Watch your digital footprints. #24

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 CIA Spy.

I am Robert Siciliano, and this is This is Peter Wormka broadcasting from Orlando. Hey buddy, what are you doing? Happy summer to you. I'm doing good.

Yeah, you've been on the road, but you've been doing some family stuff too, right? Which we have to do, because if we just, uh, if we don't, we don't spend some time with our families, and we're missing a big part of our lives.

Yeah, can't you tell with this beautiful tan that I have?

Yeah. Hey, I was online yesterday with somebody, it was so white, and it was like in the Midwest. And, and, and, and I said, I gotta get out, I gotta get some sun, this is terrible, I gotta get outside.

Yeah, well, I'm Italian, so if I'm not at least, you know, a shade darker, I don't look healthy, actually. So, uh, and we have a boat, my family has a boat, and, um, just like a 20-foot bowrider, and we tool around Boston Harbor and up and down the, um, Massachusetts, uh, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island coast, and that's my kids' summer vacation. So our summer consists of days on the boats, dog barking at everything from the boat, lots of ice cream, and, you know, adult beverages. Lots of fun.

I like it. That sounds great.

Yeah, yeah. So good. Well, you know, we have— we took a little bit of hiatus at the beginning of the summer, and here we are. We see lots of you online. Via Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Thank you so much for participating. And there's been a lot has gone on since our last podcast in late June. You know, active shooters are up, you know, with 300-something events at this point. Lots of people, you know, being shot and killed. A guy in Indiana stepped in, 22-year-old, used his own firearm to take down the active shooter. We're actually not going to be discussing that particular instance today, but it's just another reason to be on high alert out there. You know, these are things that you need to be aware of, not necessarily worry about, but you need to know what to do in the event of. Today we've got a bunch of things to talk about revolving around digital security and digital literacy and the survival mindset. So first off, Peter, Wanted to hit on this particular article from SlashNet. Talks about hackers getting ready for Amazon Prime Day shoppers with thousands of live phishing sites. Now, we know that Amazon Prime Day has actually passed. That said, Amazon has talked about another one potentially in August. Not sure if that'll happen or not. But this particular article talks about the start of Amazon Prime was July 12th. And that this company Slashnet has tens of thousands of live malicious Amazon phishing URLs in their database, which has increased over the last couple days. Most of the scams are designed to take advantage of Amazon Prime Day shoppers looking for deals. There are also more dangerous phishing attacks, including credential stealing and rogue software, which can lead to ransomware and account takeovers. Now, Peter, like, those sites aren't going away. All those phishing sites, most of them are probably still up. And the way we actually are targeted via these particular scams is via email. So you get an email via phishing. You might get a text message via your Amazon or your Apple device. And/or you're on social media and you get a pop-up, or one of your friends' accounts might have been hacked. You get an iMessage or you see your friend's account get hacked and they are soliciting deals on Amazon Prime or just Amazon in general. Peter, what are your thoughts on this?

Well, yeah, this is a big problem because Amazon is one of the largest trusted brands, right? And people automatically think, oh, if it's an Amazon, you know, this is coming through Amazon and it's a deal. And this is the time of the year when deals are taking place. People just automatically assume it's legitimate, unfortunately. But we know we always go back to if it, if it sounds too good, it's probably not true. But even though, though, some of these Amazon deals, uh, the legitimate ones, are sometimes really incredible, you know, we got to think about how can we still verify. I always go back to this verify before trust. How can we verify that this is actually a legitimate, uh, deal versus just clicking on that link and saying, I want to get this, you know, before the supplies, you know, whatever, the run out, because this is a super deal.

So yeah, I think the big problem, try, try, uh, verify before you trust. Exactly. So, and too good to be true, of course. And the way you verify, simple enough, is whatever that product or service it is that you want, then just search it. Just go to Amazon. I mean, Amazon, not only is it, you know, one of the largest trusted brands in the world, uh, it's essentially a search engine for products and services that in which they host. And so whatever it is that you're looking for, whatever deal that you see, it might— the ruse might be, you know, click this link to get this deal. To get 10% off to— for this code, whatever it might be. All you've really got to do is just go to Amazon itself and search the name of the product, search whatever the, the, the specific description of the product is, and you're either going to find it or you're not. It either exists or it doesn't. Uh, there's no specific link that you're going to click that's going to get you where you got to go, uh, and you are not going to find that product if you were to, um, search it via Amazon. In other words, Anything and everything that you want is searchable on Amazon, and that's the way to get there, opposed to clicking a link, an incoming communication that is potentially fraudulent, that's going to get you to a rogue site that's going to capture your credit card credentials, and/or, uh, you download a virus simply from clicking the link, which leads to ransomware in some cases, or account takeover, or you're providing your credentials to a bad guy.

Yeah, your credentials, like your login Yeah, so really, whether it's Amazon or— it's across the board with all of these things. When you receive an email from what you think is a trusted source or, you know, a company you're doing business with or a service provider you're doing business with, whether it's Netflix or your bank or anything like that, never click on that link in that email. Always go back into the site of that organization. And if it's a valid issue, you know, you're going to be able to find it right there, you know, see the information on that website. So across the board, that's probably the best advice that you can give is don't click on that link, just go into the website of that organization.

Yeah, simple enough. So phishing, as we know, tends to spike during special events, holidays, and Prime would be a special event, uh, and shopping days. So given the popularity of Amazon Prime Days, it's predictable threat actors will be out in full force on any day. Amazon is one of the most impersonated global brands because it's a target, and that has proven a successful opportunity for cybercriminals.

So, hey, Robert, I know that you speak to this sometimes, but probably another good point would be, especially in these cases, you know, you got— you have the protection of your credit card if it is actually a fraudulent purchase, and you can go back in most cases, get a refund from the bank or the credit card company. But if you use your debit card, what happens then?

Yeah, that's a really good point, Peter. So I actually have only had a few credit card fraudulent charges in the past 3 to 5 years. And it's not because I clicked the link or anything. It's because my card was compromised, say, at a brick-and-mortar store or online somewhere, and it was used to, you know, make unauthorized charges. Right. And so all you got to do really is, as long as you're paying attention to your credit card statements, refute those charges in real time as quickly as possible. That said, I also get push notifications that let me know about those charges as they occur. So if I do see something that is, you know, fraudulent, I immediately make a phone call to refute that charge. Keeping in mind that credit card companies have anomaly detection software that sometimes, sometimes picks up fraudulent charges, not always. So it's really important that you don't rely on those notifications from your credit card company saying, hey, you might be a victim of fraud, that you have to pay attention to your statements. As far as debit cards are concerned, I don't even own a debit card. I have an ATM card, but I don't use— that which does not have a Visa, MasterCard logo on it— but I don't use or have a debit card, which can also— is called the check card. A debit card, it can be used as a credit card to check out online or over the phone or in person. Because the problem with using a debit card is if it is compromised, if your card is compromised you have less, um, leverage. Basically, Regulation E essentially says that you have 2 days to refute unauthorized charges on a debit card, whereas you have 60 days to refute unauthorized charges on a credit card. And the banks tend to not believe consumers when there's debit card fraud. So I've been contacted by victims of debit card fraud in the past, and they've fought for, you know, days, weeks, months, years, and never got the money back. So I would never use a debit card for, um, uh, you know, point-of-sale type transactions.

Yeah, that's good advice.

Yep. All right, so next we have, uh, more on the privacy realm of things— how to stop other people seeing when you're online. This is via Gizmodo. So don't broadcast your status to the wider world in your messaging apps. So I know that a lot of us, you know, who are on, say, iMessage, um, might look at sending off a text message and look to see if it was A) delivered and B, if it was read. And I kind of like that feature, you know, uh, but do you want others to see if your text messages have been read and so forth? And that setting can be turned off.

If you turn that off, then you're not going to know, uh, and there's pros and cons, I guess, to this.

There are pros and cons, and this article talks exactly about that. So seeing when someone was last online inside an app can be— help you figure out whether or not they're available to chat It can also give you pointers as to whether they're ignoring your messages or just haven't gotten around to replying yet. But if you don't like your status being broadcast to your contacts like this, there are ways of turning it off. So there is typically a trade-off here. If you don't want your contacts to see when you're online or when messages have been read, then you won't be able to see their online status or receipts either. Uh, you may well consider that an acceptable compromise if it means other people don't know, uh, when you are, uh, and when you aren't picking up your phone.

So think about this. We're in the virtual world, I know, and we lose a lot of this, uh, um, we call nonverbal communication. Like, if you were speaking with somebody, you could say, oh, this person is just like bored with this conversation, or is not interested, or, you know, it doesn't— it's not agreeing with me. You can see that today when we send out these messages. We have no idea what that other person, you know, and we're only going to speculate. Ah, did they read it? Did they not read it? Are they ignoring me? And maybe if they— you see that you're sending the message to somebody and they're ignoring you, maybe there's a reason for that. And you kind of, you kind of learn, you get the understanding, okay, you know, I'm not going to push this any further because this person is not obviously interested. They lost— they saw it, you know.

I don't know, that is definitely one side of it, no question about it. So this particular article goes over all the various apps that we use on a relatively frequent basis, such as WhatsApp gives you instructions on how to go in and turn those various settings on and off. And then, how do I turn off read receipts in iMessage? So for the majority of you, many of you, or at least half of you that are on iMessage, um, it's right there. You know, go to Settings, go to Messages. The iMessage platform and iMessages and the iPhone doesn't broadcast your online or offline status to your contacts like some other instant messaging apps, but it does have read receipts. From the main iOS Settings app, you can select Messages and then turn the Send Receipts toggle switch off, and so on. So yeah, I mean, there are pros and cons to it, but if you are a person who really wants or needs your privacy, then you definitely want to turn that off. Frankly, I keep it on. I keep it on because I like to know when others have read my stuff, mainly my family. You know, kids, spouse, parents, and so forth. So for me, it's really important that I have that on because, you know, time really for me is of the essence. I'm willing to give up a little bit of privacy in order for additional insight as to where that other person might be in regards to that read receipt. So for me, yeah, you know, I mean, certainly I love my privacy and all, but for me, I think the trade-off is worth it.

Do you know, Robert Siciliano, if, uh, in LinkedIn, if— I mean, I know you can see whether or not someone's online. You probably can also— there's a setting to show whether or not you're online. But is there a means of being able to see whether or not someone has read your message?

You know, that's a really good question. This article, um, I think it doesn't actually talk about that. And I think it doesn't talk about that because, um, my experience with LinkedIn is that I don't think you can turn that off at all. Meaning that with LinkedIn, if somebody has actually not read your message, then their, I guess, photo will not appear in that little box in the bottom right-hand side of the iMessage or the LinkedIn message. You'll actually see either a grayed-out little window or a filled-in colored window of their actual photo, meaning that they have read it. Grayed out means they haven't. So inevitably, if you have read somebody's message or they have read your message, it's going to show whether you like it or not. Otherwise, it's grayed out. All right, so Apple phishing. Now I know that I have received many, uh, verify your email address emails from Apple. So, uh, that means that somebody has been trying to take over my Apple account by having me verify my email address and plugging in a special code. And so I've been receiving probably 2 or 3 of these a day over the course of the last few weeks in a concentrated period of time, so like over 3 or 4 days, and then it would stop, uh, and then it would start up again. And what this means is, is that there is automated software out there that is taking our known Apple IDs, or essentially just our email addresses that might be associated with, you know, any other account that could be associated with Apple or not, for that matter, and stuffing credential, stuffing that credential, that username, into automated software that is setting off these communications. Now, I get this quite frequently, and when you initially get it, it's a little scary. And what they say is that you might want to change your passcode, you might want to set up two-factor authentication if you don't already have it, which I do. But otherwise, as long as you have two-factor authentication, you don't really have much to be concerned about here. As long as you don't engage with anybody that's reaching out to you for that code, which that could be the case if they've compromised your email as well. Peter, what are your thoughts?

No, that's, uh, myself and my wife, that happened to us, uh, maybe about a week ago.. And it was in the morning, you know, like 2 in the morning. All of a sudden we get this. I said, where did this come from? You know, because usually it's good— something like that happening is going to be a result of you doing something, you trying to do something, and all of a sudden it comes back, you know, that you need to authenticate, verify your code. But not like all randomly where they send it out to you with you not instigating it. So yeah, it was very suspicious, and I said we're not going to respond to this at all. Yeah. Uh, my question would be if you have You know, is Apple providing any information that if you have, let's say, done that, what now? What do you need to do? Is there anything you can do? You know, you mentioned establishing dual authentication is fine, but is there anything else that you can do, like reporting it back to Apple? I don't know.

It says, it says right in the email that Apple sends out, if you didn't make this change, or if you believe an unauthorized person has accessed your account, Go to appleid.apple.com to verify your account information is accurate and up to date. So really what they're saying is, um, if you want to do something, then go to your Apple ID at— via iCloud, uh, and essentially log in and make sure that everything's fine. From there, you can change your passcode and/or, uh, set up two-factor authentication, which I think everybody should have authentication for your Apple ID, because if you don't—

extremely important.

Yeah, because if they get access to your Apple account, you know, that's— that could make your life relatively miserable. Now CNET talks about Apple's new lockdown mode for iPhone fights hacking. So this is an interesting article. Um, Apple is developing a new lockdown mode for its iPhones, iPads, and Macs. It's designed to fight industrial-strength hacking like NSO Group's Pegasus. So NSO, I believe— I think they're Italian or Israeli. Uh, why it matters: though these attacks happen to a small group of people, the threat is growing. Pegasus was used to spy on human rights activists, lawyers, politicians, and journalists around the world. Apple says it's identified similar attacks on people in 150 countries over the past 8 months. Apple will release Lockdown Mode for free later this year and says it's planning regular updates and improvements. The company has also expanded its bug bounties and so forth. So basically, um, Pegasus malware, which some governments use on human rights workers, lawyers, and politicians, uh, Apple announced a $10 million grant and up to $2 million bounty to encourage further research into the growing threat. So this particular software is designed essentially to lock down— to activate extreme protections on its phones, such as blocking attachments and link previews in messages, potentially hackable web browsing technologies, and incoming FaceTime calls from unknown numbers. Apple devices will also not accept accessory connections unless the device is unlocked. The people can't install new remote management software on devices while they're in lockdown. So what this does is it makes it very difficult for you to get hacked because pretty much all of the, I guess, activities that Pegasus engages in are incoming communications, messages you might receive, links you might receive, a number of other pop-ups that you might get, ways in which you interact with your device, normal things that you do all the time. That it would basically forbid you from doing them.

Yes.

Yeah, go ahead.

Be very restrictive. I mean, I can definitely see, uh, individuals, some individuals being very interested in using this because of the high probability of them being targeted, like the journalists, right? Uh, and maybe they have a separate, uh, telephones anyway, set separate what they use for for professional reasons. But I think the average individual probably will not gravitate toward using this just because it's so restrictive. Like, say, for us in, in the business world, how we communicate, and if we were to use that, or if everybody were to use that, I mean, it would severely limit our ability to be able to share information, right?

Yeah, that's the thing. There is a trade-off, you know, there is a trade-off between security and privacy and functionality.

Right?

Plain and simple. And so, for example, just getting on this pod broadcast today, uh, I was logging in via my Brave browser, uh, to, um, to access this particular platform. And the Brave browser is a pretty restrictive browser, uh, for accessing certain aspects of websites, pop-ups and so forth. And so I was having the hardest time navigating, through this particular software that we're using to broadcast this, this program today. And so I had to go back to Chrome in order to actually log in and access those various features because, uh, Brave was locking me out, which, A, was frustrating. I was in a bit of a panic because the clock was ticking to meet with you today. And so I realized that it's probably my Brave browser being a little bit too aggressive with my privacy and security. And so I went to Chrome, which is a little, you know, less aggressive, and ultimately got access to you, all those various features, and fine, and I was fine. That said, the lockdown mode for most people, even for those who are big targets, may be so restrictive that it will become unusable.

So it'll be interesting to know— I mean, this is coming out in the fall, right? And they said they're going to offer it for free. If it's, you know, if you can easily turn it on and turn it off, you know, where you might have it installed but you see, I'm only going to use it during certain times or under certain circumstances, and I can just turn it off whenever I want.

If the security software is user-friendly in such a way where it lets you know that certain aspects of your device are inaccessible, right, or inaccessible, if you can't do certain things, then, uh, and they let you know and they hold your hand through that process to turn it on or off, then that is a plus. It's a bonus. But if it's just like blanket locking things down and you don't even know what you have access to and don't, then it could be very, very, very frustrating and make the functionality of that device almost unusable. Apple's pretty good at usability. I mean, look at, you know, walking into the airport, you see 3-year-olds on iPads in their, in their stroller. Right. But like everything else, you know, digital literacy and privacy and security, you really need to know what the workarounds are and why you can't access something. It's going to be a problem for a lot of people if it becomes ubiquitous software.

Perhaps this is more— I mean, I'm not saying that they're not going to do this, and there definitely is a need for this for some people, but this might be coming out with this and talking about this in advance might be a great marketing ploy to show how they are really caring about their customers, right? Compared to maybe some of their competitors. So from a marketing standpoint, it might really be a win for them, even if very few people actually, you know, use it. Yep.

And that brings us to this dude, Terence Eaton, his blog. Apparently he's a security researcher. And it looks like back in, I think it's sometime, and I'm not sure if that's a June or a July date, I'm not sure if he's, uh, uh, in Europe or if he's in the US. So apparently, uh, his, uh, house, um, all right, it says, imagine last night lightning struck our house and burned it down. I escaped wearing only my night clothes. And there's some pictures in this of the actual burning house. Whether or not that is him or not, I'm not really sure, but the actual article talks specifically about in an instant everything vaporized— laptops phone, home servers, all a smoldering wreck. YubiKey, charged to a gristle. I think he's got to be from the UK, especially with his bowler hat. This presents something of a problem. In order to recover my digital life, I need to be able to log into things. This means I need to know my usernames and my passwords, and all my passwords are stored in the password manager. I can remember the password to that, but logging into the password manager requires two-factor authentication, which is generated by his phone. Okay, and it shows that his phone melted. Okay, so backups. I'm relatively smart, I've been sensible, I regularly export, uh, you know, secrets, uh, and save them to an encrypted file in my cloud storage. But his YubiKey was also fried. Emergency contacts, he chose his wife, but again, she was also in the fire and her phone probably got melted as well. And then recovery codes, those also got burnt up and so forth. Yeah, this stuff This guy is definitely in the UK. Driver's license gets melted. So what should you do? Like, how do you back up your backup? How do you have— how do you get access to all your stuff? Perhaps, he said, what I should have done is stored all my backup codes and recovery keys on a USB stick and then gave them to a friend. And then they talked about the various problems with that. You know, um, every time you update something or get a new service, you know, does your friend have that backup as well? So there's a lot of caveats here. And what this all means is you should really read through this article. It's kind of lengthy, but it's really smart. And what's smart about it is it gives you insight as to all the various things that can go wrong. I mean, all the various things that can go wrong. And how do you back up— how do you back up your backup in such a way where you have access to anything and everything that you need to recover your accounts?

Yeah, I mean, it is an extreme, right, this case, but it, I mean, it can happen. And even if it doesn't happen to this extreme, there's a lot of other things which can happen where you might be very inconvenienced in losing your access for, you know, for a period of time. You know, what happens when people all of a sudden their phones die? They go crazy, right? Even if it's a matter of a few hours and they have to go to the, you know, to the Apple Store or, you know, the company where they get their cell phones and get a replacement. But in that interim, people are just struggling to, uh, do things that they normally just take for granted because they don't have that access.

Yeah, so it's really important that when you are setting up your digital life, especially the two-factor authentication, usernames, passcodes, password managers, and so forth, really going through this particular article and looking at the absolute, absolute worst-case scenarios that you could begin to work reverse engineer that process to— as to how it might apply in your own life. So having, uh, backup keys and codes on a USB that's stored offsite, like maybe even in your car, um, having a friend or family member that is offsite, like not your actual spouse but maybe your lawyer or your parent or a child that might live elsewhere, uh, having, um, all of your information, you know, backed up digitally in multiple places that you can access, uh, both in the cloud and locally in such a way where if you did get locked out of your devices that were responsible for two-factor authentication, whether it's a YubiKey, a key fob, or your mobile phone, that you can easily restore those devices elsewhere. Uh, or like specifically a mobile phone, like I know that I can easily get access to all of my information on my device via the cloud. I can back up another— my iPhone is always backed up, and I can always restore my iPhone from the cloud backup, and so on. So thinking that through in such a way where you recognize worst-case scenarios and you've done anything and everything that you can to mitigate what that worst-case scenario might be in the future will save you a lot of time and heartache should you end up in a situation where Mother Nature kicks in natural disaster, fire, some type of an extreme data loss, that ultimately, if you have done your homework, you get access quickly and efficiently.

Yeah, I know, you know, both you and I know there are a lot of people out there that, you know, will write down their passwords and put them in what they consider a safe place, right? Because they feel like they have to have them written down somewhere. Which is not necessarily a good idea, but it's— at least they're probably taking a step beyond what a lot of other people do. They're not doing anything and trying to safeguard their information. But in this case, again, if your house would burn down or, you know, your, your everything's destroyed including your, your written down passwords, it's, it's the same principle. If you carry— if you have them in your house or you carry them on you, you can lose them.

Yeah, yeah, it can get hacked. Very sticky very quickly. All right, so last but not least, Peter, um, this is from Survivorpedia, which is a pretty cool website, uh, talks about, you know, prepping and so forth. And this particular article that they put together is called Mental Stability as Part of Survival. And I am a, um, you know, I'm a prepper, which, which means I am prepared, uh, for what the eventual eventuality of a natural disaster, a flood, uh, electrical power failure, whatever it might be, an active shooter situation, workplace violence, a physical attack, an identity being compromised. Like, I think about this stuff because it's by nature, it's the business that I'm in, and my goal and role is to educate people on how to react and how to respond, right? So this particular article talks about mental stability as part of survival. And I don't think that we can be prepared enough. So it begins with, you know, one of the most important and least talked about parts of survival is your mental attitude. Okay, no matter what you're doing, and survival could be anything from your passwords being compromised and getting locked out of your account to a home invasion to being in a car accident. Every military manual you open on survival starts with a chapter talking about the survival mentality. Considering that the military can spend pretty much whatever they need on the creation of those manuals, if they say something, we should probably pay attention. So further, putting it simply, a survival mentality is all about believing that you can and will survive That's important when you're going through it, and you have to believe that when you're doing what— when what you're doing in order to survive is going to make a difference in order to motivate you to do it. Let's face it, survival is difficult at best, so it's easy to become discouraged when things don't seem to be going right. And really, that could be with anything.

That's so true. It's so true. And I see this more and more today where a lot of people aren't— they don't have that mindset. You know, uh, they don't have that mindset. And when something that we think, well, that's not that bad, but it's like the end of the— for them, you know, since they don't have that mindset and not emotionally strong, uh, to deal with these things, it, it take it much— a lot of things that can happen. They feel defeated, they can become depressed. Instead of pushing forward, they sort of like, you know, feel helpless. And I think this, you know, the generate— the digital world of how so many people have grown up in this now can end up feeling that way. And over the last couple years, especially with COVID and it's— people have felt like, oh, what can I do? I have no idea what I can do.

What it boils down to is we have become so soft, so soft, so comfortable, which essentially has spoiled us. Like we've gone rotten, which means that like many of us are beyond the point where we would be able to function if the power was out for any period of time due to the fact that, you know, the food would go bad in our pantry. We don't have much in the way of backup. We don't have a supply of clean water. I mean, this is all basic 101 stuff that we're just not prepped for. And the survival mindset is way, way more than just, you know, dealing with the onset of a natural disaster or physical altercation. It's just dealing with every day, you know, dealing with, you know, the, the highs and lows and interactions with other humans that are mean to us or are just disrespectful to us, or, or just a simple stupid comment on Facebook that riles you up and and makes you, you know, run that nasty comment through your head all day long. And it's just ridiculous stuff, you know. And, and until we kind of take responsibility for that, then, you know, that survival mindset, no matter what the situation is, you can't rely on anybody else to, to, to, you know, help or take care of you. You really are— we really are on our own to a significant degree.

I had the, the curse, or the— I think in hindsight, the blessing of having lived in many countries, traveled to many countries during my career. And one of the first places I went to at that particular time was just like everything— it was a disaster, economic disaster, increase of terrorism. There was shortages of everything. I mean, when I, when I first got there, I was asking about power, you know, oh, we never have power outages. And so I ended up getting the 10th My residence was in the 7th floor, top floor of an apartment building. My office was on the 10th floor of an office building. And all of a sudden there were power outages from Monday to Saturday, uh, typically from 9 to 4 in the afternoon. There was no power, meaning no elevators. You had to go up and down the stairs. If you got a power generator to operate, a lot of the— if you wanted to send, uh, facsimiles back then Uh, you could try to send them, but usually the person on the other end didn't have power. So it was like, you know, living every day with all of these things that you just normally take for granted that you, you don't have to worry about, and everything is a problem, you know. No, no gas for cooking, right? No containers. If even if you wanted to get a container, like say if you were buying, uh, it may sound, you know, crazy, but if you wanted to buy Coca-Cola, let's say they sell them in these glass, uh, one or plastic 1 or 2-liter bottles. If you didn't have the bottles, you could not buy them in the store because they— you would have to trade in the used bottle to get the new bottle because there was no— there was a shortage. I think— I mean, shortage of everything. Sugar, milk for infant formula, all these things. You know, we have once in a while, we have something here, there's a shortage or a problem, people go crazy. Here is like everything. It was like the country of replay. Believe it or not, if it can go wrong, it will. Yeah. And so you develop that mindset. You become harder, you become stronger, uh, and you always find a way. You find a way to succeed even despite these major inconveniences that you— that today we just think that everything has to function perfectly.

Yeah, like they say, if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. And those, those events, that— those adverse situations do, you know, build your character. And I, I try to instill that in, you know, in my family life, in my children. I don't make it as easy for them as they would like it. And I sometimes, you know, make them do things that are, uh, somewhat stressful and, uh, let them figure it out on their own because that's part of life, you know. But we are becoming a bit too soft. We have become way too soft, and people really need to take a lot of personal responsibility in this regard. So Peter, what, uh, what do you have going on? What do you want to promote?

Well, I'm in the process of revamping a few things and coming out with additional new and additional training that that's going to be— it's in the process of being developed and will be rolled out, um, and available online on demand, as well as I'm reaching out to a lot of associations, okay, professional associations where their members, you know, uh, to maintain their certifications, they have to get continuing, uh, they have to get continuing educational credits. So I'm reaching out to a lot of those organizations, and anybody who's listening who who has to get an ongoing continuing education might want to think about some of the courses that we offer when it comes to cybersecurity and the art of social engineering, human hacking.

So yeah, yeah, and Peter is, uh, Peter is the expert on that. So yeah, um, a couple things, uh, just if you, uh, are so inclined, check out Peter's book. It's on Amazon. Peter, the name of your book?

Oh, I just don't have— conveniently have a copy here. Confessions of a CIA Spy: The Art of Human Hacking, available in soft copy, Kindle, and audio.

Yeah, check out Peter's book and head out to counterintelligence-institute.com to see Peter's handsome mug. And then, uh, check out me and my team at protectnowllc.com. We provide continuing education for a number of industries— accountants, lawyers, real estate agents as well. And, uh, check out all of our various products and services— virtual Chief Information Security Officer services along with, uh, security awareness seminars and cyber liability insurance and so forth. So Peter, um, last words?

Well, keep safe out there. You mentioned at the very beginning that, you know, we have to be on guard, alert to these things that can happen out there in the physical world, right? And today we talked about a lot of the things that can happen to you in the virtual world. So be cautious. And, you know, we always say, you know, look out for each other. And we can do this as well when it comes to learning about what people are doing online. And maybe, oh, you know, if they say that they're responding to something, like we talk about romance scams, right? You know, be interested in what your family members are doing online and maybe give them some advice or some, feedback if there's something they're doing you think that could lead them down the road of great hardship later on, you know, whether it's the breaking of their hearts or the breaking of their bank account.

Yeah, and be nice to each other. Thank you, Peter.