Good morning everybody!
I was on with Matt this morning and we had a good discussion about the security and what we are now seeing in website attacks, and Companies identity-related attacks and How to block bad ads. Let’s get into my conversation with Matt on WGAN.
These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit – CraigPeterson.com
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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:
Craig Peterson: We’re seeing Matt as many as 100 attacks per minute on some of these websites, but on average, we’re talking about one attack every 15 minutes or about a hundred attacks a day on average. Good morning everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Matt. We talked about what’s going on with our Chrome browsers.
[00:00:24] Why are they slowing down? Of course, I give you a couple of things you can do in order to help improve that identity theft now on companies. What’s this survey all about? We get into some detail and our websites are being attacked and it’s quieter and more persistent than ever. So here we go with Matt.
[00:00:47] Matt Gagnon: 7:36 on the WGAN morning news. It is Wednesday morning and it’s time to talk to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us now. Craig, how are you this morning?
[00:00:58] Craig Peterson: Hey, good morning. I’m doing well. Looking forward to getting out on the motorcycle, but not quite sure where I’m going to go. It’s just like go for coffee or whatever, but a different world.
[00:01:08] Matt Gagnon: It is a different world out there and good luck to you on the motorcycle. I had one many moons ago and I had to sell it and I never bought a new one. And I’m very sad about that. So thank you for reminding me that I, I appreciate it quite a bit. You’ll be out on Memorial day trying to, you know, enjoy the freedom of that motorcycle and I will not, so congratulations.
[00:01:27] So that, of course, is a technological device. And we are here to talk about the world of technology. And one of the things that always comes up in the world of technology is, you know, in terms of computers and whatnot, hacking attacks on websites, that kind of stuff. And what’s interesting is that recently it seems like they’re becoming a little bit more persistent and maybe even a little bit harder to detect, a little quieter.
[00:01:50] What’s a, what’s new in website attacks.
[00:01:53] Craig Peterson: Well, we know now that the bad guys, I’ve been very busy during this quarter of Iris time, we’ve been much more susceptible because we’re not in the office. We’re not getting the prompts and the training from our IT people. And in this case, what’s happening is businesses, many who had never been online before, have them launching all kinds of websites.
[00:02:17] So the bad guys have been kind of focusing in on our business website. They’ve been putting nasty wear on them, on the checkout pages to scrape our credit card information, just like you might see on one of those ATM skimmer devices skimming on there, and they have gotten. T darn good at it. There’s one of the security vendors out there called SiteLock, who’s analyzed some 7 million websites worldwide and found that they really have ramped up attacks on websites.
[00:02:51] Our own clients that we monitor, their websites have seen it. Tick, and we’re seeing Matt as many as 100 attacks per minute on some of these websites, but on average, we’re talking about one attack every 15 minutes or about a hundred attacks a day on average. So we’ve gotta be very careful for many of our businesses, websites are new.
[00:03:16] We’re running things like wake up WordPress, for instance, the number one platform out there for websites. It’s a great platform. But as usual, we’re not patching them. We don’t really understand what we’re doing, and many people have not been hiring experts to do it. So there’s a whole lot of peril with so many of these brand new sites out there.
[00:03:39] Matt Gagnon: We are talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us at this time to talk about technology topics. All the time. And speaking of, you know, breaches and nefarious characters doing bad things. One of the other things you hear a lot about is identity theft. And there’s a lot of companies right now that are identifying identity theft and, and reporting it.
[00:04:00]and in the last couple of years, that’s, it’s been a really big spike of that.
[00:04:04]Craig Peterson: Yeah. We’re seeing right now about 94% of businesses there that, again, this is a survey that’s been out there, how big experience and identity-related security breach that is. A lot of businesses and what we’re talking about are typically things like phishing emails and we’ve got, again, the bad guys kind of almost getting together.
[00:04:26] There are bad guys out there that for as little as $10 we’ll sell it. Other bad guys templates of websites, and we’re talking about government websites like the IRS, the world health organization, et cetera. So they now have the ability to very, very quickly ramp up and start. Pretending they are. These, you know, again, who these government agencies, places where we’re hoping to get some money.
[00:04:55] Well, they’re also going and stealing credentials from some of our businesses that are out there. Takes you 6% in fact, of the respondents said that they had been nailed by one of these phishing attacks. We have one client that we picked up, unfortunately. Right? It’s always after. Are they, the horses get out of the barn, but we picked up that had $80,000 their entire operating account stolen.
[00:05:24] And that again was due to one of these identity theft things going on. Not where they’re stealing your social security number, but where they’re stealing the identity of your business or another business. So we’ve got to keep up on that one as well. The bad guys are really taking advantage of us. Not being the type of attention we used to pay.
[00:05:46] Matt Gagnon: Indeed, and we were talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what’s happening in the world of technology. Craig, I use Chrome. I still do. And one of the things that I have noticed is that what was once a sort of a. Resource light quick browser has gotten bogged out over the years and it really, a lot of resources get sucked down.
[00:06:08]because of ads and a lot of other things. they are apparently taking some steps here now to block some of these resource-draining ads out there. How do you take advantage of that now? Because I want it.
[00:06:20] Craig Peterson: Exactly. Well, there’s a couple of blockers that you can use. Chrome has been kind of going back and forth on this.
[00:06:28] They have said, okay, well we’re going to allow ad blockers, and then they said, well, we’re not going to allow ad blockers because that’s how Google makes their money is we’ll see ads. And so there’s a real problem out there with Bitcoin mining where you go to a. A website and an ad pops-up and it starts using your computer to mine Bitcoins for the bad guys, this can be a real problem because we’re talking about chewing up your memory and your CPU on your computer, unbeknownst to you.
[00:07:05] So what they’ve done now is Google has said, okay, well if there is an. Add, quote-unquote, which might be malware that is using a lot of your CPU. We’re going to block it just right there out of the box, no questions about it. Now, there is a couple of things that you can do right now that I would suggest.
[00:07:26] One of them is a blocker that is being published called cheaper’s. I’m trying to remember. I don’t remember. Oh yeah. Ublock origin is one of them that you can install. Google Chrome has some early on stuff right now, but if you check your settings, it’s called, it’s a setting called enable heavy.
[00:07:48] Add intervention, but they’re going to turn that on by default. So really this is the first time Google with Chrome is going to be blocking any ads and privacy badger, as well as Ublock origin, will help to get rid of these heavy ads that are slowing down your browsers.
[00:08:06]Matt Gagnon: Greg Peters on tech guru joins us now as he always does to go over the world of technology.
[00:08:12] It is a fascinating world and he brings us into it. Craig, as always. Thanks a lot. For joining us and giving us this, this quick preview of what’s going on in the world of technology. And you’ll go more in-depth to these topics and so much more when I believe it’s Saturday
[00:08:26] Craig Peterson: and like Saturday at 1:00 PM Saturday from one til three.
[00:08:30] And yeah, we’ll definitely go into more detail. I’ll give you links to those actual blockers here. They’re going to speed things up and we’ll talk more about some of the stuff that’s going around this week besides.
[00:08:42] Matt Gagnon: I was going to say coronavirus would be the big thing going around this week. Alright, Craig.
[00:08:46] Well thanks. I appreciate it and good luck on Saturday. We’ll talk again soon.
[00:08:50] Craig Peterson: Bye. Bye. Alright, great folks, I hope you join us this Saturday. I’m going to be talking a lot more about these topics as well as a number of others that of course we just can’t get to and we can’t do in-depth. I’m going to be talking about the coming disruption.
[00:09:04] To college, what’s going to happen here in the future? Some existing VPNs and the challenges you’re probably having with them. It’s time to relaunch a remote team. I’ll talk about some of the things you should be looking at. Also, we’ll talk more about these COVID-19 themed phishing templates and Britain’s hard lesson about there blind trust in quote science unquote. So all of that will be released. Usually, we get it out on Saturday, sometimes it’s actually released Friday night and it airs on multiple radio stations throughout the weekend over on iHeart, as well as on their app and everywhere. So if you are not subscribed, please do take a minute and subscribe to your favorite podcast app. Everybody have a great day and a Great rest of the week. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and we’ll be joining you again on Saturday.
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