The vulnerabilities of social media platforms #4

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 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 another episode of The Security Guy and the CIA Spy Podcast. I am Robert Siciliano, and this is Peter Wormka. Hey, Peter, how are you today?

I'm doing very fine, thank you. How about yourself?

I'm good.

Uh, you know, summer is, uh, moving along. It's been a little nuts, um, with the, the weather and the chaos of, uh, kids being around. But, you know, and also what's going on out there regarding security. You know, every time I turn around, there is a new or another major security breach, uh, ransomware attacking thousands of companies at a time. Uh, you know, critical infrastructure is being compromised. Uh, I, I just saw recently a supermarket, uh, had 500 stores they had to close as a result of ransomware. So, you know, those of you who are, um, attending this podcast, uh, via audio and/or video, it's really good that you're here because this problem, as Peter and I have been saying for over a decade, is getting worse. It's not getting any better. And those of you who are here today are definitely on top of what is new and ahead of what is next regarding all of this stuff. So congratulations for taking responsibility. Peter?

Yeah, absolutely. This is a collective problem. You're not going to look to your government or some other company to solve this issue. The impact impacts all of us. Unfortunately, it impacts all of us. And we have that collective responsibility. We can work together, but we also have to work as individuals to become more and more aware of these threats and know what we can do to help prevent being the low-hanging fruit where we are actually impacted. We want to harden ourselves. We use that term many times. It's not only hardening a company, it's hardening ourselves as well so that we don't become a victim.

I agree with you 1,000%. So Peter, check this out, right? Um, this right here, uh, you guys should all be able to see, um, my PowerPoint screen right now, uh, and, uh, this is, um in regards to operational security awareness for military members. And today we're going to be discussing, you know, uh, security awareness in regards to social media. Uh, both Peter and I are experts on this topic, and what you're looking at right now is actually the backside of my first cousin, uh, and he's actually at work, you know. Uh, he's carrying obviously a semi-automatic weapon issued by the U.S. military He's on his way to his, uh, his ride, which I believe is an Apache helicopter. Some of you may know better than I do. And not too long ago, he had sent me off a text message, and this is the text message. It says, uh, you know, we do a lot of operational security briefings about how to conduct ourselves safely with social media. He said, our intelligence people came in today to give us our brief. One of the videos, he said, showed us was of you, meaning me, discussing the topic, which is kind of fun, right? So here is my cousin sitting in an operational security awareness provided by the DOD. And I responded with, you know, so did they make the connection between us? And he said, absolutely. As soon as your name was said, because, you know, both of us last name is Siciliano, everybody turned around and asked if we knew each other. And he said, I told them you were my first cousin. A few of them seemed skeptical, haha. And I said, oh cool, because that is so cool, you know. And while, you know, I'm really proud of my cousin, what he does, and my cousin actually, you know, flies that helicopter and other aircraft into parts of the world with Navy SEALs and others that are doing things and going places that he can't tell me about., and exercises that, um, parts of the world where you and I will probably never see or never go. Uh, you know, he is part of, you know, protecting you and I here at home and abroad. And the fact that the Department of Defense is using information that both Peter and I are experts in, uh, means that you really need to sit up and pay attention today because this stuff is really important. Peter, what are your thoughts on that?

Oh, Robert, that is so awesome. It really is. I, I never shared that story with me, but, uh, until now, and that's I think it's fantastic, and you're so right. Here at the Department of Defense, I mean, they're worried about these issues for the integrity of their soldiers because they are really vulnerable in a sense of when they are— whether they're targeted directly or they're putting out information out there on social media, it creates a great vulnerability regarding the battlefield. Even knowing where the movements of the soldiers, what they're doing at a specific time. So that's why, you know, kind of overall writing restriction placed upon them is not to be on social media at certain times, not to be uploading photographs that will actually provide the exact coordinates where they are. There's a lot of different restrictions that they do have, but they equally really apply the spirit of these restrictions apply to us as well in, in the Sicilian world.

They absolutely do, you know. And like, if you think back to my cousin who's married, you know, he's got children, and, uh, his wife and kids occasionally travel with him to parts of the world that, you know, again, you and I will probably never go. And like, basic common sense, one-on-one common sense, would be like, you know, his— neither he nor his spouse should be posting that, let's say, she wanted to go into the markets in Kabul, you know, she should not post that, right? That she's out to the markets in, you know, somewhere in a crazy part of the world. Because if the bad guy's paying attention that, you know, this, uh, soldier and his spouse and/or his spouse and child is heading to the markets, that is the perfect opportunity for a bad guy to seize his wife and child right? Take them hostage and use that against him, which ultimately is using that leverage against the U.S. military and the United States of America. And so while, you know, a lot of our audience today say, well, I'm not, you know, flying helicopters in parts of the world that, you know, revolve around bad guys— look at you just leaving your house and posting that you're gone for the next, you know, day or week or a couple of hours for that matter, is inviting somebody to burglarize your home. As simple as that. And I see stuff like that all the time. And I was blogging about that 10, 15 years ago. And I had people actually communicating with me, experts in the field saying, "You're the first person that I've ever seen talking about that." And then since that time, there have just been thousands and thousands and thousands of articles that I've seen that revolved around people breaking into homes based on, you know, social media posts and homeowners letting the bad guy know, in this case a burglar, that they were gone.

Well, Robert, you know that for quite a few years of my life, my previous employment in the Central Intelligence Agency, I targeted individuals. And that was prior, a lot of this was prior to social media. But when we targeted individuals, we needed to find out as much information about them. It's not easy. Many times it would require that we get in touch directly with an individual, create some kind of pretext, you know, have them out for lunch or coffee, whatever. But now with social media, I found that that type of work is so much easier because we don't even have to develop that one-on-one contact with the individual. We can just go up on the the social media profiles and see all this information. I think earlier we discussed how, you know, prior to social media, how many people really knew us as Robert or Peter, whether it's, you know, socially or professionally. We could probably count, you know, maybe professionally, maybe 50 people, 60 people. People that knew us on a more personal level, maybe 10, 15, 20, and that was it. F— now with social media, uh, I recently saw a statistic. There is 3.78 billion people on social media. That's almost half of the world's population. Granted, they're not all in contact with us, but they have access to social media that we're posting, that you and I are posting, that the audience is posting. They have access to that information. And, and the information that people post on social media today is incredibly personal. Even though I don't work anymore for the Central Intelligence Agency, I don't know if I shared with you, I am a private investigator in the state of Florida. And when I conduct investigations of people, the first place I go is social media. And I will collect a considerable amount of information on my targets of the investigation. And what amazes me is that they hardly any of them have privacy settings where I can get in openly to— I mean, it's amazing. It is amazing. Yeah, based on my, my very limited, you know, um, survey of social media users, I'm finding that almost anybody that I try to, to look into doesn't have privacy settings. I don't know what your experience has been with that, Robert.

So now, I don't actually have any privacy settings set up at all on social media myself, okay? I am what you would consider a public figure. But that being said, I have not put— I don't put any information within social media that would facilitate various forms of social engineering. So I don't necessarily have my mobile phone number or personal email address or other forms of identifying data that could be used to manipulate me. And even if they were to find certain information out there about me— and by the way, I connect with everybody, everybody, with the exception of being more— I scrutinize more on Facebook than I do on LinkedIn. And that being said, I find that I'm being bombarded at this point mostly with a lot of spam, and that the— my platform has been diluted in such a way where it's becoming somewhat useless for me as a business person. Now, for Those of you who are not necessarily in the public eye and you're a C-suite executive, I think it's much more important for you, um, and your small business people in that regard to tighten up, because what Peter is saying is that you could be targeted in such a way where they can use that information to manipulate you and your employees and even in some case your contacts and clients.

Yeah, Robert, you're absolutely right. I mean, we, we We are both out there in the public and we have to promote ourselves, right? And promote our businesses. But at the same time, our CI, if you want to call it our CI antenna, is up very high. And so when we are approached by somebody, we will analyze, you know, what is this approach? What do they want? Who are they? What can we verify about whether or not, you know, this is really authentic? And so we're constantly We're constantly monitoring that. But the average individual, the average consumer, the user of social media doesn't have that level of awareness. So they become much more vulnerable or risk-susceptible to this type of danger because they don't necessarily analyze these type of approaches like Robert and I would.

Yeah, and I think it's important that anybody who's on social, LinkedIn, for many of you people who are employees, know that, like, LinkedIn itself— and Peter, you could see this article from 9to5Mac right here.

Yes.

So, uh, LinkedIn breach reportedly exposes data 92% of users, including salaries. You know, this is, uh, this is one of many breaches that LinkedIn has faced in the past, right? LinkedIn was breached a number of years ago where all of their passwords were compromised. I think at the time it was like 160 million usernames and passcodes were compromised. This particular breach, 92% of the 750 56 million users' information was compromised, including email addresses, full names, phone numbers, physical addresses, geolocation records, LinkedIn usernames and profile URL, personal professional experience and background, genders, other social media account usernames, and so forth. It says in this particular breach that no passwords are included, but as the sites note, this is still valuable data that can be used for identity theft and convincing-looking phishing attempts. So You know, know that whatever you're posting out there more than likely is in the hands of a criminal that can be— and that information can be used against you. So phishing emails that you might receive that look like they're coming from LinkedIn, or really anybody for that matter, they can use all of this information that was scraped in a breach from LinkedIn and use it to manipulate you to get even more information about you, or to get you to make decisions that you wouldn't normally make, based on what you might consider trusting information that comes through to you via an email where you thought it was coming from a legitimate source.

Another thing that calls to mind is, uh, this article you put up there and the mention of the previous LinkedIn breach which stole the passwords. A lot of people think, well, who cares, it's just my LinkedIn profile, and okay, they stole the password, I'm going to change it. A lot of people— some people changed it, per LinkedIn's, uh, request. And a lot of people didn't, especially probably the people that weren't on LinkedIn regularly, probably thought, well, why should I bother with this? I'm not using LinkedIn. I think— I can't remember the statistic, but maybe half of the people that have LinkedIn profiles are not active users. So what does that mean? What's the risk there? That someone who has your password could easily go in and take over the account. And you wouldn't even realize it, and be able to impersonate you and reaching out to, to other people, whether it's taking over your account or creating a totally new profile using your identity. And I've seen a lot of cases of this, whether it's your name and picture or just your picture and creating an identity around your image. Uh, most people, I mean, unless someone brings that to their attention, they're not finding that out. And that goes on a lot.

Unfortunately, I wanted to point something out to you, Peter, and, and to our audience. Check this out, right? So this article right here from computerweekly.com, right? This article actually is January of 2011. Okay, so this is over, over 10 years ago. All right, it talks about the top 7 social media threats, and this is written by, um, an executive from Symantec. We all know Symantec. And you can get full access to the article itself and download a white sheet, a white paper, if you, uh, throw in your email address there. But it talks about the top 7 threats: social engineering, targeted phishing attacks, fake accounts, celebrity name misuse, or even like your own name misuse, okay, uh, site compromise, social media used for spreading spam and malware, uh, confidential information leak, right? So there, there are the top 7. And this particular expert back then basically prognosticated everything that has come true over the past 10 years, and it's been multiplied by so much more. Uh, that article, which we'll speak to in just a moment, and then there's this article right here which talks about, uh, various risks— privacy, security, and health risks of social media and how to prevent those, right? And this article is a really long in-depth exposé of all of the privacy, security, and health risks, right? And if you go through it— and really, I suggest everybody go through, you know, everything that we're showing you today— there is 40-plus risks that this particular author speaks to, uh, here in, you know, January of 2021, right? So 10 years later, it went from 7 to as many as 40+ various risks. I think it's like 45, right? And, you know, we could go on and on and on about that. So there is really a lot to be considered today in regards to all of the different risks that users face as employers, employees, and moms and dads. Peter?

Oh, it is amazing when you think about how much time, uh, is the average individual on social media. If we look at, you know, how much time do we sleep, between 8 hours, 9 hours, you know, how much time are we involved in other activities, uh, it's almost like 3 hours per day average, at least, at least 2.5 to 3 hours per day that the average person is on social media. Of course, that's average. Now, some people might be on it very little, 10, 15 minutes, and then there are other people that are on there for 3, 4, 5, 6 hours. So it's really taken hold of our lives. In some ways, people have become addicted to it, uh, to various extremes, right? And it's really invasive because we've allowed it to.

We allowed it to.

A lot of it really matters of our discipline as individuals to say, I'm going to use it in such a way, perhaps, you know, maybe I'm using it for some of my news, maybe I'm using it to keep up and date with my friends and find out what they're doing, Maybe I'm using it for professional reasons to promote myself, but we have to be able to have that discipline and draw the line that it doesn't really take over us, right? Because I think in some cases people are just becoming consumed with it, right, to their detriment, unfortunately.

So social engineering, phishing attacks, fake accounts, right, site compromise, uh, spreading spam. Peter, like, what, what techniques do you teach to your audiences in regards to these top 7 threats from 10 years ago that are, you know, 10 times more prevalent today?

Well, the first— basically, I break it down to 2 areas, and the main thing is being aware of the information that you're putting out there in social media. And if, if I were just to break down 3 of the platforms that I think are the most revealing of an individual, if I were, or a human hacker were to target them— LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. I mean, LinkedIn, as we know, gives your entire professional background, your academic and work experience, which, you know, it's just, it's a data point, right? A lot of detail is where you come from and where you probably aspire, you know, what you aspire to become professionally. Facebook is a totally different optic. It can provide insight into your interests, your hobbies, where you like to eat, your favorite restaurants, sports teams you follow, Uh, who— where did you travel to? Who did you travel with? Where are you planning to travel in the future?

And a lot of that Facebook information can be used to reset a passcode via knowledge-based authentication. So when you sign up for a new website and they ask you a few knowledge-based authentication questions like, what is your favorite food? Where did you honeymoon? You know, where do you like to travel? What was the make and model of your first car? A lot of that those data points, knowledge-based authentication, call it KBA, to reset a passcode, uh, can be found on your social media profiles, often in Facebook. My understanding was when Sarah Palin's Yahoo account was hacked back in the day, that they got information from both Wikipedia and her Facebook account.

I truly believe it. I mean, look how many pictures are typically on someone's— in someone's Facebook. If I analyze— photographs are worth a thousand— pictures are worth a thousand words. We heard that expression so many times growing up. And they really are, because by analyzing those pictures, I can learn a lot about someone's socioeconomic status. All right, so okay, that's all Facebook. There's a tremendous amount of insight from Facebook. Twitter is different. Twitter can give me an idea about your pattern of life. Now, what does that mean? People are not tweeting so much maybe when they're in their homes or their offices, or maybe they do, but they also tweet when they're on the way to somewhere. They're on the way to the gym. They're on the way to have for happy hour with their friends. And so they're tweeting where they're going. We get to understand what their routine is. Where can we actually bump into them physically and to target them at different locations? Because we know what their daily routine is like.

Yeah, what their status is. They call it a status update for a reason. What is their status? What are they up to right now?

Yeah. In addition to that, they're— they begin to express a lot of their opinions about something, right? Which is another great insight. If I know what your opinions are regarding politics, regarding your religion, regarding things that really upset you, you know, those I can use if I'm going to approach you. We'll talk about approaches some other day. I'd go on for hours and hours and hours about how to target somebody. But all this information, these are data points which are invaluable to, to a human hacker who wants to whether it's targeting you, the individual, or targeting you as a conduit to breach the security of the organization that you work for, right? Yeah, that's what it comes down to.

And ultimately, when you're targeting somebody, the goal is to get them to reveal information, right? And when you know what their political affiliations are, when you know what they know, when you know what they like right, then your job is to create a relationship with them. And that relationship is such that you want to gain their trust, right? It's a confidence crime. And by— by aligning with their political beliefs, right, and start talking politics with them and basically pointing the finger at the other party, you are creating a relationship of trust with this person which allows— which facilitates them to open up in regards to other, other things or other bits of information that you might be after. Is that how that works?

You are absolutely right, spot on. And it's because we, we tend to click with people that we have something in common with, you know. If all of a sudden, you know, let's say, let's say you're filling up your car at a gas station in another state on the other side of the country and you see somebody from your, your home state license plate, you're probably— maybe you're likely to make— go over there, make a comment to them or ask them a question, right? Or if you find in their profile that they went to the same university, same alma mater, or they, they support the same sports teams, I mean, you automatically, as soon as you hear that, you create that rapport. So the social engineer, knowing that in advance, can, as you mentioned, you know, create that as part of their persona, whether it's in person or even using a fake profile on social media, LinkedIn. You know, putting in LinkedIn some of these same commonalities that their target has. So when they approach the target, the target already feels that, that, that rapport automatically.

Yeah, that, that person is just like me, and that you have a reason to trust them. And the thing about trust is that, uh, first of all, I think trust is highly overrated, you know. Uh, I, I think that we as a species, as an interdependent species, we require trust by default, right? We have to trust one another. And so because, because we by default trust one another, bad guys know this and they twist the truth ever so slightly, just enough to manipulate us in such a way to get additional information, whether that might be usernames and passcodes, it could be credit card numbers, bank account information, uh, it could be getting you to pay a bill or wire money somewhere, it could be getting access to a physical facility. And so bad guys utilize our social media platforms essentially to manipulate us, to abuse that trust that we have inherently. And I've said a number of times that I think the way you should look at everything and everyone is that everybody is a liar until proven otherwise.

I like it. I agree with you. Like, zero, you know, Zero trust until— uh, the way I got burned, I got burned because I probably, like you, I grew up, you know, learning trust everyone until they give you a reason not to. Complete opposite of what you're saying. And, and, and I was, as a young adult, I was like that here in America. Okay, what I found where I got burned, I got outside of my little bubble. I, when I first, my first, uh reassignment overseas. I won't say where specifically, but when I, when I went there, and I went there with that mentality, I came into a culture that was very different. It was, you trust only the people in your inner circle, your close family members, you know, maybe your siblings, maybe your cousins, and only your friends from childhood, from kindergarten or grade school on. Everybody outside that circle was, you know, you don't trust them automatically. You don't trust them. And actually, they were almost like fair game. If I can take advantage of those other people because they're not part of my tribe, let's say, there's no harm. I mean, it's perfectly normal. So coming back here to America, I find that America, compared to a lot of other societies, is probably the most trusting. And that is— and a lot of these threat actors are coming You know, they're not only from overseas, of course, but a lot of them also are coming in from overseas, from other countries with a very different mindset. And they come and they realize how trusting Americans are, and that really makes us vulnerable.

Yeah, really. So this particular article that has, you know, 40+ things to be aware of, right? Uh, we'll cover a couple of those because we want to make sure that you leave here with actionable to-dos, you know, ways in which you can Essentially, you know, protect your privacy, protect your security, uh, lock down your accounts, you know, just be that much smarter and aware as to what to do and also what not to do, to be able to communicate this information to others, whether it's employees, friends and family, clients and colleagues, and so forth. So basic stuff, right? You could see this where it says strong password, Peter.

Yes, sir.

So that makes the most— that, that right there is like one of the basics, right? So you should make sure as a consumer, as an employee, or even as a small business that your social media pages, your platform, your profile, that access to these pages— you're not using the same passcode for, say, Facebook or, or for LinkedIn, for that matter. You shouldn't have the same passcode for either of the two accounts that is the same passcode as you have for your banking, or it's the same passcode you have for your credit card, or it's the same passcode you have for, I don't know, an association you're a member of and access to that particular site. Like, you should never use the same passcode twice, and you should be using a password manager to facilitate the process of having a different passcode across each account.

Robert, there's thousands of articles that say exactly the same thing and highlight this as one of the most important things that need to be resolved by individuals. So why is it today that after, you know, after, after a decade or more Uh, and articles, thousands of articles that people— there's still so many people out there that are using the same password.

Lazy.

It's just all boils down to laziness, you know. Security is one of those things where it's, it's not even a second thought. It's, it's like, it's like way down the food chain. And the thing about it is like security is fundamental to living. It's right above eating and sleeping and, and drinking fluids. Like, it's security, safety, stability, structure, and protection is the second layer on Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human human needs. But people just take it, especially in the US, for granted. We just do. It's amazing to me. All right, and then don't accept requests from unknown profiles. So I said that on LinkedIn, I accept requests from everybody, right?

Everybody.

I'm a public profile. I accept, uh, requests from everybody. That's just the way I do things. And again, my profile has been kind of decimated. Peter, what do you do on LinkedIn?

Oh boy, that's a whole day. I, I mean, I build up my profile and build up my connections, but I'm very cautious about who I connect with. I will— if I don't know that individual, I will, I will analyze the profile of that individual that wants to connect with me. And actually, I leave— I lead seminars on this whole topic where I show how easy it is to create fake profiles that can bypass LinkedIn's algorithm— algorithms to shut them down. I don't know if I mentioned to you, last year LinkedIn said that between January— June and January of 2020, they took down 33 million— 33 million fake profiles. But those are only ones— the vast majority of those, 31 million, were during the initial stages of registration. So there were certain red flags that came up with them of the type of IP addresses they were using. But if there's 33 million in 6 months that were taken down by LinkedIn, how many more pass through and are on LinkedIn that can easily be used to approach individuals out there? So I'm very careful. I will look at and I will analyze, you know, does it make sense? Is their history, their academic and work experience. Does it make sense as if I were going to employ them, right? Are there any gaps? Are there things that, that are weird?

How well is it written?

You know, and also, if I really suspect them, I'll do a reverse image search to see where else on the internet that image might appear. And if I see it appears somewhere else with someone else's name, then I know I got a live one.

Yeah, I do none of that. But like I said, my LinkedIn profile or at least my profile is fine, it's my connections are just all muddied and muddled and, you know, really of no use to anybody that wants to use that information against me and/or my connections. In your case, you know, being a retired former CIA spy, um, it makes absolute sense the way in which you curate your social media profile in regards to LinkedIn. And I would suggest that if you are a C-suite executive uh, even, you know, somebody who aspires to that level, or supervisor, even manager, heck, frontline employee, that you should probably curate your, uh, LinkedIn pages the same way that Peter's doing it. Yeah, definitely. And then, you know, as far as Facebook is concerned, I do spend a bit more time curating that due to the fact that, um, it's, it's entirely obvious to me And I spent a little bit more time there. It's entirely obvious to me when somebody is trying to connect with me that they are in fact a scammer. And usually it's somebody who is posing as a female, a, I guess, a well-built female, you know, someone who is in such a way, I guess, you know, has been sexualized in such a way where she is trying to get as many connections as possible to engage in romance scams. Uh, I see that as an obvious one. And usually when I open up— when I see that friend connection and I open it up and I check them out and it's a female, a heavily busted female, let's say, uh, I look at who she's connected to And usually it's like 10 to 15 men, uh, and it's— and I might know one or two of them. And so when I see that, I know that the goal there is that, uh, she— and often it's a he— um, is trying to connect with me to get access to my connections. And if I'm connected to this person, then, uh, my connections will see that she, in this case, uh, is somebody who I know, who I like, and who I trust. Therefore, my connection should also connect with her, and I will not facilitate that scam.

Well, you're absolutely right on that. That's one I— one of the points that I raise when people just accept connections without kind of like analyzing them. If it is a fraudulent profile like the ones you mentioned, uh, that can take place on Facebook or LinkedIn or other platforms, that, that just blindly accepting them, even if they might not be targeting you, or you might say, well, I'm not going to worry about this unless they asked me for information, or they asked me to click on a link or open an attachment, then I'll be careful. But the fact that, that someone will accept them as connections helps build up their credibility, right? You know, because let's say, for example, on LinkedIn, you'll see how many connections that they have. If they have zero, it's like, whoa, how can we— how do you go from zero to 500? You, you go from zero to 500 because people that receive connection requests from them are not looking at the profile and seeing that they only have, you know, that they only have 15, 20, 25 connections, right? So that's, that's the danger of actually helping build, helping build their credibility.

So in future episodes, we'll talk about damage control, what to do should your site be compromised or somebody is posing as you. We'll talk about the infrastructure in regards to making sure your devices are properly protected, updating your operating system and software so that, um, uh, you're not only— your, your device but your pages are also secure. And then risks of social media for youth, and we could spend a ton of time talking about that, the psychology behind all of it, how it's negatively affecting us and our families and our businesses, um, You know, if our profile is being hacked, fake apps, malicious links— I mean, we could talk for hours and hours and hours, and we will in the future on future episodes of The Security Guy and the CIA Spy Podcast. So Peter, any closing comments?

Well, I want to share, uh, actually a resource that I came across recently that I think it is phenomenal. It was put out by the Department of Defense, and I think you have a— you can highlight that on your screen. Yep, it's free and you can download it. I think that you'll have a link up on this podcast. Yeah, it's a fantastic resource that's put up by them, declassified for the general public, and it's very detailed and it goes into a lot of the things we were talking about specifically regarding social media. Uh, it will go into Facebook, Facebook Mobile, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, It will talk about photo sharing services, online dating, secure chat apps, use of the smartphones, etc., how to travel safely when we're using smartphones, etc., etc., etc. There's a lot of information. I highly recommend that you download this and read it. I mean, it's quite extensive, but it's a great resource guide.

Yeah, this is— you know, looking at this in the table of contents, I, I— there's no question about it that the DOD has been paying attention to you and I, because this is exactly what I speak to in the order in which I speak to it when I'm presenting my program. So this is a great resource, Peter. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Very good.

So, um, you know, we appreciate your, your, your feedback and your comments and your, and your likes and your shares. Uh, by all means, you know, keep all of that, uh, uh, feedback coming in. And thank you for, um, you know, sharing us and liking us. Uh, we will be back, uh, generally every couple of weeks on a Friday afternoon. You should be able to download the latest version of The Security Guy and the CIA SpyCast. Peter, you know, um, just a little bit about, you know, what your business, what you provide your clients.

Counterintelligence Institute. And we focus on helping organizations better understand the threat actors who might be fa— what threat actors they might be facing and what is it that these threat actors are trying to accomplish in breaching the security of their organization. And then more importantly, how can they sensitize their employees through security awareness training? We also offer another, a number of different counterintelligence tools, I encourage listeners to go to my website directly, counterintelligence-institute.com, to see about those products and services. And also, of course, I always got to put a plug in for my book, Confessions of a CIA Spy: The Art of Human Hacking. So for those of you that haven't seen it yet, it's available on Amazon, and you go into— I go into a lot of, lot, a lot of detail regarding the various techniques of human hacking.

Excellent, Peter, thank you. And, um, uh, you can see me and my team online at protectnowllc.com. Uh, we provide a form of security awareness training for employees regarding, you know, being on top of what is new and ahead of what is next at all times regarding all the various threats regarding phishing and social media issues that you might face, personal protection which means violence and theft prevention in the physical and/or virtual world. We also provide identity theft protection and cybersecurity insurance, and the Ripple ID button, which is a button you wear that talks to your mobile phone should there be an emergency, and a number of other different products and services, again, at protectnowllc.com. So thank you for allowing us to plug our businesses. And Peter, I will talk to you very shortly. Y'all be safe out there. Be careful.

Be safe.

Be safe. Peter, last words?

Okay, be safe as well, and I look forward to seeing you again soon, Robert. And everybody, take care.

Take care.