peterson. You hear him on this very network on Saturdays at 1:00 PM, where he goes into all of these details. Much more in-depth and to move on here a little bit, one of them, one of the more fascinating things he had on the list here today that I wanted to talk about is about the average speed of five G in the United States versus what it is elsewhere in the world. What is going on with this speed difference? And why is it different elsewhere?

Craig Peterson: [00:04:22] Yeah, it has to do with the frequencies that are assigned. The higher the frequency, the wider the bandwidth, the more bandwidth you're going to get for download. So the whole goal here of five G is twofold. The first goal is we want to be able to have a billion devices connected to our networks and local networks plus, we also want to have a speed of maybe a gigabit worth of bandwidth. Well, the US average speed is about twice now, the five G speed twice what our four G LTE speed is. But when we started.

Matt Gagnon: [00:05:00] That's nowhere near that gigabit that you're talking about,

Craig Peterson: [00:05:03] Nowhere near. Absolutely. Absolutely not. So we're talking about give-or-take 50 megabits right now. It will go a little bit faster. T-mobile has lower frequencies. I have an advanced class ham license, so I've been involved with TCP IP over the air. Multiple different places.

So what the problem is, the bottom line with some of the stuff is, we've gotta be very careful about what we're doing here. I'm having a bit of a problem on my end. Without speeds. T-Mobile is giving us the ability to listen to the signals inside businesses, some of the others like Verizon, they cannot do that.

That's become a bit of a problem. Well, I think for everybody. So sorry, a bit of wandering here on my side, looked a bit of a technical problem.

Matt Gagnon: [00:05:57] No worries, Craig, we're talking to Craig Peterson and technical problems are no problem for him because he's our tech guru. And a final question for you, Craig, before I let you go this evolving story about Tyler technologies and the ransom that they're paying to receive the decryption key is very interesting as well.

Tell me about this thing.

Craig Peterson: [00:06:12] It is interesting we found out that a couple of things, one, most people are paying for the ransoms when the ransoms come up. I can understand that because they want to get their data back. We're also seeing that bottom line, people who are paying for these ransoms out there are also breaking the law and the feds are saying they're going to come after them for paying money to these terrorist groups. That's where paying ransoms do. Tyler Technologies provides software to the majority of states here in the United States to do things like collect taxes and also to just run towns and they got nailed.

It took them about three days. They finally paid the ransom to the guys that had taken over all of their systems and shut down many of the towns and even state operations throughout the country. So, you know, bottom line again, what should we do here? We're now. Rock and hard place where the Feds are saying they may take us criminal charges if we pay a ransom yet we need our data back as well.

Matt Gagnon: [00:07:23] Craig Peterson, our tech talk guru joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening in the world of technology. Craig, appreciate it as always good luck on Saturday, discussing all these things in more depth of detail. As you can hear a one o'clock on WGAN and thanks a lot, Craig.

Craig Peterson: [00:07:36] All right. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Everybody, we will be back on Saturday. Also, remember if you are on my email list, you'll get all of my articles for this week. What I talked about here on the podcast and on the radio. So keep an eye out and make sure you're subscribed. craigpeterson.com/subscribe.

---

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

Good morning everybody!

I was on WGAN this morning with Matt Gagnon and started off this morning talking about emails that are targeting Republicans with a particularly nasty trojan.  Then we got into 5G and why the US speeds are so much lower than the speeds in Europe, and then we wrapped it up discussing the Ransomware that has been infecting local and state governments.  Here we go with Matt.

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

---

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] So the whole goal here of five G is twofold. The first goal is we want to be able to have a billion devices connected to our networks and local networks. Plus we also want to have a speed of maybe a gigabit worth of bandwidth.

Woo Wednesday morning gremlins. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Mr.

Matt Gagnon, this morning and had the weirdest thing happened to me here. I'm on the phone, right? I'm talking to the radio station. I'm being interviewed and all of a sudden the podcast starts playing on my phone. It was very distracting.  I'm used to hearing myself. When I'm doing an interview on a radio or TV station, sometimes I hear myself on delay and the delay can be sometimes a few seconds. So I'm used to that. That one I can live with, but having the podcast playing of me on another radio station, while I'm doing an interview with a radio station was just a little too much to handle. I managed to pull my act together, but wow. That was the weirdest thing.

Anyways. Happy Wednesday, everybody takes it for what it is. I suppose we talked about the same things, a little bit, slightly different angles, of course, but some of the same things we talked to Jim Polito about yesterday. So here we go with Mr. Matt Gagnon.

Matt Gagnon: [00:01:29] It is six 36, and it is time to talk to Craig Peterson, our tech guru.

He joins us now as he does every Wednesday at this time.

Craig, how are you?

Hey. C'est nous. Comment ça va ce matin?

Ah, ça va Bien. So Craig is malware targeting Trump supporters? That's a good place to start off. Do you think we're in election season? That's a, it's a nice topic, right?

Craig Peterson: [00:01:51] Yeah. Yeah. Or were you one of these people that pass conspiracy is that

Matt Gagnon: [00:01:56] I am not, of course, a conspiracy theorist, but, but still things like this do happen out there.

So it's worth chatting about.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:03] Well, this is a very big deal. Everybody should pay attention here.  We'll get into this for just a minute here, but the bottom line is there is a very dangerous banking trojan is going around right now. It's called Emotet. Emotet has been around for a long time.

The difference right now, Matt is that this Emotet malware is being sent. In a piece of email that is forwarded from a political action committee supporting Trump. So in other words, they take an email, a legitimate email from a political organization that is supporting president Trump and they forward it. For the subject line.

will have a start of FWD or RE just like you would, when you were forwarding something. Forward to re: and it'll have the body of the message that was forwarded from the legitimate group. It'll have all of the links in it that will all work normally, but there is attached to that email, a word document. That word document, if you were to open it up and become infected is horrific.

What it does it goes through your computer. It scans your network. It actually scans looking for other vulnerabilities. If you're misusing the VPN, which is about 90% of businesses that are using the VPNs, they're not set up right now, your computer at home that gets infected because you're open this mailer, the look perfectly legitimate about President Trump.

Now that malware is going to get onto your business network and spread through the corporate network. This is really, really bad. There's speculation about why is this happening? But I think the bottom line is that this is the ultimate in social engineering and phishing, and it is absolutely targeted at Trump supporters.

Matt Gagnon: [00:03:56] Speaking with Craig Peterson. You hear him on this very network on Saturdays at 1:00 PM, where he goes into all of these details. Much more in-depth and to move on here a little bit, one of them, one of the more fascinating things he had on the list here today that I wanted to talk about is about the average speed of five G in the United States versus what it is elsewhere in the world.  What is going on with this speed difference? And why is it different elsewhere?

Craig Peterson: [00:04:22] Yeah, it has to do with the frequencies that are assigned. The higher the frequency, the wider the bandwidth, the more bandwidth you're going to get for download. So the whole goal here of five G is twofold. The first goal is we want to be able to have a billion devices connected to our networks and local networks plus, we also want to have a speed of maybe a gigabit worth of bandwidth. Well, the US average speed is about twice now, the five G speed twice what our four G LTE speed is. But when we started.

Matt Gagnon: [00:05:00] That's nowhere near that gigabit that you're talking about,

Craig Peterson: [00:05:03] Nowhere near. Absolutely. Absolutely not. So we're talking about give-or-take 50 megabits right now. It will go a little bit faster. T-mobile has lower frequencies.  I have an advanced class ham license, so I've been involved with TCP IP over the air. Multiple different places.

So what the problem is, the bottom line with some of the stuff is, we've gotta be very careful about what we're doing here. I'm having a bit of a problem on my end. Without speeds. T-Mobile is giving us the ability to listen to the signals inside businesses, some of the others like Verizon, they cannot do that.

That's become a bit of a problem. Well, I think for everybody. So sorry, a bit of wandering here on my side, looked a bit of a technical problem.

Matt Gagnon: [00:05:57] No worries, Craig, we're talking to Craig Peterson and technical problems are no problem for him because he's our tech guru. And a final question for you, Craig, before I let you go this evolving story about Tyler technologies and the ransom that they're paying to receive the decryption key is very interesting as well.

Tell me about this thing.

Craig Peterson: [00:06:12] It is interesting we found out that a couple of things, one, most people are paying for the ransoms when the ransoms come up. I can understand that because they want to get their data back. We're also seeing that bottom line, people who are paying for these ransoms out there are also breaking the law and the feds are saying they're going to come after them for paying money to these terrorist groups. That's where paying ransoms do. Tyler Technologies provides software to the majority of states here in the United States to do things like collect taxes and also to just run towns and they got nailed.

It took them about three days. They finally paid the ransom to the guys that had taken over all of their systems and shut down many of the towns and even state operations throughout the country. So, you know, bottom line again, what should we do here? We're now. Rock and hard place where the Feds are saying they may take us criminal charges if we pay a ransom yet we need our data back as well.

Matt Gagnon: [00:07:23] Craig Peterson, our tech talk guru joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening in the world of technology. Craig, appreciate it as always good luck on Saturday, discussing all these things in more depth of detail. As you can hear a one o'clock on WGAN and thanks a lot, Craig.

Craig Peterson: [00:07:36] All right. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Everybody, we will be back on Saturday. Also, remember if you are on my email list, you'll get all of my articles for this week. What I talked about here on the podcast and on the radio. So keep an eye out and make sure you're subscribed.  craigpeterson.com/subscribe.

--- 

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

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito. We got into a lengthy discussion about some new malware - a trojan that is targeting Trump supporters, specifically. Then we briefly hit on 5G. Here we go with Jim.

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

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] There is a word document attached to that malicious email. That malicious email has in it, in that word document, something called malware. One of the nastiest pieces of malware out there. They're forwarding political information relevant to Republicans. People are targeting Republicans.

Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Yeah, that was me on with Jim this morning. We went into quite a bit of detail about this Trojan malware. It's an interesting discussion here.

Why is it coming out? What are they saying? What are their subject lines? What's it going to do to you? Why is it targeting Republicans?

So here we go.

Jim Polito: [00:00:47] Here he is, Oh, everybody waits for Craig Peterson and this is going to be an important visit today. We're going to talk about malware. If you are a Trump supporter, kind of a Trojan horse out there. Well, we'll get to all of that, but first, let's welcome him aboard. Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:09] Hey, good morning. I've got another little granddaughter who was born just this last week and her parents are both captains and they sent a picture of this little baby girl in a captain's outfit.

Jim Polito: [00:01:23] Now that is that's worthy of a wonderful congratulations there, grandpa again.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:34] Thanks. I've got 8 kids and I've only got six grandkids. These millennials what's with them.

Yeah, yeah,

Jim Polito: [00:01:39] yeah.

Craig, they're just not, I mean, I finally am going to be a grand or great uncle, whichever way you choose to say it. Yeah. These millennials, come on. Come on, guys. Listen.

Well, listen, before we get to this. I've got to tell you something, that'll make you feel old or it'll fascinate you.

Today. The first cell phones were made available for sale commercially in 1983. They were ridiculously expensive. There weren't a lot of towers, but they were for sale.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:16] Yeah, the big bricks. They were really. Oh, you remember those? I was so jealous when those came out. I've been a ham radio operator. I have an advanced class amateur radio license and land mobile was the thing back then. Right? So you'd have this huge antenna on your car. You drive around and almost could listen to you as you're driving. Now came cell phones, which had a modicum of privacy on them. They were so small compared to the land mobile things.

And now I've got a cell phone on my wrist. This is like big, crazy time.

Jim Polito: [00:02:49] It is. It's too cool. It just goes to show you, where will we be four decades from now? I'll probably be dirt napping, but anyway, Where were we? Where will we be? Alright, Craig, I've got to talk to you about this, cause it really caught my attention.

A piece you sent me about Trojan malware targeting Trump supporters. This is something that a good portion of the audience wants to hear about.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:18] Yeah, I thought you might be interested in this one and for everybody, this will come in my newsletter on Saturday. So make sure you're subscribed to that newsletter so you can get this.

There is a Trojan right now that's being circulated and it's targeting just Trump supporters. I might ask, how does that happen? Right. It's not like the virus only targets people in the white house and Republicans. Well, actually, maybe it does. But anyways. The way it works, is they are sending emails that are actually forwarded emails from these political action committees that are pro-Trump. These attackers are forwarding perfectly legitimate emails.

It has legitimate links in it that you can click on right to that political action committee. You can just look at and you think, Oh, it's great. The subject line says forward, and it's got the subject or maybe re the subject. Those are both things that people have is clues. Hey, this is an email you want to open.

The problem with this is it's entirely Republican PAC. That they are targeting that they're forwarding to people and there is a word document that's attached to that malicious email. That malicious email has in that word document, something called malware. One of the nastiest pieces of malware out there.

They're forwarding political information that's relevant to Republicans. There are people really targeting Republicans.

Jim Polito: [00:04:58] There you go. How do you argue with that? That's shall we say fact?

Craig Peterson: [00:05:07] Right. Its science. I believe in science. It's just, I believe in my science, this is very obvious, right? The researchers are calling it like a Wolf in sheep's clothing. Well, here's what Emotet does once you get it. Emotet is a Trojan. It's been around a long time. They use what's called a spear-phishing technique and they have for a long time.

So they try and coerce you into opening up by putting something in the email that's of particular interest to you. Then once you've opened that word document and that malware is on your computer and it starts to spread. It actually acts like what we call a worm and it brute force attacks all of the services on your computer and all of the services on every other computer on the network.

Now, you know how I've been warning about using VPNs when it comes to businesses, Jim. This is why. If you VPN in, into the office and that office is not protected from its VPN users, this Emotet will now start spreading to your business as well. We'll start taking over your file servers because it looks for SMB shares.

The window shares, is what it is, a valid local account. Very, very nasty and it is very sad and scary that it is attacking Republicans. Now Democrats would get this email as well, but the likelihood is they're just not going to be interested. So they're not going to open it.

They've gotten a little more advanced too, for those of you out there that are a little geekier, It does pass email authentication protocols, such as D Mark. So this is a bit of nastiness and it'll be interesting to see if we can figure out who's sending them.

Jim Polito: [00:06:53] It was what I was going to ask. And we're talking with Craig Peterson, our tech talk guru, and about this malware that is targeting Trump supporters.

Now, could this just be an opportunity? They're going after Trump supporters, just because it was easy. It's a segment they are going after and it's apolitical. their reasoning behind this is not political because maybe the door was left on the lock on this house.

It was a crime of opportunity. It's not particularly against the family who lives there or do you think there's more to this.

Craig Peterson: [00:07:29] Well, back up a little bit and I thought about this and here's kind of my thinking on it is that, um, Sleepy Joe's supporters are not particularly excited about his campaign or

people voting for Joe Biden are voting against Trump for the most part. It's just crazy. So the way I look at it Trump supporters tend to be, you know, man, I'm on top of it. I do want to hear what's going on, you know? That goes right into your target of opportunity theory. I think it's absolutely likely that's what's going on here.

They could be an attempt to kind of influence the election, but I think it's more likely a moneymaking opportunity for them.

Jim Polito: [00:08:11] So they look at it as, Hey, there's more Trump voters engaged. They're going to be more active. Why not go after that big fish? Just like if the Patriots were in the world series, you'd have a lot of people from New England or elsewhere fans looking for stuff online related to the Patriots.

So why not attack Patriots fans?

Craig Peterson: [00:08:36] Hey now I even, I know that the Patriots would never be in the world series because that's baseball. Okay. Come on, Jim, come on. Pay attention.

Jim Polito: [00:08:46] Did I, did I say words that I say world series?

Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Series. It just proves it pages in the world series of the super bowl. Look, if it's not hockey, I trust you only with hockey. Okay. Because you're a Canadian, maybe that and curling. Okay. That's it.

Craig Peterson: [00:09:08] Yeah. There you go. I love Curling actually. I really do. So here's what to look for. If you get a subject, this is the number one out there right now for this.

The subject line has forward breaking President Trump suspends funding to WHO. That is the number one subject these guys are using right now. Breaking President Trump has spending funny to W H O and they're asking you to click a button labeled stand with Trump. They're hiding the sending address and everything else in these things.

So, watch out. Be very, very careful in this political season about opening emails and more particularly about opening Microsoft documents. They've long been used as attack vectors against all of us,

Jim Polito: [00:09:51] You know? I think about my own email and of course, I've got campaigns, pundits, everybody emailing me every single day, and you know, I open most of it and look at it. Just because I want to say, well, what's this, what's that?

I have not received anything like that, but I'm going to be very careful now going forward because that, the last thing I need is is that,

Hey quickly, because we've only really got a minute. Five G it looks, it looks like from what you sent me, the download speeds of five G in the US are going to be a lot slower than they are elsewhere in the world. It's going to be an improvement over 4g, but it's still going to be slower than the rest of the world. Why?

Craig Peterson: [00:10:45] This is something that takes some serious time to explain. But getting it down to 60 seconds here's the bottom line. Five G is not the same thing across all carriers. Five G is using some different bands and different frequencies.

Jim Polito: [00:11:01] So here's the problem that we're seeing right now. T-Mobile has the biggest five G network in the country. In fact, you could say it's the only five G network in the country, quite reasonably. However, because the frequency is there. Using it is not as fast as Verizon's, which is only available in certain cities. In fact, in only available in certain blocks in certain cities.

Craig Peterson: [00:11:25] Here's why. The T-Mobile frequencies will go through glass. They'll go through walls. You can use them in a building. Verizon's will not. You have to be very close to the cell site. Okay. So because of the lower frequency, you also cannot send as much data. On those little frequencies. So look right now, the US average is about two times faster than four G, which is really good in Europe. We're seeing much, much higher. They have denser populations they're using the higher frequencies like Verizon is. Once Verizon's rolled out further, they will have faster download speeds.

But, with Apple's big announcement today where we're going to have to make some decisions about what carrier we want, based on whether or not we want 5g. My bottom line on that it's not that a big win unless you are hauling a lot of data up and down to your phone.

Jim Polito: [00:12:18] All right. That made sense to me, even in that short time.

So Craig has got a great show Sundays at 11 o'clock and it's repeated at other points during the weekend on TAG and HYN, but Craig, if folks want to get in touch with you, and I know you said you're putting it out in your newsletter, some of this information,

Craig Peterson: [00:12:37] well, just drop me an email. [email protected] M E @craigpetersondotcom Subscribe by going to craigpeterson.com slash subscribe.

Jim Polito: [00:12:47] Alrighty. Very good. Craig, always a pleasure. We'll catch up with you next week.

Craig Peterson: [00:12:53] Thanks, Jim. Take care.

Jim Polito: [00:12:54] You too. Bye-bye.

---

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Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito.  We got into a lengthy discussion about some new malware - a trojan that is targeting Trump supporters, specifically.  Then we briefly hit on 5G. Here we go with Jim.

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

--- 

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] There is a word document attached to that malicious email. That malicious email has in it, in that word document, something called malware. One of the nastiest pieces of malware out there. They're forwarding political information relevant to Republicans.  People are targeting Republicans.

Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Yeah, that was me on with Jim this morning. We went into quite a bit of detail about this Trojan malware. It's an interesting discussion here.

Why is it coming out? What are they saying? What are their subject lines? What's it going to do to you?  Why is it targeting Republicans?

So here we go.

Jim Polito: [00:00:47] Here he is, Oh, everybody waits for Craig Peterson and this is going to be an important visit today. We're going to talk about malware. If you are a Trump supporter, kind of a Trojan horse out there. Well, we'll get to all of that, but first, let's welcome him aboard. Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:09] Hey, good morning.  I've got another little granddaughter who was born just this last week and her parents are both captains and they sent a picture of this little baby girl in a captain's outfit.

Jim Polito: [00:01:23] Now that is that's worthy of a wonderful congratulations there, grandpa again.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:34] Thanks.  I've got 8 kids and I've only got six grandkids. These millennials what's with them.

 Yeah, yeah,

Jim Polito: [00:01:39] yeah.

 Craig, they're just not, I mean,  I finally am going to be a grand or great uncle, whichever way you choose to say it. Yeah. These millennials, come on. Come on, guys. Listen.

Well, listen, before we get to this. I've got to tell you something, that'll make you feel old or it'll fascinate you.

Today. The first cell phones were made available for sale commercially in 1983. They were ridiculously expensive. There weren't a lot of towers, but they were for sale.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:16] Yeah, the big bricks. They were really. Oh, you remember those? I was so jealous when those came out. I've been a ham radio operator. I have an advanced class amateur radio license and land mobile was the thing back then. Right? So you'd have this huge antenna on your car. You drive around and almost could listen to you as you're driving. Now came cell phones, which had a modicum of privacy on them. They were so small compared to the land mobile things.

And now  I've got a cell phone on my wrist. This is like big, crazy time.

Jim Polito: [00:02:49] It is. It's too cool. It just goes to show you, where will we be four decades from now?  I'll probably be dirt napping, but anyway, Where were we? Where will we be? Alright, Craig, I've got to talk to you about this, cause it really caught my attention.

A piece you sent me about Trojan malware targeting Trump supporters. This is something that a good portion of the audience wants to hear about.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:18] Yeah,  I thought you might be interested in this one and for everybody, this will come in my newsletter on Saturday. So make sure you're subscribed to that newsletter so you can get this.

There is a Trojan right now that's being circulated and it's targeting just Trump supporters. I might ask, how does that happen? Right. It's not like the virus only targets people in the white house and Republicans. Well, actually, maybe it does.  But anyways. The way it works, is they are sending emails that are actually forwarded emails from these political action committees that are pro-Trump. These attackers are forwarding perfectly legitimate emails.

It has legitimate links in it that you can click on right to that political action committee.  You can just look at and you think, Oh, it's great. The subject line says forward, and it's got the subject or maybe re the subject.  Those are both things that people have is clues. Hey, this is an email you want to open.

The problem with this is it's entirely Republican PAC. That they are targeting that they're forwarding to people and there is a word document that's attached to that malicious email. That malicious email has in that word document, something called malware. One of the nastiest pieces of malware out there.

They're forwarding political information that's relevant to Republicans. There are people really targeting Republicans.

Jim Polito: [00:04:58] There you go. How do you argue with that? That's shall we say fact?

Craig Peterson: [00:05:07] Right. Its science. I believe in science. It's just, I believe in my science, this is very obvious, right? The researchers are calling it like a Wolf in sheep's clothing. Well, here's what Emotet does once you get it.  Emotet is a Trojan. It's been around a long time. They use what's called a spear-phishing technique and they have for a long time.

So they try and coerce you into opening up by putting something in the email that's of particular interest to you. Then once you've opened that word document and that malware is on your computer and it starts to spread. It actually acts like what we call a worm and it brute force attacks all of the services on your computer and all of the services on every other computer on the network.

Now, you know how I've been warning about using VPNs when it comes to businesses, Jim. This is why. If you VPN in, into the office and that office is not protected from its VPN users, this Emotet will now start spreading to your business as well. We'll start taking over your file servers because it looks for SMB shares.

The window shares, is what it is, a valid local account.  Very, very nasty and it is very sad and scary that it is attacking Republicans. Now Democrats would get this email as well, but the likelihood is they're just not going to be interested. So they're not going to open it.

They've gotten a little more advanced too, for those of you out there that are a little geekier, It does pass email authentication protocols, such as D Mark. So this is a bit of nastiness and it'll be interesting to see if we can figure out who's sending them.

Jim Polito: [00:06:53] It was what I was going to ask. And we're talking with Craig Peterson, our tech talk guru, and about this malware that is targeting Trump supporters.

Now, could this just be an opportunity? They're going after Trump supporters, just because it was easy. It's a segment they are going after and it's apolitical.  their reasoning behind this is not political because maybe the door was left on the lock on this house.

It was a crime of opportunity. It's not particularly against the family who lives there or do you think there's more to this.

Craig Peterson: [00:07:29] Well, back up a little bit and I thought about this and here's kind of my thinking on it is that, um, Sleepy Joe's supporters are not particularly excited about his campaign or

people voting for Joe Biden are voting against Trump for the most part. It's just crazy. So the way I look at it Trump supporters tend to be, you know, man, I'm on top of it. I do want to hear what's going on, you know? That goes right into your target of opportunity theory. I think it's absolutely likely that's what's going on here.

They could be an attempt to kind of influence the election, but I think it's more likely a moneymaking opportunity for them.

Jim Polito: [00:08:11] So they look at it as, Hey, there's more Trump voters engaged. They're going to be more active. Why not go after that big fish? Just like if the Patriots were in the world series, you'd have a lot of people from New England or elsewhere fans looking for stuff online related to the Patriots.

So why not attack Patriots fans?

Craig Peterson: [00:08:36] Hey now I even, I know that the Patriots would never be in the world series because that's baseball. Okay. Come on, Jim, come on. Pay attention.

Jim Polito: [00:08:46] Did I, did I say words that I say world series?

Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Series. It just proves it pages in the world series of the super bowl. Look, if it's not hockey, I trust you only with hockey. Okay. Because you're a Canadian, maybe that and curling. Okay. That's it.

Craig Peterson: [00:09:08] Yeah. There you go. I love Curling actually. I really do. So here's what to look for. If you get a subject, this is the number one out there right now for this.

The subject line has forward breaking President Trump suspends funding to WHO. That is the number one subject these guys are using right now. Breaking President Trump has spending funny to W H O and they're asking you to click a button labeled stand with Trump. They're hiding the sending address and everything else in these things.

So, watch out. Be very, very careful in this political season about opening emails and more particularly about opening Microsoft documents. They've long been used as attack vectors against all of us,

Jim Polito: [00:09:51] You know? I think about my own email and of course, I've got campaigns, pundits, everybody emailing me every single day, and you know, I open most of it and look at it. Just because I want to say, well, what's this, what's that?

 I have not received anything like that, but I'm going to be very careful now going forward because that, the last thing I need is is that,

Hey quickly, because we've only really got a minute. Five G  it looks, it looks like from what you sent me, the download speeds of five G in the US are going to be a lot slower than they are elsewhere in the world. It's going to be an improvement over 4g, but it's still going to be slower than the rest of the world. Why?

Craig Peterson: [00:10:45] This is something that takes some serious time to explain. But getting it down to 60 seconds here's the bottom line. Five G is not the same thing across all carriers. Five G is using some different bands and different frequencies.

Jim Polito: [00:11:01] So here's the problem that we're seeing right now. T-Mobile has the biggest five G network in the country. In fact, you could say it's the only five G network in the country, quite reasonably. However, because the frequency is there.  Using it is not as fast as Verizon's, which is only available in certain cities. In fact, in only available in certain blocks in certain cities.

Craig Peterson: [00:11:25] Here's why. The T-Mobile frequencies will go through glass. They'll go through walls. You can use them in a building. Verizon's will not. You have to be very close to the cell site. Okay. So because of the lower frequency, you also cannot send as much data. On those little frequencies. So look right now, the US average is about two times faster than four G, which is really good in Europe. We're seeing much, much higher.  They have denser populations they're using the higher frequencies like Verizon is. Once Verizon's rolled out further, they will have faster download speeds.

But, with Apple's big announcement today where we're going to have to make some decisions about what carrier we want, based on whether or not we want 5g. My bottom line on that it's not that a big win unless you are hauling a lot of data up and down to your phone.

Jim Polito: [00:12:18] All right. That made sense to me, even in that short time.

So Craig has got a great show Sundays at 11 o'clock and it's repeated at other points during the weekend on TAG and HYN, but Craig, if folks want to get in touch with you, and I know you said you're putting it out in your newsletter, some of this information,

Craig Peterson: [00:12:37] well, just drop me an email. [email protected] M E @craigpetersondotcom Subscribe by going to craigpeterson.com slash subscribe.

Jim Polito: [00:12:47] Alrighty. Very good. Craig, always a pleasure. We'll catch up with you next week.

Craig Peterson: [00:12:53] Thanks, Jim. Take care.

Jim Polito: [00:12:54] You too. 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

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Craig discusses cybersecurity audits and new vehicle lifespan.

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

---

Right To Repair Or A Fight For Survival?

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Malware Attacks Declined But Became More Evasive in Q2

Elon Musk reveals plans to slash electric battery costs, build $25,000 Tesla

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'It Won't Happen to Me': Employee Apathy Prevails Despite Greater Cybersecurity Awareness

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A Guide to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework

---

Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

With our cars being more and more computerized should we be treating them like a computer? Do we have a right to repair? Should we be expecting upgrades? How long should our car last? We're going to get to that and a whole lot more.

Hi everybody. You are listening to Craig Peterson. We're going to get into a number of different security things this week. I've talked about them on the radio, some really cool stuff coming from Elon Musk. Some news about how paying ransomware demands could end up getting you a jail sentence. Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense, once I explain it, okay. So hold on a couple of minutes.

We have some very cool new technology. I talked about Intel before and how disappointed I've been with so much of what they've done over the years. And we are going to talk about Intel's maybe biggest competitor outside of maybe a company might've heard of AMD. We'll be getting to that and employee apathy. MacOS workers really driving a cybersecurity rethink. We'll talk a little bit about the NIST cybersecurity framework because that is getting to be a big deal. I just had this week, a client, actually last Friday that client informed me that their customer had stopped ordering a couple of weeks prior they're trying to figure out why now up until then. My customer had not told me how much this customer was worth to them but they don't buy much. That DOD contractor stopped buying from my client. Now, this is a client that we've had for 20 years, maybe longer and we'd been warning them about the changes that have been occurring. In the regulations regarding cybersecurity.

You might remember me mentioning here on the show a couple of weeks ago, there was an emergency change, right? An emergency order of 48-hour notice to change in what was being. Required of DOD contractors. Now, the department of defense is one thing, right? But how about the rest of us? All those same rules are going into effect for everyone that has any sort of federal contract coming up here within the next three years are affected by this change and their clients. So their client was getting worried and said, Oh, let's wait a minute. yeah. Yeah. They're not fully compliant. And there weren't, and we've been warning about pad, as I said for, at least 18 months and they lost 70% of their business overnight, 70% can you imagine that? Now they're freaking out and trying to figure out sorta we do now. Hopefully, we'll be able to help them with all of that and they'll survive it.

It turns out that a federal contractor that was a client of theirs was more important, 70% important to their business. That's a lot of business to lose and it took them about two weeks, apparently calling-in daily. Trying to find out from their client. Why did the order stop? What's going on here? Did something get messed up? Is this a billing mistake, an order mistake? Do we need to talk to somebody who is over in purchasing or what do we have to do here?

They finally got an answer from somebody that knew what they were talking about and it turned out that it was because they weren't compliant with these federal regulations. So keep an eye on that.

I just had another conversation on Thursday with a gentleman who indeed is really under the gun here. Now, he asked his IT provider, Hey, am I all set here? And the IT provider said oh yes yes sir you are all set. We're taking care of it for you.

But you already know my response to that, 99% of the time when we walk in, and I say 99, because. I've never seen an exception, but I want to leave a little room for error, right? The margin for error. So maybe it was just saying over 90% of the businesses we go into that think they're compliant are not compliant. If they were to get audited, they'd be in deep trouble.

The case with our client, they weren't even audited. This was it a self-audit form they had pencil whipped and the primary contractor realized, Hey, listen, this doesn't jive with what we've been seeing.

So keep that in mind, everybody. This is a very big deal.

Now I've put together it's about a 300-page long document, but it goes through all of the major cybersecurity standards and I'm calling it an audit preparation kit or an audit kit and I will be glad to send it to anybody that wants it, this is generic. This isn't to use me. This isn't to use Cisco. This isn't to use Mainstream. This is just a compilation of all of the rules that you have to follow based on the different levels within the new CMMC stuff. That's actually been out for a little while, but now they're really pounding the table about it saying you darn well better get this stuff done.

So I'll be glad to send it to you. Just send me an email within the subject line. Just say. Audit kit. I will be more than glad to get that off to you or we can do an audit for you.

We've offered audits for many years and found a lot of things and help put together a plan.

So whatever you want to do there, do it. But whether you're talking to your own internal IT people or external IT people remember most of them are not as familiar with this as they need to be. So getting a copy of this audit kit, looking at it at yourself, having the person who's responsible for IT, review it with the vendor or review it with the internal IT people, you can get your act together.

That's what I'm trying to do. Get you to the point where you can handle it all and really take care of it. That's the bottom line.

Let's get into our cars here. We're going to totally switch subjects. And then this is something that's happening right now in a lot of States in Massachusetts, there is a bill that went through back in 2013, or maybe it was something a ballot question, but it's back on the ballot this year.

Question one in mass and this is a referendum on how can traditional independent automotive repair shops survive in this world. I remember I said at the opening, is it a car or is it a computer? How should we treat it? I remember when odometers on cars, you rolled over at a hundred thousand miles because who expected a car to last a hundred thousand miles.

That's ridiculous. But bottom line now, today we expect most cars to last a quarter-million miles easily, maybe longer. Not to say that there weren't cars from back in the day, that would last that long, but it just wasn't an expected thing. So today we know, okay, I want this car to last me at least a couple hundred thousand miles, maybe a quarter million, however many you want. Before you go and sell the car, right? Doesn't that make sense?

It seems to make sense to me and vehicles have really gotten a lot better. So if you are going to buy one of these cars that is electric or are very high tech, what are you going to do with that? What are the odds that the car is going to last you? I don't know, quarter-million miles, half a million miles, the electric motors in some of these cars, frankly, should last a hundred thousand miles without even blinking twice and probably will last a million miles with no problem.

Now, the batteries, that's a different deal. We've talked to before about the efficiencies and how your F-150 is probably better for the environment than an electric car, because when you consider the global environment, the conditions that are created in China, all of the shipping that has to go on between Canada, where some of the stuff is mined and how NASA uses it for moonscapes those areas because there's death for hundreds of square miles and shipped from Canada and it goes over to China and it goes to Japan that goes back to China, that goes back to the United States. And you've seen some of those pictures of Beijing and China, I'm sure, and other places where they do a lot of manufacturing where it's deadly to drink the water. You just can't breathe. Everyone wears masks to try and protect their lungs from pollution. So don't sit there all high and mighty thinking you have an electric car or you've got a Prius or one of these other hybrid cars, and you're high and mighty thinking aren't I great because I'm saving the environment versus that guy driving the F150. When you consider how long the F150 lasts when you consider how long those batteries in your car last and how long those batteries' environmental footprint will last and what it took to make those batteries. The F-150 is still the better option worldwide when it comes to pollution, the environment, and being green.

It's so funny. You see these signs out there right now during political seasons that say, I believe in science. Yet in reality, no, that's not science. It's not science, climate change is happening. It's always happened. We've always had a changing climate. Man's impact on the client is so minuscule there's almost nothing we could do to affect any change in the environment unless we did something stupid. What scientists told us to do in the seventies and some of the so-called scientists are telling us to do now, the models are wrong. They've always been wrong.

These electric cars are our future. It is absolutely going to be our future. What do you expect from your electric car? I have nothing against electric cars. I think their great, just don't think that you're being green by driving an electric car, because you're not. They are cool as heck the technology in them is absolutely amazing and I'd love to own one. All right.

So I want to put that aside. I want you to remember that I love these things and when we get back we're going to talk more about this, the expectations, what's happening with insurance and should question one be on a referendum for this right to repair. What's that all going to mean as well?

Hey, you're listening to Craig Peterson.

Stick around because we'll be right back.

We're going to finish this discussion and of course, we got a whole lot more coming up.

Stick around. We'll be right back.

---

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 discusses cybersecurity audits and new vehicle lifespan.

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

---

Right To Repair Or A Fight For Survival?

Ring’s latest security camera is a drone that flies around inside your house

Malware Attacks Declined But Became More Evasive in Q2

Elon Musk reveals plans to slash electric battery costs, build $25,000 Tesla

Paying ransomware demands could land you in hot water with the feds

Windows 10 machines running on ARM will be able to emulate x64 apps soon

'It Won't Happen to Me': Employee Apathy Prevails Despite Greater Cybersecurity Awareness

Rise in Remote MacOS Workers Driving Cybersecurity 'Rethink'

A Guide to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework

---

Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

With our cars being more and more computerized should we be treating them like a computer? Do we have a right to repair? Should we be expecting upgrades? How long should our car last? We're going to get to that and a whole lot more.

Hi everybody. You are listening to Craig Peterson. We're going to get into a number of different security things this week. I've talked about them on the radio, some really cool stuff coming from Elon Musk. Some news about how paying ransomware demands could end up getting you a jail sentence. Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense, once I explain it, okay. So hold on a couple of minutes.

We have some very cool new technology. I talked about Intel before and how disappointed I've been with so much of what they've done over the years. And we are going to talk about Intel's maybe biggest competitor outside of maybe a company might've heard of AMD. We'll be getting to that and employee apathy. MacOS workers really driving a cybersecurity rethink. We'll talk a little bit about the NIST cybersecurity framework because that is getting to be a big deal. I just had this week, a client, actually last Friday that client informed me that their customer had stopped ordering a couple of weeks prior they're trying to figure out why now up until then. My customer had not told me how much this customer was worth to them but they don't buy much. That DOD contractor stopped buying from my client. Now, this is a client that we've had for 20 years, maybe longer and we'd been warning them about the changes that have been occurring. In the regulations regarding cybersecurity.

You might remember me mentioning here on the show a couple of weeks ago, there was an emergency change, right? An emergency order of 48-hour notice to change in what was being. Required of DOD contractors. Now, the department of defense is one thing, right? But how about the rest of us? All those same rules are going into effect for everyone that has any sort of federal contract coming up here within the next three years are affected by this change and their clients. So their client was getting worried and said, Oh, let's wait a minute. yeah. Yeah. They're not fully compliant. And there weren't, and we've been warning about pad, as I said for, at least 18 months and they lost 70% of their business overnight, 70% can you imagine that?  Now they're freaking out and trying to figure out sorta we do now. Hopefully, we'll be able to help them with all of that and they'll survive it.

It turns out that a federal contractor that was a client of theirs was more important, 70% important to their business. That's a lot of business to lose and it took them about two weeks, apparently calling-in daily. Trying to find out from their client. Why did the order stop? What's going on here? Did something get messed up? Is this a billing mistake, an order mistake? Do we need to talk to somebody who is over in purchasing or what do we have to do here?

They finally got an answer from somebody that knew what they were talking about and it turned out that it was because they weren't compliant with these federal regulations. So keep an eye on that.

I just had another conversation on Thursday with a gentleman who indeed is really under the gun here. Now, he asked his IT provider, Hey, am I all set here? And the IT provider said oh yes yes sir you are all set. We're taking care of it for you.

But you already know my response to that, 99% of the time when we walk in, and I say 99, because. I've never seen an exception, but I want to leave a little room for error, right? The margin for error. So maybe it was just saying over 90% of the businesses we go into that think they're compliant are not compliant. If they were to get audited, they'd be in deep trouble.

The case with our client, they weren't even audited. This was it a self-audit form they had pencil whipped and the primary contractor realized, Hey, listen, this doesn't jive with what we've been seeing.

So keep that in mind, everybody. This is a very big deal.

Now I've put together it's about a 300-page long document, but it goes through all of the major cybersecurity standards and I'm calling it an audit preparation kit or an audit kit and I will be glad to send it to anybody that wants it, this is generic. This isn't to use me. This isn't to use Cisco. This isn't to use Mainstream. This is just a compilation of all of the rules that you have to follow based on the different levels within the new CMMC stuff. That's actually been out for a little while, but now they're really pounding the table about it saying you darn well better get this stuff done.

So I'll be glad to send it to you. Just send me an email within the subject line. Just say. Audit kit. I will be more than glad to get that off to you or we can do an audit for you.

We've offered audits for many years and found a lot of things and help put together a plan.

So whatever you want to do there, do it. But whether you're talking to your own internal IT people or external IT people remember most of them are not as familiar with this as they need to be. So getting a copy of this audit kit, looking at it at yourself, having the person who's responsible for IT, review it with the vendor or review it with the internal IT people, you can get your act together.

That's what I'm trying to do. Get you to the point where you can handle it all and really take care of it. That's the bottom line.

Let's get into our cars here. We're going to totally switch subjects. And then this is something that's happening right now in a lot of States in Massachusetts, there is a bill that went through back in 2013, or maybe it was something a ballot question, but it's back on the ballot this year.

Question one in mass and this is a referendum on how can traditional independent automotive repair shops survive in this world. I remember I said at the opening, is it a car or is it a computer? How should we treat it? I remember when odometers on cars, you rolled over at a hundred thousand miles because who expected a car to last a hundred thousand miles.

That's ridiculous. But bottom line now, today we expect most cars to last a quarter-million miles easily, maybe longer. Not to say that there weren't cars from back in the day, that would last that long, but it just wasn't an expected thing. So today we know, okay, I want this car to last me at least a couple hundred thousand miles, maybe a quarter million, however many you want. Before you go and sell the car, right? Doesn't that make sense?

 It seems to make sense to me and vehicles have really gotten a lot better. So if you are going to buy one of these cars that is electric or are very high tech, what are you going to do with that? What are the odds that the car is going to last you? I don't know, quarter-million miles, half a million miles, the electric motors in some of these cars, frankly, should last a hundred thousand miles without even blinking twice and probably will last a million miles with no problem.

Now, the batteries, that's a different deal. We've talked to before about the efficiencies and how your F-150 is probably better for the environment than an electric car, because when you consider the global environment, the conditions that are created in China, all of the shipping that has to go on between Canada, where some of the stuff is mined and how NASA uses it for moonscapes those areas because there's death for hundreds of square miles and shipped from Canada and it goes over to China and it goes to Japan that goes back to China, that goes back to the United States. And you've seen some of those pictures of Beijing and China, I'm sure, and other places where they do a lot of manufacturing where it's deadly to drink the water. You just can't breathe. Everyone wears masks to try and protect their lungs from pollution. So don't sit there all high and mighty thinking you have an electric car or you've got a Prius or one of these other hybrid cars, and you're high and mighty thinking aren't I great because I'm saving the environment versus that guy driving the F150. When you consider how long the F150 lasts when you consider how long those batteries in your car last and how long those batteries' environmental footprint will last and what it took to make those batteries. The F-150 is still the better option worldwide when it comes to pollution, the environment, and being green.

It's so funny. You see these signs out there right now during political seasons that say,  I believe in science. Yet in reality, no, that's not science. It's not science, climate change is happening. It's always happened. We've always had a changing climate. Man's impact on the client is so minuscule there's almost nothing we could do to affect any change in the environment unless we did something stupid. What scientists told us to do in the seventies and some of the so-called scientists are telling us to do now, the models are wrong. They've always been wrong.

These electric cars are our future. It is absolutely going to be our future. What do you expect from your electric car? I have nothing against electric cars. I think their great, just don't think that you're being green by driving an electric car, because you're not. They are cool as heck the technology in them is absolutely amazing and I'd love to own one. All right.

So I want to put that aside. I want you to remember that I love these things and when we get back we're going to talk more about this, the expectations, what's happening with insurance and should question one be on a referendum for this right to repair. What's that all going to mean as well?

Hey, you're listening to Craig Peterson.

Stick around because we'll be right back.

We're going to finish this discussion and of course, we got a whole lot more coming up.

Stick around. We'll be right back. 

---

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 discusses new car technology, electric cars, and how long we can expect them to last.

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

---

Right To Repair Or A Fight For Survival?

Ring's latest security camera is a drone that flies around inside your house

Malware Attacks Declined But Became More Evasive in Q2

Elon Musk reveals plans to slash electric battery costs, build $25,000 Tesla

Paying ransomware demands could land you in hot water with the feds

Windows 10 machines running on ARM will be able to emulate x64 apps soon

'It Won't Happen to Me': Employee Apathy Prevails Despite Greater Cybersecurity Awareness

Rise in Remote MacOS Workers Driving Cybersecurity 'Rethink'

A Guide to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework

---

Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

From a 50,000-mile model T to a 100,000 mile Chevy in the seventies to nowadays we're expecting maybe as much as a half a million or a million miles out of these newest cars.

Hi everybody. Welcome back. You're listening to Craig Peterson.

Before the break, we were talking a little bit about our cars and we were expecting our cars to not last terribly long back in the day, we have gotten a lot better with our manufacturing.

In fact, some people say the cars are designed to start falling apart as soon as the warranty's over, which of course varies based on cars. Some have been longer warranties than others, but. What are we going to expect our newest cars? I'm talking about things like Tesla, Tesla may deliver this year over a half a million vehicles. That is a lot of cars that are out there.

California, just announced last month, this effort to phase out the sale of new gas-powered passenger vehicles by 2035. That's only 15 years from now. Not a whole long way away. What are we expecting from these things? Just like with your computer, you expect upgrades, right?

Do you expect a new release of software? You remember for many decades you bought a computer and there was a software update. Date, you needed a new version of PCdos or MSdos and you needed a bigger, faster computer. You needed 64 megabytes of Ram instead of what you had before he needed to move from static Ram, which was just too slow to dynamic ram as well.

If you're old as I am you remember that and much more from even older computers. That happened through Microsoft's entire life cycle until just a few years ago. Where, when it was an upgrade from windows 3.1, two 95 to 98 to XP. Millennial edition, et cetera. Every time you pretty much had to buy a new computer.

Why? because the old computer technology hardware that was in it just could not keep up with the new operating system. Frankly, software programmers are pigs - every last one of them. Yes, I said that and I say they're pigs because they're not paying attention to memory consumption. When you get right down to it, what is cheaper programmers' time or the hardware?

I know for many years I was told by my clients as I was designing and writing, operating systems and device drivers and networking code that it was always cheaper to do it software than it was to do it in hardware. So in order to save a quarter-cent on each machine, we would spend an extra few hundred hours working on some of the software that wouldn't get around that fraction of a cent piece on that motherboard.

Microsoft doesn't think that way and programmers, nowadays, don't think that way either, because. They're not programming the way we used to program. Nowadays, it's all about drag and drop. We're using languages in our cars that are so far away from the hardware. It doesn't even matter what hardware they run on.

We're using languages like Java, for instance, which is just an absolutely amazing language. It certainly has its security problems when you get right down to it. But. Java is designed so that you can run it on a fast mainframe all the way on down through your Android phone. They're all running Java and they could all run pretty much the same code without a whole lot of problems.

That's an interesting dilemma when we're talking about cars. Your Microsoft Windows computer, you were probably able to upgrade from windows 7, maybe to 8. Most of the time people bought new computers to go to 8 but upgrading to the next release of Windows 10. Was much easier, wasn't it? Did you have to replace your hardware? I know I did not. My hardware could still support windows 10 from windows seven to 8.1 while 8.0 than 8.1, right in there. 10. That is a very big change in the Microsoft world because these computers were fast enough. Now, of course, that hit and hurt companies like Intel and also AMD.

And we're going to talk more about where the hardware is going here in the near future a little bit later, and if you miss it here on the air, make sure you visit me online @craigpeterson.com. You can catch all of the podcasts there and on your favorite podcasting platforms where we talk about, should you buy a new computer now? Should you wait? And why, and where is the technology going?

But we've gotten to the point now where a new release of an operating system does not mean you have to have new hardware. That's true on your macs and has been for a long time. That's also true on your windows devices. Every few major operating system releases, you might have to get new hardware. So you're talking five to 10 years, frankly, of support out of that device.

Have you thought about your car? Because of these new cars, Tesla is a great example of it. They really own the market. I think they've won the battle, at least for now that might have even won the war for the time being when it comes to owning that whole space of self-driving cars, electric cars, et cetera, they are doing an absolutely amazing job.

But that car, that Tesla that's parked in the garage is maybe hooked up to the wifi in your house. It is maybe using the built-in data connection that it has, LTE. We know that Tesla has two processing units in it, completely separate ones. There's a lot of speculation about exactly what they're used for and when I'm not going to get into that right now. That Tesla that you buy today that has really a fancy cruise control that tries to help keep you in the lane. Might be better in a year from now. And how's it going to be better while it might be better in a year from now because that electric car you bought is going to get an upgrade. It's going to get an update and that update may even make it faster, make it use less battery, make it even smarter. Elon Musk says that he already has the software built-in and the hardware in the cars that can handle fully autonomous mode.

That'd be an interesting discussion I'd like to have with you guys sometime about what exactly is happening on that end. So the car you buy may be better next year, but how about five years now? How about that upgrade cycle?

You have a car that is full of what are basically laptop batteries, a whole bunch of these little batteries, they're all hooked up in parallel and series in order to get to the right voltage and supply the right amount of current. Those batteries just like your laptop, have a limited life. It can only be cycled so many times. Maybe it's a total of a thousand cycles. This is quite a bit, but at some point, those batteries aren't worth much or anything, and they're going to have to be replaced. By the way that is the most polluting part of these electric cars is the manufacturing and transportation of those battery components. But I digress. So you have to replace them at some point.

How about these new pieces of software that come out with, or even hardware? For instance, Tesla is completely devoted to using cameras to figure out its autonomous driving mode, versus some of these other cars that are using LIDAR, which is a laser radar combination that does absolutely phenomenal.

What happens if Tesla decides, Hey, listen, we just couldn't pull it off with what we had. So we're going to have to add some more hardware. Maybe they need a faster processor, more memory, more storage on another sensor, whatever it might be, then that car has limited use.

I bet you'd say so does a 1980 Mercedes diesel. Doesn't it.

We're gonna continue this when we get back. So make sure you stick around to listening to Craig Peterson and you can find me of course, online. Just visit me at Craig peterson.com/subscribe.

I'll send you my weekly newsletter. I won't pester you. I'm not one of those crazy marketers. Craig peterson.com.

That's where you'll find it all.

Stick around.

---

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 discusses new car technology, electric cars, and how long we can expect them to last.

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

---

Right To Repair Or A Fight For Survival?

Ring’s latest security camera is a drone that flies around inside your house

Malware Attacks Declined But Became More Evasive in Q2

Elon Musk reveals plans to slash electric battery costs, build $25,000 Tesla

Paying ransomware demands could land you in hot water with the feds

Windows 10 machines running on ARM will be able to emulate x64 apps soon

'It Won't Happen to Me': Employee Apathy Prevails Despite Greater Cybersecurity Awareness

Rise in Remote MacOS Workers Driving Cybersecurity 'Rethink'

A Guide to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework

---

Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

From a 50,000-mile model T to a 100,000 mile Chevy in the seventies to nowadays we're expecting maybe as much as a half a million or a million miles out of these newest cars.

Hi everybody. Welcome back. You're listening to Craig Peterson.

 Before the break, we were talking a little bit about our cars and we were expecting our cars to not last terribly long back in the day, we have gotten a lot better with our manufacturing.

In fact, some people say the cars are designed to start falling apart as soon as the warranty's over, which of course varies based on cars. Some have been longer warranties than others, but. What are we going to expect our newest cars? I'm talking about things like Tesla, Tesla may deliver this year over a half a million vehicles. That is a lot of cars that are out there.

California, just announced last month, this effort to phase out the sale of new gas-powered passenger vehicles by 2035. That's only 15 years from now. Not a whole long way away. What are we expecting from these things? Just like with your computer, you expect upgrades, right?

Do you expect a new release of software? You remember for many decades you bought a computer and there was a software update. Date, you needed a new version of PCdos or MSdos and you needed a bigger, faster computer. You needed 64 megabytes of Ram instead of what you had before he needed to move from static Ram, which was just too slow to dynamic ram as well.

If you're old as I am you remember that and much more from even older computers. That happened through Microsoft's entire life cycle until just a few years ago. Where, when it was an upgrade from windows 3.1, two 95 to 98 to XP. Millennial edition, et cetera. Every time you pretty much had to buy a new computer.

Why? because the old computer technology hardware that was in it just could not keep up with the new operating system. Frankly, software programmers are pigs - every last one of them. Yes, I said that and I say they're pigs because they're not paying attention to memory consumption. When you get right down to it, what is cheaper programmers' time or the hardware?

I know for many years I was told by my clients as I was designing and writing, operating systems and device drivers and networking code that it was always cheaper to do it software than it was to do it in hardware. So in order to save a quarter-cent on each machine, we would spend an extra few hundred hours working on some of the software that wouldn't get around that fraction of a cent piece on that motherboard.

Microsoft doesn't think that way and programmers, nowadays, don't think that way either, because. They're not programming the way we used to program. Nowadays, it's all about drag and drop. We're using languages in our cars that are so far away from the hardware. It doesn't even matter what hardware they run on.

We're using languages like Java, for instance, which is just an absolutely amazing language. It certainly has its security problems when you get right down to it. But. Java is designed so that you can run it on a fast mainframe all the way on down through your Android phone. They're all running Java and they could all run pretty much the same code without a whole lot of problems.

That's an interesting dilemma when we're talking about cars.  Your Microsoft Windows computer, you were probably able to upgrade from windows 7, maybe to 8. Most of the time people bought new computers to go to 8 but upgrading to the next release of Windows 10. Was much easier, wasn't it? Did you have to replace your hardware? I know I did not. My hardware could still support windows 10 from windows seven to 8.1 while 8.0 than 8.1, right in there. 10. That is a very big change in the Microsoft world because these computers were fast enough. Now, of course, that hit and hurt companies like Intel and also AMD.

And we're going to talk more about where the hardware is going here in the near future a little bit later, and if you miss it here on the air, make sure you visit me online @craigpeterson.com. You can catch all of the podcasts there and on your favorite podcasting platforms where we talk about, should you buy a new computer now? Should you wait? And why, and where is the technology going?

But we've gotten to the point now where a new release of an operating system does not mean you have to have new hardware. That's true on your macs and has been for a long time. That's also true on your windows devices. Every few major operating system releases, you might have to get new hardware. So you're talking five to 10 years, frankly, of support out of that device.

Have you thought about your car? Because of these new cars, Tesla is a great example of it. They really own the market. I think they've won the battle, at least for now that might have even won the war for the time being when it comes to owning that whole space of self-driving cars, electric cars, et cetera, they are doing an absolutely amazing job.

But that car, that Tesla that's parked in the garage is maybe hooked up to the wifi in your house. It is maybe using the built-in data connection that it has, LTE. We know that Tesla has two processing units in it, completely separate ones. There's a lot of speculation about exactly what they're used for and when I'm not going to get into that right now. That Tesla that you buy today that has really a fancy cruise control that tries to help keep you in the lane. Might be better in a year from now. And how's it going to be better while it might be better in a year from now because that electric car you bought is going to get an upgrade. It's going to get an update and that update may even make it faster, make it use less battery, make it even smarter.  Elon Musk says that he already has the software built-in and the hardware in the cars that can handle fully autonomous mode.

That'd be an interesting discussion I'd like to have with you guys sometime about what exactly is happening on that end. So the car you buy may be better next year, but how about five years now? How about that upgrade cycle?

You have a car that is full of what are basically laptop batteries, a whole bunch of these little batteries, they're all hooked up in parallel and series in order to get to the right voltage and supply the right amount of current. Those batteries just like your laptop, have a limited life. It can only be cycled so many times. Maybe it's a total of a thousand cycles. This is quite a bit, but at some point, those batteries aren't worth much or anything, and they're going to have to be replaced. By the way that is the most polluting part of these electric cars is the manufacturing and transportation of those battery components. But I digress. So you have to replace them at some point.

How about these new pieces of software that come out with, or even hardware? For instance, Tesla is completely devoted to using cameras to figure out its autonomous driving mode, versus some of these other cars that are using LIDAR, which is a laser radar combination that does absolutely phenomenal.

What happens if Tesla decides, Hey, listen, we just couldn't pull it off with what we had. So we're going to have to add some more hardware. Maybe they need a faster processor, more memory, more storage on another sensor, whatever it might be, then that car has limited use.

I bet you'd say so does a 1980 Mercedes diesel. Doesn't it.

We're gonna continue this when we get back. So make sure you stick around to listening to Craig Peterson and you can find me of course, online. Just visit me at Craig peterson.com/subscribe.

I'll send you my weekly newsletter. I won't pester you. I'm not one of those crazy marketers. Craig peterson.com.

That's where you'll find it all.

Stick around.

---

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 discusses Ballot Question 1 coming up in Massachusetts in the next two weeks and a take you may not have been expecting. Tune in.

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

---

Right To Repair Or A Fight For Survival?

Ring's latest security camera is a drone that flies around inside your house

Malware Attacks Declined But Became More Evasive in Q2

Elon Musk reveals plans to slash electric battery costs, build $25,000 Tesla

Paying ransomware demands could land you in hot water with the feds

Windows 10 machines running on ARM will be able to emulate x64 apps soon

'It Won't Happen to Me': Employee Apathy Prevails Despite Greater Cybersecurity Awareness

Rise in Remote MacOS Workers Driving Cybersecurity 'Rethink'

A Guide to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework

---

Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

So with our fancy electronic cars driving around and our electric cars driving around, how do you repair them? Should you have the right to repair those vehicles? That's the question they're asking in Massachusetts next month.

Hi guys. You are listening to Craig Peterson.

These cars, the Tesla has been on the market now for quite a few years, back in 2013, Massachusetts voted here on this right to repair legislation.

The idea was that these car manufacturers should not keep you out of your vehicle while working on it. Having just a regular car guy, car shop, whoever it is, you got a gal that does it? You could not have them mess with your car and still retain the warranty, in many cases. So they changed that law.

Now we have these cars that thankfully are 90% software. What do we do now? The reason I said 90% software is, of course, you've got the chassis, right? You've got the suspension. You've got a steering wheel. You have a gas pedal. You have a brake pedal. You have a motor or motors depending on the vehicle that's all mechanical.

That's all parts and pieces. Some of them move. Some of them don't move. Don't forget about the brakes, but every last one of those things is controlled by computer, even in a standard car, nowadays. I've ranted and raved about how I'll never drive a Volvo because they make assumptions about when the car should take over. It's kind of true for every vehicle. That steering wheel probably does not have a mechanical linkage to those front wheels on your car. Did you know that? Turning that steering wheel, all that's really doing is setting off a sensor in the steering column. That brake pedal almost certainly is not connected to the brakes on your car. Right?

It used to be, you push it down. There's a diaphragm created pressure. They use that to amplify through hydraulic pressure to the brakes, and then the brakes would grab whatever type of brakes you had. Right? Sometimes it was strictly mechanical as well, without that hydraulic assist in there. Same thing with the steering wheel, that gas pedal is guaranteed to not be hooked up directly to the engine. Used to be you'd push down the gas pedal and what would it do? It would change some valves in the carburetor or a little bit later on in the fuel injector and feed the fuel into the car nowadays. All it is is a rheostat or potentiometer.

Just a little dial like you might have on your television that is being manipulated. Buy that gas pedal, go, and have a look. Next time. You're there down there, cleaning out the car, getting rid of all of that salt from the wintertime, looking down at that car. And when you're down on the floor, the driver's side. Look at where the gas pedal is, but you can see this more, obviously in most cars on the gas pedal and the brake pedal look up, you'll see the linkage just goes to a little dial. Well, most of the time now, That's all well and good, but what it means is our cars no longer have that mechanical linkage.

If you go to my Mercedes, my 1980 Mercedes diesel, you will see mechanical linkages to everything. When I push on that accelerator, there is a steel rod that goes up under the hood of the vehicle that tilts forward control on the fuel injectors that inject the diesel into the cylinders. It is absolutely something that you can look at.

If it's jammed, you can look and see why you can replace a bearing. You maybe add a little grease here or there, you can straighten out a bent rod. But when it's software, what can you do? How much can you tinker with it? And if you tinker with it, what's going to happen?

Now with motor vehicles, it's become pretty obvious over the years, whoever touched it, whoever broke it, whoever caused an accident to occur, is the person or company, liable for the accident. So for repairs, damages, whatever might be involved.

How about an electric car? That's self-driving who carries the insurance, who has the liability. I think you know. I personally would carry insurance just in general, right? Some broad-based insurance, but is Tesla responsible for this? When that Tesla car hits someone who's responsible?

We know what just happened in Phoenix within the last month where charges were brought against a driver that was sitting there in one of these autonomous vehicles. It was driving down the road and hit a lady on a bicycle. As I recall, as she was crossing the road. Now the car didn't properly detect what was happening, so it did not stop in time.

The driver apparently wasn't paying attention, right? Drivers in quotes, air quotes, because obviously, they weren't paying attention. So that driver got charged and it's not going to be fun for that driver.

When that vehicle truly is represented to be autonomous, what happens when there is no more steering wheel in the vehicle, or whose responsible? You probably can say the manufacturer's responsible for it.

If you have the right to repair your vehicle, what does that mean? How far does that go? If you tinker with your vehicle and the software in it? You might burn out the electric motor, just like changing the chip and your engine might damage the engine, my damage to the valves, or whatever might get damaged. At that point you take it in, they look at it, the dealer manufacturer says, hey, you broke it. It's yours. We're not fixing it or at least we're not going to pay to fix it. You can pay.

So what happens now with an electric vehicle? And what happens when you trace that liability down and say, okay, who's responsible here. What happens if that person who's responsible is you because you had the right to repair and you went a little further than might be prudent.

This is an example of the law outpacing technology. Usually, the law is behind the technology. It's usually years behind technology. And that makes sense.

That gives the technology a bit of a chance to get established and then once its established then the technology can be rolled out and we know what the laws should be because you never know what's going to happen until it happens.

Now, personally, I think we have far too many laws and some basic rules or laws about liability are probably all we need.

We don't need laws about every little bit of liability, but there are a lot of questions that would need to be answered. That's where the judiciary can come in, not to make laws certainly, but to interpret the law, and say that law means you cannot kill someone negligently and therefore it's your problem and can get that all resolved. So that has years to come.

So you can see I think, how this all relates to this 2020 Massachusetts question one ballot initiative. This is the sort of thing we're starting to see all over the country here. How can traditional independent automotive repair shops, aftermarket parts, suppliers, home, tinkerers, and mechanics? How are they going to function as part of the automotive ecosystem? This ballot initiative aims to enact a law that makes vehicle-specific data for opening connectivity available to anyone. For the purposes in this case of quotes, maintaining, diagnosing, and repairing the motor vehicle. So interesting problems in trust and repurposing it. Personally, I think it's a safety threat.

I think it's a little too ahead of the game.

Hey, when we get back, we've got a lot more to talk about.

We are going to talk about Ring a little bit here and there. Latest security cameras. I don't know if you've been following this market much lately, but this is pretty cool.

You'll find out more about this by going online.

Craig Peterson dot com

---

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