Cyber Protection - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 9/21/24

all that kind of thing. But what's scarier is the cybersecurity and what happens when when somebody tries to fool you to get your money and they're so darn good and you had said it, Malick, who was with us tonight to talk about that, you had said it. Where with the AI, it's going to get even more it's going to be even harder to know the difference because these people, now, I mean they just lie right to you when they actually have the guts enough to do

it on a phone call. Uh, but when they even put it together in an email it's just it's just so hard to tell it apart. So so I'm trusting you in this journey because of conversation, because I don't even know what to ask when it comes to this. It's just awful when it happens. And I know when I catch it, you know, it just happens that I catch it doesn't mean I catch it all the time. I have to make some phone calls to see what's going on. And of course now I'm always going to

be going, Malick, take a look at this. Connie's waking me up again. So thank your wife for that. But what do you think where do we start the basic principles of security?

what we've got that's replacing the love is greed. It's just this incredible yeah, uh, pashion for money and regardless of where it comes from or what they have to do to get it right. And but we don't want to operate from a standpoint of fear right, we don't and we don't even want to operate from the standpoint of patriot. We don't want to hate anyone, don't want to hate these people that are that are coming after us.

It's it's sad, but it's true. A lot of this cyber crime and I can't I couldn't tay the percentages, but a significant amount of it is coming from people who feel they have no choice to make money wherever they are in the world. They can't find legitleman employment to make the money they need to take care of their families. You know John, Colonel John Alexander, I've gotten to know, and he's a guest on the Coast to

Coast quite a bit. I remember he shared a presentation with me years ago that said, like and this was years ago, like fifteen years ago probably, and it said that a billion people in the world do not have consistent, reliable access to potable water to drink now when you think about that, this is as basic as it gets, is just being able to reliably access drinking water. You've got people who can potentially get in some you know,

do some desperate things. But I told you earlier. I got scammed a number, probably a year or so ago, and I just it just I don't know it just they hit me later it's like why in the world, And I see, you know, the indications of it, right, And then sure enough someone else tries to reach out to me and do a similar thing. And I remember kind of scolding this person, right, and they said, you know, you're right. I am ashamed, but I don't have a choice.

I've got to make money for my family. And I was like, well, this ain't the way to do it. But I'm but I wanted to understand where they're coming from, right, some of them, Some of them it is just crime syndicates, you know, some of them are. It's nation states that are I don't think national states are necessarily targeting US individuals, right unless there's a specific reason why we're targetable, And

for the most part that's not us. But the cyber crime games, the electronic crime, they are absolutely targeting anyone, right, And so I think from a standpoint again, making sure we're not operating out of fear hatred is just being the first thing. I think being vigilant the most important aspect of security, whether it's physical security, cybersecurity, privacy is the human it's us, no one. I'm the biggest threat to my own security. Generally speaking, I'm the biggest threat

to my computer security. If I'm not practicing this proper cyber hygiene, then it doesn't matter what any virus I'm using, or any other tools or techniques I'm using. If I'm not doing I'm supposed to do, then then I'm opening myself up and I'm opening my computer up.

cybersecurity is the buzzword. Everybody's worried about it, and they're starting if I'm not careful the neglect physical security you have to have. You have to have both, right, I tend to think of you can kind of put this analogy for both domains, physical and cyber. Think of your home or your apartment, wherever it is that you live.

Whatever's valuable to you is in that is in that is in that building, is in that domocile yourself, maybe your loved ones, your your treasure possessions, maybe your data, your important documents, important photographs, you know, things like that. How do you keep people from How do you protect the things that are important to you, because again, you

can't protect everything. You have to prioritize and if you're looking at from a physical security standpoint, we had a point in my neighborhood where we had regular break in. It's like three nights in a row. People were in our neighborhood breaking in and I was like, all this is crazy. And I have a friend who is a physical security expert and we talked and he said, look, you can't again again, you can't have perfect physical security, but you want to be a hard at target, right.

You want to be that one that they're like, this is not the point if I'm going to break into a house, it's not gonna be this one. This one looks too difficult. Right. So you've got your lights on, you've got your cameras, you've got signed that says you have an alarm system, and maybe you keep your portslight on at night. That sends a message to whoever may be coming through your neighborhood that hey, I'm here, right, and I'm I'm and I want you to know I'm

thinking of you. You may be thinking to me, but I'm thinking of you, right. It's like a communication with these folks, right. And that's on the physical security side, but from cybersecurity side again, taking a look at yourself from a digital standpoint, I mean, what do you look like on the internet if you're looking at yourself as a person, and it doesn't hurt to take a look.

And we talked about how Tonny, how people can mind you and they can start targeting you, maybe even a little bit specifically and a lot of think, well I'm not that important why I'm being targeted, Well, these things are. These things are run I think in campaigns and if you take a look at and see what is out there about you and maybe your family members on the internet, and what happens sometimes is people focused exclusive though I'm

going to make myself a hard target. And what is found out in the corporate world is you've got your CEOs, your c spee. Folks, they practice excellent security at their work, they practice excellence security maybe for themselves online. But the vulnerability is the children, right, or maybe their spouse is out there posting all kinds of pictures and things like that. Case in point, I was asked to take a look

from an open source intelligence side. Had a person who was starting to become a rioting star in the agricultural business, and we're like, let's just take a look at this person from a standpoint of vulnerability. Well, just a nice general person, probably in their late thirties. But within a fairly short order I found this individual's complete full name data, birth, same for their spouse, same for all of their children, got the address of their home, got their other Malian address.

I was able to find a blueprint to their home. I was able to find this person's I think had a direct relative that died. I was able to find that person's Social Security number and date of death. I was able to find the schools that their kids went to, pictures of their kids, and I'm like, this is this is all out there and it was completely easy to find. Right. It may not matter if you're not if you're not that well known, but once you become a well known person,

that stuff becomes very important. So taking a look again, not saying that you know some of us are we think that we're a low profile. And that's another part. This is maintaining a little profile. But for some people you can't help the fact that you're that you're well known, at least on some level. But take a look and see what is out there about you. Connie, you and I talked about an E two emails that I recently

received that I felt a little bit targeted. The email had my name, and it had my my phone number, my obviously had my email address, and it had my residential address, and then there was an attachment that had my name dot pdf. I wonder the world is this? So I take a look at this thing. Now, I didn't. My first thought was they want me to click on this attachment open it up so they can infect my computer

with malware. But I took that I and I would recommend anybody be careful if they're going to try this. But I right clicked on that attachment. I saved it to my desktop, and then I uploaded it to a psyche called virus Total, which is free to anyone. You don't have to pay, you don't even have to sign up for it. And I let that site run a a scan like like about sixty some different security vendors of this PDF file or whatever it was. It's called the sayd pdf does not mean it's a PDF, right,

anyone can spoof the file extension on an attachment. But I saw that, Oh that's good to know.

They said they had access to my camera, maybe on my computer, maybe on my phone, not likely, right, And they said he said they were using Pegasus software because that's in the news right nation states are using that to spyle dissidents and political rivals. And they threatened to expose all of this to all my social media. They said they had all my contact It was just it was over the top, right, and they want me to

pay them two thousand dollars or something. And then I got another one not long after that, And then we found out later that they seemed to be targeting some folks in the area. Came out on the news, but that was targeted. From the standpoint, someone did a little bit of research on me, and I don't think they were targeting me specifically, but I think that some company was was being hired as a service to go out and do this and create these lists that probably had

an email that had the name, phone number, address. Maybe this semi customized extortion note to send out the folks right to get someone's attention, right, because when you see all this information, you're like, wait a minute, if somebody they been spying on me, or they going around my house, well none of that's really the case, but it was just to try to scare me.