Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and how the tech are you. It's time
Speaker 1: for the tech news for Tuesday, May two thousand twenty two,
Speaker 1: and it's also time for an update to the Elon
Speaker 1: Musk slash Twitter saga. When last we checked in, I
Speaker 1: mentioned that the U S Securities and Exchange Commission was
Speaker 1: investigating Musk for allegedly filing his intent to purchase Twitter
Speaker 1: at least ten days too late, which in turn had
Speaker 1: a potentially massive impact on other investors. But since then,
Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff has happened. Namely, last Friday,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk tweeted that the deal to purchase Twitter was
Speaker 1: on hold, at least temporarily, because Twitter reported that it
Speaker 1: estimated fewer than five pc of Twitter accounts are bought accounts,
Speaker 1: i e. Fake accounts that are driven by automated processes.
Speaker 1: Now must wasn't terribly clear at first about what the
Speaker 1: actual problem was. Presumably the problem was that he didn't
Speaker 1: believe Twitter and felt that the real number is much higher.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. He had already put in the
Speaker 1: offer of buying the company at forty four billion dollars
Speaker 1: and repeatedly was boasting about one of the main things
Speaker 1: he wanted to do was purge twitter body accounts and
Speaker 1: institute a verification system to make certain that every account
Speaker 1: belongs to an actual human being. So naturally this led
Speaker 1: people like me saying, well, if part of your reasoning
Speaker 1: to purchase Twitter is to get rid of the bots
Speaker 1: on it, why does this particular estimate upset you? And
Speaker 1: that really comes down to money. I guess my assumption
Speaker 1: is that Elon Musk's argument is that Twitter is misrepresenting
Speaker 1: how many accounts on the platform are bots, and they
Speaker 1: did that when filing with the SEC, and that this,
Speaker 1: in turn has inflated Twitter's stock price. It it amounts
Speaker 1: to fraud, either intentionally or otherwise. And it also means
Speaker 1: that Twitter is overvalued, and that Elon Musk's initial offer
Speaker 1: was based off Twitter's stock price, which has subsequently slipped
Speaker 1: quite a bit, largely due to Musk kind of waffling
Speaker 1: about the deal. Now I can see how that can
Speaker 1: be a legit argument, except you would think that anyone
Speaker 1: willing to pop down forty four billion dollars to buy
Speaker 1: a company would already have done, you know, some pretty
Speaker 1: thorough investigations to determine if the value represented by the
Speaker 1: stock price actually reflected the real worth of the company,
Speaker 1: you know, before you make the offer anyway. Musk also
Speaker 1: in a reply to someone, mentioned that Twitter's supposed methodology
Speaker 1: for determining how many bots are on the platform is
Speaker 1: to take a random sample of just one accounts and
Speaker 1: then investigate to see how many of those one hundred
Speaker 1: are bought accounts and then extrapolate that. Um that, if true,
Speaker 1: is is I mean to call it, to call it
Speaker 1: too small a sample size is an understatement, like that's
Speaker 1: that's nothing. You're talking about a platform that boasts a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred million accounts on it. Just to take
Speaker 1: one hundred and then trying to extrapolate anything from one
Speaker 1: hundred random accounts, that's nothing. So if that is true,
Speaker 1: that is a laughable approach to making those kinds of estimates.
Speaker 1: But then Musk said that Twitter accused him of of
Speaker 1: breaking a non disclosure agreement or in d a about
Speaker 1: all this, and at a tech conference in Florida, Musk
Speaker 1: said that the real percentage of body accounts is likely
Speaker 1: twenty or higher, possibly as high as n though I
Speaker 1: think that is ludicrously high and really doubted. I don't
Speaker 1: think only of the accounts on Twitter are real people.
Speaker 1: Um I think some of those real people are real jerks,
Speaker 1: but they're still people. Musk then said that this deal
Speaker 1: will not move forward unless Twitter can prove that less
Speaker 1: than five percent of the accounts on the platform are
Speaker 1: in fact bots or fake or spam or whatever. Musk
Speaker 1: also said that if he could arrive at a lower
Speaker 1: deal for Twitter, a purchase might not be out of
Speaker 1: the question. Now I should add there is a ton
Speaker 1: of speculation online that Musk is also scrambling because maybe
Speaker 1: the funding he secured to purchase Twitter is no longer
Speaker 1: sufficient to cover that already four billion dollar price tag,
Speaker 1: so some of the funding depends on Musk's shares in
Speaker 1: Tesla as uh as collateral, at least according to some reports.
Speaker 1: But Tesla stock prices have also dropped significantly by around
Speaker 1: thirty percent, because you know, they've been dropping ever since
Speaker 1: this deal to buy Twitter was first announced, and Tesla
Speaker 1: shareholders have been worrying that they might be saddled with
Speaker 1: footing the bill for Musk's desire to own Twitter, which
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with their their interest in Tesla
Speaker 1: as a company. Well, if that is in fact true,
Speaker 1: if you know things that he has as collateral has
Speaker 1: have dipped in value by like thirty that could mean
Speaker 1: that he might need to secure some additional funding sources
Speaker 1: to cover the forty four billion dollars. Now, yes, Ellen
Speaker 1: Musk is a multibillionaire. In fact, he's the richest person
Speaker 1: in the world. He has an estimated wealth of around
Speaker 1: two nineteen bill in dollars. But we have to remember
Speaker 1: the vast majority of that wealth isn't liquid. It's wrapped
Speaker 1: up in stuff like his stock in Tesla or in cryptocurrency,
Speaker 1: and if Musk were to sell off assets for the
Speaker 1: sake of liquidity, it would affect the value of those assets,
Speaker 1: which means that he would get less for them than
Speaker 1: what they are currently worth, which really just nails down
Speaker 1: how insane wealth is, and that most rich people really
Speaker 1: just leverage their assets to get hold of cash when
Speaker 1: they need it rather than sell stuff off. Because if
Speaker 1: you sell off a lot of it, well, it becomes
Speaker 1: like supply and demand. Right. If you're flooding the market
Speaker 1: with supply because you're offloading your massive shares in something,
Speaker 1: the demand goes down and the price goes down, so
Speaker 1: you get less than what you would have gotten if
Speaker 1: you didn't sell it off. It's it's like this weird
Speaker 1: catch twenty two, right. Anyway, My point is that even
Speaker 1: though Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, he
Speaker 1: does not have forty four billion dollars in cash just
Speaker 1: laying around, so he had to secure additional funding, some
Speaker 1: of which has depreciated in value since the time of
Speaker 1: the announcement. So some people assume that Musk is really
Speaker 1: looking for a way to back out of the deal
Speaker 1: that will save face, or alternatively find a way to
Speaker 1: renegotiate the deal so that he can purchase Twitter at
Speaker 1: a much lower price. Uh. I think that that's something
Speaker 1: Twitter's board might resist, and certainly Twitter's shareholders would probably
Speaker 1: be less interested in it. You know, if they're being
Speaker 1: told they're gonna get bought out at fifty four dollars
Speaker 1: a share and then they're told no, I'm sorry, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be closer to you know, forty dollars a share,
Speaker 1: that's a big step down, right, And I'm just using
Speaker 1: those as hypothetical figures, right, But the point being that
Speaker 1: shareholders are probably not going to be as thrilled at
Speaker 1: thought of getting a smaller payout, so it could put
Speaker 1: the deal at risk. Now, if Musk does back out
Speaker 1: of the deal on his terms, it will cost him
Speaker 1: a cool billion dollars to do it, because that was
Speaker 1: part of the negotiation, was that if either party called
Speaker 1: off the deal, then it would come at a cost
Speaker 1: of a billion dollars. Now, could it be that Musk
Speaker 1: will ultimately spend a billion dollars to not buy Twitter? Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Twitter CEO Parague Agal dismissed Musk's objection, saying that he
Speaker 1: would discuss the issue of spam accounts quote with the
Speaker 1: benefit of data, facts and context end quote. So the
Speaker 1: story is not over yet. A security consultant named Sultan
Speaker 1: CoStim Khan created a hack that exploits the keyless operation
Speaker 1: mode for certain automobiles, such as Tesla's, which is why
Speaker 1: I'm mentioning this story right after the Elon Musk story. Now,
Speaker 1: according to con his method works on other types of
Speaker 1: vehicles too, but he specifically demonstrated it on Tesla vehicles
Speaker 1: that it works on things like the models and the
Speaker 1: model why his hack would allow him to not only
Speaker 1: unlock a vehicle's doors, but also start the electric motor
Speaker 1: and drive off in the car. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: you could totally steal a Tesla using this technology. Now,
Speaker 1: to pull it off requires a couple of pieces of hardware.
Speaker 1: One piece is essentially a Bluetooth sniffer device, So this
Speaker 1: is something that can detect Bluetooth signals that are being
Speaker 1: broadcast from a source. Now, Bluetooth signals have a relatively
Speaker 1: short range, so that means you would have to get
Speaker 1: this sniffer device fairly close to your target with then
Speaker 1: about fifteen feet or so, and you know, whether that
Speaker 1: that target is a smartphone that has a specific app
Speaker 1: that interacts with the Tesla or other vehicle, or it's
Speaker 1: a keyless fob or whatever it might be, and it
Speaker 1: then will sniff the signal that's being sent from that
Speaker 1: device that would normally go to the vehicle. The sniffer
Speaker 1: device would then relay that signal to a laptop that
Speaker 1: is presumably close to the target vehicle, because again Bluetooth
Speaker 1: doesn't have a very long range, So then con could
Speaker 1: use the laptop that was coming in you know, that
Speaker 1: was detecting the signal from the sniffer to broadcast a
Speaker 1: similar signal to the car and unlock it and turn
Speaker 1: on the electric motor. So this method is not super
Speaker 1: easy to pull off. It does require some hardware and
Speaker 1: some maneuvering in order to get it to work, but
Speaker 1: the point is it is possible and there's no defense
Speaker 1: against it. Con says that he contacted Tesla and other
Speaker 1: companies and made them aware of this vulnerability, but fixing
Speaker 1: this particular problem would require a fairly substantial overhaul of
Speaker 1: the keyless entry system as well as the hardware it
Speaker 1: runs on. And further more, the risk of someone actually
Speaker 1: developing and then using this hack is fairly low, so
Speaker 1: there do not appear to be any plans to address
Speaker 1: this issue because the likelihood of it becoming a thing
Speaker 1: out in the wild is fairly limited. Cohn also revealed
Speaker 1: that other cars that use the quick set smart locks
Speaker 1: are vulnerable to this kind of attack, but that drivers
Speaker 1: who use their iPhones to access their vehicles have some
Speaker 1: additional security measures that they can take advantage of. For one,
Speaker 1: they can enable two factor authentication, which in general you
Speaker 1: should pretty much always do for any system that offers it,
Speaker 1: and also the iPhone compatible locks have a time out
Speaker 1: that makes them harder to hack. The Android version locks
Speaker 1: lack these security factors, though quick Set lands on an
Speaker 1: upgrade later this year that will likely address that. We
Speaker 1: have lots more stories to cover, including some more hacking
Speaker 1: stories as well as a lot of other stuff. But
Speaker 1: before we get to any of that, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. We're back. Cal Newport posted in his blog
Speaker 1: a really interesting piece about a scientific study titled taking
Speaker 1: a one week break from Social Media Improves well being,
Speaker 1: depression and anxiety. Well, the title of the paper pretty
Speaker 1: much tells you what you need to know. The researchers
Speaker 1: took on volunteers. They randomly divided those volunteers into two groups.
Speaker 1: One group was the control group. They were given no instructions,
Speaker 1: They just went about living their normal lives. The experiment
Speaker 1: group was told to take a week long break from
Speaker 1: social media, including popular platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter.
Speaker 1: After a week, the researchers found that the experiment group
Speaker 1: reported they experienced less anxiety and depression, and they felt
Speaker 1: an improved sense of well being. The improvements were significant
Speaker 1: even when adjusting for variables like age and gender, so
Speaker 1: it didn't just disappear once you started to factor those
Speaker 1: variables into it. Newport points out, we should always look
Speaker 1: at these kinds of scientific studies with some skepticism, largely
Speaker 1: because methodologies can get a bit fuzzy, especially when we're
Speaker 1: talking about things like mental health. There are so many
Speaker 1: variables that impact our mental health that it can be
Speaker 1: pretty much impossible to narrow in on one or two
Speaker 1: variables and then eliminate all the rest. Right, Still, the
Speaker 1: study seems to support earlier hypotheses that a dependence on
Speaker 1: social media tends to bring with it an increased sense
Speaker 1: of depression and anxiety. Anecdotally, I have cut way back
Speaker 1: on my social network presence, having deactivated my Facebook account.
Speaker 1: I don't go to Instagram, I don't have TikTok anymore,
Speaker 1: and I only use Twitter for this show. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't access my personal Twitter feed anymore. Are now
Speaker 1: I can't say that I have had a massive improvement
Speaker 1: in my mental health, but I do feel that I'm
Speaker 1: not getting worse, which wasn't necessarily the case when I
Speaker 1: was still on everything. But again, that's anecdotal evidence, which
Speaker 1: really that's not evidence at all. We all know that, right,
Speaker 1: Anecdotal evidence is not actual evidence. And goodness knows, I
Speaker 1: would much rather feel like I was a totally new,
Speaker 1: well adjusted person. I'm just not there yet. Still, if
Speaker 1: you do find yourself feeling overwhelmed, it might be worth
Speaker 1: considering taking a weak vacation from social media. It could help. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. I talked about this next story in
Speaker 1: an earlier episode that Apple has rolled out changes that
Speaker 1: allow app developers to alter subscription prices and charge users
Speaker 1: more money automatically, as long as certain conditions are met. Previously,
Speaker 1: developers were required to send a notification to users alerting
Speaker 1: them of an upcome main price hike for their services,
Speaker 1: and the user would then have the option to opt
Speaker 1: in to paying the higher price, or they could discontinue
Speaker 1: their subscription. But Apple said that this method had the
Speaker 1: unintended consequence of leading to interruptions and service because users
Speaker 1: were missing or ignoring notifications so they didn't take the
Speaker 1: action to opt in, and their service would get discontinued
Speaker 1: once their subscription was over and the price hike had
Speaker 1: taken effect, and it would cause some friction. So now
Speaker 1: the policy has changed, developers still have to send out
Speaker 1: a message to users alerting them ahead of time. If
Speaker 1: they're going to change the price, but the price change
Speaker 1: gets applied automatically and there's no opt in required, so
Speaker 1: if the user doesn't actively deactivate their account, they get
Speaker 1: charged more So, if you miss or ignore a message,
Speaker 1: then you might discover when you're looking at your bank
Speaker 1: statement that what used to cost X per month now
Speaker 1: costs X plus something else per month. Apple does have
Speaker 1: a few other requirements the developers have to meet in
Speaker 1: order to qualify for this feature. Uh, the developers cannot
Speaker 1: hike a price more than once per year. Any increase
Speaker 1: that they give to any subscription cannot exceed five dollars
Speaker 1: or fifty of the current subscription price for monthly subscriptions,
Speaker 1: and if it's an annual subscription service, the max hike
Speaker 1: is fifty dollars or fifty of the subscription price. The
Speaker 1: increase also cannot break any local laws. Now, if developers
Speaker 1: failed to meet some of those qualifications, they can still
Speaker 1: increase their subscription prices, but they will have to adhere
Speaker 1: to the old process of giving you know, users the
Speaker 1: opportunity to opt in, or otherwise their service will be discontinued.
Speaker 1: Darren Allen of tech Radar has an article titled bad
Speaker 1: news and video. A m D S new GPUs are
Speaker 1: in good stock and priced strictly at m s r
Speaker 1: p UM. In case you're not familiar with the term
Speaker 1: m s r P, that stands for manufacturers suggested retail price.
Speaker 1: In other words, it's how much the company what makes
Speaker 1: the thing tells stores how much they should charge to
Speaker 1: sell that thing. It's their suggested retail price. Stores aren't
Speaker 1: obligated to sell things at m s r P, but
Speaker 1: it is what the manufacturers are suggesting. And obviously if
Speaker 1: stores charge weight more than that and other stores charged
Speaker 1: closer to m s RP, that creates competition in the market. YadA, YadA, YadA. Well,
Speaker 1: when it comes to GPUs or graphics processing units, we've
Speaker 1: had a long run of graphics cards being incredibly difficult
Speaker 1: to find and grossly overpriced above m s r P.
Speaker 1: One really big reason for that was that crypto minors
Speaker 1: for currencies like ethereum, we're scooping up all the available
Speaker 1: GPUs before they could hit consumer mark markets and plugging
Speaker 1: them into mining machines, or they were buying GPUs at
Speaker 1: way above market price and then putting them into mining
Speaker 1: machines UM. And this gave a few enterprising folks the
Speaker 1: chance to buy up cards very quickly and then hike
Speaker 1: the price up to obscene levels before offering them up
Speaker 1: on after market platforms like eBay. Uh. Then the you know,
Speaker 1: you got to take into account the semiconductor chip shortage
Speaker 1: that we're currently in, and there are all the factors
Speaker 1: you really need right. You have limited supply, you have
Speaker 1: high demand that fuels crazy high prices. Well, Alan Over
Speaker 1: at tech Radar has pointed out that a m D
Speaker 1: has several GPUs that appear to be in stock on
Speaker 1: sites like new Egg, and more importantly, that these in
Speaker 1: stock cards are pretty much priced where they should be.
Speaker 1: Prices have been coming down a little bit recently, in
Speaker 1: large part because the value of cryptocurrency has plummeted in
Speaker 1: recent weeks. Obviously, if it costs more money to run
Speaker 1: mining operations, then you get out of successfully mining cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1: You stop doing it, right, because otherwise you're operating at
Speaker 1: a net loss. You want to make profits. So if
Speaker 1: it costs you more to do the thing, then you
Speaker 1: get out of the thing, you stop doing it. That
Speaker 1: also means we don't quite see the same rush to
Speaker 1: snap up all available GPUs. Now, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: there is still a rush, it's just not quite as
Speaker 1: vicious as it used to be, and I suspect we'll
Speaker 1: see GPU availability and pricing improve, assuming there's not a
Speaker 1: huge surge in the crypto market specifically with Ethereum. Also,
Speaker 1: we have to remember Ethereum is currently running its proof
Speaker 1: of steak blockchain in parallel with its proof of work blockchain,
Speaker 1: and proof of steak is not going to require all
Speaker 1: that computational effort to verify transactions the way that proof
Speaker 1: of work a pro which is do so once Ethereum
Speaker 1: actually transitions to proof of steak, because right now the
Speaker 1: actual transactions are still happening on proof of work blockchain.
Speaker 1: But once things merge and Ethereum has transitioned over to
Speaker 1: proof of steak, the demand for all those GPUs will
Speaker 1: drop again. I mean, other cryptocurrencies will still use proof
Speaker 1: of work, but they typically are valued much lower than Ethereum,
Speaker 1: which in turn is valued much lower than bitcoing. So
Speaker 1: it could mean that you know, the people who end
Speaker 1: up seeking out and acquiring those cards end up being
Speaker 1: you know, gamers who want to run their PCs so
Speaker 1: that they can be able to to run the latest
Speaker 1: titles at the highest settings. Wouldn't that be nice? Earlier
Speaker 1: this year, I did an episode about the company San Sui,
Speaker 1: once famous for producing high end audio equipment, and that
Speaker 1: company is now really no more than a brand name,
Speaker 1: something that's happened to a lot of companies over the years.
Speaker 1: And we have another company that we can kind of
Speaker 1: add to that list, and this one is on Kyo,
Speaker 1: oh in k y O. Unlike san Sui, on Kyo's
Speaker 1: target market was more in the mid range for audio
Speaker 1: equipment and video equipment. The company produced a v equipment
Speaker 1: that was a little more modest than the brands that
Speaker 1: were targeting, you know, the the wealthy audio file crowd.
Speaker 1: But on Kyo hit on hard times. It got delisted
Speaker 1: from the Stock Exchange last year, and now the company,
Speaker 1: which was originally founded way back in has gone bankrupt. However,
Speaker 1: last year, Sharp and the American Premium Audio Company formed
Speaker 1: a partnership and purchased the Onkyo Home Entertainment division. So
Speaker 1: while on Kyo, the company that created that division is
Speaker 1: no more, the assets, the brand, the technology, and all
Speaker 1: the stuff that the company actually made now belongs to
Speaker 1: other companies that are actually in a much better position.
Speaker 1: So essentially it means we should still expect to see
Speaker 1: on Kyo products on the market. It's just that the
Speaker 1: company that started it all is no more. I might
Speaker 1: have to do a full episode about this in the future.
Speaker 1: In fact, leave me a talk back message on the
Speaker 1: I Heart radio app if you agree. If you don't
Speaker 1: know what that is. On the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: you will see a little microphone icon on the tech
Speaker 1: stuff page, either on the page itself or on the
Speaker 1: actual entry for this episode, and if you tap that,
Speaker 1: you can leave a voice message up to thirty seconds
Speaker 1: long and let me know what you think. All right,
Speaker 1: We've got some more stories to get through before we
Speaker 1: wrap up this episode, but first let's take another quick break. Well,
Speaker 1: the power grid in the United States state of Texas
Speaker 1: is back in the news again. So last year, during
Speaker 1: a particularly harsh into storm, thousands of people in the
Speaker 1: state of Texas experienced power outages and it really put
Speaker 1: a spotlight on that state's unique situation. See. Unlike most
Speaker 1: of the other states in the US, which have power
Speaker 1: grids that interconnect with one another, Texas decided to go
Speaker 1: in house with its power grid. And you might wonder
Speaker 1: why well, Being interconnected means being partly dependent upon and
Speaker 1: partly accountable to other parties, and gosh dang it, that
Speaker 1: just ain't a Texan thing to do. More seriously, being
Speaker 1: part of the interconnected system would bring texas As power
Speaker 1: grid within the jurisdiction of federal regulations, and that darn
Speaker 1: sure anna Texan thing to do. The state has always
Speaker 1: been fiercely independent, even when it meant that citizens were
Speaker 1: bound to suffer as a consequence. There's also a lot
Speaker 1: of allegations that the various politicians who have maintained a
Speaker 1: status quo have done so at considerable personal benefit, meaning
Speaker 1: there's a lot of alleged greasing of politic coal wheels
Speaker 1: going on here if you believe the accusations. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about the impact on the average person. Back in
Speaker 1: around folks lost their lives because they didn't have power
Speaker 1: during this incredible winter storm, and now the Texas power
Speaker 1: grid is struggling with electricity demands as the state experiences
Speaker 1: high temperatures, not an unusual thing in Texas. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: pretty hard to live in Texas without air conditioning, or
Speaker 1: at least without a lot of fans. And it's definitely
Speaker 1: dangerous to do it. So a lot of folks are
Speaker 1: running their air conditioning when the weather gets hot, and
Speaker 1: it's already really hot. Some parts of the state hit
Speaker 1: a hundred five degrees fahrenheit or forty point six degrees
Speaker 1: celsius yesterday. But this over taxes the state's power grid,
Speaker 1: which is incapable of tapping into the rest of the
Speaker 1: United States as systems which would allow it to help
Speaker 1: shoulder the load. It can't do that because it's an
Speaker 1: independent little island, and as a result, power stations have
Speaker 1: had outages recently, and the state has urged citizens to
Speaker 1: limit their power usage, asking people to set their thermostats
Speaker 1: to seventy eight degrees fahrenheit and for those of y'all
Speaker 1: who use the more civilized celsius, that's about twenty five
Speaker 1: point six degrees celsius. They also have been asked not
Speaker 1: to run any big appliances during the peak hours of
Speaker 1: three PM to eight pm. And that's from our coat,
Speaker 1: the ironically named Electric Reliability Council of Texas. It seems
Speaker 1: to me like that reliability part of the name should
Speaker 1: really be revisited. All right, let's get back to hacking
Speaker 1: and exploiting hardware. Ours Technica reports that hackers have discovered
Speaker 1: how to install malware on an iPhone that can run
Speaker 1: even if the phone itself is powered off. And you
Speaker 1: might think, well, how is that possible, Well, it's because
Speaker 1: when you turn your iPhone off, it's not really totally
Speaker 1: powered down. There are certain functions that the phone needs
Speaker 1: to be able to do even if the phone itself
Speaker 1: has been turned off for normal operation. So there are
Speaker 1: certain features that run in a low power mode and
Speaker 1: they just sip as little juice as they can in
Speaker 1: order to continue to function even with the phone turned off,
Speaker 1: and the hackers figured out how to exploit this mode
Speaker 1: so that malware could run on a device that's even
Speaker 1: been powered down. The key is Bluetooth, just like with
Speaker 1: our our keyless entry conversation. Bluetooth was a big part
Speaker 1: of that as well. The Bluetooth chip and an iPhone
Speaker 1: lacks any digital signature methodology or encryption on its firmware,
Speaker 1: which gave the hackers, which I keep saying hackers, they
Speaker 1: were security researchers at the University of Darmstadt in this case,
Speaker 1: gave them the opportunity to develop malware that could do
Speaker 1: stuff like track the phone's physical location even when it's
Speaker 1: turned off. That's one of the low power processes that
Speaker 1: retain support even when a phone has powered down. It's
Speaker 1: the find my feature, right, So if you had turned
Speaker 1: your phone off and you left it somewhere, you want
Speaker 1: that find my feature to work. Well. This is an
Speaker 1: exploit of that. And considering that state backed companies like
Speaker 1: the NSO group have previously targeted iOS devices to convert
Speaker 1: those devices into surveillance tools, this new development is pretty concerning.
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine being able to exploit a target device
Speaker 1: and turn it into at least a partial surveillance tool,
Speaker 1: even if it had been turned off. Even if the
Speaker 1: owner thinks they're being savvy by turning their phone off
Speaker 1: as they traveled to some sensitive location, they could potentially
Speaker 1: be tracked by someone running malware and using a process
Speaker 1: similar to the find my iPhone, which is not good now.
Speaker 1: Security researchers and hackers in our last story, they're working
Speaker 1: to improve security, but obviously there are other hackers who
Speaker 1: have more extreme agendas, such is the case with CONTI,
Speaker 1: a gang of Russian speaking hackers who not long ago
Speaker 1: in full traded computer systems belonging to the government of
Speaker 1: Costa Rica and then locked down those computer systems in
Speaker 1: a ransomware attack. They recently have demanded a ransom of
Speaker 1: of twenty million dollars UH. They increase that in fact
Speaker 1: to twenty million, possibly because Costa Rica just installed a
Speaker 1: new president, Roderigo Chavez, and then that president held a
Speaker 1: press conference and hypothesized that the attack involved people inside
Speaker 1: Costa Rica cooperating with the presumably Russian hacker group. And
Speaker 1: that's something that the hackers themselves have said is true.
Speaker 1: They claim that there are insiders in the government who
Speaker 1: are working with them in order to compromise the systems.
Speaker 1: The hackers have been implying that their goal is to
Speaker 1: overthrow the government, but most researchers say that's likely just
Speaker 1: posturing and that really all they want is cash, cash, money.
Speaker 1: And I do talk a lot about hackers on tech stuff,
Speaker 1: but one thing I frequently don't have information on is
Speaker 1: who is actually developing the malware that's being used out
Speaker 1: there in the real world. Some hacker groups rely on
Speaker 1: tools that are made by people from outside the group itself.
Speaker 1: They're deploying tools that were developed somewhere else. In fact,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of hackers who do that exclusively, and
Speaker 1: in hacking communities, they at least they used to be
Speaker 1: referred to as script kiddies, people who, you know, we're
Speaker 1: taking the programming code that someone else made and just
Speaker 1: using it. But they don't develop code themselves. They don't
Speaker 1: even necessarily understand how to code well anyway. The U
Speaker 1: S Department of Justice claims it has identified someone responsible
Speaker 1: for developing two different malware suites that have been used
Speaker 1: in ransomware attacks. That person is a cardiologist living in
Speaker 1: Venezuela named Boises louise A Gala Gonzalez. Now, according to
Speaker 1: the d J, Zagala is the developer responsible for malware
Speaker 1: called Jigsaw and another one called Thanos. Now. Apparently, one
Speaker 1: of the zagala As relatives tipped off authorities that this
Speaker 1: doctor was moonlighting as a sort of cyber warfare arms dealer,
Speaker 1: supplying hacker groups with tools and providing technical support and
Speaker 1: getting relatively modest payouts in the process. But Zagala was
Speaker 1: using this relative to kind of funnel the money through
Speaker 1: and not go directly back to him. And then the
Speaker 1: relative got investigated as part of this overall investigation into
Speaker 1: the hack and tipped the authorities off to Zagala. One
Speaker 1: of the groups that Zagala was allegedly helping was a
Speaker 1: state backed Iranian hacking group that targeted Israeli companies. So
Speaker 1: Zagala is now charged with two counts of attempted computer
Speaker 1: intrusions and conspiracy to commit computer intrusions. He has not
Speaker 1: been arrested. He's charged with this by the United States,
Speaker 1: but he's living in Venezuela and has not been arrested. Now,
Speaker 1: should he be arrested and should he be uh extradited
Speaker 1: and stand trial for those charges? He could face five
Speaker 1: years in prison for each of the charges. It seems
Speaker 1: that Zegala is a self taught hacker as well. And
Speaker 1: it's really going to be a heck of a thing
Speaker 1: for a cardiologist to devote spare time towards learning how
Speaker 1: to code and then creating malware, particularly when you consider
Speaker 1: that medical facilities are frequently the prime target for ransomware attacks.
Speaker 1: Kind of disturbing. Finally, have you ever asked yourself how
Speaker 1: many times are companies sharing my personal data with one another? Like?
Speaker 1: How many times are the various entities out there, like
Speaker 1: say a data broker, making transactions where your personal information
Speaker 1: is part of the deal. Well, if you live in
Speaker 1: the EU, the answer is probably around six times a
Speaker 1: day on average. So that's how many times companies are
Speaker 1: sharing your personal information with stuff like you know, advertising companies.
Speaker 1: But you know, y'all in the EU can rest easy.
Speaker 1: Those of us in the good old U s of a.
Speaker 1: It's a walking seven hundred forty seven times per day
Speaker 1: on average. This is according to the Irish Council for
Speaker 1: Civil Liberties or i c c L. That keep in mind,
Speaker 1: these companies aren't singling you out personally. Your data gets
Speaker 1: lumped in with the data from millions of other people.
Speaker 1: And one way this works is that when you visit
Speaker 1: a web page, your browser exchanges information with that page.
Speaker 1: The page bundles that information up with all the data
Speaker 1: from folks who also went to that page at that
Speaker 1: same time, and this becomes a block of info that
Speaker 1: then gets auctioned off at a market and the winning
Speaker 1: bidder gets the privilege of serving their ad to you.
Speaker 1: This whole process takes less than a second to happen.
Speaker 1: That's just the little delay that happens before an ad
Speaker 1: loads in onto your page, and it's happening all the time.
Speaker 1: The process is called real time Bidding or r t B.
Speaker 1: You can read the full report on the I c
Speaker 1: c L website. The report is titled the Biggest Data
Speaker 1: Breach and it really pulls back the curtain on the
Speaker 1: data trading industry. This is something that more governments around
Speaker 1: the world are starting to look into and consider regulating,
Speaker 1: so it's possible that this rampant exchange of people's personal
Speaker 1: information will eventually get reined in. And that's it for
Speaker 1: the Tech News for May seventeen, two thousand twenty two.
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