Speaker 1: Hello, how are you.
Speaker 2: All right? Man? We hear you, We hear you. Welcome
to the Big Podcast on this What is this? Tuesday,
the twenty fourth day of June, Year of Our Lord,
twenty twenty five. My name is Tom Sullivan. So we've
got what is this? The day after the day after,
and everybody's watching to see what happens next. The President
has declared that they are going to have a ceasefire,
and it started off badly, and now the President is
saying that he's mad at both Israel and Iran and
he's trying to hold them to a ceasefire, which are
all always a fragile event in any case. Surprising polling
coming out, and it really shows more about how we
are so divided in this country. I mean, we know
that already, but on the polling regarding the fact that
we went and bombed the nuclear facilities in Iran, it's
very much the Republicans are very much in favor of it,
Democrats very much against it. So it's awfully hard to
conceive how you can be so far away from each other.
But we are here in New York today. It is
election day, and it is the Democrat primary election, which
has been They had early voting for the last week
and a half something like that, But today's the election day.
Polls are open until nine o'clock tonight, so we won't
probably know until probably tomorrow, maybe nextday, because it's banked
rank choice voting, which means it takes a couple of
days for them to figure out who's number one and
who's number two. What's interesting about this is Andrew Cuomo,
the former governor who resigned in disgrace. He was in
the lead, but now you've got this up and coming socialist,
avowed socialist, who wants to be the mayor, and he
is now neck and neck with Cuomo, and AOC is
backing him. Of course, so is David Hogg, the guy
they just threw out of the DNC Supreme Court last night,
ruled in favor of Donald Trump on the ability of
this country to deport people to countries other than from
where they came. So we'll get into all of that,
and we've got an interview this podcast with Ira Victor,
and Ira Victor is the technology guru that we have
talked to for a number of years. There was a
hack of sixteen billion passwords along with solid security numbers
and names and everything else, and so sixteen billion. Basically
you and me and everybody else. Probably our passwords are
out there in the wind. So we'll talk to Ira
Victors stick around for all of that. He's always got
great tips on keeping your technology safe. But let's start
today with the polling. Here's Harryton from the CNN statistician.
Speaker 3: Things are moving quite quickly, but these are initial readings,
and I will say, from a historical perspective, I am
surprised that the net approval rating is so low on
these strikes. And it's in two different polls. It's our
CNN SSRs Paul twelve points underwater, one thumbs down. How
about the Rotterer sipsos Paul, look at that the exact
same reading, minus nine points underwater, two thumbs down. And
why am I so surprised from historical perspective, because usually
air strikes rate fairly highly. What are we talking about.
Let's go back through the time machine net approval of
US air strikes. You see it here around minus eleven
points underwater on the average, compared to isis back in
twenty fourteen, fifty eight points in the positive direction. So
this is a nearly seventy point difference. That is why
I'm so surprised from a historical perspective, because normally these
air strikes rate quite highly, but this one, you go
back through history, it rates as the lowest that I
could possibly find on the historical record. I think there's
this idea. Okay, maybe the MAGA base wouldn't necessarily like this. Look,
this is Donald Trump's Republican Party. That's why I think
is so important to note GOP on the US air
strikes and run seventy six percent in the average of
the two Poles approved compared to just eighteen percent who disapproved. Now, well,
note that is a bit higher than Donald Trump's disapprove
a rating within the Republican Party. But overall Republicans are
with Donald Trump on this, Tucker Carlson B darn. The
bottom line is he does not speak for the majority
of the Republican base. The majority of the Republican base
is with Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: You'll notice that Harry talked about the twenty fourteen airstrikes.
That was when President Obama was in the White House.
So is it just another one of these cases where
if Obama did it, the country was fine with it.
If Trump doesn't know because they don't like Trump. In fact,
I got a clip from Van Jones and he points
that out that people don't like Israel, Democrats don't, and
Democrats don't like Trump, and Democrats don't like bb net
and Yahoo. So that's more. What this is is a
big split between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans, well, we'll get
to that. Here's Lee Carter, she's a Republican strategist.
Speaker 4: From her Strober perspective, I agree, it's actually really surprising
how negative the pulling is. But from where we are
right now, we're such a divided country that this reflects
exactly what the pulling says. If you support the president,
you support what he did. If you oppose the president,
you oppose what he did. I think the other thing
about this poll that's remarkable is it doesn't capture the
not shores. I think there's a lot of people who say, Okay,
I approve of it, but I'm waiting to see what's
the output's going to be that those that disapprove it say,
I'm really scared that this isn't going to result in peace,
and I'm worried about what's going to happen here on
American soil. So I think there's a lot of people
out there that are saying, let's wait and see that's
not reflected in this poll. And I think we're going
to see that in the coming days for sure.
Speaker 2: And Jones, the big Democrats strategist, this is his take on.
Speaker 5: It, like Trump wants to be the puppet master and
the controller of everything. But you can't control bb Net
and Yahoo, you cannot control the Orian regime, you can't
control podin, And it just turns out that being president
of the United States is not being king of the
universe or God emperor of all reality, and so he's
going to have to deal with that. I do want
to point out though, that, you know, the difference between
ISIS and Iran is Isis did not have a pr budget.
Iran is doing a remarkable job of shaping public perception online.
If you look at if you look at TikTok, they're
presenting themselves as a victim party that had a deal
with America, that America tore up the deal and they've
been trying to get along and now they're being bullied
and that is being very effective. And so ISIS had
no PR budget. They were just chopping heads off and
people could see what they are. They could see Isis
for what it is. People are having a hard time
seeing Iran for what it is, which is a brutal,
horrific dictatorship that kills gays, that blinds women, and that
has had a whole circling campaign around Israel of people
firing rockets and killing people. So Iran's public image is
very different than Isis.
Speaker 2: Which is fascinating because this is the same sort of
story that came out after Hamas attacked Israel on October
seventh of twenty twenty three, and they came out and
they literally said, we are the victims. Hamas attacked and
killed innocent civilians in Israel, and they were able to
turn the left media in this country and the left
politicians in the feeling sorry for Hamas after they had
just brutally murdered all kinds of Israelis in their homes
on a Saturday morning. But they have a PR team,
and the people that buy the PR are the media
in this country, and they're doing the same thing again
here and Iran as a PR team, and as Van
Jones said, which I thought was fascinating is Isis did not,
and that is the difference. One Republican that doesn't think
that this is the end of hostilities between Iran and
Israel is Carlos Jimenez, the Republican from Florida. He says,
they're going to kind of take a pause and come
back and fight again.
Speaker 6: I support one hundred percent what the President has done,
all right, I do. But you know, looking at the future,
you know, maybe we're going to be facing a stronger Iran.
You know, four or five years from now, when they
find themselves down they want to negotiate. Give me some room,
and now I'll come back. I'll go back to the gym,
get stronger, and then we'll go at it again when
I think I can beat you.
Speaker 2: So will Iran come back? Will they rise from the ashes?
Or are the ashes really ashes? Are there are the
nuke materials still intact? Nobody really knows yet. Jeffrey Lewis,
he's with a think tank that studies all this international
foreign policy ideas, and he thinks, no, there's still a
lot of nuke material for Iran to come back from
the from the ashes.
Speaker 7: Well, I mean, I think a lot of it depends
on whether this sees fire holds. But if it does hold,
I think you're going to see expectation from the Trump
administration that there are some kind of talks. You know,
the strikes, as impressive as they have been, have left
a lot of nuclear capacity still in Iran, and at
the end of the day, that's going to have to be.
Speaker 1: Dealt with diplomat. Well.
Speaker 7: When the conflict started, Prime Minister Netanyahu's identified the fact
that Iran had enough nuclear material, he said for nine
nuclear weapons. What he was talking about was four hundred
kilograms or eight hundred pounds of highly enriched uranium that
Iran had stored under tunnels in a mountain near a
place called Natans. That material was not struck, those tunnels
are not destroyed. There are pretty credible reports that Iranians
have moved it. They're still in possession of that material,
as well as a number of facilities where they are
able to make centrifuges, as well as at least one
facility where they were planning on installing centrifuges just a
few days ago. So the reality is is Iran can
still make centrifuges, It still has the material that started
with the war with and it still has underground facilities
that have not been struck. So the things they hit
brilliantly and it's I am very impressed, But you got
to hit it all, you know, you can't just.
Speaker 2: Hit part Obviously, he thinks that they're still in pretty
good shape. The dust off of you things and they're
right back in business. So this again, it's going to
take a while for us to figure out just exactly
what was the results of the bombing and what is
going to happen next with Iran and Israel. Mark Seeson
kind of agrees in a weird way with Jeffrey Lewis,
basically saying Israel doesn't want to have a cease fire.
They want to finish the job because they think there
is more to do.
Speaker 8: Well, first of all, I understand where Israel is coming from,
because look, they've destroyed Iran's air defenses, They've taken out
more than half of their missile launchers. Aaron is pretty
much completely vulnerable. So they want to take advantage of
that opportunity. But Donald Trump has earned the right to
say he wants to try diplomacy, and so he's got
the right to do that. This is a guy who
took one of the most consequential, boldest decisions of any
commander in chief in my lifetime and taken sending B
two bombers to store the Iranian nuclear program. And so
that's earned him a little bit of space here to
to try this. If the Iranians break the ceasefire, Israel's
going to whack them. So they should sit back and
let let's let's see what Iran does next. As we've
found throughout our history, dictatorships are not necessarily rational actors.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 8: And the reality is that that Israel. You know, they
they want to finish the job. They want to eliminate
the threat. Once you've taken the risk of starting attacking Iran, uh,
then you then you want to finish the job. But look,
the hardest part is attacking the first time, breaking that taboo.
Now they've done it. You know, there's a famous you know,
Colon Powell doctrine that you know, if you break it,
you buy it. No, actually you can break it over
and over and over again, and you don't have to
buy it if they if if Iran try you know,
the Iranian nuclear chief said the other day, he said,
yesterday we're going to start up our nuclear program again.
Speaker 1: Good luck to you.
Speaker 8: If we start seeing that they're just starting their nuclear
program again, Iran's gonna Israel's going to whack them, and
maybe the US will too, so you know, we want
to keep our boots on their necks.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 8: After the strikes on Iran, he's positioned as the strongest
world leader to stet foot at NATO in a generation.
And look he's got His position is essential is that
he supports NATO as long as they pay there to
pay their way and carry their weight. And that's exactly
where the mega movement is. By the way, the Reagan
Institute has a new poll out showing that seventy one
percent of self described NATO MAGA Republicans say that if
a NATO ally is attacked, the US should come to
their defense, But that drops to forty four percent if
that country is not paying their way. And that's exactly
Donald Trump's position. And he's saved NATO when he came
and when he came into office, only three NATO countries
were meeting their NATO commitments. He got them to spend
four hundred billion dollars more on defense, and now he's
raising the Anti to five percent of GDP. All the
Eastern European allies are there. Poland is on track to
do that this year, Lithuania, Latvian Estonia are going to
between five and six percent. It's time for Germany and
France and Canada, which is the laggard is only at
one point six percent, to get there as well.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Let's also talk about a big Supreme Court ruling that
came in last night, big win for the Trump administration.
This is Chad Wolf, former Acting Director of the Department
of Homeland Security, on the Supreme Court ruling six to
three that the United States can deport illegals to third countries.
In other words, not necessarily back to the country they
came from, because some countries they came from don't want
them back. So the court said, yes, you can send
them to a third country. Here's Chad Wolf.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think this is a really important and incredible
ruling that DHS has here, and it goes to the
concept of the United States is not the only country
that can take in refugees or assyl ees. And so
this idea is that if you come here and you
come to the United States, that we can send you
back to a safe third country that gives you the
protections that you need if you are in danger from
your own home country. So that's why it's called a
safe third country agreement of some kind. And so there's
many countries around the world that, as you know, that
don't take their foreign nationals back. And so rather than
just keeping them here in the United States for decades,
which we've seen flemarly with Chinese nationals, you can now
what the Trump administration is now going to do is
going to remove those to other third countries that will
keep them safe that we have agreements with. That starts
to diminish the pool factors that we talk about here,
because more and more people will come if they know
they can't get sent back to their home countries, they're
just going to keep coming to the United States. This
takes away that pool factor that anyone and everyone can
come to the United States, regardless of who they are,
regardless of any kind of status in the United States
needs to keep them here in the country and release
them so that perhaps they can reaffec end and address
and come to a lot of Americans. And it's just
not right. I mean, the ability the Trump administration has
been saying for some time now that if you're a
criminally legal alien here in the United States, we're going
to arrest you and we are going to remove you
gone or the days where you just get released into
the American communities to reoffend. And I think that's what
the Trump administration that will be kind of what they
are known for this term, and they are well on
their way. And it doesn't surprise me that you have
Democrats that are upset about that. These are the same
folks that praise Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for four years.
Speaker 2: Then the question is what about the godaways, what about
the Iranian nationals that are in this country that came
across the border, and what are they doing now?
Speaker 9: Yeah, this is a big issue. Obviously, for four years
we had any number of individuals coming across, and so
the consequences of four years of an open border are
going to obviously manifest itself differently. And so we know
that has Bellah Hamas and others are here in the
United States. Will see if they are activated, We see
if they are inspires the FBI and local law enforcement.
I know we're doing everything that they can, but this
is a real concern and unfortunately four years of the
Biden administration will eventually have consequences.
Speaker 2: And I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast today
that the election, the mayoral election in New York City
is underway today. It had a primary or early voting
about a week and a half ago, last week and
a half, but today is election day. And the guy
who what a choice New Yorkers have. It's going to
be ranked choice voting. But the choices are Andrew Cuomo,
who has been in the lead, the former governor who
resigned in disgrace. Yeah, that's what that's considered the best choice.
The other guy who's come on strong and now may
win the thing. We'll find out in a couple of
days because of rank choice voting, takes a couple of
days for them to tally everything up. But this guy's
name is Ma'm Danny, and mister man Danny's a vowed socialist.
He wants universal free childcare. He wants free buses for all.
He wants city run grocery stores. Yeah, the city will
run grocery stores, no cost childcare, new anti police safety department.
We don't like the police, no, So we're going to
have a anti police Safety Department, and he's going to
create an office of LGBTQIA plus affairs. So that's the
primary stuff that he is promoting, and I'm sure he
has many other ideas that are very, very similar. So
even the Chicago Tribune today wrote about their mayor brand
and Johnson and what a mess it's been for the
city of Chicago, and they said, please New York learn
from us. You do not want a socialist mayor. So
we'll see what happens from there, all right. The story
about the sixteen billion passwords that have been stolen, this
is from a number of sites today where you can
find the story about it. Sixteen billion passwords along with
your name and your social Security number and everything else.
And so I thought the guy to talk to you
about all of this is the digital forensic expert that
we rely on so many times over over the years,
Ira Victor. He's with Discovery Technician dot com. And here's
my conversation with Ira about not only the stealing of
the passwords, but how it all works and what can
you do to protect yourself? This story about the hack.
There's all always lots of stories like you that come along,
but this one is sixteen billion Google, Apple, other passwords
were leaked and what do I do? What do people
do if their passwords are leaked out? I have a
password program that I pay for, and so do I
have to go through that and change every one of
my passwords?
Speaker 8: Well?
Speaker 1: All right, So the first thing to understand is this
is not a breach from the big tech companies, not
from their servers. This particular breach is not from their servers.
This is a drip drip drip from breaches that have
been going on for quite a long time and continue
to happen. The question is where's the source of the breach?
And all the reports are that the source of the
breach for this data are from people's individual devices, So
not from from the Google cloud, not from the Apple iCloud,
not from Facebook's cloud, but the credentials to those systems
and more there are copies of those on people's devices,
and this is what's called credent credential stealing, and this
is ongoing. It isn't in the past, it's ongoing.
Speaker 2: So from that they're stealing from people's phones. Is that
what you're saying?
Speaker 1: Bones, yeah, bones, desktops, tablet yeah, network table yeah. And uh,
you know, Willie Sutton said, why do you rob banks?
That's where the money is. We want to go. You
want to steal, you want to steal the credentials. The
easiest place to steal them is from the devices because
these devices were designed, they were engineered tom to be
open and promiscuous. That's that's the word we use. They're
promiscuous devices. They're designed to connect and talk to everything,
and cyber criminals leverage that.
Speaker 2: So but I mean, I'm not own. People have gone
out of their way to try to make sure that
their passwords are protected. And what do I do? How
do I is there? Are you telling me there's not
a way.
Speaker 1: Though there is a way, There absolutely is a way.
I'm not saying that at all. And here's the mantra
to remember. Do you remember nothing else from listening to
me today? Good DataX, strong data security and privacy is
more about process than products. The industry wants you to think.
The security industry, most of the vendors want you to
think it's about buying more products, more hardware, more software,
more clouds. This moor that sure, because that drives up
their valuation that they that they make money on by
taking that into the public market, to the stock market.
Sure that that's their goal, that's their primary goal. My
contention is, and I'm in I'm in a camp that says, no,
it's about more about process than products. So and therefore
it's not a lot. It's not about spending a lot
of money, you know, much to the to the sadness
of a lot of the security vendors. I want you
to think, you know, throw a lot of money at
the problem and then you'll solve it. That doesn't because
clearly if that work, we would have had.
Speaker 2: The problem solved, right, Tom, Well, we talked about it
a lot of times that corporate America doesn't spend enough
money on security on their tech. But you're saying, this
is a different road. This isn't the normal.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: This is on the device.
Speaker 1: So a password manager is a So first, let's the
a couple of things. One is I can I can,
I can tell you about this particular kind of attack,
which is credential stealing, and some tips to reduce the
likelihood of credential stealing. But keep in mind today it's
credential steel. There are a bunch of gangs, cybercriminal gangs,
doing the credential stealing. Meanwhile, there are other cyber criminal
gangs doing other types of effect. So this isn't This
is this approach of like we we called a fire
droll approach. Oh there's a there's an arsonist over here,
go put out that fire. There's an arsonist over there,
go put out this fire. Maybe we should think more
about fireproof fire resistant buildings rather than than than more
fire departments. But let's just talk about the fire right here.
With with credential stealing passwords, we call that credentials or
authentication right right away. What people can do right away,
What people can do the browser companies in order to
get you to stick with their browser companies. And just
for those that don't know, Google Chrome is an example
of a browser. Microsoft Edge is an example of browser,
Apple Safari a, Mozilla Firefox. These are all browser companies.
In an effort for them to get you to stick
with their browser, they give you a feature where the
browser remembers your passwords, and most many many people use that.
And you see the pop up do you want to
number this password? You go? Sure? Makes it easier, yeah,
and it's making it easier for the cyber criminals. Because
they're stealing it. Let me be very selfish about this.
You mentioned password manager. I have a password manager. In fact,
there was one password manager that I use for a
few years and all of a sudden, their big, super
duper security got busted and I left them like a
hot potato and went to a different password manager that's
supposed to be the greatest password manager ever. And so
are they working on this for me?
Speaker 2: Are they doing something? Because when something comes up, it says,
do you want us to remember your password? I go no,
I use my password manager to filler in.
Speaker 1: That's right. So this is an important distinction, Tom, And
I'll say the name of the company. I'll take the
slack on this. It was Last Pass and I actually
had some conversations with the founders many moons ago, and
they were they were very conscientious, but they got acquired
by private equity and all that mattered. And again, I'm
a free market here, but that doesn't mean that they're
I mean the free market caveat m tour. That's another principle,
the free market buy or beware the private equity guys.
When they got control of the company, all they cared
about was the next quarter's earning. Sure, and so they
they you know, they repted on their laurels, and they
let security go bad in my opinion, and therefore they
things got really messed up. And I too recommended people
step away from that company that was it was too
risky in my opinion.
Speaker 2: Well, that's right. I read. I read that tons of
people were you weren't alone. Every tech article out there
said leave them, go run away as fast as you can.
So I don't know if they're I'm sure their business
was hurt by them trying to take shortcuts.
Speaker 1: It it was, so I'm talking about. What I was
talking about a few moments ago, was the built in
password saving feature of a web browser that you don't
want to use. Skip that, and you're talking so far,
so far. I feel better because I always skip that.
But yeah, that's great. So the third party password managers,
those are good, but you need to there are some
good ones out there. And by the way, for home consumers,
the basic features, there are companies out there that provide
this for free, the basic version for free, and for
many home users, the free version is perfectly satisfactory. If
you're a business, the paid versions of that will help
you manage the passwords better for your your staff. But
if you're a home user, you don't need that. So
a good password manager, though, will allow you to assign
a not just something you know. That's what we call
one factor. A factor is something you know, like a
user name and password. Another factor can be something that
you have, like an app on your phone. Another factor
could be something that you are, like the fingerprint or really, come,
I'm not making this up. It's that science fiction. There
are these scanners now that scan the veins in your hand,
the palm of your hand. And even if I had
a yeah, and even if I had an identical twin,
God forbid, the veins in my in my in my
twin others hands would be different than mine because as
we grew, the veins are different. And I don't need
to be morbid about it. But if you cut off
the hand, yeah, the veins collapse, so you the person
needs to be alive. Sorry to be so morbid. No, no, no,
but those are.
Speaker 2: But I thought you were going to go down the
road of where I've talked about this on the on
the show, and people have been very upset with it.
Is the I recognition, the what do you call it
the airlines eye scanner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, the TSASA is using that. That's right,
iris recognition. So those are all factors. So when we
say two factor authentication, I don't really like the term
because it's confusing because people say, and I understand why
a username A username that's one factor, A password that's another.
I got two factor? No, because those are something that
you know, k N O W. You know something that's
a factor. Then you have something like a little device
you can carry out in your pocket, or a app
on your phone that's something you have that's a second factor,
or your eyeball scan that's something you are that's another
second or third factor, however you want to classify it.
So the good password managers, even the ones that are free,
there are good ones that are free, allow you to
set up a strong two factor authentication. And what I
mean by that is that either a small device you're
carry in your pocket. I wear one around my neck.
Actually it's the thickness of a credit card and I
can plug it into a computer and press a button
and it synchronizes, and then I also put in my password.
And so it's something that I know and something that
I have. You can also have an app on your phone,
not quite as not as good as the device that
are wearing around my neck like a lanyard, but still
a decent second factor is an app on your phone.
The poor second factors there, really weak second factors are
a text message or an email because those systems are easy,
very easy to compromise, so they're not a good second factor.
Speaker 2: They send, they send you the code you want to,
we'll send you know, we want to make sure you
are who you are, so we'll send you a text
message and it'll it'll have one, two, three, four five.
You type that in and everything's good. And you're saying,
that's not all that good of a security.
Speaker 1: It's it's better than one factor. But all that's only
because one factor is so bad that that it's better
than nothing. But it is the weakest form of two factor,
a text message or an email, and the weakest form
of two.
Speaker 2: So what I'm getting you want to what I'm getting
a lot now is authentic something to my authenticator. I
got three authenticator apps on my phone. I don't know
why I have three read but I have three, and
so I look and one will fire up when they
send me something to authenticate it. Is that better?
Speaker 1: Right? That's better because that's an app that's not that
and that's encrypted from the from the vendor or in
this case of the example we're using, I'm using as
a password manager, but also can be directly from a
service provider on the internet and they send you an
encrypted message to your phone and then you accept it,
and that's better. But here's the weakness with that. If
you're doing and I don't recommend people doing this, doing
banking or other sensitive data on your phone is really dangerous.
Your phone is not is an extremely promiscuous device, and
you can easily someone can you know, you can misplace
it temporarily, someone can trick you to get their hands
on it. They are all sorts of attacks against phones.
And so it's if you if you're set factor something
that you have is the device you're logging into. It's
not strong two factor. So you want to you want
to do your online banking, you want to do insurance finance,
these confidential items on a computer, a more secure computer,
ideally a computer, so that your phone is not the
same device you're doing the activity on, because if they've
compromised your phone then who cares if the factors sent
to your phone? The bad guys get that. Everything seems fine,
but they're stealing that. So I know this is complex, Tom,
I'm not denying it to people that this is complex
and difficult. If security and privacy didn't take effort, everyone
would be doing it. Tom.
Speaker 2: So I have done. I have a couple of bank
accounts that I have an app for on my phone.
I don't delete them. I don't be banking bank keen,
but they will say you have a battlece on your
credit card, and so I'll go on and I won't
go into my bank accounts, but I'll go to the
credit card and pay the credit card. You're saying, that's yeah,
I'm exposing I don't do that.
Speaker 1: That's right, It's that is So here's the thing, Tom.
Imagine you're going out with buddies and they're they're drinking
a few cocktails on a Friday night. Msiah. Everybody drinks
a few cocktails on a Friday night after work. It's
miller time, and then they drive home. But Tom, you're
a former law enforcement that's not a that's a risky
thing to do, right. We do right?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 1: So I don't do that. When I go out with
my buddies after work, I won't drink three cocktails and
get it and get behind the wheel of an automobile.
Now I know that a lot of people do. That
doesn't mean that it's smart. I know that a lot
of people. So what do I have finances on this smartphone?
Speaker 2: What do I so so to delete the bank apps?
Is what you're saying your phone?
Speaker 1: Right? Use your phone for communications, but not for your money,
not for your money in and what I recommend people
do and and what I've set up many people to
do this and I do this with my family members,
is I have a separate, segregated computer that has a
high security operating system on it. I actually buy them
on eBay. These are twelve hundred dollars computers that won't
run the latest version of Windows or Map and you,
and they're still an outstanding condition, refurbished, they look almost new,
and I can pick them up for less than two
hundred dollars. Fifteen twelve fifty hundred dollar computers new a
couple of years later sell for pennies on the dollar
book there.
Speaker 2: You buy them from. There used to be a computer
company in California that was close by, and I went
over and they had a store where you could buy
refurbished and they were great because all they were was
maybe they were part of a shipment that got dropped
and three of the computers out of the twelve were damaged.
They had to send those back and call them refurbished.
Or a retailer ordered one hundred of them and could
only and only sold thirty of them. They sent the
others back. They were brand new.
Speaker 1: Yep. But they are a company.
Speaker 2: They're cheap, really cheap to buy.
Speaker 1: They're cheap. This is what I mentioned under Tom, a
tech guy, and who knows he might be listening. He
let's your show. And he used to say, I or
my boy. It's the difference between the clueless and the clueful. Yah.
And so I buy these. I buy a refurbished laptop
or a desktop with a warranty on it. I set
up a high security operating system on it. And I
tell people whoever, this is for family members, friends, clients,
and I say, do your finances on this computer, because
here's what happens, Tom, when fraud happens. They'll give everyone
an example. Last year alone, the online banking app known
as Dell. You may have heard of it. Tom's very popular. Yep.
They had last year alone, they had over a billion
dollars of fraud. That's b as in B two bomber
a billion dollars. Over a billion dollars of fraud on
Zell last year one year. Wow. So what the loss
says is that the customer. This is the second most
important thing about this interview today, Tom, the customer and
the financial institution share in the liability when fraud occurs.
Speaker 2: I've heard that about Zell is dangerous because the bank
will tell you, sorry, you lost your money, don't talk
to us. It's your fault, right.
Speaker 1: Your device is promiscuous, and they're right it is. That
doesn't mean that that was the cause of the fraud,
but they don't care about that. They care about next
quarter's earning. That's their priority, not your security of privacy.
Speaker 2: So let me go back to let me go back
to the banking. So I'll delete my apps, my banking apps.
I just looked on my phone. I've got four of them.
One of the things about my banking is that I
told you I had a password manager. I got a
password manager in there for this company and that company,
every kind of company out there, but I don't have
for my four banking relationships. I do not use them
because I don't want to give anybody even a password manager,
because they could be hacked the user name and password
for my bank accounts.
Speaker 1: And I understand that Tom, and I don't. I guess
they could get hacked. It's a matter of relative risk.
Here's the way to lower your relative risk, and anyone
to lower your relative risk. Take one of these laptops,
high security operating system on it, and then you do
all you and then you you can. You keep your
passwords handy, but not on that kid. You don't write
them down on that computer. You have them, you have
them somewhere else. You keep that information handy. You use
that computer, and that computer only to check your balance,
to make payments, to check on anything. That the only
place that those credentials can be stolen from from you
is on that device. And then if you lose money
in your account, that computer becomes forensic evidence in your
claim that your security was equal to or greater than
the banks, and you can prove it with that computer.
How do I know the scales of justice him?
Speaker 2: How do I know that I'm getting your high security
refurbished laptop.
Speaker 1: You you you buy the lab, I buy the laptop
with a promiscuous operating system in it, and it and
it is wiped completely gone. And then there are there
this Center for Internet This is actually I'm I'm I'm
giving your audience news that is that I can talk
about but is not publicly known yet, wasn't wasn't planned
for today, Tom. This the the global standard that that
defines legally reasonable security and privacy. Well that's important and
getting your money back is a standard called the Center
for Internet Security Controls c i S Center for Internet
Security Controls cisecurity dot org. And they have they are
the they are nonprofit that that manages the standard that
defines reasonable security. And I am i'm, I'm an ambassador
for that standard TOP and I have been part of
an effort that will be launching at the uh BY
in fourth schedule to launch in fourth quarter of this year.
Five a free high security operating system available to download
from the Center for Internet Security. You load it on
one of those those computers are loaded up, you fine
tune it and now you have security that is that
meets the legal burden. So you can shift the liability
your best chance of shifting the liability from you like
the bank wants to do over to the financial institution.
Speaker 2: I just because I just typed it in. I just
typed it in and it has a nice little home page.
Twenty five years it's been around the Center for Internet Security,
so we just heard about it.
Speaker 1: Well. Yeah, so, as I like to say, Tom, I've
said this to the leadership. I said, Center for Internet
Security has got large mind share, but not sorry, large
market share, but small mind share. People don't know about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's great alert level guarded. So they're basically
saying that there's bad guys floating around out there.
Speaker 1: There are there are now, Tom, I wanted to talk
to a moment about this topic. In regards to Iran,
the people may not be a perfect be aware of them.
Put the dots together perfect, all right. You're not going
to hear this any other place, I don't think so.
Fifteen years ago, the Israeli government snuff malicious code via
USB into the Natan's Nuclear Center Development Center in Iran.
This was part of the attack at over the weekend,
wasn't the tons And what happened was the malicious code
lived inside of the centrifusions and the control the control
systems for the centerfusion. And when all the control all
the operators are there. And look, you can say many
things about the Iranians. They're not fools. They're very smart.
There are many very smart educated Iranians. I know Iranian
patriots here in the United States, very smart, smart people, right,
good business people, very smart. And so they had their
smart nuclear physicists in this lap and the malware was
designed so that all their computer strengths is everything's fine,
everything's good, we're making nuclear we're processing the uraniums. Everything's good.
Speaker 2: And are you are you telling me we did not
need to drop a bomb? We already had a bomb inside.
Speaker 1: The reason we the reason it was at twenty twenty
five that Iran still apparently does not have nuclear weapons
was in part because of the stucks net virus in
twenty ten. That's right written but written by the Israelis all.
I mean, there's been no official disclosure, but it's kind
of an open secret written. Uh, there's been there have
been books written about it. Kim Kim Zelder wrote one
of the great books about it, about Stuck's Net and so.
Speaker 8: This.
Speaker 1: But the reason I bring this up is that this,
this is this is a known method of attack where
you infiltrate the system and everything works fine. Hey my
phones were my phones working fine? Ira, I moved, I
moved fifty thousand dollars yesterday everything was fine. Yeah, just
like stucks net. Everything was fine until it wasn't so.
And today today there are sixteen billion passwords leaked out.
And tomorrow will be another attack, and another attack, and
a different kind of attack, a ransomware attack, an attack
that takes out a water system, There'll be other types
of attacks. We need to think differently about our devices
and how we're using them. The conventional wisdom of everybody
does it this way, so it must be fine. Yeah,
that's not the case.
Speaker 2: A lot of the military experts that we're listening to
on various houses of media are talking about, you know,
be prepared. Ron will probably respond, they may send a missile,
they may do this, they may do that. But some
of the generals have said, and of course cyber attacks,
and that's what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So I am and yesterday, yeah, and yesterday, Tom your
guest from the New NYPD, the ant terrorism expert from
NYPD you had on yesterday he talked about he acknowledged,
he didn't say it, but this is his tone was,
the Iranians are very smart. They run reconnaissance. Remember when
he said that, Tom, They scope out buildings, They run reconnaissance,
just like when you were law enforcement and the thief
would case the liquor store the day before he'd actually
rob it. Yes, and so that's happening with site in
information security and attacks right now, Tom. Right now, the
case thing is going on, and whether it's whether it's
to steal credentials, whether it's other types of attacks on
all sorts of infrastructure and computers and systems of all
sorts that's going on. We know that, we know that
that's going on, and there is I'm hearing and seeing
heightened alerts on critical infrastructure in the United States and
that's a good thing. But people also need to be
aware that the Iranians running reconnaissance, scoping out the joint
is not just limited to you know, a water treatment
plant or an electric company. It's it's it's wide and
it's broad. And so this is this this you don't
want to be a chain in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is just a yeah, it's it's it's not
your world, but it but it is, but it is.
We've got to be aware that this is how wars
will be fought in the future.
Speaker 1: Instead of combination.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it sounds like that's what's going on now
is a combination of good old fashioned military bombing and
kinetic warfare along with cyber warfare. I had an interview
with the former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. I'm going back
six seven eight years ago and we started down the road.
He brought up cybersecurity, a cyber attacks, and I said, so,
you know, what level is it at. When's it going
to be there? He says, it's there now. That was
seven eight years ago. Rumsfeld passed away since then. So
this is something that's been going on for a long time.
Keep people like you in business. I mean, I'm glad
you're there.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I would I would happily give up that
part of my business if we wouldn't have the attacks.
But yes, this is this is important and it is
And just because everything is working fine doesn't mean that
it is from from your handheld to networks to have
work and what people are doing, this is this is
out there. You don't want to panic. It's not the
end of the world, but you need to be vigilant
and you don't want to be the one that also
that that drinks the three cocktails and gets behind the wheel.
Speaker 2: Well, all right, so let's review. Uh. One is take
my banking apps off my phone.
Speaker 1: And read and then reboot your phone after you remove
the apps, reboot your phone.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right? And then secondly is to start reading
up on this Center for Internet Security and stay in
touch with That's right. I see a big science register register. Now,
oh that's for a one day course. Never mind if you.
Speaker 1: Want to go, if you want to learn about the standard.
Because of my work in this area, I have the
Center for Internet Security make a page that just goes
right to sign up to get the standard. It's called
C and it's the standard is free. See I Security,
like center, I like India Security dot org slash Nevada
but it's applicable anywhere in the country. But see I Security.
Speaker 2: Last time you got your you got your own thing
going with them because you're you're you're in Nevada and
huh nice.
Speaker 1: Nevada was Nevada was one of the early states that
made this standard in statute, the law that defines reasonable security.
Nevada was one of the early states to do that.
I was part of that effort, and now it has
spread across the country. So we we've we we've we've
set the pace for other states across the country.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And I do this work to help people. If people
want help, I will help them get compliant with the standard,
or they can crack the books and learn it on
learn it on their own. And and and that's that's
great too.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at it. I did the ci Security dot
org slash Nevada, and I'm looking for.
Speaker 1: A put your name in there and then well there
you put your name in there and they'll send you
a link. The organization will send you a link of
a package that has the information about the standard.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at it. I'm looking at it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to my computer to explore.
Speaker 2: CIS Controls version eight point one. If the latest controls,
it can download something.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's it, the latest controls.
Speaker 2: The latest version. You have to stroll down to it
download CIS Controls version eight point one. Well, I'm on
I'm on a company computer. And as you can imagine,
what My next thought is I can't download anything. I
have to go through the well, they'll detect people.
Speaker 1: They'll send you an email which you can send home. Oh,
send you an email that'll give you a free download
for the link. What they're doing, Tom, I'll tell you
full transparency. That's I'm big on that. They're asking for
the email because they want to see where people are
making the requests for the standard. They're tracking that. And
here's fastening. Fun fact. It used to be very large,
mostly the United States. Now people around the world are
are downloading this standard and starting to adopt this. It
really is continuing that march to being the uh uh,
the standard that defines reasonable security and privacy.
Speaker 2: I'm filling it out as you're talking.
Speaker 1: There you go, and I'll tell you I'm gonna I'm
gonna I'm gonna give a spoiler alert. Center, the Center
for Internet Security Controls is mostly about process, not about
buying tons of products, because good security is a mostly
about process.
Speaker 2: Interesting, all right, I'm I'm filling this whole thing out.
So the people that God hacked it was because of
the device, is not because of Google or Apple or
anybody else having weak systems fascinating.
Speaker 1: This particular story. There'll be another breach, another story, sure,
but yes, this particular one. That's right, all right?
Speaker 2: The warning before we leave you, Ira, would you mind
giving us the whole spiel on on you because I
always want to give you credit for all this.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. I am a digital forensics expert
and I help individuals and companies protect their data and
their privacy by using standards and I when we hope
that everyone does the the the protective work, or as
I like to say it, the fluorite treatments. But when
things go south and you end up in court, which
is like roots can, it's the most painful part. I
am my digital forensics expertise. I am a consultant and
expert witness for legal cases to help attorneys with their
cases and help their clients. And I can be reached
on Discovery Technician. It's fanatic Discovery Technician dot com. And
I'm out of Nevada.
Speaker 2: Okay, Hira Victor, thank you a million times, appreciate your help,
and I'm sure we'll be talking again with the next
one of these breaches or whatever. Thought. I love the
connection to the war story about fifteen years ago they
put put the code in there into the nuclear site
that we just bomb one of them. Ira, thank you
very much and we'll talk soon. Welcome some so on
the market today, Wall Street loved the idea obvious seas fire.
We'll see if it holds or not. But the idea
of a ceasefire gave Wall Street a big boost. The
Dow Jones industrials shot up. Oil prices cratered investors obviously
betting or deeping their fingers crossed that the truce between
Israel and Iran will hold. The Dow finished up five
hundred and seven points to forty three thousand and eighty nine,
so above above forty three thousand. The SMP is a
hair breadth away from a new record, up sixty seven
to six thousand ninety two. NASDAK also a new record,
up two hundred and eighty one the nineteen thy nine
to twelve so records or near records on Wall Street today,
gold prices the flight to safety. They obviously feel like
they don't need to fly to safety. Are the Gold
down fifty seven dollars to thirty three thirty seven in oil,
another indicator that people on Wall Street are thinking that
the ceasefire will hold oil down almost four dollars today
to sixty five dollars for one barrel of oil. So
that's it for today. Thank you for coming by. We'll
be back again tomorrow. Hope to see you then.