On This Episode…
Craig is on with Ken and Matt on WGAN Morning News. They talked about hackers hacking the Nest devices and the Russians infiltrating US utilities. They also talked about how you can check if your password has been compromised using the Chrome extension Password Checkup and the website Have I Been Pawned.
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TRANSCRIPT

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 02/13/2019

Nest Cameras Being Hacked

Craig Peterson 0:00

Hi everybody, Craig Peterson here. I had a chance this morning to talk a little bit more about what I talked with Jim Polito about this a bit yesterday. But we talked a little bit more about the hackers and what’s happening with them breaking into iPhones, we’ve got hackers who are breaking into Nest devices. Hey, if you’ve got any of their stuff, some of their security cameras, etc. You’re going to want to hear what’s happening. So that’s what we covered this morning. And I’m getting a great response to these courses that I’ve put up. I mean, phenomenal. Really, I’m not I’m not making this up people. So if you missed them, make sure you check them because they are up today. All three of the initial training on security. It’s no sales at all. This is entirely trying to help you out with securing your business network. You know it does apply to individuals as well. So you’ll find all of that at http://CraigPeterson.com/concierge. You’ll also find it on my homepage you can sign up for the Thursday webinar as well there http://CraigPeterson.com. All right here we go with Ken and Matt.

Unknown 1:29
7:38, WGAN Morning News Wednesday morning. The day after the storm. Day after the storm. Time now to talk to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over the world of technology. Craig Peterson, how are you sir this morning?

Unknown 1:43
Hey that’s me. Doing well.

Unknown 1:44
Are you having bad weather over there?

Unknown 1:46
You know we had a lot of snow and sleet to and I haven’t really been out yet this morning to see if we got the rain afterwards. But yeah, there you know the birds are in and the bees haven’t come out of their hive so I know it’s not the best morning.

Unknown 2:00
Okay, so let’s talk about some tech stuff. Um, so I have a lot of passwords, and I always worry about the being compromised. Can chrome help me out on this? I do use Chrome.

Unknown 2:10
Yeah, Chrome is one of the better browsers out there are a lot of people have been concerned when it comes to Chrome and security, and how much is Google trying to, you know, monitor what I’m doing, etc, etc. And although Google does want your information and obviously does sell some of the information, it’s interesting that they are trying to keep you safe. And I think most of our listeners would like to know about, you know, some of the details behind there but we won’t get into that today but into what you’re talking about here Ken, I think is really important. There’s a couple of different websites out there that have been kind of collecting over time. Some of the breaches you know we mentioned there’s a 750 million record file that was released a couple of weeks ago that contain people’s credentials. And since then, there have been some other bigger ones. about one and a half billion people’s information is out there on the web. Now, we’re talking about the dark web here when I’m when I mentioned the web.

So what a bad guy does so that you understand how this works is they have a username, they have a password. Now, if they break into a new website, and the website is hopefully fairly secure least the passwords are encrypted, they’ll steal the password database, and then they’ll run through all of these hundreds of millions of records and try every known password. So it’s important for you to not use a password that anybody else has used before. And that’s what Google has done here now. There’s a new Chrome extension that’s called Password Checkup that you can install on your Chrome browser. And then what happens is if you go to a website, and you use credentials on that website that are known to be breached, and the database that Google’s uses over 2 billion records of breached passwords and usernames, so if it’s a known breach, password or username, it will alert you right then in there, which is really great. So it’s called Password Checkup.

But I want to mention one other thing because Ken you mentioned you’re concerned about passwords and security and that’s a website called Have I Been Pawned and this is from an Australian guy out there who put it together and it will tell you much the same information as Google but it’ll also if you put in your email address, it will also tell you if your email address shows up anywhere on the dark web in one of these hacks. So what I’ll do is everybody that’s on my SMS list. I’ll text out a link directly to both of those today when we hang up so that everybody has it. You can just click on the link go to the website you can download the Password Checkup plugin you can download the Have I’ve Been Pawned, well not download it, but you can go to the Have I Been Pawned website and I’ll send you direct link.

So if you want those, text me and do it right now, so you don’t forget. Get out a piece of paper and a pencil. It’s 855-385-5553 and I’ll send you direct links via text when we hang up. 855-385-5553 but I think this is really good news for people who use Chrome and who want a little bit more security it’s really good stuff Ken.

Unknown 6:00
We’re talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru who joins us now as he usually does on Wednesdays, to go over the world of technology. Craig mentioned text messages. I remember a while back a lot of people in Hawaii, he got a advanced warning via text message of nuclear holocaust. And apparently this is now happening again, this may be smaller numbers of people, or what have you. Are people going to be hacking into my phone to basically tell me of the coming apocalypse?

Unknown 6:27
Well, this is an interesting problem, because in Hawaii, when it happened was somebody messed up in the in the state and it came out as kind of a federal alert and people probably remember that the nuclear missiles were flying from North Korea and were going to strike any minute and people kind of freaked out. Well, there are of course now smart devices. And Matt, you mentioned that you’ve got some of these Echo devices like I do, right. And Ken do you have any of those in your home as well?

Unknown 7:00
Yes, I renamed it computer. Computer, what’s the temperature outside and it goes by the way, sometimes it just lights up on its own which worries me a little bit.

Unknown 7:12
What color does the light up?

Unknown 7:14
Sometimes blue, sometimes yellow.

Unknown 7:15
Okay, well the blue is because probably it thinks it heard you say the name. Yeah, say the name. And yeah, so that’s probably what that is. But here’s what’s happening. More and more devices in our homes have built into them Alexa or Google Home or some of these other technologies and they are hackable. Now the Alexa, you know, these little Echo devices, not so much the Google Home the Apple HomePod, not so much. But in this case there. There’s a story that came out this week and it was about the Nest security camera. Now interestingly enough Nest has been in the news quite a bit recently for major security problems, including allowing anybody that work that Nest to look at any video stream that is ever been recorded by any Nest camera, right.

It’s kind of scary when you think about it, because I kind of liked the technology behind Nest. And what the heck are they doing giving everyone access to every security video ever. They’ve kind of tighten that up a little bit. But in this case, somebody hacked their Nest security cameras and they gone online and this poor family in California started getting this alert that a nuclear war and broken out missiles were headed for multiple US cities and this family California wasn’t alone we know about another family this one in Texas where their Nest system was hacked and used to threaten to kidnap the baby’s family. In Canada the reporting it as well that some people have been hiring hackers to break into Nest and Wink and and even tried to break into some of the Amazon devices belonging to another family.

But it’s it’s a little bit of a scary world so if your Nest or other device starts warning you about global nuclear war it’s probably not true. But little warning systems that are on your phone and do you guys get a warning for instance about this storm that was coming?

Unknown 9:27
yeah exactly why do weather.com I got Well that’s all you got a weather okay well there are alert systems in place just like the one in Hawaii it’s a warned about the nuclear missiles but there are alerts systems in place that will send you things about emergency situations in the area. Some states have amber alerts to go out automatically to completely different system so we’re not talking about those devices being hacked at this point it looks like Nest has the most vulnerabilities.

Unknown 9:58
We’re talking to our tech guru Craig Peterson who joins us every Wednesday at 7:38. http://CraigPeterson.com. If you want to go easy as box anytime you want. So you know we’re waiting for Robert Muller’s report which we could get in the next year or two. However, you know there are some some evidence of Russian hackers infiltrating our utilities. What’s the scoop with that?

Unknown 10:25
I love Russians. I watch the Americans. One of my favorite TV shows.

Unknown 10:32
That was a great TV show. I hated the ending of that.

Unknown 10:37
I’m on season four so.

Unknown 10:39
Although it’s probably the most realistic ending they could come up with. To be honest with you, though. I mean.

Unknown 10:45
Oh shut up both of you.

Unknown 10:48
I can’t hear you. Yeah, there. There are a number of hack attacks going on right now. The Russians are seriously considering using the internet as a first attack vector against the United States, they’re also saying, Hey, we’re gonna use it as defensive mechanism. We’ll see what ends up happening. But there is a ton of hacking going on. And that’s kind of the bottom line about all of this stuff. They are breaking into some of our phones. iCoud locked phones, you remember when people were stealing iPhones back in the early days, just grabbing them at coffee shops, right? And it got to the point that Apple did something about it, which is if you have Find My iPhone turned on on your iPhone, which everybody should do, turn that on. If your phone is stolen or your iPad is stolen, there is almost no way to recover that phone. Apple can unlock it, but that’s it. Nobody else can. And so what’s happening is the bad guys are coming up to people holding them a nice point or guiding point and saying unlock your phone and turn off Find My iPhone.

So the bad guys get a little bit smarter about it so that they can then resell that phone out on the black market or use it as they might want to. There’s some rumors about the ability to still break into the newer iPhone 10. And you know, life goes on, right. But it’s interesting to see some of the bad guys now on the streets trying to break into iPhones. But so you do it the old fashioned way. They’re mugging people.

Unknown 12:32
Indeed. All right. Craig Peterson, our tech guru joins us on Wednesdays at this time to go over the world of technology. Craig, thank you, sir. And we will talk to you again next week.

Unknown 12:44
Gentlemen, take care. Thanks.