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

Airing date: 08/21/2018

Tripping To Italy – Hackers Seizing Accounts Via Voicemail – New Alexa Skill Scaring Burglars

Craig Peterson: 

[00:00:00] Hi, Craig Peterson, here. I was on this morning with Jim Polito. I don’t know if you know it or not, but he is doing this guided tour. Actually, it’s a professional firm that’s doing it and they go over to Italy in March. That would be kind of fun to go over there with them. So, we talked a little bit about that. Did you know hackers can seize practically all your online accounts, and it’s your voicemails fault? Well, I talked in detail with Jim about that this morning. Also, that new Alexa skill that’s designed to fake arguments and scare off the stupid or burglars. So, here we go with Jim Polito.

[00:00:36] He’s one of the most popular guys we have on the show. He is our tech talk guru, and he is Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

[00:00:46] Hey, good morning. You know that trip to Italy it sounds fantastic. I went to the home page there on iHeart radio for the radio station. I clicked through and I looked at some of the pictures. Now, I’ve got to say there’s probably a lot of people who have never been over to Europe and I have. I don’t know if you’ve been over there before.

[00:01:03] I’ve been to England and to France, but I’ve never been to the to the motherland, you know for me, Italy or Ireland my other motherland.

[00:01:15] Well, People were afraid about the language and I got to say if you are in these places, especially with a tour group like this where you’ve got a professional tour, it is fantastic because everybody that you’re with of course speaks English, right they are all from our area. And the tour guides speak English and people in the cafes are speaking English. And that was always a concern of mine because I only speak French and English, so Italy I have problems.

[00:01:42] I have problems because you’re a Canadian.

[00:01:46] Craig. Yeah, exactly. It was funny, I was up in Toronto for a wedding here last weekend one of my nieces got married and I started speaking French, because I knew my sister speaks French and she went to French high school like me and one of my sons speaks French and I just assumed that I’m in Canada everybody speaks French but I’ve forgotten no. This is Ontario.

[00:02:10] They don’t speak French don’t, they don’t. That’s frankly Craig I like Ontario better. Oh, Did I say that? I know. Just kidding. No. Right. Right. But they still have to have everything bilingual there. I mean I do. I just love when I’m in Canada and you look at the packaging and they have the language police you know like it’s in English. It’s got to be in French. Same size same font. You know, it’s even worse.

[00:02:41] And in Quebec, did you know that you could not you couldn’t move your business with a name that sounded like it was English. Yeah. And in fact it was so crazy, Jim, that they had stop signs in Quebec and now stop is a valid French command to stop. But the language police in Quebec decided it didn’t sound that English didn’t sound French enough so they changed them all to Arret and then pass the language police said you know really that’s bad grammar so, they changed them all back to stop thinking of the tens of millions of dollars just came up some silly of waste.

[00:03:15] A complete waste of time. Kerry is telling me well, there’s folks in Italy who speak French too in northern Italy.

[00:03:24] You’re right don’t worry about it people if you’re thinking about going, Go. You are going to enjoy this. The language isn’t going to be an issue. You’ll have the time of your life. The only drawback is I heard this Polito character is going to. You know I’m going to be.

[00:03:40] You’re going to have to be with me. You don’t have to room with me. You know, my poor wife is going to have to do that. You don’t have to room with me.

[00:03:48] But the food will all be gone.

[00:03:51] I’ll be gone. No, I promise not to eat all of the continental breakfast at the hotel before we start the day. I promise. So. anyway. hey, you’ve got some great stuff for this us this week. And, I want to get to the one that really caught my eye. I want to start with this, OK.

[00:04:10] Hackers can seize practically all of my online accounts and it’s my voicemails fault. This one scares the heck out of me. What’s going on here Craig?

[00:04:21] Yeah, this is a real problem for people. We’re aware that hackers try and get into our accounts, right, just normally. So. a lot of people have been talking about two-factor authentication. Now, do you use that at all? Jim, are you familiar with that.

[00:04:37] Yeah, I do now because remember was it was it Instagram that had the big hack. And, they said hey you should go to two-factor identification and, I said all right I don’t want somebody posting stuff on my Instagram account.

[00:04:51] Exactly. So, that’s one type of two-factor authentication is where you might give them your phone number and they text you, right. And that’s probably the most common and it’s very hackable, frankly.

[00:05:06] But, if they want to go after you, right, there they’re not going to cast a wide net and pick you up because of the text messages. But, if they are going after you and we’re finding out now the FBI is coming out with all kinds of warnings about this that small businesses are being specifically attacked more and more.

[00:05:26] But, if you give them your phone number and them be you know the Facebook, Microsoft, Google, etc. Give them your phone number where they can text you. Here’s where the problem starts coming in. Now, many of us use WhatsApp or we use signal. Signal is a great app for communication right back and forth and a keep your data safe it’s all encrypted. And, with those as well many people have given their phone number. So, here’s what hackers are doing. There is a big conference out in Vegas, here just about a week or two ago. Two of them. There’s Black Hat and Defcon. And, at these conferences, they were talking about the new techniques the bad guys are using. Well, what they’re doing now is, these places including Whatsapp and Signal have your phone number and, they give you the option if you want to verify that it is you. Yeah, I did forget my password. Yeah. Give me a new password. They have the option of calling you on the phone to see where this is going.

[00:06:31] Ok. Yes.

[00:06:33] So, all you have to do, now were protecting many of our systems but how many offices are protecting their voicemail system. So, here’s what happens. All you have to do this takes about 30 seconds to as much as three or four minutes. All they have to do is say OK, I’m targeting this financial planner, OK. This company over here and they know what the phone number is for that company. So, they find that number within that company that’s going straight to voicemail and then they know the person’s extension they might want to get to. They then have a little program that keeps calling that number and, it calls it, it gets into the voicemail system and it just sequentially tries to all of the passwords, because of voicemail systems don’t have a limit on how many times.

[00:07:26] Oh that’s right. My my my my iPhone right. You try 10 times you’re locked out. Right. Right. Right.

[00:07:35] Yeah. Gets longer right. So you do the first few times or correct the third time that way a and then it’s five minutes. So, they don’t go back and try. It’s a week later. OK. It’s time and you out. Voicemails, don’t do that. He demonstrated here on the stage over at Defcon, that he could brute force almost any voicemail system in the world. And, he was ensuring the calls were straight to voicemail. All automated right he didn’t have to do anything. And then we went to the Web site, did a password reset process, using call me feature.

[00:08:09] It called him. Now, these systems that are calling you to reset your password and verify it’s you. The systems will leave you a voicemail with the new password.

[00:08:21] So, you have to do is go there. The hacker, all they have to do is go there and get it.

[00:08:26] You already have the voicemail password, right. Now you have a secret code, you are in the account and boom there it is. Yeah ok.

[00:08:34] Not good. We’re talking with our good friend Craig Peterson tech talk Guru the end of this segment. We will give you a number you can text my name to. And he’ll provide you with this information plus more, standard data and text rates apply.

[00:08:47] Ok. There is more work around here Jim. OK. go ahead.

[00:08:51] Well you can use don’t use your SMS as your phone number for verification. There are other ways to do this. You can use things like Google Authenticator. There’s another app called Duo. There’s also things like Yubi keys. Ok. It’s getting complicated at this point. But, if you have any money to protect, you might want to pay attention, if you send me a note or write something up and send it off to you.

[00:09:17] Excellent. All right, Craig quickly I do have my lights on timers at my house to make it look like there is somebody home or to protect from burglars. Also, have lighting around the perimeter to make sure that a night nobody sneaks up to the house. But, you’re saying that Alexa can take care of this for me.

[00:09:37] Yeah, this is kind of cool. Alexa has the ability to learn what it calls news skills. So a skill can be, for instance, I Heart Radio has skills and many other Web sites. Now there’s hundreds of thousands of these things. My wife made a skill for Alexa to drill one of our grandkids in some of that history lesson stuff. So, it’s really cool. Alexa has a new skill called away mode, and what you can do is go into your Alexa app on your phone. Look for the skill called away mode instead of turning on your lights and turn them off or making noises.

[00:10:14] Alexa can do by the way right.

[00:10:17] It is. It has real and completely ridiculous conversations. These were penned by comedy writers from Saturday Night Live, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and others. There’s a really kind of cute thing that it’s doing, for instance, the gems are a couple has a breakup while also trying to watch TV two average guys discuss what’s unique about themselves, so they can start a Podcast. Emergency PTA meeting to discuss memes, fidget spinners and other teen fads. And, this is my favorite, Jim, conversations from a book club where no one discusses a book, and a mom walking her daughter through Ikea assembly over the phone.

[00:11:01] So. So the burglar comes in the House. Oh, there’s somebody in there. There’s people in there talking. There’s a guy. I mean as opposed to the old they used to have those things it was a recording of a barking dog, people would have, you know. And that was supposed to scare people away, but now you had a conversation, of course. I think if the burglar sticks around long enough if it’s that much of a joke, now they might not get the joke because people do have absurd conversations like that.

[00:11:30] I get to read this quote here. Hand me the rule book. No, the rule book that’s the rule and reference no. Learn to play guide.

[00:11:38] That’s the quick reference. That’s pretty good.

[00:11:42] Now that’s realistic, that’s realistic.

[00:11:46] Having done that. You know what else is realistic. Craig Peterson offers you all this information for free. He doesn’t go and sell your name. He doesn’t give you away to hackers. He does it all for free.

[00:11:59] All you have to do is text my name, Jim to this number 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. That’s 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53.

[00:12:12] That’s right. Standard data and text rates apply. And then if there is ever an emergency like a massive hack. Guess what your on Craig Peterson’s list to notify and he won’t try to sell you anything, won’t annoy you, Craig. That was a great segment. And what do I say? Oh yes.

[00:12:30] Avoir.

[00:12:34] Thanks, Craig.

[00:12:37] Bye. bye-bye. Bilingual. Craig Peterson okay. Don’t go anywhere. A final word.