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

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito.  He had a few questions about Voting and the Technology surrounding Mail-in and Online Voting and then we got into the sales of the Chinese company ByteDance to Oracle. 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] They've been using some of our drone footage, which is why these Chinese drones are illegal to use for government contractors and many others. Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson, here. I am enjoying this weather. This is my time of year. I was on with Jim this morning, we talked about TikTok, this whole Oracle thing. Why did the president do what he did and is the sale actually going to fix the problem? President Trump identified. So we talked about that and of course, we also talked about voting. It can't get political sometimes with Mr. Polito. So here we go.

Jim Polito: [00:00:41] Okay, this is the guy you need to have at your side through all of this. I want to talk to him about Oracle and TikTok, cause I want to get his take on it.  I've got something more important to talk about first, and that is online voting - God help us. Here are our good friend and tech guru. Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:05] Hey, good morning, Jim. Love this weather. Love it.

Jim Polito: [00:01:09] This is Canada weather. Speaking of the great white North, Gary, a listener from Gardner sent a picture of him. You know, some scrape marks on his windshield had a little bit of frost on the windshield little bit there. Yeah. I would figure that you would like this you're coming into your season here.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:30] I am. I, I remember summers, it would get to like 70 or 72 and it was just wonderful. That was summer weather. I just don't like 90 degrees.

Jim Polito: [00:01:41] Well, I'm kinda, with you there. I'm with you there. I don't like it.

Alright. Here's what I don't like. I don't like online voting. First of all. I don't like mail-in voting. I don't like online voting, but you sent me some interesting information. We can do online banking, which you would think needs all of this security. What's the difference between that and attempting to do online voting? Why can't online voting be done?

Craig Peterson: [00:02:10] Yeah, this is a really interesting problem. The bottom line for everybody is it's not a problem that will be solved any time soon, or my soon. I mean, it will take many years before this problem is solved. The big problem you have has to do with a secret ballot. So when you go to the voting booth, although this year they took the little flap off the back of the booth. So people could potentially look over your shoulder, but people were there to monitor to make sure there wasn't somebody holding a gun to your head to make sure you voted the right way. In fact, it's illegal pretty much everywhere to take a picture of your ballot. And that's gone to court many times because again, Someone could be extorting you to make sure you're voting the way they want you to.

Or if you live in Orange County, California, the ballots came pre-filled with the Democrats, checked off. How do you know if it's a legitimate ballot, that's the problem really comes in Jim? When you're talking about ATMs, banking is different. We do have encryption from the ATM machine, all the way to the data center for the bank.

And then the banks also share their data over secure links and, and they count on you checking your bank statement at least every once in a while.

But once you've voted, all right. How do you know that your vote was counted? That your vote made it? How can you do it secretly? Yeah. And so that's the big problem here.

You cannot have it secret. Now. There are some technologies out there right now that allow this auditable voting system, kind of using the technology that's behind Bitcoin, but it's not there yet. We can't be sure someone is literally or figuratively holding a gun to your head while you vote. Mail-in voting doesn't work because of that one reason and we can't do online voting because again, the same reason, but it just can't be audited.

Jim Polito: [00:04:24] Yeah, I get it. Now that makes complete sense to me because you do lose the ability of the secret ballot. I want everybody to vote, but if somebody chooses not to vote, that's their right.  I guess it's public information that someone could look at.

Well, what ballot did Jim Polito take in the primary? You know, if I take a Democrat, I'm an unenrolled. So if I take a Democrat ballot or I take a Republican ballot or whatever, somebody can look at that and say, Oh, he took a Republican ballot. Oh, he voted in that election. And then you get on a certain list, but I see where you're going.

The next step from this is, yeah, it's actually easier to do the banking because everybody's upfront about it. There are built-in checks and balances. You would give away the secret ballot if we were to say you vote online.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:17] Well, even with banking, we look at it and look at your credit card.

Now they have the chips on them that do help to authenticate your card. But right now, the latest numbers that we have are from 2018, and credit card fraud alone costs the world's banks almost $28 billion. In 2018. That's a system that is sure. So what kind of fraud could we expect from heaven forbid, we have mail-in voting.

I think that might be inevitable, but that was a fraud. There's going to be crazy and it's not like an ATM, we just can't secure it. We can't be sure that people are voting secretly and that's been fundamental. You look at some of these other countries, China has 98% of the population voting every time there's an election. They know exactly who you voted for. Yeah.

Jim Polito: [00:06:14] Well, and you don't have much of a choice, frankly, when you voted China, you're voting for the communist party that's it. We're talking with tech talk guru, Craig Peterson, our good friend who loves the little cold snap in the air right now.

Alright. Let's get to Oracle and TikTok. Now, you know, I, I don't post things on TikTok but I did register my name so that I would have Jim Polito on TikTok as I do on everything else because someday, maybe, you know, people, my age will take over TikTok. I don't know.  I found it. They talk to me decently. I was explaining to my stepsons. They said you're on TikTok. And they said, well, wait a minute. I'm not posting anything. I do view stuff on TikTok and I said, my TikTok experience is much different than yours and they said, what do you mean? I said, my TikTok experiences, politics and home improvement, and maybe motorcycles and the rolling stones. You know, like that's the kind of stuff that gets sent to me. Cause that's the kind of stuff that I like. Oracle now beats out Microsoft to buy this platform owned by the Chinese communists.  I've been looking forward to hearing your take on this

Craig Peterson: [00:07:34] This real interesting thing, because it's the first time ever I'm aware of where some deal like this has happened. Certainly during the war, we had businesses that were broken up. For instance, Bayer here in the US that makes the aspirin was a German company in world war two. Congress divested the German company, Bayer of all interest in the United States. And, given the company to some buddies, right.

But you know, maybe not that I couldn't happen here in the United States. What we're looking at right now is this company called Bytedance, which is this Chinese company. Don't think of companies under socialism the way we think of them under a typical free market. The company is controlled by the socialists in China, by the Chinese communist party.

They were sending data to China. And anything that goes to China is monitored by the Chinese military. They've been using some of our drone footage, which is why these Chinese drones are illegal to use for government contractors, and many others because they have GPS in them. They're showing video it's giving them the exact GPS coordinates and they'd probably have a better map of the United States than we do now.

When it comes to TikTok much the same problem. We're taking videos. We're giving locations where we are, who our friends are. So if they want to trick you into something with phishing, et cetera, they now have enough information to do it. So that's why President Trump said that. This is it. I am invoking these powers that have been with the president in Congress for many, many decades now. I am going to force the divestiture of TikTok. Or it's going to be illegal to have on the stores here in the US. So where we're at right now is the Chinese government said we will not allow Microsoft to buy TikTok. So that came in over the weekend and that's when Oracle's rose to the top.

Cause Microsoft and Walmart were, kind of, going into together. Walmart really wanted to control it and Microsoft would do the technology. But what they're going to do is bring it here, under US control. But unlike the Bayer Aspirin factory, where you can have someone go when you can see there is no socialist influence here. The national socialists of Germany are not here running it anymore, it's the Americans. You can't audit all of this code, that is TikTok in a matter of days, weeks, months, or maybe even years. There's still going to be problems here, but it is moving in the right direction. Oracle is an odd company and their pricing strategy historically has been to grab people by the ankles and shake them upside down and see how much money comes out and that's how much it costs to buy their database.

Jim Polito: [00:10:39] Isn't the CEO of Oracle kind of an odd duck.

Craig Peterson: [00:10:44] Oh yeah. He has the biggest Yacht in the world. And he is very, very, very, very strange, Larry Elison. This is going to be interesting on that front alone is TikTok going to become a charge for service? What's going to happen? But we're not going to get the security we want out of TikTok for some time. But I would imagine initially the servers are going to move directly in the US, under US control, and Oracles going to be mandated to not allow any of that data to go to China. They will probably be able to stop most of that from happening.

Jim Polito: [00:11:19] Unless, of course, there's some little sleeper bit of code somewhere in there that the Chinese have developed, but we'll see. Interesting. I feel better. Look, I never really cared about the Chinese knowing what I'm looking at on TikTok and where I am. I'm not important. But maybe we just don't want the Chinese to know what do Americans do and where do they go to be able to mine, that kind of information about us. Maybe in that respect, I don't care as an individual, but I care as a country. We'll see. The good thing is, Craig we have you here with us to watch this whole thing. Very helpful information, especially about voting and everything else.

So Craig, if people want to know more about Craig Peterson, I guess they can tune in on Saturdays, but there are other ways to reach you.

Craig Peterson: [00:12:11] Yeah. In fact, starting today, I have a couple of times a week. You got to have emails going out there about a three-minute read. I'm trying to keep these short to help you understand what's going on here in the tech business, particularly securities, I'm giving you some tips, some tricks, other things.

I'll be doing live pieces of training, all of this free. I'm not trying to sell something right. This isn't the way you might expect it to be, but I am going to be putting that out and you can get it by going to Craig peterson.com/subscribe, correct. peterson.com slash subscribe. You'll get my weekly newsletter, which covers everything Jim and I talk about.

And even some things we don't get to as well as some of this real quick minute training that I'm going to be doing.

Jim Polito: [00:12:58] That's fantastic. The Craig Peterson show, if you want to listen Saturday mornings at 11 o'clock on WTAG obviously in Western mass, you can use the iHeart radio app. And, there you have Mr. Peterson. We've got you covered front to back. Thank you. Craig so much enjoys the Canadian weather and we'll talk with you next week.

Craig Peterson: [00:13:19] Indian summer. Alright? Bye-bye.

Keep an eye out for this first email today, these three-minute emails. And let me know what you think if it's worth my doing, I think it is. And I'm sure it'll get better, but what do you think might make it a little bit better as well?

All right. Take care, everybody, and we'll be back tomorrow. 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

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito.  He had a few questions about Voting and the Technology surrounding Mail-in and Online Voting and then we got into the sales of the Chinese company ByteDance to Oracle. Here we go with Jim.

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

--- 

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] They've been using some of our drone footage, which is why these Chinese drones are illegal to use for government contractors and many others. Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson, here. I am enjoying this weather. This is my time of year. I was on with Jim this morning, we talked about TikTok, this whole Oracle thing. Why did the president do what he did and is the sale actually going to fix the problem? President Trump identified. So we talked about that and of course, we also talked about voting. It can't get political sometimes with Mr. Polito. So here we go.

Jim Polito: [00:00:41] Okay, this is the guy you need to have at your side through all of this. I want to talk to him about Oracle and TikTok, cause I want to get his take on it.  I've got something more important to talk about first, and that is online voting - God help us. Here are our good friend and tech guru. Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:05] Hey, good morning, Jim. Love this weather. Love it.

Jim Polito: [00:01:09] This is Canada weather. Speaking of the great white North, Gary, a listener from Gardner sent a picture of him. You know, some scrape marks on his windshield had a little bit of frost on the windshield little bit there. Yeah. I would figure that you would like this you're coming into your season here.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:30] I am. I, I remember summers, it would get to like 70 or 72 and it was just wonderful. That was summer weather. I just don't like 90 degrees.

Jim Polito: [00:01:41] Well, I'm kinda, with you there. I'm with you there. I don't like it.

Alright. Here's what I don't like. I don't like online voting. First of all. I don't like mail-in voting. I don't like online voting, but you sent me some interesting information. We can do online banking, which you would think needs all of this security. What's the difference between that and attempting to do online voting? Why can't online voting be done?

Craig Peterson: [00:02:10] Yeah, this is a really interesting problem. The bottom line for everybody is it's not a problem that will be solved any time soon, or my soon. I mean, it will take many years before this problem is solved. The big problem you have has to do with a secret ballot. So when you go to the voting booth, although this year they took the little flap off the back of the booth. So people could potentially look over your shoulder, but people were there to monitor to make sure there wasn't somebody holding a gun to your head to make sure you voted the right way. In fact, it's illegal pretty much everywhere to take a picture of your ballot. And that's gone to court many times because again, Someone could be extorting you to make sure you're voting the way they want you to.

Or if you live in Orange County, California, the ballots came pre-filled with the Democrats, checked off. How do you know if it's a legitimate ballot, that's the problem really comes in Jim? When you're talking about ATMs, banking is different. We do have encryption from the ATM machine, all the way to the data center for the bank.

And then the banks also share their data over secure links and, and they count on you checking your bank statement at least every once in a while.

But once you've voted, all right. How do you know that your vote was counted? That your vote made it? How can you do it secretly? Yeah. And so that's the big problem here.

You cannot have it secret. Now. There are some technologies out there right now that allow this auditable voting system, kind of using the technology that's behind Bitcoin, but it's not there yet. We can't be sure someone is literally or figuratively holding a gun to your head while you vote. Mail-in voting doesn't work because of that one reason and we can't do online voting because again, the same reason, but it just can't be audited.

Jim Polito: [00:04:24] Yeah, I get it. Now that makes complete sense to me because you do lose the ability of the secret ballot. I want everybody to vote, but if somebody chooses not to vote, that's their right.  I guess it's public information that someone could look at.

Well, what ballot did Jim Polito take in the primary? You know, if I take a Democrat, I'm an unenrolled. So if I take a Democrat ballot or I take a Republican ballot or whatever, somebody can look at that and say, Oh, he took a Republican ballot. Oh, he voted in that election. And then you get on a certain list, but I see where you're going.

The next step from this is, yeah, it's actually easier to do the banking because everybody's upfront about it. There are built-in checks and balances. You would give away the secret ballot if we were to say you vote online.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:17] Well, even with banking, we look at it and look at your credit card.

Now they have the chips on them that do help to authenticate your card. But right now, the latest numbers that we have are from 2018, and credit card fraud alone costs the world's banks almost $28 billion. In 2018. That's a system that is sure. So what kind of fraud could we expect from heaven forbid, we have mail-in voting.

I think that might be inevitable, but that was a fraud. There's going to be crazy and it's not like an ATM, we just can't secure it. We can't be sure that people are voting secretly and that's been fundamental. You look at some of these other countries, China has 98% of the population voting every time there's an election. They know exactly who you voted for. Yeah.

Jim Polito: [00:06:14] Well, and you don't have much of a choice, frankly, when you voted China, you're voting for the communist party that's it. We're talking with tech talk guru, Craig Peterson, our good friend who loves the little cold snap in the air right now.

Alright. Let's get to Oracle and TikTok. Now, you know, I, I don't post things on TikTok but I did register my name so that I would have Jim Polito on TikTok as I do on everything else because someday, maybe, you know, people, my age will take over TikTok. I don't know.  I found it. They talk to me decently. I was explaining to my stepsons. They said you're on TikTok. And they said, well, wait a minute. I'm not posting anything. I do view stuff on TikTok and I said, my TikTok experience is much different than yours and they said, what do you mean? I said, my TikTok experiences, politics and home improvement, and maybe motorcycles and the rolling stones. You know, like that's the kind of stuff that gets sent to me. Cause that's the kind of stuff that I like. Oracle now beats out Microsoft to buy this platform owned by the Chinese communists.  I've been looking forward to hearing your take on this

Craig Peterson: [00:07:34] This real interesting thing, because it's the first time ever I'm aware of where some deal like this has happened. Certainly during the war, we had businesses that were broken up. For instance, Bayer here in the US that makes the aspirin was a German company in world war two. Congress divested the German company, Bayer of all interest in the United States. And, given the company to some buddies, right.

But you know, maybe not that I couldn't happen here in the United States. What we're looking at right now is this company called Bytedance, which is this Chinese company. Don't think of companies under socialism the way we think of them under a typical free market. The company is controlled by the socialists in China, by the Chinese communist party.

They were sending data to China. And anything that goes to China is monitored by the Chinese military. They've been using some of our drone footage, which is why these Chinese drones are illegal to use for government contractors, and many others because they have GPS in them. They're showing video it's giving them the exact GPS coordinates and they'd probably have a better map of the United States than we do now.

When it comes to TikTok much the same problem. We're taking videos. We're giving locations where we are, who our friends are. So if they want to trick you into something with phishing, et cetera, they now have enough information to do it. So that's why President Trump said that. This is it. I am invoking these powers that have been with the president in Congress for many, many decades now. I am going to force the divestiture of TikTok. Or it's going to be illegal to have on the stores here in the US. So where we're at right now is the Chinese government said we will not allow Microsoft to buy TikTok. So that came in over the weekend and that's when Oracle's rose to the top.

Cause Microsoft and Walmart were, kind of, going into together. Walmart really wanted to control it and Microsoft would do the technology. But what they're going to do is bring it here, under US control. But unlike the Bayer Aspirin factory, where you can have someone go when you can see there is no socialist influence here. The national socialists of Germany are not here running it anymore, it's the Americans. You can't audit all of this code, that is TikTok in a matter of days, weeks, months, or maybe even years. There's still going to be problems here, but it is moving in the right direction. Oracle is an odd company and their pricing strategy historically has been to grab people by the ankles and shake them upside down and see how much money comes out and that's how much it costs to buy their database.

Jim Polito: [00:10:39] Isn't the CEO of Oracle kind of an odd duck.

Craig Peterson: [00:10:44] Oh yeah. He has the biggest Yacht in the world. And he is very, very, very, very strange, Larry Elison. This is going to be interesting on that front alone is TikTok going to become a charge for service? What's going to happen? But we're not going to get the security we want out of TikTok for some time. But I would imagine initially the servers are going to move directly in the US, under US control, and Oracles going to be mandated to not allow any of that data to go to China. They will probably be able to stop most of that from happening.

Jim Polito: [00:11:19] Unless, of course, there's some little sleeper bit of code somewhere in there that the Chinese have developed, but we'll see. Interesting. I feel better. Look, I never really cared about the Chinese knowing what I'm looking at on TikTok and where I am. I'm not important. But maybe we just don't want the Chinese to know what do Americans do and where do they go to be able to mine, that kind of information about us. Maybe in that respect, I don't care as an individual, but I care as a country. We'll see. The good thing is, Craig we have you here with us to watch this whole thing. Very helpful information, especially about voting and everything else.

So Craig, if people want to know more about Craig Peterson, I guess they can tune in on Saturdays, but there are other ways to reach you.

Craig Peterson: [00:12:11] Yeah. In fact, starting today, I have a couple of times a week. You got to have emails going out there about a three-minute read. I'm trying to keep these short to help you understand what's going on here in the tech business, particularly securities, I'm giving you some tips, some tricks, other things.

I'll be doing live pieces of training, all of this free. I'm not trying to sell something right. This isn't the way you might expect it to be, but I am going to be putting that out and you can get it by going to Craig peterson.com/subscribe, correct. peterson.com slash subscribe. You'll get my weekly newsletter, which covers everything Jim and I talk about.

And even some things we don't get to as well as some of this real quick minute training that I'm going to be doing.

Jim Polito: [00:12:58] That's fantastic. The Craig Peterson show, if you want to listen Saturday mornings at 11 o'clock on WTAG obviously in Western mass, you can use the iHeart radio app. And, there you have Mr. Peterson. We've got you covered front to back. Thank you. Craig so much enjoys the Canadian weather and we'll talk with you next week.

Craig Peterson: [00:13:19] Indian summer. Alright? Bye-bye.

Keep an eye out for this first email today, these three-minute emails. And let me know what you think if it's worth my doing, I think it is. And I'm sure it'll get better, but what do you think might make it a little bit better as well?

All right. Take care, everybody, and we'll be back tomorrow. 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

Welcome,

Good Monday morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jack Heath and we discussed some less tech news that he was interested in getting my take on. For more tech news of the week listen in on Saturday at 11:30 am on this station. Here we go with Jack.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit

- CraigPeterson.com

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. We've got a busy week I had where you keep it on your email box. Would you? I've got some new emails coming out here mid-week. We're starting training and it's basically going to start with email. We're trying to keep these down to about a three-minute read. I'll get you up to date, keep you up to date as we go forward.

Then we're going to be having some more live stuff on YouTube live and Facebook lives and elsewhere. It's going to be a busy time for me, but you know what? I think it's worth it. I've been doing this for so long and I want to help those of you who are in business and are worried about what's really happening.

It's gotten crazy out there in the cyber world. So many businesses destroyed, not just by the whole COVID response, but because of the bad guys they've just gone crazy. All right.

This morning I was on with Mr. Jack Heath and I was out with my phone. It didn't sound quite as good as it does when I'm in my studio, but, you know, Ce la vie.

We talked a little bit about a kind of a nontech issue, but kind of a tech issue. So here we go with Jack.

Jack Heath: [00:01:14] Joining us within a different time slot, because we got to get, we had to move, somethings around for, we're going to give you an update on those state's latest opioid numbers with Chris Stawasz.

Right now, Craig Peterson, our tech talk guy, Craig, you know, one of the realities. Good morning. Hope you had a good weekend. One of the realities of, indirect realities of the pandemic or COVID-19 whatever you want to say about this that no one really saw was. A real estate, the booming market here where people are moving.

I heard stories over the weekend, getting into bidding wars to buy New Hampshire property and homes. What of it has to do with the reality of technology and people can work virtually from anywhere in their leaving larger urban areas. Good morning, Craig.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:52] Yeah, it sure does. Jack. Good morning. We're seeing an amazing change now in businesses, some businesses such as the New York stock exchange, where there are people who interact with each other are planning on reopening. But we've seen businesses paying as much as, the highest I've seen right now is $60 million to break a lease because they are just not going to bring the people back.

Some of these people are afraid of living in some of the bigger cities plus are just tired of all of the mess they've had. They are moving out or moving to places like New Hampshire and there have been massive booms cross country once you're outside of the cities. I'm afraid we're going to see a lot of empty business real estate, and that might be the next thing to fall.

Jack Heath: [00:02:39] Yeah, I think that we'd already seen malls, sort of falling by the wayside, with online shopping. I don't think we've really calculated the commercial real estate hit in a lot of major, major cities. I mean, you take cities like Chicago or New York City where some companies, corporations may not be renewing the lease. Where they would they didn't just lease a little bit they might have leased a whole building or several floors at a building. Then think about this, Craig, it is not just the commercial building and the services around the building, it's all the ancillary businesses that support commuters, coffee shops, Bistros, restaurants in and around a building. Where you might've had 800 workers, a thousand workers, that's a small economy and you go across the country with larger cities and no one's really calculated the hit on commercial real estate. Then the Washington, DC even we're seeing fewer visitors. What about all those little lunch places or restaurants or bars? So it's a lot of collateral damage as well.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:35] Yeah, who knows maybe this is going to be another New Hampshire advantage going forward here.

Great place to live. As it turns out a great place to work. New Hampshire for the longest time had some of the highest numbers of per capita high tech jobs in the nation. We were number two. And I think this is going to help to really solidify that as people move out of the box, often the area and some of the bigger cities I'm worried yeah.

To about obviously our restaurant and other small businesses that have been hit so hard. I was just reading about what had happened post world war two because almost all of these restaurants had shut down. We saw hundreds opening after the troops came home. So this might actually end up being a pretty good sign for us right here in New Hampshire.

Jack Heath: [00:04:20] Well, the other thing, Craig, I know it's not a tech talk discussion, but it's a human discussion. As we will also have the challenge of trying to get younger families and people to move here. We were kind of had an age-drain where we were one of the faster aging States. I know you're not getting older Craig, but you know what I mean?

Now, all of a sudden now we're seeing a. You know, younger families, people, you know, in their thirties and forties and not retirement age, moving to New Hampshire. These are not just all baby boomers that are moving here.

Craig Peterson: [00:04:47] No, and these younger people and then I know a few myself who used to have to leave in order to get those jobs.

Even those internships are finding that they can stay. Now, there are even online training available for how to get an internship over zoom or Microsoft teams or, or any of these online sites, something we hadn't seen before. These kids have the opportunity to live wherever they want.

Jack Heath: [00:05:14] Not only that Craig, but there are also unintended consequences communities didn't count on maybe as many students virtually or physically because you've seen towns like Bow, New Hampshire, all of a sudden they've seen an influx of families and that means more students.

The other thing. Is, we don't know yet, I'm sort of half being facetious before we go to break. A lot of these people moving here, bring their politics with them.

The demographic changes that we see from this little influx that no one's really calculated yet, but over the last several weeks and months. I'm literally hearing about bidding wars, almost a weekly now, of property, go on the market and several people from out of state are bidding on the property.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:53] Yeah. And these younger families tend to have kids, and those kids have to go to school, and typically the tax burden on that count increases higher than the tax revenue from the younger families.

So, yeah, it's going to be quite the little mix-up. We get a lot of technology to talk about so I'll be back on Saturday at 1130 to go into it in more detail right here.

Jack Heath: [00:06:11] Thank you, Craig Peterson, Craig Peterson dot com. Make it a good Monday.

Craig Peterson: [00:06:14] Hey, I got a question for y'all too. Karen had said, you know, why don't you just ask the people who listen on the podcast, you know, there are hundreds of them. So maybe they've got an idea, but I am going to be offering kind of a "done it for you" thing, right. It's what I've been doing for the last 30 years now, cybersecurity for businesses. So it's my team and I, it's a family operation and we help businesses by just taking over the cybersecurity side of their business. You know, they still have the people working within the business. They're the guys and gals that fix computers, help answer questions, and evaluate new products and all that sort of stuff.

But what would you do you call that? Right. We internally we call it, do it for them. That's what most people seem to want nowadays anyways because they who has time to learn this stuff. It's impossible to not only learn but keep up with it's just changing soul racks. What would you call a done for you type thing when we're talking about cybersecurity. Let me know what you guys think.

Just email [email protected]. So I can see that I'm going to try and pay a little closer attention to my email this week, even though I have a lot to do as you try and get some of these new things online, but what would you think we should call a service offering as a managed security services provider? The oldest in new England? What should we call that?

Anyways, let me know. Take care. everybody. Talk to you later. 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

Welcome,

Good Monday morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jack Heath and we discussed some less tech news that he was interested in getting my take on.  For more tech news of the week listen in on Saturday at 11:30 am on this station.  Here we go with Jack. 

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit

- CraigPeterson.com

--- 

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. We've got a busy week I had where you keep it on your email box. Would you? I've got some new emails coming out here mid-week. We're starting training and it's basically going to start with email. We're trying to keep these down to about a three-minute read. I'll get you up to date, keep you up to date as we go forward.

Then we're going to be having some more live stuff on YouTube live and Facebook lives and elsewhere. It's going to be a busy time for me, but you know what? I think it's worth it. I've been doing this for so long and I want to help those of you who are in business and are worried about what's really happening.

It's gotten crazy out there in the cyber world. So many businesses destroyed, not just by the whole COVID response, but because of the bad guys they've just gone crazy. All right.

This morning I was on with Mr. Jack Heath and I was out with my phone. It didn't sound quite as good as it does when I'm in my studio, but, you know, Ce la vie.

We talked a little bit about a kind of a nontech issue, but kind of a tech issue. So here we go with Jack.

Jack Heath: [00:01:14] Joining us within a different time slot, because we got to get, we had to move, somethings around for, we're going to give you an update on those state's latest opioid numbers with Chris Stawasz.

Right now, Craig Peterson, our tech talk guy, Craig, you know, one of the realities. Good morning. Hope you had a good weekend. One of the realities of,  indirect realities of the pandemic or COVID-19 whatever you want to say about this that no one really saw was. A real estate, the booming market here where people are moving.

I heard stories over the weekend, getting into bidding wars to buy New Hampshire property and homes. What of it has to do with the reality of technology and people can work virtually from anywhere in their leaving larger urban areas. Good morning, Craig.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:52] Yeah, it sure does. Jack. Good morning. We're seeing an amazing change now in businesses, some businesses such as the New York stock exchange, where there are people who interact with each other are planning on reopening. But we've seen businesses paying as much as, the highest I've seen right now is $60 million to break a lease because they are just not going to bring the people back.

Some of these people are afraid of living in some of the bigger cities plus are just tired of all of the mess they've had. They are moving out or moving to places like New Hampshire and there have been massive booms cross country once you're outside of the cities. I'm afraid we're going to see a lot of empty business real estate, and that might be the next thing to fall.

Jack Heath: [00:02:39] Yeah, I think that we'd already seen malls, sort of falling by the wayside, with online shopping. I don't think we've really calculated the commercial real estate hit in a lot of major, major cities. I mean, you take cities like Chicago or New York City where some companies, corporations may not be renewing the lease. Where they would they didn't just lease a little bit they might have leased a whole building or several floors at a building. Then think about this, Craig, it is not just the commercial building and the services around the building, it's all the ancillary businesses that support commuters, coffee shops, Bistros, restaurants in and around a building. Where you might've had 800 workers, a thousand workers, that's a small economy and you go across the country with larger cities and no one's really calculated the hit on commercial real estate. Then the Washington, DC even we're seeing fewer visitors. What about all those little lunch places or restaurants or bars? So it's a lot of collateral damage as well.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:35] Yeah, who knows maybe this is going to be another New Hampshire advantage going forward here.

Great place to live. As it turns out a great place to work. New Hampshire for the longest time had some of the highest numbers of per capita high tech jobs in the nation. We were number two. And I think this is going to help to really solidify that as people move out of the box, often the area and some of the bigger cities I'm worried yeah.

To about obviously our restaurant and other small businesses that have been hit so hard. I was just reading about what had happened post world war two because almost all of these restaurants had shut down. We saw hundreds opening after the troops came home. So this might actually end up being a pretty good sign for us right here in New Hampshire.

Jack Heath: [00:04:20] Well, the other thing, Craig, I know it's not a tech talk discussion, but it's a human discussion. As we will also have the challenge of trying to get younger families and people to move here. We were kind of had an age-drain where we were one of the faster aging States. I know you're not getting older Craig, but you know what I mean?

Now, all of a sudden now we're seeing a. You know, younger families, people, you know, in their thirties and forties and not retirement age, moving to New Hampshire. These are not just all baby boomers that are moving here.

Craig Peterson: [00:04:47] No, and these younger people and then I know a few myself who used to have to leave in order to get those jobs.

Even those internships are finding that they can stay. Now, there are even online training available for how to get an internship over zoom or Microsoft teams or, or any of these online sites, something we hadn't seen before. These kids have the opportunity to live wherever they want.

Jack Heath: [00:05:14] Not only that Craig, but there are also unintended consequences communities didn't count on maybe as many students virtually or physically because you've seen towns like Bow, New Hampshire, all of a sudden they've seen an influx of families and that means more students.

The other thing. Is, we don't know yet, I'm sort of half being facetious before we go to break. A lot of these people moving here, bring their politics with them.

The demographic changes that we see from this little influx that no one's really calculated yet, but over the last several weeks and months. I'm literally hearing about bidding wars, almost a weekly now, of property, go on the market and several people from out of state are bidding on the property.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:53] Yeah. And these younger families tend to have kids, and those kids have to go to school, and typically the tax burden on that count increases higher than the tax revenue from the younger families.

So, yeah, it's going to be quite the little mix-up. We get a lot of technology to talk about so I'll be back on Saturday at 1130 to go into it in more detail right here.

Jack Heath: [00:06:11] Thank you, Craig Peterson, Craig Peterson dot com. Make it a good Monday.

Craig Peterson: [00:06:14] Hey, I got a question for y'all too. Karen had said, you know, why don't you just ask the people who listen on the podcast, you know, there are hundreds of them. So maybe they've got an idea, but I am going to be offering kind of a "done it for you" thing, right. It's what I've been doing for the last 30 years now, cybersecurity for businesses. So it's my team and I, it's a family operation and we help businesses by just taking over the cybersecurity side of their business. You know, they still have the people working within the business. They're the guys and gals that fix computers, help answer questions, and evaluate new products and all that sort of stuff.

But what would you do you call that? Right. We internally we call it, do it for them.  That's what most people seem to want nowadays anyways because they who has time to learn this stuff. It's impossible to not only learn but keep up with it's just changing soul racks. What would you call a done for you type thing when we're talking about cybersecurity. Let me know what you guys think.

Just email [email protected]. So I can see that I'm going to try and pay a little closer attention to my email this week, even though I have a lot to do as you try and get some of these new things online, but what would you think we should call a service offering as a managed security services provider? The oldest in new England? What should we call that?

Anyways, let me know. Take care. everybody. Talk to you later. 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

Welcome,

Good Monday morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jack Heath and we discussed some less tech news that he was interested in getting my take on.  For more tech news of the week listen in on Saturday at 11:30 am on this station.  Here we go with Jack. 

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit

- CraigPeterson.com

--- 

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. We've got a busy week I had where you keep it on your email box. Would you? I've got some new emails coming out here mid-week. We're starting training and it's basically going to start with email. We're trying to keep these down to about a three-minute read. I'll get you up to date, keep you up to date as we go forward.

Then we're going to be having some more live stuff on YouTube live and Facebook lives and elsewhere. It's going to be a busy time for me, but you know what? I think it's worth it. I've been doing this for so long and I want to help those of you who are in business and are worried about what's really happening.

It's gotten crazy out there in the cyber world. So many businesses destroyed, not just by the whole COVID response, but because of the bad guys they've just gone crazy. All right.

This morning I was on with Mr. Jack Heath and I was out with my phone. It didn't sound quite as good as it does when I'm in my studio, but, you know, Ce la vie.

We talked a little bit about a kind of a nontech issue, but kind of a tech issue. So here we go with Jack.

Jack Heath: [00:01:14] Joining us within a different time slot, because we got to get, we had to move, somethings around for, we're going to give you an update on those state's latest opioid numbers with Chris Stawasz.

Right now, Craig Peterson, our tech talk guy, Craig, you know, one of the realities. Good morning. Hope you had a good weekend. One of the realities of,  indirect realities of the pandemic or COVID-19 whatever you want to say about this that no one really saw was. A real estate, the booming market here where people are moving.

I heard stories over the weekend, getting into bidding wars to buy New Hampshire property and homes. What of it has to do with the reality of technology and people can work virtually from anywhere in their leaving larger urban areas. Good morning, Craig.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:52] Yeah, it sure does. Jack. Good morning. We're seeing an amazing change now in businesses, some businesses such as the New York stock exchange, where there are people who interact with each other are planning on reopening. But we've seen businesses paying as much as, the highest I've seen right now is $60 million to break a lease because they are just not going to bring the people back.

Some of these people are afraid of living in some of the bigger cities plus are just tired of all of the mess they've had. They are moving out or moving to places like New Hampshire and there have been massive booms cross country once you're outside of the cities. I'm afraid we're going to see a lot of empty business real estate, and that might be the next thing to fall.

Jack Heath: [00:02:39] Yeah, I think that we'd already seen malls, sort of falling by the wayside, with online shopping. I don't think we've really calculated the commercial real estate hit in a lot of major, major cities. I mean, you take cities like Chicago or New York City where some companies, corporations may not be renewing the lease. Where they would they didn't just lease a little bit they might have leased a whole building or several floors at a building. Then think about this, Craig, it is not just the commercial building and the services around the building, it's all the ancillary businesses that support commuters, coffee shops, Bistros, restaurants in and around a building. Where you might've had 800 workers, a thousand workers, that's a small economy and you go across the country with larger cities and no one's really calculated the hit on commercial real estate. Then the Washington, DC even we're seeing fewer visitors. What about all those little lunch places or restaurants or bars? So it's a lot of collateral damage as well.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:35] Yeah, who knows maybe this is going to be another New Hampshire advantage going forward here.

Great place to live. As it turns out a great place to work. New Hampshire for the longest time had some of the highest numbers of per capita high tech jobs in the nation. We were number two. And I think this is going to help to really solidify that as people move out of the box, often the area and some of the bigger cities I'm worried yeah.

To about obviously our restaurant and other small businesses that have been hit so hard. I was just reading about what had happened post world war two because almost all of these restaurants had shut down. We saw hundreds opening after the troops came home. So this might actually end up being a pretty good sign for us right here in New Hampshire.

Jack Heath: [00:04:20] Well, the other thing, Craig, I know it's not a tech talk discussion, but it's a human discussion. As we will also have the challenge of trying to get younger families and people to move here. We were kind of had an age-drain where we were one of the faster aging States. I know you're not getting older Craig, but you know what I mean?

Now, all of a sudden now we're seeing a. You know, younger families, people, you know, in their thirties and forties and not retirement age, moving to New Hampshire. These are not just all baby boomers that are moving here.

Craig Peterson: [00:04:47] No, and these younger people and then I know a few myself who used to have to leave in order to get those jobs.

Even those internships are finding that they can stay. Now, there are even online training available for how to get an internship over zoom or Microsoft teams or, or any of these online sites, something we hadn't seen before. These kids have the opportunity to live wherever they want.

Jack Heath: [00:05:14] Not only that Craig, but there are also unintended consequences communities didn't count on maybe as many students virtually or physically because you've seen towns like Bow, New Hampshire, all of a sudden they've seen an influx of families and that means more students.

The other thing. Is, we don't know yet, I'm sort of half being facetious before we go to break. A lot of these people moving here, bring their politics with them.

The demographic changes that we see from this little influx that no one's really calculated yet, but over the last several weeks and months. I'm literally hearing about bidding wars, almost a weekly now, of property, go on the market and several people from out of state are bidding on the property.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:53] Yeah. And these younger families tend to have kids, and those kids have to go to school, and typically the tax burden on that count increases higher than the tax revenue from the younger families.

So, yeah, it's going to be quite the little mix-up. We get a lot of technology to talk about so I'll be back on Saturday at 1130 to go into it in more detail right here.

Jack Heath: [00:06:11] Thank you, Craig Peterson, Craig Peterson dot com. Make it a good Monday.

Craig Peterson: [00:06:14] Hey, I got a question for y'all too. Karen had said, you know, why don't you just ask the people who listen on the podcast, you know, there are hundreds of them. So maybe they've got an idea, but I am going to be offering kind of a "done it for you" thing, right. It's what I've been doing for the last 30 years now, cybersecurity for businesses. So it's my team and I, it's a family operation and we help businesses by just taking over the cybersecurity side of their business. You know, they still have the people working within the business. They're the guys and gals that fix computers, help answer questions, and evaluate new products and all that sort of stuff.

But what would you do you call that? Right. We internally we call it, do it for them.  That's what most people seem to want nowadays anyways because they who has time to learn this stuff. It's impossible to not only learn but keep up with it's just changing soul racks. What would you call a done for you type thing when we're talking about cybersecurity. Let me know what you guys think.

Just email [email protected]. So I can see that I'm going to try and pay a little closer attention to my email this week, even though I have a lot to do as you try and get some of these new things online, but what would you think we should call a service offering as a managed security services provider? The oldest in new England? What should we call that?

Anyways, let me know. Take care. everybody. Talk to you later. 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

Welcome!

Craig explains contact tracing and how Apple 13.7 and Google Android are using it to help respond in this Pandemic.

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

---

Read More:

iOS 13.7 launched today with a new system for battling the pandemic

Hackers are exploiting a critical flaw affecting >350,000 WordPress sites

The accidental notary: Apple approves notorious malware to run on Macs

Most IoT Hardware Dangerously Easy to Crack

55% of Cybersquatted Domains are Malicious or Potentially Fraudulent

Feds Can't Ask Google for Every Phone in a 100-meter Radius, Court Says

The Hidden Cost of Losing Security Talent

Don't forget Cybersecurity on Your Back-to-School List

---

Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] A lot of Great comments about last week show, appreciate you guys joining us today. Of course, this is Craig Peterson and as usual, we've got a lot of technology to talk about and some security stuff as well. So here we go.

Emily: [00:00:19] And now, here's Craig

Craig Peterson: [00:00:21] Hopefully you were able to join me earlier this week as I was on during drive time talking about many of these issues. We usually only get to talk about two or three, and you've probably seen in your newsletter email this morning, that most weeks we have, I don't know eight. To 12 different topics that I think are really important.

So we get to a bunch of those today on the radio show. And of course, in my email, in that newsletter, I've been adding an Ask Craig's section. You probably noticed that and these are some questions that people have asked me directly in response to the newsletter, or just like you guys can email [email protected] anytime.

And I figured those are the things everybody really wants me to spend a little time on. So that's exactly what I do. You'll get those of course during the week.

Right now we're going to be talking about this new iOS version. In fact, it might even talk about the one after that because that's been hitting the news due to some critical flaws.

If you have a website and it is that time for elections and businesses to try and grow. If you're a candidate or a business, or you are running a website for the local soccer club a year are gonna want to hear this about WordPress. And, we've got a really sad little story here about a mistake Apple made, but they cleaned up after themselves.

So that's a little bit about what's going on today. We've got more of that as well as we go forward. So let's start with the whole iOS 13.7.

Those of us who've been using iOS for a while. We all know that we do get updates, right? That's one of the real advantages to the Apple ecosystem over some of these others out there, particularly the Android.

I know I can hear you guys now. Phew. Phew. In particular, Android, I use Android. In fact, I was chatting with a friend of mine. Who became a friend because he was a customer first. He was the chief technology officer for the state of New Hampshire. And I had done a whole bunch of stuff for the state over the years and had set up the nh.gov domain and all of the communications and everything.

It was interesting cause I hadn't talked to him and. The better part of a decade, maybe even more. and he said, so what kind of phone do you have? He says you gotta have an Android. And I said, no, I don't. Because he knows, I like to tinker with technology. And if you're a tinkerer, Oh, that's where the Android comes in handy. But the biggest problem with Android, and the main reason I don't have one, are you just don't get the updates. You don't have the stability that you have in Apple Ecosystem for your Apple, your iOS devices, your iPhone.

Apple launched a new version of iOS here a little over a week ago. It was called 13.7. It adds a few different features, but one of the ones that really surprised everybody was something called notifications express. Now, remember we talked a few months ago about Apple and Google getting together and they came up with a methodology that could be used in order to track people that come in contact with each other. The idea behind it was, Hey, listen, we want to be able to let people know if they've come in contact with somebody that had COVID-19 symptoms.

You know the contact tracing stuff that you talking about now. Whether or not COVID-19 is, the killer that they want everybody to believe, or maybe something else is going on. That's not the topic I'm going to get into right now. But what this does allow you to do is tie in for some of the contact tracing apps.

You may be familiar with Sturgis and the big motorcycle rally. They hold out there every year, even this year. The complaints now that they're a quarter-million new cases, actually it was a little higher than that of COVID-19 have been spread. It's going to be a super spreader. There's no hard evidence of that I've seen and I've read quite a few articles on it. No definitive studies, certainly at least not yet.

What does this all mean? It means if someone gets sick, they're going to have to track it down. We've seen that happen in Europe, a lot. Look at New Zealand, for instance, they had a major outbreak. One person had COVID-19 symptoms and then apparently spread it to 13 others.

There's another one just here in Maine that happened a few weeks back. Apparently these people had attended a wedding and then spread the COVID-19. There's a number of deaths associated with that. The deaths were people that weren't even at the event, but who got it from people who had been at the event and passed it all along.

Well, this is a new rollout from Apple second phase, we had software updates in may that included this application, programming interfaces, API to help public health authorities to develop their apps for their own use, for this purpose. We've had some countries that have already used that some in Eastern Europe, down in again, New Zealand they've been trying to track people that are part of this group that started this spread again. In fact, they locked down the whole country. Again, I'm not going to get into today. Oh, that's for another show.

With the second phase, now, the authorities can get high tech exposure tracking without developing their own apps. So phase one, Apple added the API. So people well could write apps. Some third parties did write some apps.

Now they can do that the tracking without the API, Google has, this is not released in an Android software update yet. It does have its own version of exposure notifications express and later this month, Android six or later, devices are supposed to be able to get that update.

Again, the problem with Android, most devices will never have that update available to them. In this case, just like with Apple's solution, they're going to be able to get these notifications letting them know, they may have been exposed. This is built right into the operating system in the Apple iOS version, but in the Google world, Android users are to have to download an app.

We'll see what happens, ultimately here, users who are in participating states are prompted there. They are said, Hey, listen, do you want to receive notifications? If the contact tracing app, if this app indicates that they may have been exposed and then the users advise on the next steps to take. That has to do with the user's local public health authority. So far, we've got Maryland, Nevada, Virginia, and the district of Columbia participating in what's called the exposure notifications express system. Yeah. More expected to come later. There are states such as, again, Virginia, North Dakota. I am my Hill mean Alabama, Arizona, Nevada, who all came up with their own apps or bought apps from third parties using this API.

We've got 20 countries that already have exposure tracking apps that they're using. And we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens here. At least you're given the option. It's not like in China where you don't have the option. You have to carry your smartphone and that smartphone does track you and does track your contacts. We'll see.

Ipads by the way, are not included in that. Now I mentioned at the beginning of this. Something about the next major version of iOS 14 and there is a whole lot of controversy about it. Apple has said that they're going to push it out a little bit. We'll see how far out that'll be. They're supposed to have a conference that has come in week one of their big Apple meetings, or they're going to announce all the new stuff. We'll see what iOS 14 has in it. Remember Apple does not make money off of selling information about you, does not sell your data the exact opposite of what Google does, right? Google, the people who gave us Android. So Apple doesn't sell our data. Google is in the business of selling our data as quickly and as much of it as they possibly can. Another reason not to use Android.

In this case now, with iOS 14, Apple is locking down your privacy even further and companies that are like Facebook, that also are in the business of selling your data are rather upset because what is going to happen with iOS 14, as it exists right now is they are going to totally squash the ability for these guys to track you.

That to me seems like a pretty big deal. We'll see you ultimately, what ends up happening? 13.7, by the way, this really, yeah, just came out is probably the last update before 14 comes out. But who knows? There've been so many complaints from companies that are in the business of collecting and selling your data. It might still be a little while before that happens.

I want to give you guys a little tip, here again, I give this out and I should make this it's an every week sort of thing. I'll probably mention it again during the show today, but make sure you go to have I been poned.com. How have I been PWNED dot com there are features for businesses as well, but. You go there, you put in your email address, and just like I explained last week, it will tell you where on the dark web it finds your email address. It'll tell you about the breaches that your email address might've been found in and also what data was stolen as part of that breach so that you know, and then really, I want everyone to remember. It's a dangerous world out there. And it's way more dangerous now that we have so many people working from home.

I've got another one. We'll talk about a little bit later here called jigsaw.

But when we get back, we're going to talk about a different kind of patch. I bet one, you may not have heard before, and if you're a business, you've got to make sure that you stick around because 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

Welcome!

Craig explains contact tracing and how Apple 13.7 and Google Android are using it to help respond in this Pandemic. 

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

---

Read More:

iOS 13.7 launched today with a new system for battling the pandemic

Hackers are exploiting a critical flaw affecting >350,000 WordPress sites

The accidental notary: Apple approves notorious malware to run on Macs

Most IoT Hardware Dangerously Easy to Crack

55% of Cybersquatted Domains are Malicious or Potentially Fraudulent

Feds Can’t Ask Google for Every Phone in a 100-meter Radius, Court Says

The Hidden Cost of Losing Security Talent

Don’t forget Cybersecurity on Your Back-to-School List

---

Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] A lot of Great comments about last week show, appreciate you guys joining us today. Of course, this is Craig Peterson and as usual, we've got a lot of technology to talk about and some security stuff as well. So here we go.

Emily: [00:00:19] And now, here's Craig

Craig Peterson: [00:00:21] Hopefully you were able to join me earlier this week as I was on during drive time talking about many of these issues. We usually only get to talk about two or three, and you've probably seen in your newsletter email this morning, that most weeks we have, I don't know eight. To 12 different topics that I think are really important.

So we get to a bunch of those today on the radio show. And of course, in my email, in that newsletter, I've been adding an Ask Craig's section. You probably noticed that and these are some questions that people have asked me directly in response to the newsletter, or just like you guys can email [email protected] anytime.

And I figured those are the things everybody really wants me to spend a little time on. So that's exactly what I do. You'll get those of course during the week.

Right now we're going to be talking about this new iOS version. In fact, it might even talk about the one after that because that's been hitting the news due to some critical flaws.

If you have a website and it is that time for elections and businesses to try and grow. If you're a candidate or a business, or you are running a website for the local soccer club a year are gonna want to hear this about WordPress. And, we've got a really sad little story here about a mistake Apple made, but they cleaned up after themselves.

So that's a little bit about what's going on today. We've got more of that as well as we go forward. So let's start with the whole iOS 13.7.

Those of us who've been using iOS for a while. We all know that we do get updates, right? That's one of the real advantages to the Apple ecosystem over some of these others out there, particularly the Android.

 I know I can hear you guys now. Phew. Phew. In particular, Android, I use Android. In fact, I was chatting with a friend of mine. Who became a friend because he was a customer first. He was the chief technology officer for the state of New Hampshire. And I had done a whole bunch of stuff for the state over the years and had set up the nh.gov domain and all of the communications and everything.

It was interesting cause I hadn't talked to him and. The better part of a decade, maybe even more. and he said, so what kind of phone do you have? He says you gotta have an Android. And I said, no, I don't. Because he knows, I like to tinker with technology. And if you're a tinkerer, Oh, that's where the Android comes in handy. But the biggest problem with Android, and the main reason I don't have one, are you just don't get the updates. You don't have the stability that you have in Apple Ecosystem for your Apple, your iOS devices, your iPhone.

Apple launched a new version of iOS here a little over a week ago. It was called 13.7. It adds a few different features, but one of the ones that really surprised everybody was something called notifications express. Now, remember we talked a few months ago about Apple and Google getting together and they came up with a methodology that could be used in order to track people that come in contact with each other. The idea behind it was, Hey, listen, we want to be able to let people know if they've come in contact with somebody that had COVID-19 symptoms.

You know the contact tracing stuff that you talking about now. Whether or not COVID-19 is, the killer that they want everybody to believe, or maybe something else is going on. That's not the topic I'm going to get into right now. But what this does allow you to do is tie in for some of the contact tracing apps.

You may be familiar with Sturgis and the big motorcycle rally. They hold out there every year, even this year.  The complaints now that they're a quarter-million new cases, actually it was a little higher than that of COVID-19 have been spread. It's going to be a super spreader. There's no hard evidence of that I've seen and I've read quite a few articles on it. No definitive studies, certainly at least not yet.

What does this all mean? It means if someone gets sick, they're going to have to track it down. We've seen that happen in Europe, a lot. Look at New Zealand, for instance, they had a major outbreak. One person had COVID-19 symptoms and then apparently spread it to 13 others.

There's another one just here in Maine that happened a few weeks back. Apparently these people had attended a wedding and then spread the COVID-19. There's a number of deaths associated with that. The deaths were people that weren't even at the event, but who got it from people who had been at the event and passed it all along.

Well, this is a new rollout from Apple second phase, we had software updates in may that included this application, programming interfaces, API to help public health authorities to develop their apps for their own use, for this purpose. We've had some countries that have already used that some in Eastern Europe, down in again, New Zealand they've been trying to track people that are part of this group that started this spread again. In fact, they locked down the whole country. Again, I'm not going to get into today. Oh, that's for another show.

With the second phase, now, the authorities can get high tech exposure tracking without developing their own apps. So phase one, Apple added the API. So people well could write apps. Some third parties did write some apps.

Now they can do that the tracking without the API, Google has, this is not released in an Android software update yet. It does have its own version of exposure notifications express and later this month, Android six or later, devices are supposed to be able to get that update.

Again, the problem with Android, most devices will never have that update available to them. In this case, just like with Apple's solution, they're going to be able to get these notifications letting them know, they may have been exposed. This is built right into the operating system in the Apple iOS version, but in the Google world, Android users are to have to download an app.

We'll see what happens, ultimately here, users who are in participating states are prompted there. They are said, Hey, listen, do you want to receive notifications? If the contact tracing app, if this app indicates that they may have been exposed and then the users advise on the next steps to take. That has to do with the user's local public health authority. So far, we've got Maryland, Nevada, Virginia, and the district of Columbia participating in what's called the exposure notifications express system. Yeah. More expected to come later. There are states such as, again, Virginia, North Dakota. I am my Hill mean Alabama, Arizona, Nevada, who all came up with their own apps or bought apps from third parties using this API.

We've got 20 countries that already have exposure tracking apps that they're using. And we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens here. At least you're given the option. It's not like in China where you don't have the option. You have to carry your smartphone and that smartphone does track you and does track your contacts. We'll see.

 Ipads by the way, are not included in that. Now I mentioned at the beginning of this. Something about the next major version of iOS 14 and there is a whole lot of controversy about it. Apple has said that they're going to push it out a little bit. We'll see how far out that'll be. They're supposed to have a conference that has come in week one of their big Apple meetings, or they're going to announce all the new stuff. We'll see what iOS 14 has in it. Remember Apple does not make money off of selling information about you, does not sell your data the exact opposite of what Google does, right? Google, the people who gave us Android. So Apple doesn't sell our data. Google is in the business of selling our data as quickly and as much of it as they possibly can. Another reason not to use Android.

 In this case now, with iOS 14, Apple is locking down your privacy even further and companies that are like Facebook, that also are in the business of selling your data are rather upset because what is going to happen with iOS 14, as it exists right now is they are going to totally squash the ability for these guys to track you.

That to me seems like a pretty big deal. We'll see you ultimately, what ends up happening? 13.7, by the way, this really, yeah, just came out is probably the last update before 14 comes out. But who knows? There've been so many complaints from companies that are in the business of collecting and selling your data. It might still be a little while before that happens.

I want to give you guys a little tip, here again, I give this out and I should make this it's an every week sort of thing. I'll probably mention it again during the show today, but make sure you go to have I been poned.com. How have I been PWNED dot com there are features for businesses as well, but. You go there, you put in your email address, and just like I explained last week, it will tell you where on the dark web it finds your email address. It'll tell you about the breaches that your email address might've been found in and also what data was stolen as part of that breach so that you know, and then really, I want everyone to remember. It's a dangerous world out there. And it's way more dangerous now that we have so many people working from home.

I've got another one. We'll talk about a little bit later here called jigsaw.

But when we get back, we're going to talk about a different kind of patch. I bet one, you may not have heard before, and if you're a business, you've got to make sure that you stick around because 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

Welcome!

Craig explains contact tracing and how Apple 13.7 and Google Android are using it to help respond in this Pandemic. 

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

---

Read More:

iOS 13.7 launched today with a new system for battling the pandemic

Hackers are exploiting a critical flaw affecting >350,000 WordPress sites

The accidental notary: Apple approves notorious malware to run on Macs

Most IoT Hardware Dangerously Easy to Crack

55% of Cybersquatted Domains are Malicious or Potentially Fraudulent

Feds Can’t Ask Google for Every Phone in a 100-meter Radius, Court Says

The Hidden Cost of Losing Security Talent

Don’t forget Cybersecurity on Your Back-to-School List

---

Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] A lot of Great comments about last week show, appreciate you guys joining us today. Of course, this is Craig Peterson and as usual, we've got a lot of technology to talk about and some security stuff as well. So here we go.

Emily: [00:00:19] And now, here's Craig

Craig Peterson: [00:00:21] Hopefully you were able to join me earlier this week as I was on during drive time talking about many of these issues. We usually only get to talk about two or three, and you've probably seen in your newsletter email this morning, that most weeks we have, I don't know eight. To 12 different topics that I think are really important.

So we get to a bunch of those today on the radio show. And of course, in my email, in that newsletter, I've been adding an Ask Craig's section. You probably noticed that and these are some questions that people have asked me directly in response to the newsletter, or just like you guys can email [email protected] anytime.

And I figured those are the things everybody really wants me to spend a little time on. So that's exactly what I do. You'll get those of course during the week.

Right now we're going to be talking about this new iOS version. In fact, it might even talk about the one after that because that's been hitting the news due to some critical flaws.

If you have a website and it is that time for elections and businesses to try and grow. If you're a candidate or a business, or you are running a website for the local soccer club a year are gonna want to hear this about WordPress. And, we've got a really sad little story here about a mistake Apple made, but they cleaned up after themselves.

So that's a little bit about what's going on today. We've got more of that as well as we go forward. So let's start with the whole iOS 13.7.

Those of us who've been using iOS for a while. We all know that we do get updates, right? That's one of the real advantages to the Apple ecosystem over some of these others out there, particularly the Android.

 I know I can hear you guys now. Phew. Phew. In particular, Android, I use Android. In fact, I was chatting with a friend of mine. Who became a friend because he was a customer first. He was the chief technology officer for the state of New Hampshire. And I had done a whole bunch of stuff for the state over the years and had set up the nh.gov domain and all of the communications and everything.

It was interesting cause I hadn't talked to him and. The better part of a decade, maybe even more. and he said, so what kind of phone do you have? He says you gotta have an Android. And I said, no, I don't. Because he knows, I like to tinker with technology. And if you're a tinkerer, Oh, that's where the Android comes in handy. But the biggest problem with Android, and the main reason I don't have one, are you just don't get the updates. You don't have the stability that you have in Apple Ecosystem for your Apple, your iOS devices, your iPhone.

Apple launched a new version of iOS here a little over a week ago. It was called 13.7. It adds a few different features, but one of the ones that really surprised everybody was something called notifications express. Now, remember we talked a few months ago about Apple and Google getting together and they came up with a methodology that could be used in order to track people that come in contact with each other. The idea behind it was, Hey, listen, we want to be able to let people know if they've come in contact with somebody that had COVID-19 symptoms.

You know the contact tracing stuff that you talking about now. Whether or not COVID-19 is, the killer that they want everybody to believe, or maybe something else is going on. That's not the topic I'm going to get into right now. But what this does allow you to do is tie in for some of the contact tracing apps.

You may be familiar with Sturgis and the big motorcycle rally. They hold out there every year, even this year.  The complaints now that they're a quarter-million new cases, actually it was a little higher than that of COVID-19 have been spread. It's going to be a super spreader. There's no hard evidence of that I've seen and I've read quite a few articles on it. No definitive studies, certainly at least not yet.

What does this all mean? It means if someone gets sick, they're going to have to track it down. We've seen that happen in Europe, a lot. Look at New Zealand, for instance, they had a major outbreak. One person had COVID-19 symptoms and then apparently spread it to 13 others.

There's another one just here in Maine that happened a few weeks back. Apparently these people had attended a wedding and then spread the COVID-19. There's a number of deaths associated with that. The deaths were people that weren't even at the event, but who got it from people who had been at the event and passed it all along.

Well, this is a new rollout from Apple second phase, we had software updates in may that included this application, programming interfaces, API to help public health authorities to develop their apps for their own use, for this purpose. We've had some countries that have already used that some in Eastern Europe, down in again, New Zealand they've been trying to track people that are part of this group that started this spread again. In fact, they locked down the whole country. Again, I'm not going to get into today. Oh, that's for another show.

With the second phase, now, the authorities can get high tech exposure tracking without developing their own apps. So phase one, Apple added the API. So people well could write apps. Some third parties did write some apps.

Now they can do that the tracking without the API, Google has, this is not released in an Android software update yet. It does have its own version of exposure notifications express and later this month, Android six or later, devices are supposed to be able to get that update.

Again, the problem with Android, most devices will never have that update available to them. In this case, just like with Apple's solution, they're going to be able to get these notifications letting them know, they may have been exposed. This is built right into the operating system in the Apple iOS version, but in the Google world, Android users are to have to download an app.

We'll see what happens, ultimately here, users who are in participating states are prompted there. They are said, Hey, listen, do you want to receive notifications? If the contact tracing app, if this app indicates that they may have been exposed and then the users advise on the next steps to take. That has to do with the user's local public health authority. So far, we've got Maryland, Nevada, Virginia, and the district of Columbia participating in what's called the exposure notifications express system. Yeah. More expected to come later. There are states such as, again, Virginia, North Dakota. I am my Hill mean Alabama, Arizona, Nevada, who all came up with their own apps or bought apps from third parties using this API.

We've got 20 countries that already have exposure tracking apps that they're using. And we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens here. At least you're given the option. It's not like in China where you don't have the option. You have to carry your smartphone and that smartphone does track you and does track your contacts. We'll see.

 Ipads by the way, are not included in that. Now I mentioned at the beginning of this. Something about the next major version of iOS 14 and there is a whole lot of controversy about it. Apple has said that they're going to push it out a little bit. We'll see how far out that'll be. They're supposed to have a conference that has come in week one of their big Apple meetings, or they're going to announce all the new stuff. We'll see what iOS 14 has in it. Remember Apple does not make money off of selling information about you, does not sell your data the exact opposite of what Google does, right? Google, the people who gave us Android. So Apple doesn't sell our data. Google is in the business of selling our data as quickly and as much of it as they possibly can. Another reason not to use Android.

 In this case now, with iOS 14, Apple is locking down your privacy even further and companies that are like Facebook, that also are in the business of selling your data are rather upset because what is going to happen with iOS 14, as it exists right now is they are going to totally squash the ability for these guys to track you.

That to me seems like a pretty big deal. We'll see you ultimately, what ends up happening? 13.7, by the way, this really, yeah, just came out is probably the last update before 14 comes out. But who knows? There've been so many complaints from companies that are in the business of collecting and selling your data. It might still be a little while before that happens.

I want to give you guys a little tip, here again, I give this out and I should make this it's an every week sort of thing. I'll probably mention it again during the show today, but make sure you go to have I been poned.com. How have I been PWNED dot com there are features for businesses as well, but. You go there, you put in your email address, and just like I explained last week, it will tell you where on the dark web it finds your email address. It'll tell you about the breaches that your email address might've been found in and also what data was stolen as part of that breach so that you know, and then really, I want everyone to remember. It's a dangerous world out there. And it's way more dangerous now that we have so many people working from home.

I've got another one. We'll talk about a little bit later here called jigsaw.

But when we get back, we're going to talk about a different kind of patch. I bet one, you may not have heard before, and if you're a business, you've got to make sure that you stick around because 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

Welcome!

Craig Explains Why companies believe that they are Completely Patched up and Why it means more than your Operating System.

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

---

Read More:

iOS 13.7 launched today with a new system for battling the pandemic

Hackers are exploiting a critical flaw affecting >350,000 WordPress sites

The accidental notary: Apple approves notorious malware to run on Macs

Most IoT Hardware Dangerously Easy to Crack

55% of Cybersquatted Domains are Malicious or Potentially Fraudulent

Feds Can't Ask Google for Every Phone in a 100-meter Radius, Court Says

The Hidden Cost of Losing Security Talent

Don't forget Cybersecurity on Your Back-to-School List

---

Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey, do you have a 99% patch rate? Gonna talk right now about why that is a load of UMHUM in every case that I've ever seen?

Craig Peterson here and here we go.

Hey everybody. Thanks for joining me today. this is something that I don't know if I can ever repeat enough, but I want to take a little bit of a different angle on this than I have before. Most of us know that we're supposed to patch. What do we patch? What are we using? You might turn on automatic updates on windows. You might have those turned on MacOS, of course, on your iOS devices. Maybe you've got an Android device it's less than two years old and still gets updates so you have that turned on. Here's the problem. I have yet to walk into a business that doesn't say that they have just a phenomenal patch rate.

You know, so for instance, you'll walk in there and you say, how good are you guys at keeping up on patches? Almost every last one of them says, yeah, almost a hundred. We're probably 99, 98% of the patches are up to date and we're just phenomenal. We're safe. Yeah, we're safe. don't worry about us. Yeah, we're safe. Don't worry about it.

I've been in a couple of businesses and said that and then, they got nailed something awful and they were too embarrassed to call me back. When I talked to them later on, I found out what had really happened with them.

Many people and many businesses are focused on that patch rate and that kind of makes sense. We have to make sure the patches are done, particularly the critical patches. But why is it that I go into a business and every business says, yeah, we're patched up. it might not be a hundred percent, but we're patched up. Every business says that.

Yet I always find critical vulnerabilities when I poke around. When I do a scan. When we do these paid assessments to come up with an action plan for businesses. We scan their systems, which means their workstations, it also of course means there are servers and maybe other devices that are out there. I have never scanned a device that did not contain a critical vulnerability.

Where's the disconnect? Why are businesses and people saying, yeah, we have this 99% patch rate? Yet I am continually finding major problems. It has to do with what's being patched. People are not patching the right thing. So let's look at a couple of different things here.

First of all. When we're talking about workstations, desktops, laptops. Here are the four types of software that are attacked the most. Number one internet browser add-ins. How many of us have extensions on our browsers? Some of those extensions are in fact, malicious themselves. Internet browsers.

Another big attack vector is operating systems. Of course, all of our office applications, all of our productivity stuff, software like I'm using right now for the radio show. All of this stuff gets attacked. But when we're talking about a 99% patch rate yeah. We're pretty much all patched up. What they're almost all always thinking about and talking about is patching the operating system and that's where things end.

Now on the server-side, when we go into businesses, we're finding the webserver software, the database server, the operating systems on those servers, the remote server management stuff, like RDP, the active directory. Those are what is always being attacked. So why the disconnect? It's because it's difficult to patch everything.

Microsoft, I already mentioned has the ability to automatically install updates. In fact, if you don't have the business versions, the enterprise versions of Windows, professional, you're forced to do updates. You don't even get to say when you want those updates to happen. If you're running iOS, on your iPhone, on your iPad, again, updates just happen automatically.

But how about all of those apps? If you're getting those apps on your mobile devices, from the stores, like the Google play store or the Apple store, you were probably getting updates for your applications. If you're not getting them from there, you're probably not getting updates.

So not patching the right thing is a very big deal. I wanted to talk right now about one specific thing that people are not patching. Frankly, that is our web server. You've got a website, right? If you're a business, any size business, you've got a website. You have to have a website. You have to get the message out.

Now, of course, you can have some emails from other things too, but we're going to focus on one thing right now, the website. Hackers are actively exploiting right now, a vulnerability in a WordPress plugin. Now, I mentioned our browser plugins are the extensions for our browsers and how those can be hacked in many cases.

It's another vector, obviously for the bad guys to get on to our computers and really start messing around. in this case, we're talking about WordPress web server, which is the number one most popular web server out there, WordPress and there are more than 700,000 active installations of this. We are using it for our own little websites for our families, We're using it for our businesses. We're using it for our associations or organizations. This particular file manager plugin, which extends features for WordPress allows bad guys to run command and malicious software things, like scripts whenever they want to. Now, how many people are keeping their WordPress installation up to date.

Are you keeping your flash UpToDate? Are you keeping your other Adobe software up to date? How about all of the other software you're running on your computers? I look at this computer and it's just astounding how much software I have installed here on my Mac that I use all the time.

So the attackers are using this exploit to upload files that have these shell scripts in them that are hidden in an image. Makes it even harder for you to find.

So we have to be very careful. We don't know the impact of all of this yet. It's probably pretty bad. There are some companies that are blocking it. We block it as well, but we're talking about millions of exploit attempts.

Over the course of the last couple of weeks, that is pretty bad. And we're only seen about half of the sites out there. The WordPress sites actually patched up. So make sure you do the update. You have to inventory everything you have. Everything your enterprise uses. What software do you have? What is it installed on? Is it up to date?

Don't just Willy nilly, allow people to install software on their computers, and don't do it yourself either. Every time you install software, you open up another potential way for bad guys to get in. Its something else you have to track. It's something else you have to inventory. It's something else you have to update. You have to upgrade.

People are just downloading stuff, Willy nilly. And remember what was the very first thing I said, that's attacked frequently internet browser, add-ins. That means internet browser add-ins means that those wonderful little bars that people install on their browsers are, yeah, those are malicious much of the time. At the very least, they are providing something called adware that's tracking, where you're going. Sometimes it replaces the ads on the website shows you stuff. It clicks through to these not clickbait sites, but click through to make them money on ads that they're running.

It's bad. We can't do it now. I wish we had more time. All right.

Your listening to Craig Peterson.

Stick around because when we get back, we're going to talk about an Apple problem with security this time.

---

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!

Craig Explains Why companies believe that they are Completely Patched up and Why it means more than your Operating System.

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

---

Read More:

iOS 13.7 launched today with a new system for battling the pandemic

Hackers are exploiting a critical flaw affecting >350,000 WordPress sites

The accidental notary: Apple approves notorious malware to run on Macs

Most IoT Hardware Dangerously Easy to Crack

55% of Cybersquatted Domains are Malicious or Potentially Fraudulent

Feds Can’t Ask Google for Every Phone in a 100-meter Radius, Court Says

The Hidden Cost of Losing Security Talent

Don’t forget Cybersecurity on Your Back-to-School List

---

Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey, do you have a 99% patch rate? Gonna talk right now about why that is a load of UMHUM in every case that I've ever seen?

Craig Peterson here and here we go.

Hey everybody. Thanks for joining me today. this is something that I don't know if I can ever repeat enough, but I want to take a little bit of a different angle on this than I have before. Most of us know that we're supposed to patch. What do we patch? What are we using? You might turn on automatic updates on windows. You might have those turned on MacOS, of course, on your iOS devices. Maybe you've got an Android device it's less than two years old and still gets updates so you have that turned on. Here's the problem. I have yet to walk into a business that doesn't say that they have just a phenomenal patch rate.

You know, so for instance, you'll walk in there and you say, how good are you guys at keeping up on patches?  Almost every last one of them says, yeah, almost a hundred. We're probably 99, 98% of the patches are up to date and we're just phenomenal. We're safe. Yeah, we're safe. don't worry about us. Yeah, we're safe. Don't worry about it.

 I've been in a couple of businesses and said that and then, they got nailed something awful and they were too embarrassed to call me back. When I talked to them later on, I found out what had really happened with them.

Many people and many businesses are focused on that patch rate and that kind of makes sense. We have to make sure the patches are done, particularly the critical patches. But why is it that I go into a business and every business says, yeah, we're patched up. it might not be a hundred percent, but we're patched up. Every business says that.

Yet I always find critical vulnerabilities when I poke around. When I do a scan. When we do these paid assessments to come up with an action plan for businesses. We scan their systems, which means their workstations, it also of course means there are servers and maybe other devices that are out there. I have never scanned a device that did not contain a critical vulnerability.

Where's the disconnect? Why are businesses and people saying, yeah, we have this 99% patch rate? Yet I am continually finding major problems. It has to do with what's being patched. People are not patching the right thing. So let's look at a couple of different things here.

First of all. When we're talking about workstations, desktops, laptops. Here are the four types of software that are attacked the most. Number one internet browser add-ins. How many of us have extensions on our browsers? Some of those extensions are in fact, malicious themselves. Internet browsers.

Another big attack vector is operating systems. Of course, all of our office applications, all of our productivity stuff, software like I'm using right now for the radio show. All of this stuff gets attacked. But when we're talking about a 99% patch rate yeah. We're pretty much all patched up. What they're almost all always thinking about and talking about is patching the operating system and that's where things end.

Now on the server-side, when we go into businesses, we're finding the webserver software, the database server, the operating systems on those servers, the remote server management stuff, like RDP, the active directory. Those are what is always being attacked. So why the disconnect? It's because it's difficult to patch everything.

Microsoft, I already mentioned has the ability to automatically install updates. In fact, if you don't have the business versions, the enterprise versions of Windows, professional, you're forced to do updates. You don't even get to say when you want those updates to happen. If you're running iOS, on your iPhone, on your iPad, again, updates just happen automatically.

But how about all of those apps? If you're getting those apps on your mobile devices, from the stores, like the Google play store or the Apple store, you were probably getting updates for your applications. If you're not getting them from there, you're probably not getting updates.

So not patching the right thing is a very big deal.  I wanted to talk right now about one specific thing that people are not patching. Frankly, that is our web server. You've got a website, right? If you're a business, any size business, you've got a website. You have to have a website. You have to get the message out.

Now, of course, you can have some emails from other things too, but we're going to focus on one thing right now, the website. Hackers are actively exploiting right now, a vulnerability in a WordPress plugin. Now, I mentioned our browser plugins are the extensions for our browsers and how those can be hacked in many cases.

It's another vector, obviously for the bad guys to get on to our computers and really start messing around. in this case, we're talking about WordPress web server, which is the number one most popular web server out there, WordPress and there are more than 700,000 active installations of this. We are using it for our own little websites for our families, We're using it for our businesses. We're using it for our associations or organizations. This particular file manager plugin, which extends features for WordPress allows bad guys to run command and malicious software things, like scripts whenever they want to. Now, how many people are keeping their WordPress installation up to date.

Are you keeping your flash UpToDate? Are you keeping your other Adobe software up to date? How about all of the other software you're running on your computers? I look at this computer and it's just astounding how much software I have installed here on my Mac that I use all the time.

So the attackers are using this exploit to upload files that have these shell scripts in them that are hidden in an image. Makes it even harder for you to find.

So we have to be very careful. We don't know the impact of all of this yet. It's probably pretty bad. There are some companies that are blocking it. We block it as well, but we're talking about millions of exploit attempts.

Over the course of the last couple of weeks, that is pretty bad. And we're only seen about half of the sites out there. The WordPress sites actually patched up. So make sure you do the update. You have to inventory everything you have. Everything your enterprise uses. What software do you have? What is it installed on? Is it up to date?

Don't just Willy nilly, allow people to install software on their computers, and don't do it yourself either. Every time you install software, you open up another potential way for bad guys to get in. Its something else you have to track. It's something else you have to inventory. It's something else you have to update. You have to upgrade.

People are just downloading stuff, Willy nilly. And remember what was the very first thing I said, that's attacked frequently internet browser, add-ins. That means internet browser add-ins means that those wonderful little bars that people install on their browsers are, yeah, those are malicious much of the time. At the very least, they are providing something called adware that's tracking, where you're going. Sometimes it replaces the ads on the website shows you stuff. It clicks through to these not clickbait sites, but click through to make them money on ads that they're running.

It's bad. We can't do it now. I wish we had more time. All right.

Your listening to Craig Peterson.

Stick around because when we get back, we're going to talk about an Apple problem with security this time.

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