What's the Ultimate Solution to Russian Hacking?

Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

[As heard on WTAG, WHYN, WHJJ 2021-06-15]

Hey, we've got this meeting between Presidents Biden and Putin, and I have some serious words for our President. I've got some opinions about our federal bureaucracy when it comes to cybersecurity and Mr. Jim Polito pulled them out of me this morning.

[00:00:18] Jim Polito: [00:00:18] So here we go. Hey, every week on Tuesday, we have the honor of my next guest.

[00:00:26] And he is the tech talk guru, as far as I'm concerned, Craig Peterson an all around great guy here, just in time, Craig to save Joe Biden, you're going to be the advisor to Joe Biden. How do you like that?

[00:00:44] Craig Peterson: [00:00:44] I already have a good job. I don't want to work.

[00:00:48] Jim Polito: [00:00:48] Listen. I know that Canada day is just two weeks away and you're preparing, you're stocking up on Molson and Labatt's and moose head.

[00:00:57] I know you're stocking up on all of that, and I know you've got a lot going on, but you could give Joe Biden some advice. He's going to sit across. And look into the eyes of Latta mere Putin. And as far as I'm concerned, Vladimir Putin knows exactly what the cyber hackers in his country are doing. So what does Joe Biden say to the man who's at the top of the cyber hacking, uh, pyramid.

[00:01:33] Craig Peterson: [00:01:33] By the way I am sending out an email today, I put together a little video training for everyone. Who's on my email list on how to stop these Russian hackers. It's 95%. Effective. Okay. But the here's the advice I would give him. First of all, he needs to pull back what he said to the bladder, because just a couple of days ago where president Putin came out and said, Hey, listen, you know, we'd be more than glad to extradite these people to the U S you just need to extradite terminals back to Russia as well.

[00:02:06] And Joe Biden seems to have given us tacit approval for that. The reason I say that is if you look at what we've done here in the us, We have indicted Chinese military officials for hacking into our computer systems. So when you hear president Putin say things like that, you are sure he has in the back of his mind.

[00:02:31] The same thing that we did, which is I'm going to ask you to extradite your military hackers, because we do have them, every branch of service had Packers. Absolutely. So I think what the president Biden should do when he's talking with gluten is say, Hey, listen, I'm going to reopen the Keystone pipeline over all the guy who was doing it says I've given up now.

[00:02:58] It's ridiculous. And I am going to continue to put pressure on Merkel and others to not allow oil. From Russia into their countries because it is war. We are at war we can continue or continue to just capitulate to these people. No,

[00:03:17] Jim Polito: [00:03:17] we're talking with Craig Peterson, a tech talk guru. And, um, while I said it in a joking way, I knew he would take it seriously.

[00:03:24] Yeah. Um, This trade of, I, I brought it up earlier, a trade of prisoners. I mean, Biden is running circles around him by, by bringing

[00:03:35] Craig Peterson: [00:03:35] that up. Yeah. Putin has really, really out of played a president Biden. It's very, very unfortunate. And when you look at a war, for instance, there's skirmishes, you have battles here and there and.

[00:03:51] People die. You are really trying to hurt the economy. Uh, I, I hate to say it, but that's why you shoot someone with a small caliber weapon. You want to wound the, the opponent so that they now have to have three to five people behind the lines to get that opponent back to help that soldier. Well, what happens here in the us, we lost, we were colonial pipeline for a week and say, goodness, near in the Northeast, we didn't really feel it because we had just, I mean, just had all of our tanks filled up by colonial.

[00:04:28] Down in New Jersey. Cause the way they do it, as they staged deliveries, the south didn't do that. So how much did they hurt us and our economy by doing that? I would say they heard us more than many of the skirmishes we've had over the years. Not in depth in lives loss, which of course is just completely incalculable, but certainly the damaged door.

[00:04:53] Yeah.

[00:04:54] Jim Polito: [00:04:54] I mean, it's been, it's been terrible. And so you see the thing is that, you know, and I know I'm asking you to step out of the tactical world into the world of international diplomacy, but you've got a guy sitting there who you and I both know has. Control over these individuals who Putin wanted them to stop.

[00:05:17] He could make them disappear, like, like, like that could make them disappear. So how do you, how do we just quietly? Behind the scenes continue to strengthen our offensive abilities as cyber attackers, and that we encourage all of our private industry to harden themselves to cyber attacks.

[00:05:46] Craig Peterson: [00:05:46] All right, here we go.

[00:05:48] Hopefully you're still sitting down Jaya.

[00:05:54] Here's the, here's the really big issue as I see it, I strongly suspect cause I've been watching what our government does and you know, I have a little bit of an insight track, not my battle. And that, that helps me to understand a little bit about what's going on. Is he, if the Biden administration can continue to literally approve of some of these hacks, let's just play this game through a little bit, a war games.

[00:06:26] If we are all worried that we're going to be attacked. And we're not seeing the software that does not protect you. People like, you know, the McAfee and the Norton antivirus, et cetera. It's not going to protect you enough. We've got Microsoft conditioned us now to the point where we don't want to install up.

[00:06:49] Because it's finished mess up her computer and we're going to be down for a week or two or three or four while we try and figure it out. Right. So if they can get us to the point where we're saying, this is a huge problem, and we've already been conditioned that if it's a big problem, it must be a federal government problem.

[00:07:07] Because it's a big problem. Yeah. So now we need this federal government to step in and take over all of our networks, take over all of our security monitor. Exactly what's going on because here's what I do. I write these, you know, I do cybersecurity and I am tied in with Cisco. That's, who we use. They are the best out there for so many things.

[00:07:31] And Cisco's looking at almost a trillion. Transactions a day. We're talking about emails, website visits, et cetera, et cetera. And the reason they're so effective is because they can take all of this data that they're gathering from their customers. Now, Cisco doesn't send any of your data, just sends what are called check sums up, but it's looking at what's going on across all of these networks.

[00:07:56] And it says, okay, Here's what's up right now. And it immediately tells all of the equipment, the Cisco equipment all over the country. Okay. Block this. Now, if you have the right system come in and it's blocked. So what would happen is if we get to the point where we're on bended knee and, and asking you, please president Biden protect us and they now decide, okay, well, we're going to propose.

[00:08:20] Correct. You quote unquote, they're going to have to provide robes that live on our computers, Jim, that computer there in your studio, the computer that's in front of everyone out there right now, even people listening on the iHeart radio app or whatever app or whatever website, those mobile devices are going to have federal government software on them.

[00:08:44] Wow. Where do you think that leaves us?

[00:08:48] Jim Polito: [00:08:48] Yeah, it leads us to more vulnerability.

[00:08:53] Craig Peterson: [00:08:53] More vulnerability. Yes, exactly. From maybe, maybe you trust president and Biden, but how about the next administration or the next illustration? Right. It's win, win. And I hate to bring up the national socialists in Germany, but when the national socialists took over, there were already lists of people who would have been prepared by the prior government that had guns that could defend themselves that were trained and they were rounded up.

[00:09:19] First, right? Yep. So the officials put into place. It makes it, so now we have a potential real big problem. So let's look at what's happened with China and Russia when it comes to very valuable information. For instance, wouldn't you, if you were a foreign adversary like China, what didn't you love to have all of the information from all of the background checks of every federal employee.

[00:09:46] Wouldn't you love to know who works for who, where they are, their family situation, everything, uh, China stole it from us already. Yeah, they have it. Okay. And, and that's the sort of thing that the bad guys go for. So if we don't pull up our socks ourselves, yeah. It's not going to change. So let's look at colonial.

[00:10:09] How long you were paid, how much ransom

[00:10:11] Jim Polito: [00:10:11] was it? 5 million, I think where you're talking about in Bitcoin. Yeah,

[00:10:16] Craig Peterson: [00:10:16] absolutely. It was like a four and a half give or take $5 million. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. And the meat Packers, you know, they paid about 11 million. Yeah. I read

[00:10:25] Jim Polito: [00:10:25] that. I read that. Yup. And which is, as you have said, that's the worst thing you can do cause you just painted a, a, um, a bullseye

[00:10:35] Craig Peterson: [00:10:35] on your back.

[00:10:36] And the Trump administration said, you pay ransoms, you are supporting terrorism, and we're going to come after you with the justice department. The byte administration says

[00:10:48] what's 5 million. Yeah. Look at an equation that of that of a perverted person would have in their heads. Uh, the equation is okay. So cost colonial, let's say $5 million plus obviously time and materials to get everything back in order. So that's call it 10 million. Okay. Uh, and if they were to put. The proper stuff in place.

[00:11:13] I'm not just talking about hardware and software for cybersecurity. I'm talking about the people to monitor, keep it up to date, keep the desktop up to et cetera. It would cost them easily, 20 to $30 million a year, cheaper to pay a ransom, keep your fingers crossed or to do cybersecurity properly. That's the same equation, the same equation we're seeing again and again, and again, look at the Equifax breach.

[00:11:44] Look at TJX to all of these big breaches in every one of them. There's been fingers pointed at C-level bean counters that said, well, it's just, it's cheaper. To pay the price when we're hacked the not to. And at the same time, we, as a people, our information is being stolen. We're being cheated. Our retirements are being stolen and we're seeing this.

[00:12:07] We've seen operating accounts and small businesses completely emptied, and we are starting to beg the federal government. To come in and fix this. This is a real problem. So I think Biden should tell Putin to take a hike a long one off a short pier and make sure he realizes we're taking this very seriously and do what the federal government was instituted for, which has helped to ensure our common defense.

[00:12:44] Jim Polito: [00:12:44] I just was waiting for the perfect moment. I think it's perfect. I think what you said today is spot on. And of course this will be podcasted because I hope that somebody. From the administration here is, it says you should listen to what Craig Peterson said on the Jim Polito show. And, um, you're absolutely right.

[00:13:07] It has to be done. And, uh, Craig, I know you said you're getting out that information about how to protect yourself from a Russian hack, which involves that virtual Russian keyboard. So how can folks get more information from Craig

[00:13:22] Craig Peterson: [00:13:22] Peterson? All right. If you sign up before this afternoon, they'll set up by noon today.

[00:13:28] Right now, go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. I'm planning on sending it out when probably early the afternoon today. And it tells you exactly what you need to do and shows you how to do it for installing that keyboard. That's going to keep these Russian hackers out 99% of the time.

[00:13:51] And of course I have my weekly newsletter and everything else too, but this is critical.

[00:13:56] Jim Polito: [00:13:56] Right, right. Craig, excellent segment as usual. And I know you'll be watching the next 24 hours and maybe we'll be talking about this again next week or sooner. Great. Thank you, Craig. Craig Peterson. Everybody was a great asset to the show.