Following the New News About the DNC Hack [As Heard on WTAG]

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Transcript

WTAG_2017-08-15_Following-the-New-News-about-the-DNC Hack

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

Airing date: 08/15/2017

Following the New News about the DNC Hack

Craig Peterson: One of my favorite times of the week is when I get to talk to Jim Polito. He’s just phenomena. A true radio personality. But this week Jim’s out. He’s doing a little vacation. So I got to talk to Danny, Daniel Ferrantino. H e’s Jim’s producer and unlike so many radio shows where the guys call the producer but in reality it’s just kind of a board operator. Danny gets very involved with the production of the show. So I got to chat with Danny, and of course we went through the latest that’s in the news. Here we go.

Danny Ferrantino: Speaking of smart people we have one of the smartest of them all. Craig, welcome aboard buddy. Craig, welcome aboard.

Craig: Why, I thought I was on with Jim.

Danny: I call that the curse of the Polito.

Craig: Okay. You said it the same board it’s on.

Danny: That’s what it is. So, speaking of being smarter, the DNC hack. Shocker, shocker Craig. It may not of been the Russians after all.

Craig: This is, boy, going back and forth. This is crazy. We had, of course, all of these inside job theories floating around right now. Before that it was the Russians. You remember the emails that were really, ultimately, that said hey listen. If things don’t go well with the elections, we’re going to blame it all on the Russians. We apparently do have some of our analysts looking at all of these hacks and leaks and said yes, the Russians were trying to influence our election. In fact it came out just this last week that apparently the FBI and the CIA were busy during the election watching all social media trying to figure out if Russia had sock puppet since. And, you know, fake posters on Twitter etc. trying to influence the election. Well, you know, bottom line is, of course they were trying to influence the election. We try and influence other countries’ elections, right?

Danny: Yeah.

Craig: We do everything. We give the money. We give them support. Just all kinds of stuff over the years. So, of course, they are trying to influence the election. But the big question here is how much hacking did they actually do and were they successful? Now we have the secretaries of State of every state saying no, we were not hacked. The government, in fact, the FBI has said that our voting machines are critical infrastructure in the United States. And they’re calling now, some of the Feds saying hey, we need to move elections from state elections to one national federal election. And you know we’ve had a lot of people over the years complaining about the way our voting works, the way the president’s actually elected. But you know they’re saying hey, with this attack, with these attempted attacks. With, not just like Putin, for instance, but Mafia people. You know, you name it. Some other country that doesn’t even know that it’s coming from their country. It goes on and on. This is all a huge story, Danny, and it’s very confusing. I’m kind of jumping all over the place. But there are a lot of potential hacks that could happen in the future.

So rule number one, by the way, don’t use electronic voting machines. If you’re responsible for it in a town or in a state, just don’t do it. It’s stupid. Use machines that have paper ballots that you fill out. Okay, you can have a machine read that, but at least it can be audited afterward. So let’s move on to what you’re talking about which is were the Democrats hacked? Well we have the Podesta leak. And the Podesta leak obviously was, because of what he said, was because he chose a really great password, known as password.

Danny: I tell you what, no password1 next time.

Craig: Yeah exactly. And he went and he gave people control of his computer. You know, he did just a stupid, stupid thing that no listener of this show would ever do because, you know, I’m constantly talking about don’t click on this stuff, right? So we had that. We had Hillary Clinton with an unsecured server with at least 30,000 emails that she can’t or won’t provide. We have no idea what was on that server. We do know that it was imminently hackable and that once it came out that this server existed in someone’s bathroom, that’s where it was located. That this illegal server was there that someone tried to get onto it and said hey, listen. This isn’t secured. In fact, it’s not even using SSL. Even the most basic of site to site encryption. So that server could well have been hacked by almost anyone. We had WikiLeaks coming out and saying hey, all of these emails that we published came from a source other than a hacker. The Seth Rich tie-in, which seems to indicate that maybe he was a leaker and that he had leaked it internally and had given these emails because he was so upset about what the Democrats were doing that he gave them to WikiLeaks. And then, of course, his death, we’ve gotten, this is just expanding more and more. We’ve now got a very, very, very left wing guy who came out with a report in a very left-wing newspaper out there saying hey, this was an inside job. In fact, I’ve interviewed a whole bunch of former National Intelligence Security officials. I’ve done a whole bunch of research on all of this. Talking with other security, cyber, forensic people. And he came out and said no. In fact, it was not. And there is no way that it was hacked by the Russians.

Danny: Well, not t get too technical okay. We’re speaking with Tech Talk guru, Craig Peterson. One thing I’m reading here basically is saying that the amount of data downloaded from the server that basically that the Internet capability isn’t fast enough to keep up with how fast they were able to do it.

Craig: Yeah, that’s what they’re saying. This is from The Nation, very left-wing newspaper. And they’re sating hey listen. It had to have been copied to a hard disk locally. The transfer rate was almost 23 MB per second. That is far faster than what the DNC had. It’s far faster than what you would get on an international link from Russia. And that alone, because of the timestamps, they were able to reverse engineer the transfer speed. That alone would indicate that it was an inside job. It was someone sitting there copying these files. But there’s so much more here. The DNC, remember these are DNC emails that were hacked or leaked. What about the guy fleeing from the United States to Pakistan that was arrested three weeks ago by the FBI at the airport trying to flee the country. This guy was paid triple the going rate in Washington DC to take care of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chairperson’s computer systems. And he had access to, not only all of her emails and systems but apparently also the systems of 30 other Democratic Congress people.

Danny: Wow.

Craig: And he was paid $4 million. He and his family. And this is a guy who had, his last job Danny, was working for McDonald’s and he got fired from that job.

Danny: How do we get a job like that Craig?

Craig: He ends up in a job in DC being paid triple the rate. Three times what a guy in DC for maintaining computers. Triple the rate, his pay. And all kinds of allegations about this guy been involved in various nefarious things including, you know, car dealerships. It just goes on and on. So in March of this year, he was barred from having any access to any House computers. Because the House security people said whoa, whoa, whoa whoa, this guy is a risk.

Danny: A security risk. Yup.

Craig: Yeah. And allegations that he was tied into Iran and into Pakistan. So now he can’t touch computers. But guess who can keep paying him until he tries to flee the country. Paying him triple the going rate. Triple the salary, average salary in Washington, DC. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Why would you pay an IT guy to maintain your computers for six months?

Danny: Because you don’t want anyone else to know what’s on them?

Craig: And then the FBI shows up to this guy’s house, Danny. I don’t know if you heard about that. And all of a sudden they find these computers that were smashed with hammers, a la Hillary Clinton’s computers, right?

Danny: Did they not learn that that doesn’t actually destroy the computer?

Craig: And that’s what the FBI said. They’re going to be able to recover the data that was on these computers and she’s screaming she wants them back. Because we all know the FBI will return evidence if you just ask for it back.

Danny: Yeah, no problems. They don’t ask questions twice.

Craig: So this is confusing as heck. And I’ve been following this closely. There are a lot of very weird things going on here. Could well be an inside job. As you mentioned, there’s a lot of evidence to it pointing to being an inside job. There’s other people that were saying well, you know, they could have copied the files after the fact. There’s just all kinds of different things. This is very confusing but let me tell you, you know, a lot of people say where there’s smoke there’s fire and we don’t have smoke here we have visible flames. And I will be interested to see what happens. USA Today was reporting on this story. As we mentioned The Nation, the very left wing newspaper is reporting on this story. We have all kinds of loose ends everywhere. We even have a murder…

Danny: That’s right.

Craig: … that is being tied into this. And we have the top Democratic officials that are all on this as well. And the most of the newspapers just are not reporting this.

Danny: It’s shocking that the fake news outlets aren’t turning real news Craig. Real quick. We only have a couple minutes left. I was talking with Tech Talk guru, Craig Peterson. So the man who wrote the passwords rule has a new tip. Don’t use his passwords. Right?

Craig: Yeah, never mind. Exactly. Yeah, this guy, the federal government agency that’s responsible for setting standards, the NIST, and he came out with a report when he was a mid-level manager saying oh, you should have uppercase, lowercase, special characters. You should change your password every 30 to 90 days. And it has been codified into federal law in many cases. But now he’s come out and he’s realized that is a bad, bad idea. Always was a bad idea. So the National Institute of Standards had come out with new password recommendations. Basically here’s what you do, and I’ve been saying this for months. You remember Danny, Jim and I talked about a year ago. Not this guy but the best passwords are phrases that you can remember that you don’t have to write down. Just string three or four words together. Maybe stick a dash or a number between each of the words. Use those as a password and you will have a very secure password. So at least he backpedaled and told people about it because it was crazy. People had to write down the passwords. They post them with Post-it notes on the computers and stuff. Use a password manager. Use good passwords. Good passwords mean multiple words strung together that just make phrases you can remember.

Danny: There we have it. Craig, if someone wants to learn more, what can they do?

Craig: Http://CraigPeterson.com or text the word Jim to 855-385-5553 and I’ll send you all of today’s show notes. Again 855-385-5553.

Danny: Standard text and data rates do apply. Craig, as always, appreciate the time. Buddy, we’ll talk to you next week.

Craig: Take care. Bye-bye.

Danny: That is Craig Peterson, Tech Talk guru. He joins us each every Tuesday at 8:40.

Craig: By the way I’m almost ready with our new little product for everybody. We’ve got some great giveaways and a great paid product that we’re coming up with that’s going to make your computers way safer. We’re aiming the product to businesses, the free stuff at home users. But you’ll only find out about it if you’re on my insiders’ list. Make sure you subscribe. Http://CraigPeterson.com/subscribe. Talk to you tomorrow bye-bye.

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Show Notes

Joins Danny Ferrantino, as he sits in for Jim Polito, talking about the new news about the DNC hacking. So, if the news is saying that it may not be the Russians after all, then who?

More tech and security news only on CraigPeterson.com.

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