Jul 1, 2022
Saving 79% onPrescriptions
Microsoft Outlook Attack inProgress!
Does Your Business Use eMail? FBI Warning
About one-third of Americans are taking a prescription drug --And this is kind of the scary part. The average person who is on aprescription has four prescriptions and we're paying dearly for it.But mark Cuban has an answer.
[Following is an automated transcript]
Well, you know, I do a lot of stuff in cybersecurity and I'vegot a few different courses coming up.
[00:00:22] And of course, we do a little bit of weekly trainingfor anybody who's on my email list, you know, on the free list.Absolutely free as well as you get my insider show notes. And ifyou got my show notes, you probably noticed this. Tidbit here onTuesday when I sent it out. And that is mark Cuban. Now for thosewho don't know mark Cuban, he started way back in the internet.
[00:00:48] Boom days he lucked out. He had a, a company calledbroadcast.com. and he was able to turn that into, I think it waswell over a billion dollars. I don't remember the exact amount, butit, it was a very, very big chunk of money. And then he's gone onto become an investor. You might know him as the owner of abasketball team.
[00:01:10] You might have seen him on a TV show called sharktank. He's been out there and he's a bright guy. He's been helpinga lot of people and causing a lot of problems too. Right. But hehas a new business that he has started with his billions of dollarsonly. He has at least 1 billion and it's called. Cost plusdrugs.
[00:01:35] Now this is where it comes into affect everyAmerican, because I mentioned, you know, how many Americans are onvarious prescriptions? Well, many of the prescriptions that wecould be taking are actually generics. So for instance, if you goto the Walmart pharmacy or Walgreens or wherever it. Be you'll findthat they have options for you.
[00:02:00] If the doctor says, yeah, generic's okay. They'llsay, Hey, listen, I'll give you the generic and you can save awhole lot of money. I don't know if you've looked at good RX atall. But good RX. I have saved a ton of money with that. And whatthey do is help you find free coupons. Compare the prices at, atWalmart Walgreen, CVS Rite aid, you know, at the majorpharmacies.
[00:02:24] And we'll tell you where you can go to get your bestdeal. Plus. They also have some really cool discounts. So it, itacts kind of like a discount card. So I'm on their site right now.Good rx.com. And I look, I'm looking up their number one drug,which is Lipitor, apparently it's used for coronary art or coronarydisease and high cholesterol.
[00:02:51] So they're saying, well, wait a minute. Now here. Youcan get a few different, uh, options. I'm looking now, forinstance, CVS pharmacy nor normal retail, by the way is $126 atCVS. You can get it using a good rx.com card. 76% off for $30instead of $126. Walmart, $15. Uh, Walmart neighborhood market, $15now, Walmart, that's what they consider to be their retailprice.
[00:03:27] Although, as I mentioned, some of these other oneshave much, much higher retail prices. So you can see that going.For instance, for Lipitor, you might be. Paying a premium for abrand name. Now there, there's a good reason for that. There's areason why prescription drugs can be expensive and, and they'recalled patent drugs.
[00:03:48] And the reason they're call patent drugs is they'veput a lot of money in. They've put a lot of research time. They've,they've put up with a whole lot of regulation and going back andforth with various government agencies. And they finally were ableto come forward with a drug that works. Put all of thattogether.
[00:04:09] And you've got a very expensive research anddevelopment product, right. Or project, frankly. So I don't, Idon't really hold it against them. If we're having some of thesedrugs being rather expensive. You might remember that, uh, epiepinephrine a few years ago, this guy got a hold of the companythat made epinephrine and the, um, You know, the, the whole problemwith I'm looking it up right now, like EpiPens, they used to beexpensive and then they became crazy expensive.
[00:04:44] So let me see here, EpiPens, EpiPens, and who needsit? There's a whole lot of information. It's not telling how muchthey are, but he raised the price. Like what was it? 2000% orsomething insane, again, a prescription drug and one that somepeople really need in order to save their lives. You know, I'm abeekeeper, right.
[00:05:08] And I used to have a really bad reaction to bestings, wasp stings. Now we just. Reaction, right. We thought atthe time I was allergic, but no, it was just a bad reaction, whichI still have. Right. It gets stung multiple times a year, but, uh,it still swells up. When, when, uh, our friend mark Cuban startedlooking at this, he said that this is kind of crazy.
[00:05:31] So what he's done now is mark Cuban has built, uh, Ithink it's all up and running just outside of Dallas. Let's seehere. Yeah. Okay. Just outside of Dallas, a huge, huge building.It's a 22,000 square foot plant. Now most of the pharmaceuticalsare actually easy to make and. To make. And that's what kind ofgets confusing because you've got all of the R and D and thegovernment regulations, everything else that's expensive, butactually making them is pretty cheap, but he's built this $11million plant near downtown Dallas.
[00:06:14] And he says right now, looking at what the expensesare that Medicare could have saved as much as are you ready forthis? 3.6 billion per year. Now that's where we're talking abouteverybody. Because if you pay taxes, you are paying for some ofthis Medicare money, 3.6 billion per year in savings. By buying itfrom cost plus drugs.
[00:06:46] So there's something else I want you to check out. Sothe first one was good. rx.com. The second one is cost plus drugs.They have over a hundred generic prescription medications rightnow. And what they're doing is they're taking the actual cost ofproduction. And I'm sure that includes right. The loan on thebuilding, et cetera, but the cost of production, plus a 15% marginbecause you need to keep the lights on.
[00:07:13] You need to be able to expand. Profit is not a badword. That's how people save for retirement by investing incompanies, buying stocks, and that profit then becomes their moneyfor retirement. I think that's an important thing. So. 15% marginand an $8 pharmacy dispensing and shipping fee. That is absolutelycheap.
[00:07:41] So this is, uh, Husain Liani who did the research onthis? And he published it in the annals of internal medicine.Looking at that just absolutely amazing. And that's something youcan do too. One third of Americans, again, we are on prescriptiondrugs and the average person is on four. Wow. So researcherscompared the price charge by cost plus drugs for 89, genericmedications to the cost for the same drugs paid.
[00:08:17] Medicare in 2020, they found the government programcould have saved 37% on 77 generic drugs by buying from Cuban'scompany cost plus drugs. Once in January drug to consumer bypasses,wholesalers bypasses, pharmacies bypasses, I PA passes insurance.All of those are driving up the cost of medicine. So direct toconsumer.
[00:08:43] Uh, how easy could that be? And I'm on their websiteright now, looking at a couple of things here. Let me see, let mego back there. Cost plus drugs, and I'm believing this go to costplus drugs.com. Yes you can. I am there as we are talking. So he'sgot, oh, here's one tib. Uh, which is the generic for gleekI'm.
[00:09:08] Now I'm not familiar with that myself retail price,$2,502. cost. Plus, are you ready? $14. Can you believe that thatis crazy. Yeah. Wow. And it'll look, it'll look differentobviously, cuz it's a generic. So you saved $2,488 for a 30 countsupply. That is just amazing. So when I, I, I was talking about thesavings here, where.
[00:09:41] Okay. They could have saved 37% on 77 generic drugs.But when you start getting into these really expensive drugs,that's where the 3.6 billion really, really starts to add up insavings. This is something so what you can do once you're on costplus drugs.com, you can contact your doctor for a prescription.
[00:10:04] They've gotta get started button. They have thestrength that you want in this case, a hundred milligrams or 400,the quantity you want. And then all that has to happen is yourdoctor has to approve it. You pay $14 instead of $2,500 and it getsshipped straight to you. Wow. Now, is that cheaper than Medicarepart B right?
[00:10:28] Or your regular insurance? Wow, sure. Is justabsolutely amazing. So you can find all of this stuff. This is markCuban doing this, and I gotta say, I am impressed. He is going tohelp a whole lot of people. Yeah, I'm, I'm just looking at this.Wow. Here's another one retail price. $9,600. And at cost plusdrugs, you can get it for 39.
[00:10:57] So there you go. Two options, mark Cuban's newventure, which is online now at costplusdrugs.com and goodrx.com.Wow. It's just amazing, right? This world. What's it coming to?Great little great little drug company. So we're gonna talk if youare a user of outlook, this is important to you because a majorattack is underway.
[00:11:26] Major scam underway. If you are an outlook customer,you are in the crosshairs of a very successful credential stealingcampaign. So I'm gonna tell you about that, what it means, what youcan do and, uh, how you can stay safe.
[00:11:43] This is a very big problem for people who are usingMicrosoft 365, that is really common, used to be called office 365and you pay a, a flat monthly fee, 20, 25 bucks.
[00:11:59] It kind of depends on what level you get. They havesome real cheap ones as well, and it lets you use all of whatMicrosoft used to call Microsoft office applications. And one ofthose applications is outlook. And I've never particularly liked.they have gotten better in recent years. And I actually do use itright now, as well as MacMail I use both of them, but there is ahack going on against Microsoft 365 and outlook customers in theus.
[00:12:34] Here's what's happening. They are sending you anemail and the email really does look like it's ti voicemail thatsomebody left. This is called a voicemail fishing attack and itfollows, what's kind of a classic fishing flow. If you will, theways they've been doing fishing here over the years, and whatfishing is, is basically.
[00:13:02] Getting you to bite at something that you shouldn'tbite on. You, you will respond to an email. You'll click on a link.You might call a phone number. You might click on a text message.That's another one that's going around right now. How do you tell afake text message from a real text message? And I'm afraid to saynowadays you tell by just not clicking on the links that are intext messages.
[00:13:30] It's, it's so disappointing. I was talking on theradio this week. It, it, it, because it just, it bothers me so muchabout this very thing. I've been on the internet for decades now.Right? I, I started back in 81. I think it was maybe 80. Two and wehad email and it was the best thing ever. If you had somebody'semail address, you could send them a note and you'd be pretty darnsure they'd get it.
[00:13:58] In fact, they probably would get it within just a fewminutes and respond to you. And there, there wasn't any spam. Backthen the idea was, Hey, listen, the internet is for researchgovernment research, university research, and that's the way itshould stay. And indeed, we were kind of keeping it that way for,for quite a while.
[00:14:21] And then some people who were marketers got on theinternet. And they would start to advertise, Hey, we have a specialsession for you at, uh, UC Berkeley this week only $500. And ofcourse that went be beyond what the internet was for. In fact, atthe time you could not use it legally. For any sort of financialpurposes.
[00:14:47] So what we would do back then is we would send thescript to the Monty Python routine of spam. Remember that spam,spam, and egg spam, and hands spam, spam. Uh, yeah, we would sendthem the whole. And they, sometimes, if somebody sent out a littlething that was trying to sell something that they should not beselling online because it was illegal to use the internet forbusiness in case you didn't know until about 1991.
[00:15:20] And that's when I started. Putting businesses onlineand really started focusing in on cyber security because almostimmediately the bad guys started getting on there. So this is, uh,this is really what happened. This was the script, right? Uh, well,what have you got waitress? Well, there's egg and bacon, egg,sausage, and bacon, egg, and spam, egg, bacon, and spam, egg,bacon, spam, sausage, and spam spam, bacon sausages, and spam spameggs, spam spam, bacon spam.
[00:15:51] Do you remember that? So. We would send this topeople who kind of broke the rules written or unwritten on theinternet. And sometimes somebody would get just a hundred of thesethings, maybe even more. And what would happen back then of course,is it would fill up your mailbox and it would slow down your checkconnection.
[00:16:10] Cuz a lot of us were just connected to the internetvia dial up modems. So it, it really kind of hurt you to get allkinds of spam. Emails coming in. That's where the term comes from.I remember it well, so I don't care what they say on some of thesewebsites or they're trying to do little research on it and figureit out.
[00:16:31] Well, now things have gotten a lot worse because itisn't just marketers that are trying to solve something. And Idon't have a problem with marketers, I guess, in a way I am onemyself. Right. I, I have a business and I provide cybersecurityservices. For a high net worth individuals and for businesses.
[00:16:50] And if you are a regular person, you have a question.Please ask, just send an email to me, me Craig peterson.com, nomatter who you are. And I will try and answer the question for you.And I have a lot of stuff that I've written over the years. That'dbe more than glad to forward to you. There are some trainingcourses that I.
[00:17:10] Put together that I will be more than glad to sharewith you. And you probably know I did all of the training for theFBI's Ingar program for a couple of years. I, I ran that online,all of their webinars. So I've been doing this for a long time andI'm more than glad to help. That's why I am here. Right.
[00:17:31] But now we got bad guys. and the bad guys are tryingto get you to do something against your best interest. So in thiscase, what happens is you get a missed voicemail notification viaemail, and a lot of times it'll look pretty legitimate. It mighteven be coming from someone inside your company, whose account theyhave hacked.
[00:17:57] Now on that email, there is an HTML attachment. NowHTML attachments can get past a lot of email gateway filtersbecause they aren't in and of themselves malicious. So they're notraising big red flags for users in a, in a voicemail notificationsetting because that's how office Microsoft office sends youlegitimate notifications.
[00:18:24] Anyways. Now, these from fields are set upspecifically using the organization's name. As I said, sometimeseven a valid email address. Now, if you go ahead and click on thatattachment, it will run a program on your computer using a languagecalled JavaScript and that's embedded in every browser out therenowadays.
[00:18:47] And that JavaScript code is going to redirect you toan attack. Controlled website. Now this website set up to get youto give up your credentials. So, what they'll do now is as you goto the website and the website might look like it's Microsoftoffice and it might look like it's your business website, and it'llask you to log in.
[00:19:15] It might ask you for other information as well. It istrying to get your username and password that it can then use to goafter other people. You see what's happening here. So each of theURLs, these guys are creating these websites that they're sendingyou to are created to match the targeted company.
[00:19:39] It's it's incredible how good they're getting, andthey even have one of those Google recapture. Pop ups. Now this isa, an increasingly popular technique to evade these auto mail,automated URL analysis tools. So for instance, with my client, anemail comes in, it goes through Cisco's. Email filter. We have anadvanced email filter from Cisco, but we run our client's emailsthrough.
[00:20:10] And what happens is they look at the URLs, they visitthe website that the URL PO points to, they try and verify if it'slegit or not. And you you've had captures, you know, it's, um,click every box that has a bicycle in it, sort of a thing. It'skind of a touring test, test puzzle. So once this is solved, We'lltell you what happens next, cuz we're out of time right now.
[00:20:36] Uh, make sure you visit me online. Craig Peterson.com. I'll keep you up to date. You can get my free newsletterand trainings. Craig Peter son.com. And I want to talk too aboutbusinesses in the, the big business of email compromise.
[00:20:55] Yeah, I think most of us know what a big business is.Well, how about a business, an industry that has racked in 43billion, according to the FBI. That's what we're talking aboutright now and what you can do about it.
[00:21:11] We were talking about, what's been happening withMicrosoft outlook users right now, a major campaign underway thathas been extremely successful because these bad guys are using somerather advanced technologies. Absolutely crazy. So they get you toclick. HTML link that is there while filed that is there as part ofwhat looks to be a voicemail notification for you.
[00:21:43] And then it takes you to a website that's speciallycrafted for you and your company. So you work@bigco.com and youclick on that HTML and it'll take you to big co.com. Well, at leastthat's what it looks like, but it distracts you now because itwants to give you this capture as well. So this Google captures,you know, these things, these little mini touring tests, click onall of the trees in the picture, sort of a thing, right?
[00:22:18] And you've got the nine things well with, uh, ormaybe it's some blurred or distorted text and you have to type thatin. And the whole idea behind that is normally to weed out thesebots on eCommerce sites, online account sites. But what they'redoing here is. They're making sure that the email, the, thesoftware that checks the emails to make sure they are legitimate,that is going out to the big co dot or big co fake.com website.
[00:22:54] They wanna make sure that that email checker does notfind out that it's not the real site that you wanted to go. So thecomputer that's doing the checking will go to the site and it'llsay, oh, there's a capture on there. And then it'll stop because itcan't solve the capture. It needs you, it needs a human, right.
[00:23:15] So this is kind of cool here. Uh, Eric. K. He's asecurity awareness advocate with no before. No. Before is a companythat does training for people, for employees here about some ofthese, uh, these hacks and things are going on. When faced with alogin prompt, it looks like a typical. Office 365 login. The personis likely to feel comfortable entering their information withoutlooking at the browser's URL bar to ensure they are at the reallogin site, this familiarity and the high odds in an attendedvictim regularly uses office 365 for something in the Workday makesthis a great Lu.
[00:24:02] For attackers, this is from an article over on darkreading.com. This isn't, uh, a new technique, but let me tell you,it is B a very successful one. They have seen a resurgent, uh,resurgence of this starting a couple of years ago, back in July,2020. And it is really targeting human nature. And of course,Microsoft 365 is quite the target.
[00:24:29] So I mentioned. $43 billion industry. I'm lookingright now at a public service announcement from the F FBI and theyare calling business email compromise the $43 billion. Scam. Thisis crazy. A sophisticated scam. It targets businesses andindividuals who are performing legitimate transfer fundsrequests.
[00:25:00] It's carried out by people who are compromisinglegitimate businesses and individuals. Now, what they're trying todo with this business email compromise is get someone who has.Control of funds to do a transfer. What happens is they will do alittle research on the business that might go to the website andsee on the website.
[00:25:25] Oh, let me see here. Okay. The president's name isCraig Peterson. Uh, the CFO is Mary Jane and, uh, the accountingdepartment head is manly. And, uh, so now they got thatinformation. So they'll go online. And to look at LinkedIn, findout who all else is at the business. Maybe things have changed, youknow, maybe try and find an email address by doing an open sourcesearch for the email address of people there at the business.
[00:25:57] You see where this is going here? Yeah, it, it getspretty bad. So, uh, let's say they befriend the CEO on Facebook oron LinkedIn, but Facebook more likely, uh, and now. They're theycan see on Facebook or maybe they don't even have to because yourFacebook profile and posts are not hidden from the public.
[00:26:20] So they just go there and, oh, let me see. Okay,great. He's gonna be out of town next week. And then what they'lldo is they'll get into somebody's email account at the business.And once they're into somebody's email account, they can startlooking through the emails and sending emails that look perfectlylegitimate to other people within the organization.
[00:26:43] Now, I, I did a whole story on television about thisone on news program, and one of the people on staff, one of thetalking. received an email like this, and it asked him to, uh, tobuy some gift cards. This is very, very common scam right now, thegift card scam, and they try and get you to go ahead and. Buy giftcards for other people in the office are gonna have a little partyand we don't want anybody else to know about it.
[00:27:15] It's supposed to be a surprise. And I had some realfun with him. One of these days, I should probably share all ofthis in one of my newsletters. I think you guys would reallyappreciate it, enjoy it a little bit, but, uh, we really led themon and sure enough, you know, it was a total scam and we keptplaying with them and it, it was something, any.
[00:27:38] That was one thing. This is another because they willeventually get to the CFO, somebody who has the authority totransfer funds and get them to transfer funds to. Them. And thenthey use mules to move the money around these, uh, useful idiotswho will sign up. And yeah. Yeah. It's kinda like the Nigerianscam.
[00:28:05] All I need is access to your bank account and I'mgonna wire in, uh, $10,000. And I, and what I need you to do istransfer 8,000 of it over here to this PayPal account because mygrandmother's dying and she needs the money. There's similar scamsthat are going after lonely people and getting them to send moneybecause somebody needs an operation, et cetera.
[00:28:33] So in this case with the business email compromiseand the 43. Billion dollars that have been stolen from businesses.They'll usually get to the CFO and send a story like, Hey, uh, wehave this new vendor and we've had 'em for three months and wehaven't been paying them and we gotta make sure we pay them.
[00:28:54] And, uh, we need to wire 43 million to this accountthat actually happened. And they did wire the money. It happened toBarbara cran, another person who wa is on shark tank. Uh, it, ithappens to a lot of companies out there. And I've got a couple inthe last month that we've worked with the FBI on the, thesecompanies hear me on the radio.
[00:29:21] They sent an email to me@craigpeterson.com and theyhad had their operating account. Emptied. Uh, the latest one is a,a lady 77 years old who had her retirement money stolen from herover $70,000. This stuff's real people. We've got to pay attention.We can't let this continue to happen. Make sure you sign uponline.
[00:29:48] Craig peterson.com so that you can get my insidershow notes and we can keep you ahead of the bad guys. When we comeback, we're gonna talk about this row overturned and what senatorsare asking the FTC.
[00:30:05] We've got some senators who are saying they werespurred on by the row overturned. And they're asking the FTC toprobe, apple and Android, and what's happening with tracking. Now Ihave a suspicion. That's not really right.
[00:30:21] We've got, of course the recent overturn of Roe. You,you of course heard about that. it was pretty much impossible tomiss if you pay any attention to the news.
[00:30:36] Well, we've got three Democrat, us senators and aDemocrat us representative that asked. The federal trade commissionto investigate apple and Google for engaging in unfair anddeceptive practices by enabling the collection and sale of hundredsof millions of mobile phones, users, data, the FTC shouldinvestigate apple and Google's role in transforming onlineadvertising into an intense system of surveillance thatincentivizes and facilitates the UN.
[00:31:11] Train collection and constant sale of Americans'personal data. These companies have failed to inform consumers ofthe privacy and security dangers involved in using those products.It is beyond time to bring an end to the privacy harms, forced onconsumers. Buy these companies. Now I have been talking about thison the
[00:31:38] radio for 20 years. Because do you remember whenCongress forced telephone manufacturers and cell phone companies toput GPS coordinates into the receivers, into the phones? Do youremember that you could no longer use your analog phone? You had touse digital phones under federal law. right. It, it's justamazing.
[00:32:09] We can go into all of the reasons that they've givenfor that in the past, but anyhow, that's what they did. Soimmediately decades ago, now, many years ago, they startedcollecting data. Now it's okay for the government to collect it,even though it's illegal. For them to collect this data. So what'shappening here?
[00:32:30] Why have the Democrats for so long? Well, andfrankly, a lot of Republicans been big on collecting data on all ofus. Now, I I've gotta say when I've looked at the stats, thebiggest. Purveyors of the surveillance society have been presidentObama followed by president Biden. Now you could argue thatpresident Bush was won too, because of course they passed an actthat allowed for all kinds of changes in surveillance.
[00:33:02] So, okay. So we'll put him in there too. So we got aRepublican in there. Obama put that program that president Bush hadput in place on steroids and then president Biden did the samething. President Trump tried to cut it back because he was a victimof some of the surveillance that they were doing. So what's goingon here?
[00:33:25] Well, these Democrat senators are saying, uh, wedon't want people who are trying to get abortions to be. okay. Ican see that. Uh, I can also see that I don't want to be trackedand you don't want to be tracked. And it's one thing to have anadvertiser know a little bit about us, you know, Hey, we justvisited the Ford dealer and the Chevy dealer and the Hondadealer.
[00:33:52] So maybe he's looking for a car let's let's try andadvertise a car. Right. So Honda and Chevy and Ford all startputting ads up for you. Okay. So that's. Thing if I'm in, if I'minterested in buying a truck. Okay, great. Show me ads on a truck,but we've seen already misuses of this data over the years, one ofthe earliest ones I talked about here on the radio was this guy whowent to an emergency room and all of a sudden started seeing adsfor what you might call ambulance, chasing lawyers saying, have youbeen injured?
[00:34:30] right. You've seen those types of ads before, butonce he was in the emergency room and he was geolo geolocated inthe emergency room, they started selling advertising to lawyers. I,I, I'm not real fond of that one either, but I think there's anulterior motive here behind what these Democrats are saying.
[00:34:52] If you have seen the movie 2000 mules, you understandwhat I'm talking about here? what ended up happening here is theylooked at trillions of data points. You see, they went out andbought databases of smartphone data where these smartphones werelocated. And then they started doing some serious analysis on itand they were able to say, okay, this smartphone went to.
[00:35:28] Different Dropboxes for the election for ballots. Andin between each visit to the Dropbox, they went to a left wingorganization where they did something. Right. So they, they go to aDropbox drop off ballots and they're on video doing this, droppingoff ballots. And then they go to a left wing organization and thenthey go drop off more ballots at a different Dropbox, and then theygo back again and then it's on video.
[00:36:02] And some of these people are taking pictures of them,stuffing the ballots into the box, supposedly, so they can getpaid. So now there are some criminal investigations that have beenstarted. I don't know how far they've gotten yet over some of thisinformation that was gathered. And that was documented in the filmby Danes.
[00:36:24] Dusuza called 2000 mul. And if you haven't seen it,no matter what side of the aisle you want, you need to see it.Absolutely need to see. And whether you believe or not, whenpresident Biden said that we have the best, uh, what was it? Um,election stealing organization that's ever been made? I can'tremember his exact words right now.
[00:36:49] Uh, he was serious about it, right? So now all of asudden, the Democrats are concerned that people who visit abortionclinics might be tracked, cuz they could be. Right. You could buydata geotagged with an abortion clinic's location, GPS coordinates.You absolutely could do that, but that's been true for a longtime.
[00:37:15] Why now? Well, maybe because of Roe V Wade, but Ilook, of course it wasn't just that one decision that wasoverturned, but I, I look at some of this and really, really dowonder because it really looks like some number of people werecaught illegally stuffing ballot box. So it's, it's fascinating tome that all of a sudden now out, they come with this.
[00:37:45] Now apple has stopped enabling the trackeridentifiers. By default, if you have an apple smartphone, it ismuch more. Private than the Android phones are by far, right?Google makes its money by selling your information. That's how theymake most of their money. Apple makes its money by selling youservices and selling you hardware.
[00:38:13] so that should tell you something right there. Andthe fact that Senator Elizabeth Warren is one of the ones who isproposing this legislation makes you think even more about this.Now, Google, uh, this is an article from ours. Technical apparentlyresponded to this whole concept in an article that ours waswriting, saying that it's had all kinds of efforts to block appsand violate Google play policies.
[00:38:41] And. the bands it's imposed on companies that areapparently sold user data, and they say Google never sells userdata in the play at Google, strictly prohibits a sale of user databy developers and, uh, goes into the advertising ID. So it it'sfascinating to me that all of a sudden, now the Democrats areinterested in stopping the data collection.
[00:39:08] It really is. I don't like it. As I said, I've talkedabout this for more than 20 years now on the radio. It, I thinkit's a real problem. This data collection, because also the federalgovernment, even though it's illegal for them to collectinformation on American citizens, they do it every. And some of thelargest, like the, um, immigration people, Homeland security arethe biggest collector.
[00:39:37] They have more information about you than anyoneelse. Even if you're here legally, you were born in the UnitedStates, et cetera, etcetera, because they are buying all of thisinformation from what are called data broker. So, yeah, they say,yeah, we're, we're not collecting it. You we're forbidden by law tocollect it, which is absolutely true.
[00:39:59] But what they are doing is buying it from privatebusinesses. So I think we've got to completely. Reconsider how thisall works. Apple has been working on it. You can go into your applephone and make a change, share identifier if you want to, whichmakes it harder to track apple also. And Google has this, as Ibelieve is an option.
[00:40:25] But apple also will give you a different Mac addressevery time you're connecting to wifi networks so that you can't betracked that way. Because just, if, if you connect to the networkat target the wifi at target, for instance, they will know when youreturn because your phone has the same Mac address that's used forthe wifi.
[00:40:49] So they know. They know where you go in the store.They know what you're looking at in the store, in some cases,depending on how the tracking works. So it's fascinating to me,this is a, a real privacy issue that could easily turn intosomething much worse because this data, this same data that'savailable to marketers is available to government is also availableto bad guys.
[00:41:17] and you talk about the ability to potentially framesomeone and it, it, it just gets extremely, extremely scary. Rightnow, last month, more than 40 members of Congress called on Googleto stop collecting and retaining customer location data, theprosecutors could use to identify women who obtain abortions.
[00:41:37] Again, tied into this, uh, abortion anytime any day.Uh, and as the governor of Virginia said, even after the baby isborn and delivered it, you should be able to abort it. Uh, sowherever you fall in that spectrum, obviously the Democrats in theus want abortions far more than the Europeans that every Europeancountry I can think of has much tougher restrictions on abortionthan we have here.
[00:42:05] But. Privacy is not an abortion issue. Hey, join meonline. Craig peterson.com. Make sure you are on my email list.And, uh, you can ask any question you want. Just email me,
[00:42:20] me@CraigPeterson.com.
[00:42:26] I really appreciate all the emails I get from youguys. And it is driving me to do something I've never done beforenow. I've always provided all kinds of free information to share onmy email list. Great stuff. But now we're talking about cyber punchlists.
[00:42:43] So they know what's hot because who really, reallytracks technology, not too many people. And I get, uh, you know, alittle off put by some of these other radio hosts that callthemselves tech people, and they're actually marketing people, butyou. That's me. Right. And that's why, if you are on my list,you've probably noticed I'm not hammering you trying to sell youstuff all of the time.
[00:43:09] It's good, valuable content. And I'm startingsomething brand new. Never done this before, but this is for youguys. Okay. You know that I do cybersecurity. As a business andI've been doing it now for more than three decades. I don't know ifI should admit that. Right. They say, never say more than 17years.
[00:43:30] Okay. So I've been doing it for more than 17 yearsand I've been on the internet now for. Oh, 40 years now. Okay. Backbefore it was even called the internet, I helped to develop thesilly thing. So over the years, we've come up with a number ofdifferent strategies. We have these things that are called plan ofaction and milestones, and we have all kinds of other lists ofthings that we do and that need to be done.
[00:44:01] So what we're doing right now is we're setting it. Sothat you can just email me, me, Craig peterson.com. And I will goahead and send you one of these punch lists. Now the punch listsare around one specific topic. You know, we got these massive.Punch list with hundreds and hundreds of things on them. And thoseare what we use when we go in to help clean up the cybersecurity ina company.
[00:44:28] So we'll go in, we'll do scans. We will do red teamblue team where we're attacking. We do all, all kinds of differenttypes of scans using different software, trying to break in. We usethe same tools that the hackers use in order to see if we can. Intoyour systems and if the systems are properly secured, so we do allof this stuff, so, and, and then it goes into all of the paperworkthat needs to be done to comply with whatever it might be.
[00:45:00] Right. It might be, they accept payment cards. Itmight be that they have hip. Information, which is healthcareinformation. And it might be also that they're a governmentcontractor. So there are hundreds and hundreds of things that theyhave to comply with. Most of them are procedural. So we have all ofthis stuff.
[00:45:18] We do all of this stuff. And I was talking with mywife here this last week about it and said, you. So much of thiscould be used by small companies that can't afford to hire my teamto come in and clean things up. Right. And I don't want them tosuffer. So here's what we're doing. We're starting this nextweek.
[00:45:42] We have a punch list for you on email. So what arethe things you can do should do for email? Just very, very narrowon email so that you can recognize a fishing. Email, what you mightwanna do to lock down your outlook, if you're on windows or yourMac mail. So we're taking these massive spreadsheets that we haveand we're breaking them up.
[00:46:10] So the first one that's available to you guys,absolutely. A hundred percent free. Is the one on email. So justsend me an email. Me M E Craig peterson.com. Now, remember I am,my, my business is a business to business business, right. Butalmost everything in these various. Punch lists applies toindividuals as well.
[00:46:34] So I got an email this last week from a guy saying,Hey, I'm 80 years old and, uh, retired and I don't know much aboutcomputers and that's kind of what got us thinking about this. Youknow, we need to be able to help him. We need to be able to helpyou out. Okay. And if you're a small business and we've dealt witha lot of them over the years, and as a small business, you justdon't have the funds to bring in an expert, whether it's me orsomebody else, although yeah.
[00:47:03] What you want the best. But anyways, , it, it, uh, itis gonna allow you to do it yourself. Okay. So absolutely free. Allof these punch lists on all of these topics, we're probably gonnaend up with more than a hundred of these punch lists. And all youdo is email me, me, Craig peterson.com. Just let me know in therewhat you're interested in.
[00:47:29] So even if we haven't got that punch list broken downfor you yet, we will go ahead and put that on the. To do right. Weneed the priorities. What kind of a priority should we have aswe're putting these things together for free for people. Right. Uh,and the only way we know is if you ask, so the first one's onemail, you can certainly ask for email.
[00:47:50] We've got, as I said, more than a hundred others,that we think we're gonna be able to pull out of the exact. Plan ofaction worksheets that we use so that you can go through thisyourself, whether you're a home user or you are a small business oreven a big business, right? We we're talking with, uh, a gentlemanwho's probably listening right now, who has a business.
[00:48:17] They have three offices, they have some requirementbecause of the military contracts for high level. Cyber securityand it would work for him too. All right. So they, this is all ofthe punch list stuff. You probably know what a punch list is,right? It's using the construction industry a lot, but in our case,it's you need to do this.
[00:48:39] You need to do this, you need to do this. Okay. Sothat's what that's all about. So enough rambling on that. It'sgonna take us some time to get 'em all together. I'm also. We'regonna do more video stuff again, training. So just like on theradio show where we're talking about what's in the news, we'regonna talk about what's what's in the news.
[00:49:01] When it comes to small businesses, what you should bepaying attention to with of course, an emphasis on cybersecurityand we're. Putting those up on my website@craigpeterson.com. Infact, we've already got some up there already, and then we aregoing to also be putting them on YouTube and rumble. So if youdon't like YouTube and Google, then you can certainly go torumble.
[00:49:25] You'll see them there. But if you're on the emaillist, I'm I'm. Starting to put links in the bottom of the emails.So you can go and watch those videos. If you are a video typeperson that you know, more visual. So it's, I think all good. Andit's good news for everybody. And this is what happens, I think, asyou get more mature, In the business.
[00:49:48] Right. Um, as I said, I've been on the internet formore than 40 years, helped develop some of that software that, uh,some of it's still in use today and now it's time to do more giveback. And I really am trying to give back, okay, there's thisisn't. This isn't a joke. So, uh, no joke. Right. So go ahead.Email me at Craig Peterson.
[00:50:12] Tell me which punch list that you would like. And Ican also put you on my email list so that you get my insider shownotes, and you can just do that yourself by gonna Craig Petersondot. Com you'll see right up at the top of the page. If you scrolldown a little bit, it'll kind of pop up. It's a big red bar thatgoes across the top.
[00:50:32] I try not to be too intrusive and you can sign upthere for the newsletter. So you'll get some of these trainingsautomatically. You'll get my insider show notes, all of this stuff.It it's absolutely free. Okay. This is my giveback to help you out.It really is. Okay. I, as I mentioned at the very beginning, I,I.
[00:50:52] Peeve by some of these people that representthemselves as tech experts. And in fact, all they are aremarketers. We've got a client that decided that, uh, I was tooexpensive. My team. So they went out and shopped around, tried tofind the cheapest company they could. And so now the, the companythat they're bringing in is saying, you're saying, uh, Hey, um, uh,so how does this work?
[00:51:15] How do you do zero trust? Uh, why do you have afirewall here? Uh, why do you bother to have a direct fiber linkbetween the offices? All this stuff? Well, because they need it.Okay. I get it. You use. Barracuda spam firewalls and Barracudafirewalls. It, it, yeah, this is a different league. Okay. So youare gonna be getting these punch lists from me that are reallygonna help you understand and secure your systems.
[00:51:47] Right? This isn't your average run of the millso-called managed security services provider or managed services orbreak fix shop. You are getting it from the guy that the FBI. Ingarprogram went to, to do their trainings. That was me. Okay. So fortwo years I set up the program. I ran it. And if we ever aresitting down having a coffee or beer, sometimes I'll tell you why Ileft.
[00:52:13] Okay. Uh, but think about FBI and I, I think youmight have a clue as to why I decided not to do that anymore, but Itrained thousands of businesses, government agencies, state local.Federal, you name it. So you are getting what you really need,which is another problem. I keep hearing from people, you do asearch for something on YouTube or Google and you get what amillion, 5 million pages, right.
[00:52:43] As supposedly that it says are available and theygive you, okay, here's the top one, but what you need is anintegrated single way. To do things where everything workstogether. And that's what I'm trying to do for you guys, becausethere's so many little products, different products that just don'twork so well together.
[00:53:06] So we'll, we'll be covering that as well in these,but you gotta be on that email list. Craig peterson.com. CraigPeterson. So n.com/subscribe will take you right to thesubscription page. And I'll keep you up to date. This is not mypaid newsletter. All right, stick around. We'll be right back. AndI promise I'll get to Russia, Russia, Russia.
[00:53:33] Some of the high tech companies and others pulled outof Russia after the Ukraine invasion, but one stayed Google. Whatis going on with Google? And now they're in big trouble with theRussian government. Wow.
[00:53:50] Here's a list of companies according to CNET thathave pulled out of Russia because you remember Russia invadedUkraine, February 24, we had Adobe, these are the guys that makePhotoshop, Adobe reader. Airbnb, Airbnb has kind of an interestingstory too in Ukraine because a number quite a number of Airbnbcustomers went ahead and rented rooms and homes from Ukrainians,even though they had no intention of going and they told theUkrainians, Hey.
[00:54:23] I'm not gonna show up, just take this money. I'm sureyou need it. Can you, can you imagine that that's fantastic. Goodfor them, Amazon, they suspended shipments of all retail productsof customers in Russia and Bella Russ, and also suspended primevideo for users in Russia. Apple stops selling its product inRussia's it's halting online transactions, including limiting applepay.
[00:54:50] It's also disabled. Some apple map features inUkraine in order to protect civilians, Amazon web services. Theydon't have data centers or offices in Russia, but it's allowing newsignups for the service in Russia. BMW four GM Honda. Have allscaled back their operations or stopped them. Ford suspended itsoperations in Russia effective immediately until furthernotice.
[00:55:19] GM is suspending business in Russia. Honda hassuspended exports to Russia, Disney halted, all theatrical releasesin Russia, including the new Pixar film, turning red, also pausecontent DJA. The drone company that's gotten in trouble here in theus for some of its practices of sending GPS information to Chinawhile they're not doing it over there.
[00:55:45] Uh, electronic arts. They make a bunch of verypopular, uh, games, epic games, another one Ericson FIFA body bandRussia from this year's world cup formula one canceled its planplanned Russian ground pre Fujitsu, Goldman Sachs. Now Googlethat's where I want to go. We'll stop at Google here for aminute.
[00:56:10] Google. Suspended their ad network in Russia. And theidea was okay. Uh, we're not sure how payments are gonna workbecause Russia of course has had this kind of this lockdown byforeign countries on their banking system. We're not sure we canget the money out. Right. Um, uh, that's what they're apparentlydoing now.
[00:56:36] They're still there. Google's YouTube. It's searchengine on and on still running in Russia. Now that is reallydisturbing. If you ask me, why did they not pull out? It doesn'tmake sense. So Google did stop accepting new customers for Googlecloud. In March. YouTube said it's removing videos at deniertrivial trivialize, the Russian invasion, but what finally gotGoogle.
[00:57:09] Out of Russia, Russia seized their bank accounts.They froze, they transferred their money out of the main bankaccount in Russia. We're talking about a 2 billion per yearbusiness, Google Russia, that that really upsets me. So I did alittle more research online about all of this, and I was reallysurprised to see that Ukraine now has given the Ukraine peace prizeto Google.
[00:57:40] and it says, uh, quote on the behalf of the Ukrainianpeople with gratitude for the support during this pivotal moment inour nation's history. So what is it? I, I, I'm not sure. Right? Sothere, uh, one of their foreign ministers, I guess, and, uh, Koran.Baha I think, uh, said thank you from the beginning of the war,Google has sought to help.
[00:58:05] However, however we can through humanitarian supportof our tools will continue to do as long as needed. So I dug in alittle more and tried to figure out what's up. Well rush or Googleleft its Russian search engine online and YouTube online and wasusing it in Russia in order to. Control the narrative inRussia.
[00:58:31] Now, unlike what they've done here in the us, whereGoogle has been caught, many times controlling the narrative invarious elections and taking certain ads and not taking others andtaking certain business and not taking others, apparently inRussia, it has been. Blocking a lot of the stuff that Russia itselfhas been putting out.
[00:58:55] So the, the federal government there in Russia.Interesting. Hey, so they also have helped Ukraine out by providingthem with mapping GPS and rumor has it satellite services. Yeah.Interestingly to track Russian troop movements, uh, Al also Ukrainesaying the Google news component has also been tremendouslyvaluable.
[00:59:24] Google's also helping to raise money for the cause of*ckraine. Like many companies are doing right now to help peopledisplace due to the war and Poland. Wow. They've been doing Yemen'swork and, and bringing. People in, by the millions, into Polandfrom Ukraine. It reminds me when I lived in Calgary, Alberta, myCub, one of the Cub masters Cub troop leaders was a woman who camefrom Poland many years ago.
[00:59:52] This was back during Soviet occupation of. Poland.And I, I remember talking to her about what was happening overthere. Why did she leave? And it is just so, so impressive. Thepolls have done so much impressive stuff over the years. So they'realso saying that Google's done a lot of other things in orderto.
[01:00:13] Help protect Ukraine, including Google's blockdomains. They've prevented fishing attacks against Ukraine. They'vewarn targeted individuals that they are being targeted. It's reallysomething what they've done. So my first knee jerk was why isGoogle? Still doing business in Russia. Well, now it's become clearbecause they have a special page for Russians that gives correctinformation, at least, you know, Google's claiming it'scorrect.
[01:00:47] Uh, I don't know which fact checkers, checkersthey're using, but. That gives Russians real information about thewar what's going on in Ukraine. What's happening with the Russiansoldiers. Did, did you see this just this last week, apparentlyRussia removed the age limit for volunteers for the military. Itused to be, I think it was 40 years old.
[01:01:12] If you were a Russian citizen and 30 years old, ifyou were foreign national, now the Russian military will takeanybody. Any age from anywhere. In other words, Russia is reallygetting kind of hard up if they want people like me, right. Tofight, to fight their wars. I'm sure they don't really well. Idon't know.
[01:01:32] Maybe they do want me, right. That every, every warneeds cannon fodder. So it is fascinating to see good job Google. Iam quite impressed. I did not expect them to be doing that. They'vealso. Uh, uh, provided over 45 million in donations and grants tovarious groups. They've done pro bono work for variousorganizations over there.
[01:02:01] So this is really, really cool. So that's it. That'swhat's happening over there in you? Crane and Google, you can ofcourse, find out a lot more. Get my insider show notes. So you hadall of this on Tuesday morning. You could have digested it all andbe ahead of everybody else out there. And then also don't forgetabout my new offer here.
[01:02:27] Free, absolutely free for. Asks by emailing me Craigpeterson.com. I'll go ahead and send them to you, which is I thinka pretty cool thing now. What am I gonna send you? Well, you gottaask first, right? You gotta ask. And what we're gonna be doing istaking what I have been using for years to help secure mycustomers.
[01:02:54] And we're making available for free my cyber punchlists. Craig peterson.com/subscribe.
[01:03:02] Bit of a hubub here, a B Biden's infrastructure bill$1.2 trillion. And, and it's in there is this thing that Bob BARRis calling an automobile kill switch. Well, I did some moreresearch and we'll tell you the facts right now.
[01:03:19] What are you supposed to do? If you are trying topass a bill to stop drunk driving deaths, and you've got all of themoney in the world, you know, well, I guess 1.2 trillion, isn't allof the money in the world.
[01:03:33] What are you gonna put in there? Well, I did a searchon this and I I'm chuckling because this is craziness. This is theAP associated press. And they've got this article claim. PresidentJoe Biden signed a bill that will give law enforcement access to akill switch that will be attached to all new cars in 2026 APSassessment false.
[01:03:59] Okay, so we've got fact checkers here while thebipartisan infrastructure bill Biden signed last year requiresadvanced drunk and impaired driving technology to become standardequipment in cars. Experts say. Technology doesn't amount to a killswitch. Hmm. Let me see. So I can't start the car. If the car'scomputer thinks I might be drunk or impaired in some other way, butthat's not a kill switch.
[01:04:31] What, what is that? Then if I can't start the car,because I have a disagreement with the computer. How about thesepeople that I don't know, maybe their eyes can't open all of theway. Maybe they have problems with eyes on nystagmus, the eyes kindof jittering back and forth. Right. And now what are they gonnado?
[01:04:50] Argue with the computer? That's a kill switch. Ican't believe these crazy people that are like AP here, coming upwith fact checking on things. So, yeah, I'm sure there's somedistortions in some articles out there, but they contradictedthemselves in two paragraphs. I guess they figure people are justgonna see false.
[01:05:14] Okay. I'm done. They're not gonna bother reading therest of the article. Yeah. Kind of crazy, isn't it? So according toan article written by remember former us representative Bob BARR inthe infrastructure bill, is this kill switch. Now the, the bigquestion is what is the kill switch? How far does it go?
[01:05:39] So I decided, well, let's look up something Iremember from years ago and that is GM GM has the OnStar systemit's yet another reason I won't buy GM, there are a number ofreasons, but this is another one. OnStar system, you know, they'vegot an advisor, isn't that great. And if your car is in a caraccident, a crash that advisor can hop on and ask if you'reokay.
[01:06:08] And if you want emergency services coming, they'llcome, uh, OnStar will call them for you. And if you are just fine,they won't bother calling. I mean, if there's no answer at all,they'll they'll call emergency services and let them know where thevehicle is. Cuz the vehicle has with OnStar built in GPS.
[01:06:30] Well, one of the features of OnStar is that it cansend a signal to disable cars, engines, and gradually slow thevehicle to an idle speed to assist police in recovering thevehicle. Now they will only do that at least right now for vehiclesthat have been reported stolen and have been confirmed by thepolice.
[01:06:58] So in, in reality, that's kind of cool, right? Itslows down. Hopefully the bad guy, if he's on the highway, makes itover to the side of the road and while the car slows down andeventually stops. So, uh, all of this stuff sounds good. This killswitch. Sounds good. Doesn't it? Because you know, we're gonna keepdrunk drivers off the road.
[01:07:24] Now in reality, of course, they're not gonna be ableto keep drunk drivers or other impaired drivers off the road. Ireally don't care what kind of technology they put in. And they'renot talking about putting in one of these blow in the tube, thingsthat checks your blood alcohol level. They're talking about havinga camera facing you as the driver and probably other occupants ofthe vehicles and that internally facing camera.
[01:07:53] It's going to evaluate you. It's gonna look at you.It's gonna look at your face. Is something droopy. Are, are youkind of slow to respond? It might have a little test that it hasyou take right there. The, the law is very loosey goosey on anydetails. There really aren't any, so it's gonna be up to themanufacturer.
[01:08:15] So they put this in the car step. Just like OnStar,step one, put it in the car and they'll tell you when to turn.Remember how cool that was the GPS with OnStar. And you'd say,yeah, I want to go to this address. And then the, uh, the assistantgoes ahead and sense programming to your car. And now you can goand if you lock your keys in the car, they can unlock the car foryou.
[01:08:41] All, all kinds of cool stuff. And then next up whathappens. Well, but they can stop the vehicle. So there's anothertechnology story related to OnStar. And this is from 2009 fromKelly blue book book, OnStar stolen vehicle, slow down forts itsfirst carjacking. So again, doesn't that sound fantastic. This wasa Tahoe OnStar.
[01:09:10] And, uh, the driver and his passenger forced out ofthe vehicle robbed by a shotgun wielding perp who then drove off inthe SUV. And the OnStar dispatcher was able to locate the vehicleusing GPS advised police of exact location. And as soon as thepolice established visual contact, the stolen vehicle slow downsystem is activated available on a number of GM cars andtrucks.
[01:09:36] Right? So this was over a decade ago. That thishappened, but the technology's evolved hasn. so we initially haveall of these car companies trying to decide, okay. So we've gotthis kill switch law, which AP says is not a kill switch law. Cuzthey talk to experts just like the, what was it? 52 people, uh,heads of intelligence.
[01:10:01] Committees and agencies said that this wasn't acollusion hoax, right? So they talked to experts who said, no, no,no, this isn't a kill switch, but that's today you can argue, it'snot a kill switch. I would completely disagree with you. Day one.It's a kill switch cuz you can't start your car. Right. It's a killswitch.
[01:10:21] A kill switch is often something you hide somewhereon the car so you can kill the engine. So it can't be stolen. It'sa kill switch. Come on. People fact checkers aside. This couldpotentially allow law enforcement again, to shut down your car,remotely track the car's metrics, location, maybe the passengerload, because remember now cars are tracking all of this.
[01:10:46] They've already been. Tickets issued by police thatdid not see anyone speeding. The car was not caught on a trafficcamera, but they hook up a device to your car's port that talks toits computer. And the computer says, yeah, he was doing 80 miles anhour or, uh, five minutes ago. And all of a sudden you got aticket, right?
[01:11:08] Massachusetts wants to go ahead now and say, uh,yeah, yeah. Let's charge by the mile that you drive and mask.Because of course they're not getting enough revenue from gasolinebecause of the electric cars, right. Electric cars are not payingtheir fair share when it comes to road taxes. So let's do it thatway.
[01:11:27] So how are they gonna collect the information while.They're gonna hook up to your car's computer. The next thing comingdown the road, and it's already in most cars is wireless dataconnectivity. You might have found already. If you have a Nissan, aHonda, many other cars that. You have to get a major upgrade.
[01:11:49] It varies 600 bucks up to a few grand for anexpensive car, but the two G data network, we talked about this onthe show already is being completely shut down by the end of theyear. So we've gotta replace it and switch you over. To the LTEdata network, which of course eventually will go away as well, orat least 3g what happens once it's all hooked up?
[01:12:16] Well, the next easy step is just feed all of thatinformation straight to the government. Craig, Peter son.com.
[01:12:27] If you've been afraid of ransomware before I I've gota good example for you where a whole country now has been ransom.Absolutely crazy. So we'll talk about that. What is the state ofransomware? And the NSA is asking us to trust them again.
[01:12:43] Of course staying up to date means that you get myinsider newsletter pretty much every Tuesday morning and, and theonly way to get that is to go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe.
[01:12:56] And I will keep you up to date. You'll get even moreinsight information. The Costa REAN government has declared a stateof national emergency. And to the best of my knowledge, this is thefirst time a government has done this because agencies of the CostaRican government have been hit so badly by the K ransomware.
[01:13:22] That the new incoming president immediately declareda state of emergency. So now the country has expanded lawenforcement powers and they are trying to go after the KTIransomware group. Now between you and me. Good luck on that one.They are based in Russia. There's a number of different articlesout this week.
[01:13:44] This one from ADV Intel at tech target. But accordingto their research, the Kati ransomware groups attack on Costa Ricangovernment was part of a rebranding effort. So this ransomware ganghas seen a lot of their payments, just dry up. Because it's harderto get the money in. Right. And what are you gonna do withcryptocurrency?
[01:14:09] If you are the KTI group, can you turn it intoanything useful? Well, it kind of depends on the country you're in,but for most people, no. Okay. Absolutely. No. So we were able toknock the KTI ransomware groups. Offline. And we talked about thatbefore here. The us government did that, but now this is marking anew chapter for the cyber crime landscape.
[01:14:37] Interesting. Isn't it? So there are someinvestigations that have been going on. They've been trying tofigure out what happened. What was the cause of the downfall of thecounty ransomware group? Are they really gone? Why did they pulltheir website offline and also. They declared publicly support forRussia in its invasion of Ukraine.
[01:15:00] And so now the Canti ransomware group got hacked andheld ransom. They suffered major leaks. As a consequence. So otherhackers went after KTI, which is a hacking group and they, theyshowed here from internal in documents that were stolen, that theKTI ransomware gang's primary Bitcoin address, which was found inthe leak, showed that they had taken in over 2 billion incryptocurrency over the last five years.
[01:15:34] Isn't that just amazing and anonymous leaker haspublished more of the gangs communications, but you know, that canhelp that's for sure. But you think with that much money, they'd beable to protect themselves right now on top of it, because of thehack of Costa Rica and the major damage it's caused, the usgovernment has offered a couple of bounties here.
[01:16:00] Against the KTI ransomware group. So there's $10million available. If you can provide the feds with informationabout the leaders of the KTI ransomware group and $5 million thatyou can get leading to the arrest of anyone involved with a contransomware attack. Isn't that something. So ransomware has beenreally outta control for years.
[01:16:25] There's no signs that things are actually slowingdown. Definitely been enhanced law enforcement efforts to trackthem down. But ultimately here, the core members of these groupshave been escaping these law enforcement activities. They've beenusing mules kinda like 2000 mules. Have you seen that movie?
[01:16:46] But the idea is they get people primarily in the uscuz that's where most of the money comes from. They do ran. Ofpeople and businesses information here. In fact, last year, it'sestimated that 60%, six, 0% of small businesses were hacked, whichis just crazy. Right? Well, no wonder it's got $2 billion, but.
[01:17:09] What are, what are we supposed to do? What are theydoing to, to, uh, really come after us? Well, they're doing many ofthe same things. These mules will, uh, be hired saying, Hey, I justneed to, uh, use your PayPal account. And, uh, all you have to dois transfer some money. You can keep. 5%, 10% of the money I put inthere.
[01:17:29] And they've always got these excuses, you know, thinkthe Nigerian email scams from years past, and frankly still kind ofgo around a little bit here, but large bounties are really becominga part of the toolbox, a law enforcement's been using in the us andabroad to try and track them down. And that's really what they'rehoping for down in Costa Rica, because what are they gonna do?
[01:17:57] You know, frankly, really? What are they gonna do?Well, I don't know. And they obviously are relying on the UnitedStates to help them out with this. The internal structure of the Kgroup has been highly organized. They've got the same type ofstructure of a legitimate corporation would have it takes its workthat needs to be done.
[01:18:18] They hire contractors that may not even know whothey're actually working for to write small pieces of, of, uh, codehere that gets tied. so it's not too surprising that a KTIaffiliate is going to go far enough to cause a national emergencyto be declared. Uh, one of the things that KTI has done in some ofthese other ransomware companies have done companies, gangs is.
[01:18:47] They have ransomware as a service. So there's all ofthese people that are affiliated with KTI and all you have to do isget the KTI ransomware onto someone's computer and Taha. They willpay you. It's really that simple. They've got tech support for thepeople that are ran that got ransom to help them, uh, supposedlypay, right?
[01:19:13] How do I buy Bitcoin? And they'll walk you through.and then they will help you with restoring your files. Hopefullythey can be restored. They, they can't always be restored. I thinkright now the latest number I saw. about 60% of people who havetheir data encrypted and ransom are in fact able to get thatdata.
[01:19:39] There's 60% of the data back. So that's not too, too,uh, big a deal, but KTI operates on affiliate model. and thisaffiliate that went ahead and ransom, our friends in Costa Rica iscalled UN C 1 7 56, uncle 7 56. They're also suspected in otherattacks on government servers, including a theft of intelligencematerials from.
[01:20:07] Peru. And this attacker has already leakedinformation stolen from Costa Rica and it's on the K ransomwaredark web portal, which is online. And after the former president ofthe country refused to pay a $10 million ransom demand, theystarted leaking the data. So in this case, focus has been on thenational government agencies.
[01:20:31] They are potentially looking at what might you mightcall espionage, but these K ransomware affiliates have becomefamous for really quickly exploiting new vulnerabilities as they'republished and being indiscriminate in who they attack because $2billion. Right. And then the other part that I think is really kindof interesting here.
[01:20:55] Well, the we're talking about money. We're talkingabout real money. Obviously KTI deals almost exclusively inBitcoin, which can be hard to turn into hard currencies, but thatour friends in Costa Rica said no, we're, we're not going to pay.Knowing what has been stolen and what they no longer have accessto.
[01:21:18] In fact, the president said that the comp the countryCosta Rica is effectively at war. Now. They got a foothold KTI didin 27 agencies at different levels of the go. And the, uh, yeah.Okay. So KTI is, see, I'm looking at an article in the registerhere. KTI is apparently is made more than 150 million from athousand plus victims while we know it's actually 2 billion, but itdepends on the timeframe that they're talking about.
[01:21:50] Uh, And, uh, the, the cont says that they aredetermined to overthrow the government by means of a cyber attack.We've already shown you all the strength and power. You haveintroduced an emergency. It it's, it's really quite something. NowI mentioned earlier today that I am now. Taking all of thecybersecurity stuff that we have been using here over theyears.
[01:22:14] Things like our plan of action and milestonesdocuments and, and all of this stuff we use to run our projects forour customers. It's the real stuff, people. And remember, I've beendoing the cybersecurity. Since the early nineties, so we know whatwe're doing, I know what I'm doing and I'm making it available forfree.
[01:22:40] Okay, guys, you just have to send me an emailme@craigpeterson.com. So the first cyber punch list that we havethat a available and all you have to do is ask for it again. Me,me, Craig peterson.com is the. Email punch list. So with this punchlist, I go through the things that you need to do. In order tosecure your email and be more or less secure in your email.
[01:23:14] Now, I don't know about you. I do not like these longdiatribes. I, I have a book behind me that is hardening windows 10and it is in a four inch binder, double. Sided. There are thousandsof recommendations in there from Microsoft. There's a lot thatneeds to be done. So what I've done is boiled it down to the mostimportant things.
[01:23:43] And as I said, it's available for absolutely. Freefor you. It really is. If you're a listener, just email me, me,Craig peterson.com. You can ask me to add you to my insider shownotes and my little three minute trainings that we do every week.Uh, you can also ask for a cyber punch list that you might need, soit's just, okay.
[01:24:07] Need to do this. You need to do that. You need to dothis. You need to do that. So it makes it very straightforward. I'mtrying. To be OBT accused about any of this, but we have hadamazing feedback on this from companies over the years, and nowit's available to you for $0. Okay. So make sure you check itout.
[01:24:28] Craig peterson.com and you can always email me,me@craigpeterson.com as well. Thanks for taking a little time withme today and look for me online. Look for my emails and if youwould please give. Thumbs up on your favorite podcasting platform,YouTube or rumble or subscribe. Thanks.
