Business email compromise scam and other phishing losses #7

Welcome everybody to the Security Guy and the CIA Spy Show podcast, where we are keeping you on top of what is new and ahead of what is next at all times on all things security, tech, and digital literacy. Knowing that when good people like you want to make sure that their money, their family, and their business is safe and secure from attackers, hackers, and thieves, or you just want to make sure your tech is running smoothly, my name is Robert Siciliano. I am the Security Guy, and along with my co-host Peter Wormka, who is a real and retired United States CIA spy, we will give give you every single tool, tip, tactic, and skill that you need to fight the bad guy and keep your physical and digital life secure, worry less, and even make you happier. This podcast will help you breathe easier with less stress and a greater sense of well-being. So let's get at it, and welcome to The Security Guy and the CIA Spy. I am Robert Siciliano, and this is Peter Warmke.

For those of you that don't know it, I am the CIA spy in this couple.

He is the CIA spy. He is the real deal. Peter, where did you spend a lot of your time while you were working for the government?

Almost all of it was overseas, in predominantly Latin America. I've been to almost every country in Latin America, and I spent also some time in Western Europe and traveled all over Middle East, parts of Asia, and parts of Africa.

That is pretty crazy. And, um, how long were you functioning as a CIA spy?

At least, at least 20 years.

And, um, how many— have you ever been in a situation where you feared for your life?

Uh, not because of my affiliation with the CIA, but just maybe from— I would say fear for my life, no. Uh, my back of my hair— my hairs in the back of my neck went up a few times. It was more from criminal activity or, you know, terrorist organizations. One of the first countries I went to was Peru, and they, uh, we had the Shining Path back then. And there were times when, I mean, I had terrorists in front of my, my home casing the area. So I mean, it's— and there are bombs going off that you would feel. You didn't know if they were bombs or tremors. I mean, there was a lot of that going on. So yeah, from that standpoint of my own physical security for those type of things, but not because of my affiliation with the organization, because that was very low profile.

So if, if you are allowed to tell me, what, what type of intelligence would you be responsible for gathering?

I mean, there's a mix, and over my career I collected on everything from, uh, you know, very high priority target countries like Russia, China, you know, um, and some of the, the places where I live, even like what's going on internally with the internal government and their, their, uh, relationships with other countries. We would target it on counter-proliferation, organized crime. I mean, a lot of different, a lot of different areas across the board I was involved in.

And so you would take that information back to the U.S. government and they would act on it in some way that basically would be to what, infiltrate a particular organization, to secure the homeland? Like, what might they do with that?

I mean, ultimately looking at improving the United States positioning in the world, right? Whether it's in foreign trade negotiations, whether it's in military operations, there's a whole gamut. When I say it is to help better inform senior policymakers back in Washington, DC, we hope it's to better inform them. At least that's our intent. We don't have influence in their decisions, but we hope to inform them.

So I've watched a ton of movies on spies like everybody else has. Have you ever worn a wire?

No, I have not. No, I've not worn a wire. Well, you gotta be careful with watching those spy movies. You know why? Because a lot of these, uh, companies that will produce these movies, they'll reach out and they will hire one or two former agency officers to consult. And I know some of these people, you know, and they'll ask a question about, you know, what What is it like to do XYZ? And then when the officer says, this is how it's done, that's too boring for Hollywood. They'll go their own direction. So things in Hollywood, there are some really good series though that will replicate pretty much the facts of how things were. But the vast majority of these Hollywood films are, now it's for entertainment. It's not really for education as far as understanding how the world really works out there.

Very interesting. All right, so today, Peter, we have all kinds of interesting things to talk about. Uh, and here, um, this is Peterborough, New Hampshire loses $2.3 million in an email scam, says CBS in Boston. Now, uh, a lot of you might be saying, well, I don't live in New Hampshire, so why is this such a big deal to me? The fact that a very small municipality— I think that they have like under 10,000 people in this particular town— The fact that this small municipality, you know, wired, um, or lost, you know, this much money in an email scam is a really big deal due to the fact that we have, you know, thousands of municipalities all over the country that are targets for the exact same crime. And this could happen to, you know, cities and towns big and small, uh, really the they're focusing on just a few people within those cities and towns that have access to wiring those funds. And they'll spend— these criminals will spend years, you know, infiltrating these little cities and towns to get access to those people and to find out, you know, where the— who's paying what bill to where. So let me read this to you. All right, so in the small town of Peterborough, New Hampshire, $2.3 million was stolen from taxpayers during July and August of 2021. The town said that $1.2 million was set to go to Conval School District and another $1.1 million to go to Peterborough's Main Street Bridge project. All right, and then it says the criminals forged email accounts pretending to be officials from either the school district or contractors from the bridge project. They then communicated with the town staff to receive payments. And then someone internally, the town administrator, said they clearly paid attention to how we conduct business, who we conducted business with, and they targeted the most valuable transfers, said the town administrator. And then they said that they also learned Small governments like ours are not protected as well as banks or cities. Well, there's no question about that. So Peter, let's discuss how a particular fraud or how a particular scam like this may occur. So what do you think happened here?

Well, this is really interesting because, you know, we, we don't hear too much about these type of attacks or scams in the municipalities. You know, over the last few years there's been so much of the ransomware ransomware, where these municipalities also have all of a sudden had all their data encrypted, and their operations are pretty much at a standstill. But with the ransomware, there's no guarantee to the criminals that the criminals are going to get paid, right? Some of the municipalities pay, other ones don't. But in this case, it's much smarter. They're actually getting into the municipality and being able to gain access to these bank accounts and transfer the money out through these fraudulent wire transfers. It's very similar, almost identical to what we hear, the BEC, business email compromise, where a hacker will get in and then they'll basically impersonate someone senior up, maybe a CFO, a CEO who has authority to request wire transfers, or maybe even a little bit out of the regular sequence, but all of a sudden, hey, this is an emergency, we need to pay this vendor right now. They'll send an email to some underling who actually can execute that wire transfer, and it might, it might look like a common name. Oh yeah, we got to pay this vendor, we do pay this vendor, but the instructions have a different, uh, bank account.

Yeah, so what I think happened here, I think because they knew about particular payments, they knew that they targeted high-value payments, right? I think what happened was that it's likely that somebody within the school— somebody, somebody within the municipality, somebody within City Hall basically, or even somebody within the school system, or somebody within, uh, the contractor themselves, the company that was doing the bridge— somebody's email was compromised.

I agree.

So bad guys got the username, which is an email address, and the passcode of somebody within the town or somebody within the construction company, probably a little bit of both. And they were able to log into their email remotely from anywhere in the world, for that matter, and they were able to read sent and received emails going back for as long as that person has been an employee, right? Either of the construction company or the school, right? Or the town. And so being able to read all those emails, they were able to piece together what construction projects there were, what funding need to be made to the school district, and so forth. So they learned the internal workings. They probably spent months learning about it all, reading all of these email communications back and forth. And then once they understood exactly what was taking place and who was supposed to receive what specific funds and where those funds were supposed to go, that's when the hackers, the criminal hackers in this case, intervened. Yeah, that's when they either created a separate email posing as either the construction company or somebody from the city, or they just did it internally using the existing email of somebody from the company, from a construction company, or somebody from the city. And then they just change the wiring instructions to suit the bad guy in this case.

Yeah, I agree with you, and it's a pretty good payday, right, to $2.3 million. If people can— I mean, that's just one of probably so many scams that the same individual or small group is undertaking. So you can imagine how much money across the board a lot of these individuals are really stealing. And at the end of the day, it's not like people think, well, this company gets hacked or whatever. It's that company's problem. It's those capitalists' problem. But here, It's the individuals, the taxpayers of the city. That money, you know, where's that money going to come from? It's coming from their pockets. You know, are these projects now going to be totally, uh, totally, you know, unfunded and have to die, or are they going to have to find additional revenue from taxpayers? You know, they mentioned, I think, in the article, the insurance. But even if the insurance pays part of this, at the end of the day, insurance rates go up.

We all, we all pay for these type of And, and if they had cybersecurity insurance, if they had cybersecurity insurance, depending on the policy, depending on the rider and all this stuff, they, they may or may not be covered. Because if, if, if the policy covers, you know, business email compromise scams, if it covers phishing scams, if it covers, you know, blatant, um, uh, fraud right? That's one thing. But it, you know, it may not cover that because the cybersecurity insurance they had may only cover like a data breach, you know, where so many records—

something we should interview. We should bring somebody on as a guest who's an expert on the cyber insurance and really kind of talk about—

if people in the audience are interested, I think anybody in the audience, you, uh, engage— are you— are a— you, you sell or develop cybersecurity insurance, by all means touch base with us. We at ProtectNow actually, um, uh, are a vendor, uh, for cybersecurity insurance. I could point that out to you later, but we actually do have an expert that we have worked with that we could bring on. She's really awesome.

Yeah, right.

So, uh, Peter, with this particular fraud, the most important thing I think that everybody should realize as far as this particular scam is concerned is that before you wire money to anyone, no matter what the reason is, you gotta get on the phone and you gotta call the person responsible for all the various transactions, the people who are sending the funds, people who are receiving the funds, confirm the legitimacy of that transaction, confirm the account information, the routing number, the bank account number, making sure that everybody you're talking to is in fact who they say they are, right? And get as much proof as you possibly can before that money is sent out. Don't just trust that email communications are in fact legit because they can easily be spoofed.

Back in the day, and this goes way back to the early '80s, I've been around for a while, I used to work in banking, and, uh, for a tran— for certain amounts that were transferred out of the bank, you had to have at least two officials of the bank signing that that wire transfer. I mean, it was kind of like a— I want to say dual authentication, but it was sort of— you had two sets of eyes to analyze what's going on here. Does this make sense? And I think we need to do more of those type of things every time we have a transaction, especially of this magnitude.

Yeah, they got to go back to basics, go back to the way it was, like more hands-on. All right, so Peter, check this out. This is via VentureBeat. Proofpoint, which is a security company, and Ponemon, uh, which is a research company, uh, losses due to phishing have almost quadrupled since 2015. All right, I am not surprised at all just based on the last story regarding Peterborough, New Hampshire. Like, of course, you know, you didn't see, uh, fraud like that. You didn't see wire fraud like that in 2015, not $2-point-something million from a couple of transactions. It just didn't even exist. You had mostly data breaches and credit card data breaches and such, but not like that, not like what we just saw. So costs from phishing attacks have tripled since 2015. The average annual cost of phishing has increased from $3.8 million in 2015 to $14.8 million in 2021.

That's an average, that's an average per organization, right? This is—

we're not talking about Total annual cost. Oh yeah, okay. Yeah, this is because phishing has a low entry barrier for cyber criminals with a high value return. These emails are very easy to create, require a little technical knowledge, and most importantly, depends solely on one user clicking to succeed. It goes on to say that phishing attacks not only had direct financial consequences on these attacks also increase the likelihood of a data breach, decrease employee productivity, and increase the likelihood of a business disruption, all contributing to additional costs. In fact, huge amounts of time and investment are spent dealing with the consequences of a phishing scam. Employee productivity losses are among the costliest to organizations, increasing from an average of 1.8 million in 2015 to 3.2 million in 2021. So I think that these numbers that they're speaking to are the overall costs and losses incurred from phishing. So it's lo— it's lost productivity, it's money lost from the actual fraud itself. And, you know, a lot of this can be stopped— lost productivity, fraud itself. A lot of fraud can be stopped simply by engaging in security awareness training, right?

It's a fraction of— it's, I mean, of course it's an expense, but you gotta— they have to not consider this an expense. First of all, it's a fraction. This is a— it's an investment. It's not an expense. This is an investment to secure your, you know, a— your— say your assets, your financial holdings, because as you mentioned, there are so many costs incurred with a breach. Not to— you didn't even mention the reputation, the brand reputation of an entity, the trust. You know, they're going to lose clients and it's going to be harder to gain new clients. Then many times there's also litigation costs associated with these breaches that— I mean, it just— yeah, it's like double, you know, or triple what they initially might think as far as the value of the information that was, was stolen. There's so many extra costs associated with this.

So Peter, in a security awareness training that you would provide, give us an example of, you know, what you would present to your audience that would, you know, get them up to speed in regards to what to be aware of.

I mean, there's certain levels, right? You can do an initial awareness training that is more extensive than this, uh, what are these typical videos that you watch when you do the annual, um, the compliance training, you know, 15-20 minute video And then you answer 3 questions, and if you get it wrong, well, you can go back and retake the test again. At the end of the day, people don't remember what they learned.

They didn't learn.

They did not learn. They're just complying with what the corporation, the company says they have to. For a real, real security awareness training, you have to get everybody involved, and they have to really understand from the get-go, what is their— why might the organization be a target? What's of value to an external threat actor? Is it the proprietary information, the customer data, employee data that can be bought and sold? Is it proprietary information that could be used by a competitor? Could it be financial extortions like ransomware or business email compromise? So they need to understand why it could be targeted. Many times today, I spoke to a lot of people recently. I was at this conference, and they were telling me, yeah, we've been hacked. We're constantly probed, and it's because they want to get at their customer data to then go after their customers. So it's kind of like a, a domino effect here. So the employees need to understand that. They need to understand why their company might be targeted and what the methodology is for these hackers when they're developing, uh, their case, and how they might study potential insiders, target them, and learn about them. A lot of this through social media. So you're probably looking at a you know, a solid, uh, couple-hour workshop for them to really understand. And— but that's not enough. I mean, it's better than nothing. It really opens their eyes.

I think it's important to show the employees how specifically they are targeted, right? Just how vulnerable they actually are, how their LinkedIn profile and their Facebook profile, uh, maybe even their personal pages, and how criminals will gather basic intelligence about them as as moms and dads, as, you know, as an equestrian for that matter. You know, if they talk about how they love horses on their Facebook page or they are a runner and they run for a particular charity and that might be on their LinkedIn page and how criminals would use that basic intelligence to get access to them, to build a relationship with them, to send them instant messages, to send them emails, based on an equestrian event or a runner, a runner's event, or a charity that they might belong to. And they would, they, they would build this relationship with them, send them all these various communications, see what they click on, see what, what, what is the most effective way to get access to that particular employee. And then they might from there target them at either at home or at work. So they'll, they'll continually engage in what we basically call an advanced persistent threat. You know, they continually are working on, uh, one aspect after another on a particular individual until they know enough about them and, and have the ability to get as much access about that person as possible. And then once they basically have, um, uh, put together a full profile on them and know what their trigger points are that's when they execute their scam.

It's so easy, but you know, a lot of the basic security awareness training today doesn't— it doesn't go— doesn't go deep enough because a lot of it's just focused on basic phishing where, you know, you get scammer that will produce an email and then send it out to hundreds or thousands of people. Yeah, and a certain percentage will click it on, but what we're talking about here is targeted spear phishing, as you mentioned, right? I learned about the target, I'm going to create an email, I might even create a social media profile, fake profile, and develop in that profile commonalities with the target. We've gone to the same alma mater, we, we support the same sports teams, we support, we remember the same associations, or maybe, you know, even the same humanitarian causes. And so when they approach you, it's like, whoa, I got so many things in common with this person, right? You automatically trust them, right?

So that goes back to the sales principle, you know, you do business with those who you know, who you like, and who you trust. And so, uh, you may not necessarily, you know, know a person, but you have no reason not to like them, um, you have no reason to trust them, and you have so much in common with them, you feel like you know them. And so it basically— like, the scammer is developing a rapport with you, and over time, once they do so, um, that's when you begin to click the links, provide sensitive information, and so forth. So yeah, uh, companies need to up their game, uh, invest in security awareness training, uh, which is, like you said, a complete fraction of the millions and millions to billions that are being lost every single year. So Yeah, so Peter, um, I found this to be really interesting. This is from, um, securitymagazine.com. I believe this is a, um, a publication of the American Society of Industrial Security. A former U.S. Golf Association employee charged with stealing $3.4 million in U.S. Open tickets in a case of insider theft. So insider fraud has always been a problem in corporations, it's in government agencies and so forth. Federal prosecutors charged a former U.S. Golf Association employee with stealing more than $3.4 million in U.S. Open tickets and reselling them for profit. Uh, let me see, acting U.S. Attorney announced that Robert Siciliano in PA was charged with— by, uh, information— with one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud 4 counts of mail fraud and 10 counts of wire fraud related to a scheme to embezzle and pocket fraudulent proceeds from the unauthorized sale. So basically, it looks to me like this guy basically had pocketed like $3.4 million worth of tickets over a 5, 6 year period of time. So he was skimming tickets from, you know, the pile of tickets that they produced every single year. And he sold them at a significant discount for about $1 million. So about two-thirds off the face value, and he was just pocketing the money. He engaged in a years-long selling scheme to steal and sell thousands of US Open tickets. And, you know, they didn't notice it until they noticed it.

That's what I'm wondering. So how long was this going on? I mean, you said a year-long scam, or is it longer than that? That year. It's a lot of money. You know, I wonder how they caught him. What was the trigger? What, what made it stand out? Why did they—

He stole 23,000 US Open tickets, all without the knowledge and consent of the USGA. The defendant then sold those tickets to third-party ticket brokers in return for payments totaling more than $1 million. So more than likely, you know, they don't actually say specifically how he did it, right? And, you know, it would be We could certainly make an attempt to reverse engineer the process, but it's likely that, you know, like in any organization, uh, you know, if you're— if, if, if they've got tens of thousands of tickets and, and those tickets are, um, you know, printed out and there's physical tickets available and you can basically fudge the accounting in some way right, pad the books in favor of your scheming. That's the best way to go about it. So if he, if he's ministerially responsible for physically recording how many tickets were sold and how many are left, and there might have been like, there might have been, uh, promotional tickets that they would give away, right? That's usually how something like this might work. There was promotional tickets, like let's just say 1% of the tickets that they would, uh, produce were for promotional purposes. Well, he might have taken, say, half of those percentage of tickets and wrote them off as they were given away to ABC organization and so forth. So more than likely what was happening is, is he was padding the books in favor of his scheming, and he was writing off those tickets to benefit him opposed to say charities or other organizations. That's usually how something like that happens.

The thing here is, so much for checks and balances. And you see this across a lot of companies that get, uh, suffer fraud from, from inside, right? Inside fraud. It's just that they don't have another means of being able to validate, verify what is being done as far as expenses, uh, that are being, you know, uh, reported, or revenues that are being taken in. So He was able to do this without anybody really detecting it. Maybe, maybe he was caught, you know, if maybe there was somebody observing. I mean, that's a lot of money, and you would think he would probably be spending some of it, right? So it's a temptation, you know, to not really get caught. You got to be able to put your money away for a long time in the future without changing your lifestyle. And they probably changed his lifestyle. Maybe people saw him, uh, driving real nice cars, uh, other things, and started to say, what's going on? This guy only makes, let's say, $120,000, but he's spending way beyond his means. Who knows?

Yeah. And at some point, it had to have gotten back to somebody that this guy always had tickets to sell. Like, you can't engage in that type of fraud for an extended period of time and it not in some way, shape, or form get back to somebody within the organization. Somebody had to talk at some point Either that or they brought in, you know, some type of a forensics accountant to take a look at the books, to look for any anomalies. Could be. And that's really what all businesses should be doing, small and medium and large, is have a forensics accountant come in and look at your books because the people that are responsible for your books on the inside are perfectly positioned to pad those books in favor of their scheming. And they know more than anyone how to do that because it's their job to, you know, present the books. And just fudging a number here and there, putting a decimal out of place here and there is enough to, you know, again, pad those books in favor of their own scheming. So that said, you know, bringing in an expert to look for those anomalies is entirely necessary due to the fact that I see, and I'm sure you have, this type of fraud occurring all over the place, especially with small businesses where you have like the brother-in-law is the accountant or the sister, the sister is the bookkeeper and so forth. And, and they're the ones that are, you know, taking $100 grand a year extra off the top.

Yeah, I mean, it's a matter of, uh, I mean, companies trusting their employers, but you still have this balance. You, when you hire somebody, I mean, I don't know if they had a background investigation on some of their employees Maybe he— there was a background investigation conducted when he started. Maybe he's— maybe he was squeaky clean, but situations change over a period of time, and all of a sudden maybe he felt a need for money and he was like desperate. Where can I find some money?

Gambling, drugs.

Yeah, gambling and drugs, you know. So I think companies always have to do their due diligence when they're hiring new people, and not just it not just once, as people move into higher positions of authority, responsibility, and access to money and being able to abuse the system like he did, of course, they need to do like reinvestigations or update their investigations. Very few companies do that. I was just at a conference, an HR conference, and there were a number of companies that provide background investigations. And I went up to them and I asked, you know, how— what about reinvestigations or when people are moving up into positions? Hiring the company. Do your clients ask for that? They said no. It sounds like, you know, that would be a great opportunity, but nobody's asking for those.

Yeah, and they should.

They should.

So Peter, we are, um, well, kids are back to school, uh, or at least they're gonna be back to school either. You know, there were some, some kids were back to school late in August. My kids are back to school now. Some are going back to school after, um, Labor Day. And we're already seeing school shootings. I think there was a school shooting in North Carolina just yesterday. Uh, it's, it's back, you know, and that's one of those concerns that every single parent, you know, has, or at least they, you know, uh, should. Um, and, uh, it's real, you know. We have an epidemic in this country of school shootings, and, and, you know, people can argue that with me all day long, but, you know, one kid shot in school is too many, and, and it's, and it's a lot more than one. So students— and this is via Managed Methods um, via their blog. Uh, the students are returning in person to in-person classrooms, and some officials have a new set of concerns. Reports of targeted school violence can rock the psyche of our nation. The horror of violent attacks in these spaces meant for safety and education is unthinkable, but unfortunately it's part of our reality that we cannot ignore. As students return to school, administrators and school resource officers and law enforcement note The Potential for an Increase in School Violence Incidents. So this is a really good article that has a lot of really good detail that I would suggest, you know, our audience, you know, kind of dig through. And this particular link will be in the show notes, um, once we post it. Uh, there, there are a few things that, uh, I wanted to point out, you know, before we, um, end up today. So 5 school violence early warning signs. Bullying. The report finds that 21% of school violence plotters were motivated by revenge for being bullied by their peers. Well, that's kind of significant. So what they're saying is 1 out of 5 of those who actually committed, uh, school violence, you know, active shooters, were kids that were bullied. And you know what, what is interesting about that is, is, uh, I would say that probably, I would, I don't know what the status, but I would say that probably 2/3, if not 3/4 of all kids going to school were bullied at some point, right? I agree.

Yeah, I mean, it's always, it's always been bad, and I think it's only gotten worse because it's not just at school, but all these kids can get on social media at night and continue to bully.

Yeah, digitally, electronically, you know. I, I was bullied in school quite a bit, and I, I got in a lot of physical confrontations in school, not because I acted out but because I physically defended myself. I was not one to roll over and just take it. Somebody would say something to me or do something to me, I would respond with something verbal. And if— and when I responded with something verbal and they responded with something physical, I responded with something physical. I would never even— I never even, you know, considered, you know, shooting up the place because I just— I never— I'm just not a violent person. That being said, I think that that, you know, report of 21% of plotters were motivated by revenge because of bullying. I, I think that number's low. Um, I, I would bet it's more. And then number 2, suicidal behaviors. 13% of targeted school violence plotters are noted to be suicidal. Further, the study finds that 37% of plotters express a willingness to die, intended to commit suicide, or plan to commit suicide by cop. That is very interesting to me, that 37%, uh, those are kids that are just unhinged, man. Like, that is just scary right there.

Well, you know, a lot of them, what they'll do in advance when they're starting to think about this, they will research previous shootings. And so they— I think they come to the conclusion, yeah, almost everybody that gets involved in this, many of them will end up, you know, dying. But they're, you know, they see it as, okay, I'm going to take all these people out with me.

They got nothing to lose, right? And then, uh, according to, uh, Averting Targeted School Violence, 91% of school violence plot experienced some life stressors in the 5 years leading up to their plotting. Additionally, 81% experienced stressors in the past year or were ongoing when their plotting was discovered. So that stat— those stats make total sense to me. But the fact of the matter is, who isn't experiencing life stressors?

Well, I know, but isn't that kind of scary if, you know, this is true? And I, and I do believe it is. Think about probably more than any time in the last 5 years. This last year, a year and a half, for our young— our kids has probably been more stressful than previous years just because of COVID and not going to school. I mean, so who knows how much of this frustration is, is pent up in a lot of people, right?

And those stressors include family, like separation and divorce, social, uh, bullying, uh, and so like we discussed, academic Failing grades, suspensions, criminal, judicial. 23% experienced stressors related to criminal activity such as arrest. Changing schools, 90% of plotters had changed schools. Uh, general personal stressors, like 90% of plotters experienced stressors that report described as unique or personal in nature and therefore not easily categorized. And physical health, 9% of school plotters experience physical health stressors. You know, like, all of those stressors, all of those stats, to be frank, none of those mean anything to me because I just think that all kids experience all of that stuff, you know. And I mean, we all do, right? Uh, and then obsession with violence. I think that this right here 67% of plotters are found to have an obsession with violence.

I—

that right there to me is the most significant stat in everything that we've discussed so far. The report indicates that this type of behavior includes researching prior school attacks, like you said, communications of violent themes, an inappropriate interest in consuming violent and graphic content, watching animal cruelty videos, and inappropriate interest in weapons. So I think that more than anything, obsession with violence is the most significant indicator of someone who's going to act out like that. And it says it— 67% of plotters. Like, that's it right there. You know, this is a child— in most cases, a child— that has an obsession with violence, and all of these other stressors and whatever are factors, but it's that obsession with violence that ultimately is what makes that individual act out upon what they think about. And then concerning communications, the report finds that other students and/or family members are usually in the best position to identify an imminent school violence threat. This is because, as Plotter gets closer to turning ideas into action, they will usually communicate their intent to someone in at least one of a variety of ways. For example, 94% of plotters share their intention for attacking in some way. That right there, Peter, I think that like that's the most significant red flag of all.

Uh, we gotta be— we have to pay attention, just like, you know, if you're seeing somebody and interacting with them face to face. Uh, you can also like go back to social media. Like a lot of these individuals do post things in social media and after the fact, well, all this stuff is like that. You see, didn't anybody realize it? It looks so clear, right? Some of the declarations, some of the comments that they're making. In that particular article, it mentions some of the technology that potentially is used or could be used to help maybe identify, you know, individuals who might be at high risk for these things. I don't know, is Facebook or some of these other social media sites, are they monitoring with certain algorithms to pick up comments that are made like, like this?

Well, the social media sites themselves are not. However, there are, you know, you can report a profile, you can report inappropriate content or violent speak, right? We, as you know, users of these platforms, have the ability to police them on our own and speak up. And both parents and teachers and students themselves should be doing that when they see something going on. Just because somebody acts a certain way and that's their MO and, and you kind of laugh it off because they're kind of like a jokester and/or like they're, they're all— they've always been odd, that doesn't mean that what they're saying and doing is okay. We still— you still need to bring attention to it to the authorities. Should they actually act out on what they're going to say, you could be responsible as a concerned citizen. You know, if you see something, say something, as the Department of Homeland Security says, uh, to stop a potential attack. There are actually third-party services that will monitor social media chatter if in fact they are hired by, say, a particular city or town or a school district to look at all the various social profiles of everybody in that particular school and look for behaviors or chat or speak that would be, um, you know, violent in nature. So that does in fact exist, right?

That's really interesting. We need more of that though.

We do need more of that. You know, my kids go to school and, um, I'm not so worried about, you know, what goes on in my kids' school due to the fact that, you know, it's private in nature and it's a little tighter, uh, and, um, you know, uh, the, uh, teachers have a really close relationship with those kids and the kids themselves, um, are much more of a tight-knit group. That being said, um, you know, if my kid comes home and he and she says something in regards to there's a particular kid in class, he's saying and doing these various things, I'm the first one to call the school and say, hey, you need to be aware of this kid, this kid, and that kid, and this is what he's saying. I remember, um, you know, back in when my daughter was in 4th grade, uh, there was a boy that— this particular school had a very lax policy on mobile phones, and a 4th grade boy brought— was bringing a mobile phone into school. My daughter would tell me about this, and, and I, you know, started to become concerned pretty quickly. And then he brought in the phone and started showing porn to all the kids in class in 4th grade. Okay, so don't you know, like, I was down there within 12 hours, and, um, that kid, uh, was ejected from that school within 2 days. I mean, that was the end of that. Like, I, I got everybody riled up, and I mean, that was it. Like, you know, it's 4th grade. Like, you know, and that was But that wasn't just the problem of the child, that was a parent problem. Absolutely. And it was also a problem for the school head that was allowing or facilitating that process due to the fact that they allowed mobile phones in school, which I had rejected from the very beginning. So look, as concerned parents, you need to be involved in your kids' digital lives. Uh, you need to know what they're saying, what they're posting, what they're liking, what they're sharing. What they are consuming. Okay? If you've got a child that has a tendency towards violent speak or violent behavior, you as a parent need to step in, right? That child is your problem, and your problem could be my problem should your kid act out and walk into school with a firearm or a knife. So parents really need to be involved, and parents me and parents like you need to speak up to other parents that aren't effectively parenting their children that have a tendency towards violence.

And we need to support our teachers because a lot of the teachers feel like their hands are tied. They can't do anything with the children because if they do say— they try to do anything, the parents are going to come on there and say, no, not with my child, you know.

Exactly. So Peter, what do you have to promote this week?

What I have to notice is that I'm very busy doing a lot of travel, uh, I'm gonna be presenting at a number of conferences, and I'm very excited. I'm going to be speaking at the beginning of next month at two different TEDx venues. So you're going to be hearing more about me in the weeks to come.

Good for you. And the website address that people could see you at?

Yes, counterintelligence-institute.com. And also my LinkedIn, my LinkedIn profile, Peter Warmbier. This is my a lot of information.

And how do you spell Warmka?

W-A-R-M-K-A.

And, uh, you can see, uh, me and my team at protectnowllc.com. We have a continuing education event coming up for, uh, Texas Realtors. We are an actual approved school in Texas for the 100-something thousand real estate agents in Texas, providing our CSI Protection training, uh, for 6 hours of continuing ed for Texas agents. And, um, yeah, lots of really fun things are happening at Protect Now. I have a few announcements to make over the next coming weeks once we start signing a few contracts, Peter. It's really exciting. I can't wait to tell everybody about it.

Fantastic.

Other than that, Peter, you have, you have the last words today.

Well, thank you very much for wrapping up our 7th podcast, right, Robert?

Yeah, we're getting there.

Yeah, and I look forward to seeing all of you during the upcoming 8th podcast. Stay safe out there. We, you know, let's protect each other, let's care about each other, and, uh, stay safe, hopefully, hopefully, you know, physically and mentally, and be nice to each other.

Yeah, thank you, Peter. Talk to you guys, talk to you later.