The Security Guy and CIA Spy PodBroadcast

And welcome to the Security Guy and CIA Spy Pod broadcast. I am Robert Siciliano, and this is Peter Wormka.

How are you doing, Robert? It's been a while.

It's been a while, man. Yeah, uh, I'm good. Yeah, it's coming to the tail end of my, um, my, my busy fall speaking season, so I am almost off the road. Uh, I am, uh, approaching 1.5 million, uh, miles on Delta, uh, and Diamond Medallion qualification status. And, uh, I am exhausted.

Now your family's gonna say, now you can come and you can go and take us on some nice trips.

Yeah, well, I'll tell you, you know, uh, all of the miles, uh, and the status, uh, does actually work. We go to Mexico generally once a year, and those flights are essentially paid for as a result of my travel. So it works out pretty good. Uh, I would say, you know, for those of you who um, want to build up all those mileages and points, American Express and the Delta Reserve card, if that's your airline, which it really should be because they're the only ones that are really doing it at this point, uh, reliably, for at least for me, um, is the way to go.

Yeah, I've had a lot of travel going on also. It's been kind of a busy— fortunately a very busy time, uh, the last part of the year though. Now it's starting to slow down, but I'm going to be taking some personal trips to some pretty exotic locations. But I As a good security professional, I will tell you about those after I come back, not before.

Makes total sense, as you should, right? Yeah. So learn from Peter. He knows what he's talking about. All right, so we're going to be talking about the internet, or at least sections or portions of the internet, going down over the past month. It's happened a couple of times, actually, and what that means and why, right? Because we all heavily rely rely on the internet for pretty much everything at this point, much like we rely on the grid. And so when the internet or portions of the internet goes down, what happens? You know, a lot, a lot doesn't happen actually. Airlines depend on it, banks depend on it, and we're beginning to learn more and more how this disruption significantly effects our lives and in some cases our ability to make a living. You know, if you can't fly anywhere and you depend on air travel to get somewhere, you know, that's money out of your pocket. It's kind of scary actually. So we're going to talk about that, what it actually means, and, uh, what if anything we as, you know, consumers can do, what we can do about it, if at all. Okay, so the AWS, which is Amazon Web Services, outage is proof someone is breaking the internet. Whether that's intentionally or not, that remains to be seen. The 3-hour global outage at Amazon Web Services was enough to halt banks, games, and government services, exposing the fragile foundations on which our digital world rests. Okay, so this is just a couple weeks back. So Groundhog Day, uh, on the internet as apps, services, and websites mysteriously went offline. From high street banks to Roblox, and even a few of our lives were untouched by the massive outage at AWS. So the e-commerce giant controls huge amounts of internet cloud infrastructure. This monopoly is not a good thing, okay? The nuts and bolts that keep all the apps, websites, and more that we use, uh, day to day alive We tend to only take notice when it doesn't work, which makes perfect sense for all of us. So which is more often than you think. You know, similar AWS outages happened in '20, '21, '23. To its credit, Amazon works tirelessly to solve that problem. But, you know, it's going to continue happening. Interestingly, my friends and I were in Boston Harbor, a few years back. And I'm not going to go into too much detail because I don't want to expose the guy too much, but many people will be able to find him not too difficultly. There was a boat, uh, it was more like a ship or a yacht, but it wasn't more than like maybe 40 feet long, uh, that was in Boston Harbor. And my friends and I kind of pulled up behind it, and there was an older couple in the back of the boat. And what struck me about them was that they were relatively fit. The boat was beautiful. Um, the guy, uh, skinny, fit, had long gray hair, right? Long gray hair in a male is unusual. And she, you know, long gray hair. So they were probably in their mid-60s. And I looked up the name of the boat, and as I did my research while we were in the harbor I realized this particular guy was like the main engineer. He was the main guy at Amazon. Oh wow, he was the guy at Amazon that keeps Amazon up and running, like their CIO. So that being said, people should not, not have too difficult of a time finding out who he is by searching, you know, Amazon CIO ship or boat or yacht. And, um, this guy essentially travels the world, or at least at the time was traveling the world, running Amazon from his boat.

Sounds pretty nice. Yeah, sounds like a nice gig.

Yeah, yeah. And, um, but he obviously, you know, is connected, uh, in many ways. You know, there was all kinds of technology on the top of his boat, satellites and everything. That connect to probably Starlink and so on. And, um, you know, he's got people on the ground that all he really needs to do is communicate with that are responsible for implementing everything that he says and does until something goes wrong. Until something goes wrong. Um, you know, and but, but, but all that being said, you know, when Amazon goes down for any period of time, it's not generally because of the fault of one person. Or him for that matter. Generally, there are numerous circumstances involved, and we all rely on this technology to the degree where, you know, there could be essentially people's lives on the line if, say, a healthcare organization, a hospital for that matter, is connected in such a way where their technologies go down. Right. Pretty scary, actually.

I mean, this is all so interconnected. I mean, it's become part of our critical infrastructure in this country. You know, you think about, as you mentioned, the grids and all these other things, but this is even maybe, maybe should be at the top of the list because this also impacts the other aspects of critical infrastructure. Something comes down, you know, the ramifications are really, really huge. And I think it really points out you know, some of these cases things just happen, right? And it was not necessarily malicious in some of these cases. But if you have a malicious actor out there, whether it's a state, you know, sponsored adversary of the United States, or it happens to be a criminal group, you know, trying to use rent, you know, extortion, how vulnerable we become because of things like this is becoming more and more apparent.

Yeah, so the outage and the speed at which everything ground to a halt has highlighted a fatal flaw in how we have the web set up, right? So it was something I wanted to point out to y'all. Yeah, right here. So right, right here. Thank you. Good. Okay, experts say that the total dominance of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud has now created serious risks, right? The majority, around 60%, of companies rely on what they call this triply of AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. 3 companies handling 60% of all web traffic.

That's monopoly.

That is frightening, right? So when Microsoft Azure, AWS go down, they cause massive issues because of how companies structure cloud computing. Cloud computing is essentially where companies or individuals rent out IT infrastructure from one of the three major tech giants. Instead of paying the massive cost of building and operating their own servers, it's usually cheaper for companies to pay for data to be processed for them. You know, they don't have to pay for the hardware or the software or the manpower, right? However, this means massive parts of the internet rely on a few centralized nodes where the world's data is processed. Uh, we have become reliant on the big 3 or 4 cloud providers because of costs and simplicity. They make it affordable to provide new services at a scale that it would be difficult to replicate as individual organizations. That's where the problem lies, these monopolies. Uh, and at this point, you know, I don't know that there is any, I guess, backup plan. So what you might see here in the photo, y'all— experts say these issues stem from the fact that the world's cloud computing, uh, are centralized in the massive data centers operated by Microsoft and Google. Pictured here. This is Amazon Web Services in Ashburn, Virginia. Look at that, look at that, like that's massive. And, and I see here 1, 2, 3, 4 similar buildings which are— I mean, if you look at that, they're pretty awesome is what they are.

And they must have a lot of other locations though like this too, right?

I would imagine. Um, but I mean, it says right here, uh, they're concentrated, you know, at least AWS in Virginia, you know. Uh, so this means, as they say, we're putting all of our eggs in what they say is 3 baskets. Although these companies are leaders in cloud technology, they're not infallible, as we know. We've seen twice in the past 10 days, even if a single provider has an issue in parts of its infrastructure, then hundreds or even thousands of services become unavailable, affecting millions of customers worldwide. Wow, wow. Um, so when Microsoft Azure went down, there were 105,000 reports of disruption on Down Detector. Uh, yeah, how long did that last? It wasn't So I think for most of them have been less than 12 hours. Yeah, like a half a day. Yeah, which isn't the end of the world, literally and obviously. But still, um, when Amazon Web Services went down, it affected more than 2,000 companies. Imagine. I mean, that was a kind of a big deal, you know.

I think it's a problem is that people are not, you know, they're not taking this seriously enough. Maybe because it's been— we think about it, we've had the boy that cried wolf, right? And probably the biggest time that I remember, you remember it as well, maybe several of the listeners, is the whole Y2K. Remember, people were getting so worried about what's going to happen with the, you know, when that clock hit midnight and then it could be the end of, you know, it could be a terrible disaster on the internet, and absolutely nothing really happened. So I think a lot of people walked away from that thinking, ah, you know, what's the worst thing that can happen? Probably not so bad.

So right here it says, since the internet is so reliant on a handful of individual firms, this domino effect means small failures have widespread, often unexpected impacts. Uh, for example, when AWS led to problems with electric locks, beds, uh, and even ovens that relied on software connected to the cloud. Uh, this high reliance means that a problem at one vendor can paralyze a massive portion of the internet. What makes this problem so difficult to resolve is that the massive power of these few companies means they're able to control the market. Yeah. Uh, while tech giants secure their dominant position by offering companies, uh, an unbeatable deal, there are now concerns that these companies are stifling competition.

Yeah, that's very true.

This means that competitors find themselves locked out of the market and unable to compete with the bigger players. To make matters worse, experts say that these firms' near monopoly, near monopoly, near monopoly encourages them to run hot, meaning they don't use any more resources than they need to. Well, that sucks. Uh, the regulator recommends using its powers to designate Amazon and Microsoft as having strategic market status, allowing it to demand changes to boost competition. So, uh, Nikki Stewart, a senior advisor to the Open Cloud Coalition, says this dependence stifles competition and innovation while creating a fragile system where one provider's issues, uh, can quickly become everyone's problem. This market is anti-competitive and very difficult for challenger cloud providers to even have a voice, let alone get an opportunity, leaving companies with few realistic alternatives. That's not good. Which brings to mind planes grounded, flights canceled, and passengers stranded. Everything we know about the, the global traveler outage, right? So this is back in September. Airports around the world in chaos with planes grounded and passengers left facing delays. Disruption, disruption began here in the U.S., uh, and it also affected, you know, Canada and and Heathrow. Uh, it said at the time, due to a cyberattack, a third-party system which provides check-in and boarding systems for various airlines was hit. So it says it was a cyberattack. Uh, it hit Heathrow, Berlin, and Brussels. Flights were delayed and canceled in several European airports. Um, you know, that right there, 13 arrivals would be canceled. That was pretty scary when that happened.

You know, I don't think they ever came out and publicly stated if they know who was behind this attack.

Yeah, and, and I don't know that— I don't know that it was ever actually, you know, discussed or announced. But what we have here is a majority monopoly, 3 companies, a trip— tripopoly, as they're calling it, um, and a few vendors, services that if and when they're either attacked or they have downage, we're all kind of screwed. And I don't know that, that enough is being said or done about it.

No, there really isn't. I mean, this has been an ongoing— this, this— anybody that's been following Sword, I mean, would see that this is an evolving— has evolved for quite a while now. It's not like it's just a brand new a problem. This has been going on for quite some time, uh, and it doesn't seem like there's much importance put on trying to restructure, uh, these types of monopolies, right? There hasn't been very much talk about that.

Yeah, and the idea of, you know, these companies running hot, meaning that they're throwing as few resources at their services as they need to, to increase profitability is not okay.

No, it's not.

And that's where government needs to step in, for what it's worth, to require that they either break up this monopoly or, or tripopoly, or they themselves provide a level of redundancy that, um, even if it means increasing the costs for their clients, um, to absorb whatever those costs might be in order to, uh, effectively have a level of redundancy so something like this doesn't happen.

But I'm sure that they're already, you know, the— these three, they have a strong lobby— lobbying interests, right? And, and trying to trying to prevent that from happening. Because if you're looking at the profit motive, they're going to prefer that, that this type of restructuring does not happen, uh, as long as they can always spend more money on trying to, you know, prevent that. And no matter what, no matter what party is in, in power within the government, I think you still have that powerful, powerful lobby groups that are going to try to prevent these monopolies from, from being impacted or, you know, broken up or some somewhat restructured. To prevent this from being worse than what it already is?

I would say in the past year, uh, we have probably seen maybe 5 or 6 forms of disruption like this. Maybe not to the level of Microsoft Azure or, uh, AWS going down, but 5 or 6 disruptions similar to the planes being grounded, websites going down, certain services not working either regionally or nationally. And when you see that many in, in, in within a year, it's, it's telling that over the next year to 2 to 3, if something's not done, we could see disruptions happening on a much more frequent and regular basis. Disrupting our lives as we know it and potentially leading to, um, financial losses, uh, potentially fatalities, right? Uh, when you start seeing infrastructure, uh, critical infrastructure being affected— banking systems, right, energy, right, you know, finance, energy— um, I think that's when when government is going to step in in such a way where there's going to have to be change and change right away.

I agree with you, and I think especially the sectors where you see immediately threats to human life, right, like whether it be airline disasters or something happening within the major hospitals, right, that creates a problem where individuals are potentially could lose their lives because of these things happening, that's when you're going to get more— you are going to get more attention. Unfortunately, it takes— unfortunately, you know, we don't want to see it come to that, but you're probably right. It's— that's the only thing that's going to really force that kind of change.

Yeah. Yep. Um, not good. Not happy about it. Uh, all that being said, you know, I think that like for all of us Knowing that we can't rely on, uh, these 3 companies as we have been, just having that understanding, just knowing that at any given point in time access to some of your most important services may not be there for you, that your mobile device may not work like it's supposed to, that your internet browser and access to all the apps and websites that you regularly rely on may not work like they're supposed to, that at some level in the back of your head you need to have some type of a backup strategy. Okay, and for me what that might mean is like, you know, beginning with sustainability for my family on a, on a very, very local level, like in my own house, and that means food and water and Having backups of food and water. You know, at any given point in time, I've got at least 110 gallons of water. That means 2 55-gallon drums filled with potable water that is good for up to 5 years, right? Mm-hmm. Um, at any given point in time, I probably have a good 2 to 4 months worth of food. Uh, meaning like, uh, just add water or dried goods that we could consume, right? At any given point in time, I have backup of, uh, power and energy in the form of propane and gasoline, uh, and generators that work off of either or that would provide necessary heat, uh, over a period of time, uh, depending on the time of year. You know, obviously, uh, climate control is more, uh, important to be for consideration between the months of, say, you know, October and March versus, you know, April to September. Um, and you could even stretch that out a little bit to, you know, maybe even December to, to February, you know. Um, depend— you know, as far as heat is concerned, you know, significant, uh, cold. Uh, and I think that people need to, like, at least consider that as a minimum Uh, because in the end, those are the things that are most important. Heck, if the, if the internet goes down, if power goes down, um, if you aren't able to travel somewhere or even drive somewhere, uh, because the gas pumps are down, because, you know, the internet's down, um, you've got to be able to at least, you know, have enough backup to fuel your car to get wherever. Uh, that means like 1 to 2 tanks of gas. Or, you know, sustenance as far as food and water to take care of your family for a period of time. And I don't know that most people think in those terms.

They don't. I know you mentioned it a number of times, and it's usually been in the context of, you know, getting hit with a natural disaster, right? That's when you need to have all these things that you just take for granted. But now you're pivoting over, and I think it's very, you know, it's a good comparison that if you do have the internet going down, it could be like being hit with a, you know, natural, like an earthquake or, you know, or something worse where all of a sudden nothing's working at all. And, and all you can rely on is what you have, you know, in your plan. What resources have you gathered where you can rely on those and not rely on, you know, a greater distribution that might readily always be available, but that isn't right now.

Yeah, Peter, I, I know I'm not like a doom and gloom type of guy. I just like to have backup for my backup and You know, they say if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. And we've seen some failure with the tripopoly. And that's a bit unsettling to me. And I would just hope that people would be a little more acclimated to preparation should things go down for any period of time. That's all.

No, you're right. I think this is somewhat generational too, though. Like our parents went through the Great Depression, right? And I think that generation was always probably a little bit more conservative, realizing, hey, I could lose everything in a heartbeat here because of the situation. So how do I plan to be more conservative to save things? And I think that's kind of diminished during our generation, especially the younger generation where they don't really think about that as happening. They haven't gone through any major situation, war, disaster, where they got to think about how do I fend for myself.

We're just so dang comfortable. And I think that that's a little bit of a problem.

It is, you know.

Peter, where can they find you?

Well, you can find me on my website, uh, counterintelligence-institute.com, or even better still, on my LinkedIn page.

All right, LinkedIn. Yes, uh, here is Peter's LinkedIn.

Uh, two books: Confessions of a CIA Spy, The Art of Human Hacking, and for individuals more focused on seniors Why Are You Messing With Me? A Senior Survival Guide on Fraud, Privacy, and Security. I do a lot of public speaking now, especially regarding the seniors out there, because the scams are getting so much more brutal, and we're coming across people not losing just a small percentage of their, you know, their income, their savings, but everything, everything. It's, it's terrible.

I've met those people, and, uh, when you meet it, when you meet a, an individual or a couple or a family that's lost their life savings. Not only that, they've mortgaged their house and they've got— they're going bankrupt because everything is gone. And they might be in their 60s or 70s. And you come upon these people, they are essentially broken. I mean, their, their spirit is just broken. And you want to talk about it?

I, you know, I'm putting— I decided to put more and more blame on the government. For not taking a stronger— playing a more important role in the awareness, running awareness campaigns, because fortunately I've had the opportunity to do a lot of travel over the last several months, even international locations, and I find in other countries where their respective governments are taking on a much more proactive role in educating the populace regarding threats, not just threats to AI, but all kinds of threats in general when it comes to fraud, scams and here come back to the United States and I don't see any, hardly anything happening, um, you know, by the government itself, you know, the federal government or state governments. It's just not being done, not enough.

Yeah, we're on our own. Uh, so as far as, uh, me, I'm at protectnowllc.com. Again, protectnowllc.com. Uh, Peter, uh, last final words.

Well, as we're getting closer now to the holiday season, especially Thanksgiving, you know, count our blessings and really be appreciative for what we have. And realize that not everybody is as fortunate as we are and try and look out for those individuals that might need our, our hand.

Yeah, man, with what's going on with SNAP and everything else, I mean, hey, you know, like everybody, 12% of our public, uh, you know, country, they need help, uh, you know, despite your politics. I mean, it is what it is, you know, not everybody has the same, uh, you know, capacity or ability, uh, you know, some of us just, you know, some of us have IQs of whatever and some of us have, I have a capacity of whatever. I mean, not everybody is the same. You know, so some people just need help. I mean, we see it every day, right? I mean, the guy who comes up to your window and he needs help, he's— there's usually a reason for that, you know. Not everybody has the same capacity. So, uh, yeah, have a little empathy, people. It's, you know, it's not a bad thing. All right, all right, buddy. I appreciate you. I'll talk to you.