 Okay, at five o'clock show, I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Think Tech, Think Tech, Tech Talks. We're talking about Microsoft and how it took down election hacking software, but there's much more than just Microsoft or that software. We have Attila Suresh from Cylanda. I get that right, Cylanda. He's an expert in the risks we have in the what do you want to call it, the computer environment. But before, so say hello, say hello, Attila. Hey guys, how are you doing? Okay, I got some setting the stage comments I want to make. Okay, and we have here in COVID time, election time, we have election hacking software. Not sure where that all comes from. We have other hacking software that's not directly related to the election. We have social media disinformation, that seems to be in the news a lot lately and not clear that we're getting a real solution on that. We have software and social media that connects the skinheads and the militia who want to blow up the election and have violence. And that comes domestically and foreign. And then of course we have the regular array of trash mail, including an enormous amount of trash mail about the election. And we're at an intersection here of the regular garbage and risk that comes over the internet. And then the things that come over because of COVID, the things that come over because of the election. And we have both domestic and foreign players on us in this country. And so I put to you this question, Attila. Like in the marathon man with Dustin Hoffman, is it safe? Can we have a safe election with the internet so handicapped and impeded this way? Or are we just going to chase our tails and get distracted and disturbed and disrupted in our election? Because of all these factors, people taking advantage of us. Congress is dysfunctional, hasn't done anything. So the natural question is, are they going to take advantage of us? So what's your answer to that? Is it safe? Well, the answer is of course it depends. And of course the other half of my answer is maybe. So we could have a problem. But it's been a while since Dustin Hoffman was on the screens as a young man. But definitely, we do have a lot of challenges. There's a lot of folks out there who want to spread this information. In fact, I know we were talking about Microsoft earlier. But if you go to FBI's IC3, that's the Internet Complaint Center's website. They have a lot of public announcements specifically related to disinformation, specifically on social media related to the election. So they're trying to let the public know that there's a lot of false advertising going on on social media. And I think that brings us back to common sense. You're going to have a lot coming through social media that you don't need to believe. There's no such thing as a as a pygmy elephant. And there's probably no such thing as a lot of the stuff that you're hearing about on the about the election. Now, to be fair, however, election machines and systems are or should I say could have been vulnerable if Microsoft didn't do this take down. So when you're ready to talk about that, Jay, we can delve into it. Yeah, okay, let's delve into it. I'm all up on that one because I worry about not only Microsoft, but any other organization that may have a flaw in its software and that software is being used in the election and people can come and crack our system. Well, and that's the thing is that it's not individual users, phones and tablets and home computers that they're using to watch Netflix. Those are not the targets. We're talking about the systems that run the systems, right? The databases, the polar information, the data collectors that are in charge of assembling polar data and those systems have vulnerabilities. And unfortunately new ones are being discovered all the time, but Microsoft took a bit of an initiative and they took down what's called the trick bot network. Now, trick bot. Talk about that, what is that? Well, trick bot is think about it, think about it this way, Jay. Let's say you want to become a cyber criminal. But your security chops and your computer chops are maybe not all that great. So what can you do? You can jump on the dark web and if we're not monitoring you, you can get through, but if we are monitoring you, we'll stop you. But you can get onto the dark web. And much like if you watch a record Ralph, Ralph rex the Internet. Ralph goes into the dark web and finds a CD character and buys a virus, right? You don't need a lot of technical know-how to be able to infiltrate a system. And what happens is that trick bot gets their way inside of a prominent company's network and then they'll sell access to that network for a fee. So for instance, some local companies that we've worked with, we've seen that access to the computer systems have been on the sale for dark, on the dark web for anywhere from two to $3,000. So if you pay two to $3,000, you too can have access to that company's network and do whatever you want. So trick bot is a way for cyber criminals to be able to deliver their criminal activity as a service to anyone who's interested in getting access into that company's network. This sort of services, this is relatively new, isn't it? Well, software as a service has been around for some time, right? If you don't want to do something yourself, you certainly can't hire it out. The cyber criminals just figured out a way to monetize the same way that everyone else has except they're selling bad stuff. And Microsoft recognized that the trick bot network was a problem and it's a network of I don't know how many, but I can only assume dozens if not hundreds of servers that are sitting all around the world. And they worked in conjunction with telecom providers to block those IPs and shut down those servers. And so that kind of whole trick bot network was disrupted at a time right before the election when they could have had access to to election machines or or polar data machines. And if if they would have had that access and they could have disrupted or the idea is that they could possibly disrupt something come November. So shutting that down was a priority. And, you know, it's not to say that these guys can't rebuild their network. They they can, they're smart enough, but it's going to take some time and it's disruptive enough at a time that's that's pivotal to our election process where hopefully it can disrupt them enough so that they don't mess us up. And now you're probably wondering how the heck to get on the computers in the first place. Well, how did that? Very good question. Funny, I should ask, yeah. You're a smart man. So trick bot is the the clue is in the name trick, right? So an email comes in, it's got a PDF attached. Perhaps it has, you know, a letter from a Nigerian prince or it could be a job job resume from someone who's applied to your company seeking employment. Well, that if HR person opens that up, it can make its way onto that computer and then onto the network and trick bot, the way it works is that it it once it gets onto a computer, it just opens up a backdoor for all kinds of stuff and it really depends on the industry. So let's say, for example, you're a bank and you post a few jobless things on this on your site, let's say your bank or credit union. Well, then that then someone then a cyber criminal can look at those jobs and craft a resume that looks like something the HR person might receive. Figure out the HR manager's email by looking at either past compromises or even scraping it off the website. Send a job resume in that looks legitimate and then they open it up. And sure enough, the trick bot makes its way onto the HR machine. And this the strategy has been used over and over again on power and utility critical infrastructure companies. So they're particularly vulnerable to this method of attack. And once it's in, the payload can be very different. So for instance, if it's financial services, it can be email where they're looking for card data or they're looking for financial data that they can siphon out and just send off to a far off place and maybe try to transfer some money out or sell those credit cards for a fee on the dark web, they could go in there and just deploy ransomware straight up on a Friday night. And when the IT department isn't around, which is what they did with Universal Health Services, I'm sure you heard about the biggest hospital chain in the country, how they were completely taken down last weekend, where nobody could operate, it was over 80 locations. I mean, that's rough stuff. And they came in through trick bot and then they deliver it where you grant somewhere held the systems for for ransom and made it so that people in this pandemic don't have access to health care. That's pretty shameful. Well, the ransomware is disturbing in the context of the election. You know, cities and counties and municipal organizations have often been the victims of ransomware. And all of all a bad actor would have to do is lock down the voter the voter information and and hold it for ransom. And now you have not only a ransom demand, but you also have a confidence problem because they would report it to the public, a confidence problem about about voting information is very troubling. And I suppose if you and I thought for a while, we could figure out a lot of other ways that you could use trick bot to screw up an election. So, you know, is it safe? Well, we'll see. Is it safe? I mean, you say that it takes a while to recoup, you know, to reestablish the trick bot, you know, network. But gee, it sounds to me like if these guys were motivated, they they could do it. So, you know, let me let me go toward digression for a moment. You know, I've always felt that the legitimate users of the web since 1995 or so when it became popular under Bill Gates, you know, you know, don't mind revealing who they are. Get on there, whether it's Internet browsing or creating a website or whatever, you know, most people, most legitimate users would have no problem in telling you who they are, identifying themselves and having an account by which they are identified. But we don't have that. We have this kind of First Amendment thing. And at first, I'm sure you and me, you know, we we thought the First Amendment was good and we didn't want the government all over our freedom, freedom of the Internet in terms of being anonymous. I don't feel that way anymore. Or at least my earlier thought about it is come home. I think people ought to be anonymous. I think you can't get on. You can't get on any network unless you identify yourself. And if you fool around, we are going to prosecute you and put you in in the cooler for a long time, felony type prosecution. And you were going to sit there and cool your heels for a long time. And that way we will discourage this sort of thing, both on access and on sanctions. But we don't have that. And Congress being fully aware of these problems, well, at least some of the staffers are fully aware. The actual Congress people don't have a clue on how Facebook works. That's my thought. What we have is ignorance in Congress. We have a lack of political will. We have a lack of systemic capability to actually pass any bill. And so there is no no bill that that comes current on what is going on to deal with it. We are not dealing with it. If we dealt with it, we wouldn't have this free for all. What do you think? Well, you know, when you started talking, it reminded me of China's policy about using the Internet. You know, they they do police everyone who's on there and they will shut you down and they want to know who you are. So I guess you have to think about what's wrong with that. Well, like you said, they will prosecute and they also will censor. So, you know, the entire purpose of the Internet, I I thought and, you know, that's just my opinion, of course. Things are like armpits. Everyone has them, but it was supposed to be a free platform. We're all expression and all ideas as long as they were considered legal and socially acceptable could be done. But haven't we haven't we left that as the train left that station? I mean, there's, you know, yes, it's valuable. Yes, I can do so many things. I am empowered, enabled all day long. However, the risks are much greater and the bad actors are much greater. And they are it isn't safe about the election. It isn't safe about this information. It isn't safe about, you know, confusing hundreds of millions of people to do the wrong thing. It isn't safe about trading illicit weapons or information. It isn't safe. And I think we've got to bring that to a halt. I don't know about censorship. I don't believe in censorship, but I but I certainly do believe you can you can be identified and that's not a problem. It's like driving on the highway. You can drive on the highway, but it's a right, not a privilege. And the same thing, the same concept should exist with the Internet. You're going to use it, use it all day and all night. But it is a right, not a privilege. And if you abuse it, you're done. Well, on the public Internet, you might be able to do that. But on the dark web, it's a whole different story. I would shut the dark web down. I would I would I would talk to every Cisco and every network and all the hardware software. I would say, look, you got to follow these rules. Once once a guy abuses it, he cannot get on. Once he fails to identify himself, he cannot get on. If they want to build their own, you know, infrastructure, infrastructure around the world and spend trillions of dollars making a parallel infrastructure, that's fine. But not the one that, you know, that we that we permit. They can't use that. And so we make we make the system responsible. Well, what worries me really is data exfiltration. And that is, you know, how we were talking about ransomware earlier. Data exfiltration is what comes before ransomware. Where everyone's focused on ransomware and how it can ruin things. Data exfiltration and data manipulation is what happens before that. Imagine if they have access to these voter machines. And then rather than hold them hostage, they just decide to change the numbers. Try to figure that one out. Oh, yeah, try to figure that one out. You're scaring me. Yeah, they could they could take and maybe release the results early or they could somehow try to post them on social media in a way that it would screw things up. So there's there's so many different angles. I mean, you're you're not talking about a singular problem where you can just hit the nail on the head and you're done. This is a moving target and we're not talking about one moving target. We're talking about millions of moving targets. And besides beyond that, of course, there's a million different variables here. Beyond that, you have these guys are so successful. They are making billions and hundreds of billions and even trillions of dollars. The stock, the only the only, you know, a successful stocks stock issue in the in the market right now, the stock market of the tech companies, they're making so much money and it's because of COVID. It's because of Zoom. It's because we spend all our time buying things and exchanging messages and so forth. And, you know, it's just huge. And Congress has not really been able to even understand what those people are doing, much less do a trust bust on it. So, I mean, I think we are way behind the curve. We are vulnerable in every which way, starting with the economic and the X, what do you call it, X, X information, X, X faction data, X filtration. Yeah, X filtration. Thank you very much. And then, of course, there's manipulation of political processes. We're in terrible shape on this. And the reason I say all this is I think it's going to visit us. We're going to see evidence of this in the elections starting in two weeks. And we're going to be mighty ticked off about it. And maybe if there's a functional government afterward, somebody will say, gee, we don't really get into this. We're going to prevent this from happening again. It's OK, you're still going to have a job, trust me. Well, you're absolutely correct. I mean, who knows what's going to happen in the next few weeks. And I do know every time I see Trump talking, he's talking about how we may have a problem with the ballots and an untrustworthy election system. So I don't know. It could be a could be a real snafu in the next few weeks. And cyber cyber is going to be a big part of that. Yeah, and we're in a situation where all these factors are working. It's it's covid, it's the election, it's Trump and his friends. It's it's Russia. You know, people think that the United States is vulnerable now. They are going to try games on us if they wouldn't otherwise try. I mean, I think we're very vulnerable to this. And I'm I'm concerned about it because the stakes are so high and there's nobody watching the store. Really, nobody watching the store. So I suppose at this point, we should probably get into your your article. And I guess you made a movie about it and that's managing passwords. But what does that got to do with what we've talked about so far? Oh, yeah, it's all connected. It's all connected. Security isn't a isn't just a one shot deal. It's a layered approach. And there's there's different pieces you can put together of the puzzle in order to get inside of a company. For example, earlier, I mentioned how an email to HR containing a resume when opened could open up a backdoor into that company. Well, how would they get that email address in the first place? And even better, if they wanted to create trust, they could send an email from a fellow co-worker referring them or saying, hey, here's an invoice that needs to be paid and that invoice has an embedded in that PDF as a trickpot. Right. So that username and password that's floating around out there on the dark web, that can be reused for all kinds of malicious purposes. So the only true way to to save yourself really in those two ways is first using unique password for every service that you use online, right? And then the second is you monitor the dark web so that if something does pop up, at least you can just change that one account. So for instance, your your password for your credit card should be different than the password for your online banking. If the two are the same, guess what? One is breached, the second is breached. And worse yet, if you start using that same password on your LinkedIn, on your Facebook, on your Twitter, on your Instagram, you see how password reuse is a problem and password reuse is a big, big problem. It's not a joke. What about my finger? What about my finger? Your finger? What about my finger? My thumb, my index finger, my bio, my biology? Well, biometric is good as a form of two factor authentication. So even right now, we're talking on my laptop. When I open it up, I put in a password and I also have to show my face and two cameras read my face in order for me to get in. That's two factor authentication. It doesn't necessarily have to be my finger. Fingers are great. We've deployed two factor authentication through fingers. But as you know, it's not perfect. You have arthritis. It's a problem. If your fingers are wet, it's a problem. If you cut your finger, which had happened. Uh-oh, you better have those other fingers recorded, right? You know, just a small cut and you put a band-aid on it. Now you can't get inside your computer. So it's not a perfect system. But, you know, you say that you say, well, I got to have a different password for every single thing. And my goodness gracious, I don't know about you. Maybe you have, maybe you're really smart, but I spend an enormous amount of time every day screwing around with passwords. They want my password here and there and they send it to the phone, send it to another machine. I go chase, I have to find the phone of the other machine. I got to have dual verification on everything. I mean, I mean, the amount of time that I spend, you know, just to get to a payload is enormous. Surely somebody smarts, maybe somebody like you, like Cylanda, you know, could figure out a way to bypass all of that because it is slowing down our economy among other among the other factors that are slowing our economy. Absolutely. Passer managers do this exact task. There's last pass, there's keeper. We prefer keeper because it has multi-factor built in. So when I want to log in to, let's say, my Gmail, ask me for my username and password, all I did log in is once into my keeper account and then from there on out, it automatically puts in my username and password and then my two-factor authentication fills it in for me also. Everything's done. Is it safe? Safe as it's going to be. I mean, they use military grade encryption. They haven't had a breach yet, which is nice. And, you know, they're focused on security. That's their entire business. So that I think they understand that if there was a breach, that would be a breach in confidence. And then you'd probably have to move to something else. Yeah, after you've lost a lot. Well, they are a security company. So it's in their best interest to employ the best practices they can. No one's going to guarantee you everything, but I can guarantee you this. Post-it notes with passwords on them. It's not going to cut it. What about a little book, a little book that I can write in like a little notebook, an address book where I can go through the pages A, B, C, D, E and M. I put Microsoft or like that and I write it down. I write it down and I keep it in my pocket. Isn't that easier? It is easy and not necessarily a big time saver, though. We have some clients that did that in the past and then they realized that that worked for maybe one person, but in an organization where you have 10, 15, 20, 30 people, doesn't really cut it. You have to have something that's a little bit more centralized. Not to mention how hard is it to change a password once Johnny leaves? You know, once Jay or accountant takes off, you know, we have to change all the passwords all over again. That's a very difficult process. Also, the dark web monitoring doesn't really work either. So the idea is a lot of these pastor managers, especially Keeper that we use, it monitors the dark web to make sure that the password that using a password combination that you're using isn't being leaked out there. So if there's a breach on LinkedIn, I'm sure you recently you heard about the evite breach. All those pastors find either way out. Who knows how many password reuses are out there. But I can tell you this right now, we know which ones were reused. We're able to remediate them for our clients. We have a full dashboard into monitoring everything from them. It's a very simple problem to solve and it's very affordable. Recently, we just did an article for it in the advertiser just on Tuesday. So it turned out really well. And you made a video and we're going to play that. But you know, it strikes me to take Keeper or one of the others, right? It's a company. It's maybe a private company. I'm not so sure it's a public company. It's a company and it's cooperation. It's got board directors and it's not one day this fellow who is kind of an oligarch. Let's call him Johnny oligarch. He comes around and he says, you know, I really like your company. I am going to buy your company. I'm going to pay twice, three, four times as much as any evaluation would determine. And here's the money now. Hand me the control of your company. And Mr. Johnny goes back to Moscow, say, for example, and he's got control of this. He takes the board out. He takes the management out and he's got all the passwords, all of your password. How is who stopping that? Is there a government agency? Is there a statute? Is there anybody going to stop that? It's not how the technology works, Jay. This isn't like like a self storage or something like that where they bought the building and they can just go inside of each storage locker and pick out whatever's in there. The way secure password security works is that it's so secure that they can't even see it. There's no backdoor that's done that stuff because that'd be a violation. So the way it works is that if you lose your password, you are S-O-L. You lose your master key password. That's what's going to give you access all the rest of your passwords. And those are all encrypted anyway. So you're in good shape with these service providers. At least I hope that it's going to stay that way. So far, they've been around for some time. Last pass and keeper are kind of like the top two. Dashlane's kind of in a close third, but we've had some weird experiences with Dashlane. These companies are also within the United States, which is nice. All the data is kept within the United States. You know, that could change. You never know as they become a more global company, but they solve a real problem that we have today. So we could talk about theoretical things in the future. That's fine. You know, anything's possible. Let's talk about solving the problem today that you might have of cyber criminals having access to your business's accounts. Right? How do you fix that in the next 48 hours? Well, sure. That's the primary problem for sure. And that's the, you know, if you're going to get, if you're going to get hacked, that's probably, you know, one way to stop it. But if I go back to my thing about, is it safe? Is the election safe? Are all those factors that are in play about the power in the country, about public opinion in the country, about people being fully informed, properly informed to vote, about skinheads using, using social media to form up their, their initiatives, you know, to go to the state of Michigan, to conspire, to kidnap the governor of the state of Michigan. That's all social media and there's no control on it. I mean, I, I hear what Zuckerberg is saying, but, you know, I know, I know Attila, if you and I were in charge of preventing that sort of thing, if we controlled Facebook, we could prevent it. I don't think he's preventing it the same way you and I would prevent it. And so I'm not sure that the password management is actually going to help us, save us against the kind of thing that will affect our, our national integrity. Well, it doesn't come in one form, like, like I said, security is a layered approach. I'm just starting with the simplest thing that everyone can do. That's just that's really what it comes down to. The simplest solutions are the ones that work. You know, you have a fancy recipe. Often doesn't come out as good as a, as a simple recipe. You just keep it simple when it comes to security and keeping the stuff secure. And you're right. You know, we have also some leadership, which is telling these, these, these folks that to stand by for orders. I mean, those kind of messages are also we're getting mixed messages all the way from the top. So, you know, and you're right, social media has been a great way for these fringe groups to mobilize. But before it became popular, everyone was doing this on the dark web. You think ISIS operates on social media? No, they're on the dark web. That's how they communicate. So what's the future of it? You know, I, I, I grant you that password management is very important and everybody should do that. And I, you know, I urge people just as you do to do that. But, but what direction are we going here? Are we getting safer? Are we getting exposed more or less? Are the tools that are available to me as powerful as the tools that are available to Mr. Trickbot? You know, which way is the pendulum swinging until it? You know, we deal with a lot of companies, in fact, mostly companies and those companies are, are coming to us because they have these same questions. They're worried about their future and what they can do. And the tool and the answer is the tools that the hackers use. There's even better ones out there to protect you. But, you know, most companies don't want to make the leap, right? And if they don't make the leap, then eventually something happens. It's just numbers. It's a numbers game. We see thousands of we're just looking at the reports right before we started filming here, Jay, and yeah, we saw thousands of attacks on company networks today that we stopped, right? But that's because we're we're stopping them. Imagine all those other companies that don't have us protecting them. Well, I think that's that's a very important point. And we're going to have to close with that because we're out of time. But if you want to be safe, you've got to bring an expert in because I don't have the time to do all this and I don't want to have anybody on my staff, well, unless I'm a big company, you know, it's it's more efficient for me to bring somebody like you in because because like, you know, all those virus protectors, you're on it all the time. You're you're you're checking out the newest threat all the time. And I'm not sure I can afford to do that in-house. Certainly, I can't do it myself. But if I hire somebody like like Cylanda or one of the others, then presumably I have the best protection I can have in in these times. But let's let's let's circle back until there's more that's going to be revealed here in the next few weeks. I'm sure, you know, you're going to make more, more of your videos and maybe some more articles, too. We'll all learn something in the election. Thank you very much for joining me today, but this conversation is only beginning. You got it, Jay. Stay safe out there. Take care.