The DNC Hack that Wasn’t – Disney Being Sued for Apps that Spy [As Heard on WGAN]

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Transcript

WGAN_2017-08-16_The-DNC-Hack-That-Wasn’t

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

Airing date: 08/16/2017

The DNC Hack That Wasn’t – Disney Being Sued Over Apps That Spy

Craig Peterson: We’ve had more information come out about the so-called DNC hack. Now there’s some questions about the hack. Where there was a hack and whether it was an inside job. Or maybe it looks like an inside job but it was really a hack. And we talked about that this morning on WGAN. Also talked a little bit about Disney’s lawsuit. Did you hear about them getting sued over apps that they say are spying on our children?

Matt Gagnon: And it is 7:38 on the WGAN Morning News. And that time every Wednesday is reserved for Craig Peterson, our tech guru, who joins us today as he does every week. How are you doing Craig?

Craig: Doing well. How are things with you guys?

Ken Altshuler: Well, there’s nothing to talk about.

Matt: Nothing to talk about.

Ken: Politically so…

Craig: That’s true. It’s pretty quiet. Hey Dan was telling me when I called him that he went ahead and downloaded that Hiya app that I told you guys about, that blocks you know, the bad guys from calling the spam calls? And says it has basically changed his life.

Ken: Well, that’s cool.

Matt: Changed your life do you mind? That’s a decent testimonial.

Ken: He needs to change his life, clearly. And if anybody who comes on, you know, comes here at 3 o’clock in the morning needs to change his life.

Craig: Needs some major change.

Ken. So we’re talking a lot about Donald Trump and part of it obviously, politically speaking, is this hack of the, whether the Russians were hacking into the DNC and the emails. What’s the latest on this, Craig?

Craig: This is a story just keeps on giving us, wow. You know I do a lot of security work. I have done Internet securities since the late 1980s and so I’ve kind of seen everything here over the years. This DNC hack, as it’s been called, really, there’s a huge story here. And it’s got to the point now where they’re even talking about a murder that was committed and who committed it and why? Here’s kind of the bottom line. We know that Hillary Clinton had an email server and that email server, obviously to my mind, was completely idiotic for her to have done. You know the potential state secrets on it, sitting in a bathroom somewhere. And as soon as we found out about this, I have a couple friends who hopped onto her surfer. And there was, bottom-line, no real security on it at all. Not even the basics like SSL. It was just wide open. And they didn’t want to get in trouble so they didn’t try going in and hacking it. But we could be almost certain that some people probably did hack it right? And we don’t have access to it. We don’t have access to the disks. It’s hard to tell what happened there.

So that’s one thing. Who knows what got leaked out of that another. Another one is, of course, John Podesta who was her campaign manager. And he fell for a scam that I think your listeners know about because we’ve talked about it many times and that is someone sends an email saying your account has been hacked. You know, click here to clear it up. Or we need to verify some information. Or just like those telephone calls we’re talking about earlier. People will call and say hey, I’m from the bank or from the IRS etc. And so John Podesta, who should’ve known better, apparently clicked on the link, this is according to him, and then his account, his email account was compromised. So there you go. There’s another avenue for information to have been leaked.

Then we have Debbie Wasserman Schultz that we’ve talked about on the show before. And the idiocy or something, I don’t know what. Not only was she paying her tech person triple the going rate for tech people there in Washington DC. Triple. And paid them $4 million, him and his brother and couple of other family members. But he was under investigation. He was barred from even accessing the House computer network back in March. And she continued to pay the guy triple the going salary in Washington DC. Triple until he was arrested at the airport trying to flee the country. Now, of course, there’s something in common in all of these. These are all Democrats. And in each case there was a very possible leak of all kinds of confidential information. And with this guy that was arrested trying to flee the country that was not only working for Congresswoman Schultz but 30 other Democrats apparently. Congress people. He had, there’s alleged ties with him to Iran. Obviously to Pakistan and other places. What did he leak? And now The Nation which is a rather left right, in fact very left wing, is reporting that they’ve been working with forensic experts and former national security advisors. And they’re saying that newly revealed evidence suggests that that the so-called hack by the Russians of the DNC information was actually a leak. And remember too, WikiLeaks’ publishers said hey listen. I didn’t get this from the Russians. And reading between the lines, he’s saying I got it from an inside person.

So we have evidence that it was a leak. It’s kind of loose evidence. We’re looking at timestamps on files and how long it might take to transfer them and there’s no way the Russians could’ve transferred it at those sort of data rates of the timestamps would indicate. But then on the other hand, maybe the timestamps we’re looking at were from someone copied them locally after they were stolen. You know there’s so many questions here. But the report in The Nation says that whoever did this had to have physical access to the DNC, the Democratic National Committee’s system to be able have done this. And, wow, it goes on and on. And we’re not even talking politics yet right? We’re talking going rates for computer people, for IT people. And I gotta tell you, most companies, and that this not just the DNC, most companies I go into are dramatically overpaying for their IT support and they’re paying for people that don’t know what they’re doing. And in the case again of this IT person and company really, with his family, his previous job as I had mentioned before had been at McDonald’s where he got fired. And then he went on to getting triple the going rate for IT support. This whole thing is just confusing as heck, Ken. And you know, the evidences is a little odd here. It’s not conclusive. But I would kind of boil it down to looks like the Democrats have an IT problem.

Matt: To say the least, I would say Craig. So we’re talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru, who joins us at this time every Wednesday. Craig I got to be honest with you. Going through the topic to talk about today, I stumbled upon the Disney one that you brought up here. Kind of spooked me a little bit. Disney is being sued for spying on children through an app?

Craig: Yeah.

Matt: Explain this to me. Am I supposed to be worried about this if I have kids?

Craig: Yeah. Yes, actually. You should. Here’s what’s going on there. I talked about, of course, I wasn’t one with you guys back then, but there was a Barbie doll that was released that kids can talk to. And the Barbie doll would respond to the kids. Now this isn’t like back in, you know, Teddy Ruxpin days, where it really didn’t understand much. And you know, I had to have a little bit of interaction, but that’s it. This Barbie doll actually listen to what the kids were saying and responded. Now in order to do that it had microphones inside. It was Wi-Fi connected. It sent all of the audio up to the cloud to a third-party company who sent it to Google and Google listened to it and turned it into text which a third-party company then used to respond to the child. And really, really bad news is it was a popular present about, I think it was two Christmases ago. Well there is a rule on this whole thing from the Federal Trade Commission. It’s called the COPPA rule which is the Children’s Online Privacy Protection rule. And Disney has a number of different apps. And the 42 of them now are named in this lawsuit that apparently are spying on your kids, listening to what they’re doing, what they’re saying. It’s apparently, you know, all these allegations that it’s spying on them, listening to them and using it for marketing. Maybe using it for other things. And you got to remember in this day and age, companies like Disney aren’t the ones actually writing the code. They’re using third parties. I mentioned Google for instance, to turn voice into text. Well, they’re using companies to write the code for the apps. And this becomes a problem here because these third parties are tracking the kids. So I’ll keep up-to-date on this, but that this is very, very concerning to me. And parents need to pay attention. If the device can listen to your child, talk to your child. The device knows where your child is, there are horrendous security problems in the works. You know, the potential is there and it really kinda scares me frankly. I don’t know. If I had young kids these days, I don’t know what I do because these types of apps and games are really everywhere.

Ken: Craig Peterson, our tech guru, joins us every Wednesday at 7:38. Thanks Craig, we’ll talk to you next week.

Craig: Hey gentleman, take care. Bye-bye.

Ken: Thanks.

Matt: Thanks a lot Craig. Appreciate it.

Craig: Hey by the way, we finally got around to it. You can subscribe easily now to my insiders’ email list. Just go to http://CraigPeterson.com/subscribe. Have a great day. Will chat with you later. Bye-bye.

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