Welcome!
Good morning, everybody. I was on with Jim Polito and we covered Warnings from the NSA, Stats on C-Level Non-Compliance, and how companies are handling patching and updating and the problems that it is causing.
For more tech tips, news, and updates visit – CraigPeterson.com
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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:
Craig Peterson: Al Qaeda has used business servers here in the U.S. Just regular businesses that are online and are trying to, have a nice little website and get their message out to people. Al Qaeda has taken some of those over and is used to spread just horrific propaganda.
[00:00:21]That was me on with Mr. Jim Polito here this morning. I am just totally shocked at what has been going on, how, how bad things are. And in case you didn’t realize that we’ve had some serious problems with security. That’s all we talked about here this morning. In fact, what the old Al Qaeda guys are up to, but what are some of the things that you should be doing?
[00:00:45]If you are a C-level, a business owner, you’ve got to listen in because I got some stats here about you that your, IT people should probably know about as well as you we’ve all got to pull up our socks here.
[00:01:01] Jim Polito: This is a Safe Harbor in the world of tech and, all things, all things information. I’m talking about our good friend and tech talk guru Craig Peterson.
[00:01:13] Good morning, sir.
[00:01:16] Craig Peterson: Hey, good morning, Mr. Jim,
[00:01:17] Jim Polito: How are you today, Craig?
[00:01:20] Craig Peterson: I’m doing well. I’m still out in Kentucky. We got the wedding coming up on Friday.
[00:01:26] Jim Polito: Nice.
[00:01:27]Craig Peterson: Karen and I are out here to help out. Yeah, it’s going to be nice.
[00:01:31] Jim Polito: That’s nice.
[00:01:32] Now listen, did you get to Bourbon County at all? Cause I understand there’s a, there’s a couple of things that I would like to see in bourbon County if you know what I mean.
[00:01:44] Craig Peterson: Yeah, they’re some amazing tours, but you know, the government here is shut them all down. The governor, they recently elected a Democrat governor who has, canceled everything.
[00:01:55] Her wedding basically got canceled, no more than 10 people in one place. It’s going to be outdoors. I’m going to be streaming it live. So the family and friends can see her. Some of my relatives from Canada cannot get into the US cause it is closed until the middle of this month.
[00:02:15] So it was just a big mess, you know, it’s their happy day. I hope.
[00:02:20] Jim Polito: Yeah. Well, here’s a good thing. You know, as the father of the bride. Think about how little you’ll spend on an open bar.
[00:02:27]Craig Peterson: I went to the liquor store and they’ve got some great Kentucky bourbon. Let me tell ya. It’s actually cheaper to go to New Hampshire to buy it than it is to buy it here. It’s a different world, but it’s very, very cool. My daughter works on this big horse farm. They won the triple crown a couple of years ago we’re staying with her and it’s really pretty.
[00:02:51]You know, what’s weird, you’re outside. It’s beautiful. There are no bugs. There are no black flies. There are no mosquitoes. I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe the governor quarantined them too I was thinking.
[00:03:05] Jim Polito: Maybe the bourbon distilling process, put something into the air here. They’ll get drunk and they can’t fly straight. I don’t know.
[00:03:12] Well, look, we’re happy with congratulations on behalf of everybody and hope you do have a good time.
[00:03:19] Now we’re going to talk about something else that you’re an expert in, the Russians. What are they doing now? Hacking
[00:03:29] our servers, and I guess actually we left the door open for them.
[00:03:34] Speaking of bugs, didn’t we leave the door open for the Russians.
[00:03:40]Craig Peterson: Unfortunately we did and we have. The Russians have been very active. They have been attacking Ukraine here for two years and one of them really. Big pieces of nastiness. Some of this ransomware was apparently originally aimed at Ukraine, and it kind of took out the whole world. It was absolutely crazy.
[00:04:03]Right now the national security agency has a group of them it is watching really closely from Russia called the Sandworm group. There is a mail server that is in pretty common use. You know, if you’re in the Unix world, there are a few servers there’s send mail, postfix, and EXIM. Those are the big ones. Those are the ones that handle the world email. then if you’re a small business, then you’re probably using something like Microsoft exchange server. The NSA is saying now that this EXIM mail. A system that’s used in UNIX has a critical bug and it’s being used right now by the Russian to allow them to control our US servers. Think of Hillary’s server in a closet, if you will where they had access to all of the emails near as we can tell. Now it’s looking like they have had access to, some of our communications here in the US and this is directly tied into the GRU.
[00:05:10]Jim Polito: Now this is Ukraine. They were going into Ukrainian utility companies, right?
[00:05:18] They were trying to hack it, which is the big fear we always have. Right. Craig that they get into is a utility infrastructure, gas, electricity, water, all of that. And, and they don’t need to send a bomber overhead. They, they, they destroy us that way. Right.
[00:05:38] Craig Peterson: Yeah, exactly. And that’s the beauty of them getting control of servers here in the US you know Al Qaeda has used business servers here in the U.S. Just regular that are online and are trying a nice little website and get their message out to people. Al Qaeda has taken some of those over and is used to spread just horrific propaganda.
[00:06:04] I gotta tell you just yesterday. We put a new server online for a client. This is a very fancy server. It’s a politically related organization and they need to take donations. They need to get information out, you know, with the email list and everything else. Brand new server and in a matter of 20 minutes, after turning the server on it had 42,000 requests coming in from China and Russia in 20 minutes, Jim.
[00:06:40]Jim Polito: So you put a server online, it’s for a political organization, 43,000 hits from those groups in 20 minutes.
[00:06:54] Craig Peterson: Not just amazing. They’re probing us constantly. They’re getting in. And this particular one that Russian’s main intelligence directorate is going after is patchable. Like so many others that we have out there. We had power outages, Ukraine back in 2015, 2016 that you were talking about here again. Patchable. We knew about it.
[00:07:20] Look at what happened two years ago now with the number one credit reporting company in the country patchable six months before it was hacked. We’re just not doing patches. I’m going to be talking about that this weekend here on, on my radio show. I’m not sure Danny has it on Saturday or Sunday now.
[00:07:43] I’m still not sure
[00:07:46]Jim Polito: I know it’s 11 o’clock it’s either Saturday or something. You know what? I’ll make sure I get it.
[00:07:53] Yeah. Get a clear answer to that, but no, it’s a great show because I’ve heard it, but I’ve listened to the podcast. I’ll check with Danny. I should probably, you know like I know him in the kitchen, but that’s no excuse.
[00:08:08] Craig Peterson: Well, we had this thing happened with the Olympics. You remember the winter Olympics here in 2018 and they were able to, again, we think it was, it was, various intelligence organizations shut down key parts of the winter Olympics. We’re not paying attention.
[00:08:26] I think. It’s because people are afraid that if they patch, something’s going to break, they’re going to get blamed. We, as a business, people have to smarten up. Did you know that three-quarters of all C-level people, three-quarters of all business owners, and executives have asked their IT people to make exceptions for them, for security and particularly mobile security? I don’t want to have to be out of the office and then use this two-factor authentication stuff. Three quarters, Jim.
[00:09:02] Jim Polito: Yeah. See that’s, you know what you’re like that until you have a hack and then it’s too late, you know what I mean? There are so many other things in life where we’re like that. ‘ll just do this. I’ll just do that. and until something happens, then all of a sudden you change your tune. I’m glad that you spread that word. Cause we have a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of business owners who listen to the show. I’m glad that you spread that word to them because as, as you said before, you know, the big companies they can protect themselves the small businesses. If, if the Russians and the Chinese were able to take out all of our small businesses, they’ve taken us out because we have so much of our employment tied up in small business. You’ve made that point that it doesn’t matter if they go after Wells Fargo or somebody else, they got, they got all the small businesses and that’s the Achilles heel.
[00:10:07] Craig Peterson: And it’s our retirement, Jim, that we’re talking about here. And, you know, when a small business gets hacked, they will, the majority of the time they will file for bankruptcy within a week. That’s bad. It is. And you think it’s bad right now with coronavirus. Imagine never being able to get your business back on its feet.
[00:10:30] Jim Polito: I know that’s awful. Well, look, we’re glad that you have us on our toes all the time and knowing what the latest is. So if you want to get on that list like me and, get an email from, from our good friend, Craig Peterson, get information. All you have to do is text my name, Jim, to this number.
[00:10:54] Craig Peterson: You can text it to (855) 385-5553.
[00:10:59] You can ask me any questions. Listen, right now we’re giving free help. I’m paying for my tech people to help out small businesses for, you know, half an hour, an hour. You can email me M E @craigpeterson.com. I really, I am here to help Jim, me M E @craigpeterson.com.
[00:11:24] Jim Polito: I appreciate that. We appreciate it. And Craig, congratulations.
[00:11:29] Hope you have a great wedding on Friday and we’ll talk to you next Tuesday, sir.
[00:11:34] Craig Peterson: All right. Thanks, Jim. Take care.
[00:11:37] Jim Polito: You too. Bye-bye. A little bit of bourbon and branch there with Craig Peterson. Don’t go anywhere. We’ve got a final word. When we return, you’re listening to the Jim Polito.
[00:11:47] Craig Peterson: I had a lot of people, a really good response to last weekend’s radio show and I’m going to do some similar things this weekend. I really, really want to get into windows updates and things. So maybe we’ll get to that a little bit. This weekend. We’re definitely planning on doing more of it probably the weekend after we’ll have to see how things end up going. Cause of course, you know, busy times as you just heard, I am on with the family, of course, for this wedding.
[00:12:21] So. Oh, man, we’ll see how this all ends up going, but anyhow, make sure you tune in this weekend as well, because we will be going over some of those details and helping you understand why it’s important to do some of these updates. And then we’ll try the weekend after to get into how to do them a little bit.
[00:12:42] I’m not sure I could really do it on the radio. You know, I’ve done some training on it. It’s included with some of the courses that I’ve put together and I’m going to be releasing some, and I might just do a re-release here coming up in the near term, but, it’s, you know, it’s just so important anyway, enough rambling.
[00:13:02] And, we’ll talk tomorrow. I plan on being back on a WGAN
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