Latest / Brian Thomas / Tech Friday w/ Dave Hatter - Sponsored by Intrust IT - 10/30/2026
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: 513-74.
- 0:00Speaker 2: Oh, sorry. It's Tech Friday. Dave Hatter. Get ready to
- 0:02Speaker 2: give the phone number again. Default mode. InTrustIT.com is where
- 0:08Speaker 2: we find Dave Hatter and his crew. They are the
- 0:10Speaker 2: best in the business, court of business career for all
- 0:12Speaker 2: your business computer needs, keeping you out of trouble, engaging
- 0:15Speaker 2: in best practices, and unringing the bell of disaster when
- 0:19Speaker 2: it hits. Dave Hatter, welcome back to the show, man.
- 0:21Speaker 2: I certainly appreciate your company sponsoring this segment.
- 0:24Speaker 1: Always good to be here, Brian.
- 0:25Speaker 2: All right. Let's jump right into it. An issue that
- 0:27Speaker 2: comes up every election year is concerns about voting machines. Now,
- 0:31Speaker 2: I get a pretty good sense here in Ohio that
- 0:33Speaker 2: we don't have any hacking concerns. I've been advised that
- 0:36Speaker 2: they're not hooked up to the Internet and they can't
- 0:38Speaker 2: be tampered with from outside forces. I'll have to take
- 0:40Speaker 2: them at their word on this. But some states, well,
- 0:44Speaker 2: are at risk. That's what this article says. Anyway, Dave,
- 0:46Speaker 2: can you break it down?
- 0:48Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 0:48Speaker 3: So Security Week is a well-known, well-respected magazine in the
- 0:53Speaker 3: the cybersecurity, information security space. Timing of this article is
- 0:58Speaker 3: kind of unfortunate that they waited until a few days
- 1:01Speaker 3: before the election to publish it. But it's a pretty
- 1:06Speaker 3: deep dive into this, and I think it's really well done.
- 1:09Speaker 3: You know, my concerns with all of this are always, Brian,
- 1:12Speaker 3: and we see this sort of thing play out more
- 1:14Speaker 3: and more every day, right? I don't think you and
- 1:16Speaker 3: I have talked about the recent PHP vulnerability, but The
- 1:19Speaker 3: point I've been making for a long time now, and
- 1:21Speaker 3: one of the reasons why I got out of software
- 1:24Speaker 3: engineering as a professional and into cybersecurity is because anything
- 1:28Speaker 3: that has software in it is vulnerable. I've talked about
- 1:30Speaker 3: Mikko Hoponen's book before. He's a very well-known, much smarter
- 1:34Speaker 3: than me, cybersecurity professional, wrote a book called If It's Smart,
- 1:37Speaker 3: It's Vulnerable. I know I've mentioned Bruce Schneier's book, also
- 1:40Speaker 3: way smarter than me, internationally renowned cryptographer and cybersecurity guy,
- 1:44Speaker 3: wrote a book called Click Here to Kill Everyone. And
- 1:46Speaker 3: the whole idea is if it's got software in it,
- 1:48Speaker 3: it's vulnerable.
- 1:49Speaker 1: OK, period.
- 1:50Speaker 3: That's the bottom line point they're making. I believe that's
- 1:53Speaker 3: absolutely true. We've seen this PHP thing. We've talked about
- 1:56Speaker 3: refrigerators being hacked and so forth. So this article is
- 2:00Speaker 3: pretty long, but it goes into and here's the subhead.
- 2:03Speaker 3: Unpatched voting machines, unverifiable QR coded ballots and AI driven
- 2:08Speaker 3: influence campaigns leave U.S. elections short of secure. Now, that's
- 2:12Speaker 3: their words, not mine. You know, they they make some
- 2:17Speaker 3: very interesting points in here. There's some great quotes from
- 2:21Speaker 3: some pretty well-known cybersecurity experts. They talk about the vote
- 2:25Speaker 3: counting and the vote machines and how the machines are certified.
- 2:29Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, they have software
- 2:31Speaker 3: in them, Brian. And that's part of the problem. They
- 2:34Speaker 3: talk about foreign nations trying to influence the vote. But
- 2:40Speaker 3: the thing that I thought was the most interesting, again,
- 2:42Speaker 3: because there's a bunch of different headlines. There's a whole
- 2:43Speaker 3: section securing the integrity of the election, voting and counting. U.S.
- 2:49Speaker 3: election voting machines are certified by the EAC. This certificate
- 2:52Speaker 3: is designed to ensure their security and applies to both
- 2:54Speaker 3: the voting and the counting machines. Shari Bargel, co-founder and
- 2:59Speaker 3: CEO at Sequent, is doubtful. There is no direct correlation
- 3:02Speaker 3: of the certification process to the four-year election cycle, and
- 3:04Speaker 3: the certification can occur in any four years. Certification process
- 3:09Speaker 3: may take a year, but probably less than two years.
- 3:11Speaker 3: In a worst-case scenario, a voting machine whose certification began
- 3:14Speaker 3: in the first year of the electoral cycle will have
- 3:16Speaker 3: been sitting untouched for two years.
- 3:18Speaker 1: Quote, now this is this guy.
- 3:19Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, go ahead. This is the grill.
- 3:21Speaker 2: We're kicking out of the stadium here, right here.
- 3:25Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 3:26Speaker 3: Quote, that's pretty ridiculous, unquote, Comet Sparkle. Quote, software needs
- 3:30Speaker 3: to be updated and patched pretty much continuously. In the
- 3:32Speaker 3: commercial world, we patch our systems every month, but for elections,
- 3:35Speaker 3: we're trusting the software. It hasn't been patched for two
- 3:38Speaker 3: years or more. And the final analysis, the EAC certification
- 3:40Speaker 3: is pretty much meaningless, unquote. Now, again, that's this guy.
- 3:45Speaker 3: They talk about air gapping, keeping machines offline. They talk
- 3:49Speaker 3: about voter village at DEF CON. You and I have
- 3:51Speaker 3: talked about that over the years where DEF CON is
- 3:54Speaker 3: a yearly cybersecurity conference. Thousands of people show up. They
- 3:57Speaker 3: have villages where they take things apart and attack stuff
- 4:01Speaker 3: and demonstrate stuff. And it says here, you know, machines
- 4:03Speaker 3: are often taken to Voting Village, a hands-on election security
- 4:06Speaker 3: lab run at DEF CON, gives researchers and election officials
- 4:09Speaker 3: and the public legal access to real voting equipment so
- 4:11Speaker 3: they can test the security. Some of these machines are
- 4:14Speaker 3: still in use in the current election cycle when they're
- 4:15Speaker 3: delivered to Voting Village. And the same guy, quote, basically,
- 4:21Speaker 3: this is Bargel, every voting machine that has been delivered
- 4:23Speaker 3: to Voting Village has been successfully hacked once the hackers
- 4:26Speaker 3: have hands-on access, unquote.
- 4:27Speaker 1: Hmm.
- 4:29Speaker 3: So, I mean, this goes on and on. I'll post
- 4:31Speaker 3: this in the notes. I've shared this with a bunch
- 4:33Speaker 3: of people. I strongly encourage people to go read it
- 4:36Speaker 3: for themselves. Again, they talk about election influence campaigns. They
- 4:40Speaker 3: talk about the idea that, you know, printing something with
- 4:43Speaker 3: a QR code where you can't read what it says
- 4:45Speaker 3: is basically useless. I try to make this point every day, Brian.
- 4:48Speaker 3: You can't look at a QR code and know what
- 4:49Speaker 3: it does.
- 4:50Speaker 1: True.
- 4:50Speaker 3: I never, ever, ever scan QR codes out in public.
- 4:55Speaker 3: I don't know what they do. I don't know how
- 4:57Speaker 3: they got there. I don't know that some bad guy
- 4:59Speaker 3: hasn't come along and put a new QR code over
- 5:01Speaker 3: top of a legitimate QR code like in a parking lot.
- 5:04Speaker 3: And this has happened, by the way. So, yeah, this
- 5:07Speaker 3: is a really interesting article. I am going to send
- 5:10Speaker 3: it to Secretary LaRose.
- 5:11Speaker 1: I know him. I've done some cybersecurity seminars.
- 5:15Speaker 3: For his team, which, by the way, is a huge
- 5:17Speaker 3: benefit to residents of Ohio that your secretary of state
- 5:20Speaker 3: is out there providing free cybersecurity seminars for small businesses.
- 5:25Speaker 3: I'm going to send it to the Kentucky secretary of state.
- 5:28Speaker 3: I mean, again, sadly now we're just days out from
- 5:30Speaker 3: the election, but it's, it's a very interesting look at
- 5:35Speaker 3: this from a, this is, you know, this, and it's
- 5:37Speaker 3: not political in any way. It doesn't talk about, this
- 5:39Speaker 3: article doesn't talk about politics at all. So yeah, it's,
- 5:43Speaker 3: it's pretty useful in my mind.
- 5:45Speaker 2: Frightening stuff.
- 5:46Speaker 1: It would have been good to have it earlier. Yes.
- 5:48Speaker 2: LinkedIn.com. Find Dave Hatter and LinkedIn.com. That's where you'll find
- 5:53Speaker 2: the articles he speaks of here on the Morning show.
- 5:55Speaker 2: Don't go away. More to talk about, including the latest
- 5:57Speaker 2: MapQuest update. 55KRC, the talk station. 641-55KRC, the talk station.
- 6:06Speaker 2: IntrustIT.com is where you find Dave Hatter and his crew
- 6:09Speaker 2: for your business computer needs. Dave Hatter, I like this
- 6:11Speaker 2: new feature on MapQuest. At least I think I do.
- 6:15Speaker 3: Well, you know, Brian, I'm not a fan of flock cameras.
- 6:18Speaker 3: And I always like to remind people, flock has become
- 6:21Speaker 3: the coke of mass surveillance.
- 6:23Speaker 1: Yeah. or the Kleenex, right?
- 6:25Speaker 3: They're not the only company that are building these sorts
- 6:28Speaker 3: of mass surveillance capable cameras. They're just the ones that
- 6:32Speaker 3: have gotten the most ire. They're the ones that are
- 6:34Speaker 3: the most well-known. Seems like in many cases, the public
- 6:39Speaker 3: is waking up to this whole mass surveillance thing.
- 6:41Speaker 1: And there's been a huge backlash against this.
- 6:44Speaker 3: I like to point out that Fort Wright does not
- 6:47Speaker 3: and has never had flock cameras.
- 6:49Speaker 1: Or anything like this and will not as long as
- 6:51Speaker 1: I'm involved in it. But that said, if you, uh, I,
- 6:56Speaker 1: I'm not a, I don't use MapQuest. I have an
- 6:58Speaker 1: Apple phone. I use the maps on my Apple phone,
- 7:00Speaker 1: nothing against MapQuest. Um, but the, the native map app
- 7:05Speaker 1: on my Apple phone does what I want it to do.
- 7:07Speaker 3: And you know, Brian, I tell people all the time,
- 7:10Speaker 3: the less apps you have, the better. So again, I
- 7:11Speaker 3: have nothing against MapQuest. This is a useful feature though,
- 7:15Speaker 3: in my mind. And I think it just speaks to
- 7:17Speaker 3: the backlash. Although it's interesting to see one technology company essentially, um,
- 7:23Speaker 3: Let's just say cast aspersions, for lack of a better word,
- 7:26Speaker 3: for an FCC compliant way to say this on another
- 7:29Speaker 3: tech company. So MapQuest and their latest update will now
- 7:32Speaker 3: show you where the automated license plate reader cameras are.
- 7:37Speaker 1: Think Flock.
- 7:37Speaker 3: Again, other companies, Axon, there are other people doing this,
- 7:40Speaker 3: but Flock is the most well-known. So if you use
- 7:43Speaker 3: the MapQuest app, you can turn this on and it
- 7:45Speaker 3: will show you where the flock cameras are, wherever you are,
- 7:48Speaker 3: so that you can avoid them. So if you're someone
- 7:50Speaker 3: like me that does not want to be mass surveilled,
- 7:52Speaker 3: it's just out minding your own business, trying to live
- 7:54Speaker 3: your life, everyday, innocent, average citizen, and you don't want
- 7:59Speaker 3: to be surveilled, you don't want to be tracked like this,
- 8:01Speaker 3: this is a handy way to let you know how
- 8:03Speaker 3: to avoid these things. And it's really interesting because in
- 8:06Speaker 3: the screenshot they show in this one article, Now, again,
- 8:10Speaker 3: I don't know, Brian, that this particular screenshot is legit
- 8:13Speaker 3: or they just made it up for this news story.
- 8:16Speaker 3: But assuming that's a real screenshot of a real place,
- 8:19Speaker 3: there is an insane amount of flock cameras in that
- 8:22Speaker 3: given location.
- 8:23Speaker 2: And that was going to be my point. To your point,
- 8:24Speaker 2: even if I want to avoid flock cameras, it may
- 8:27Speaker 2: be impossible for me to get to point A to
- 8:28Speaker 2: point B without having to go past one or multiple
- 8:31Speaker 2: of them.
- 8:32Speaker 3: I mean, looking at this map, again, assuming it's legit,
- 8:35Speaker 3: it would be very difficult to avoid them. But at
- 8:38Speaker 3: the very least, you could minimize your exposure to them
- 8:41Speaker 3: if you had this.
- 8:45Speaker 2: Maybe this is less of a practical feature and more
- 8:47Speaker 2: of just the look at the size and scope of
- 8:50Speaker 2: the Big Brother reality we live in these days.
- 8:53Speaker 1: Well, it certainly is. points that out.
- 8:56Speaker 3: And they say in the article, by turning on the
- 8:58Speaker 3: surveillance layer in the map options, which I think is
- 9:01Speaker 3: a funny way to describe it, by turning on the
- 9:03Speaker 3: surveillance layer in the map options portion of the software,
- 9:05Speaker 3: the map will reveal each location.
- 9:07Speaker 1: And it does say in this article.
- 9:08Speaker 3: The feature allows users to view the reported locations of
- 9:11Speaker 3: license plate readers operated by providers, including Flock Safety, Motorola Solutions,
- 9:15Speaker 3: and Axon.
- 9:16Speaker 1: So I do.
- 9:17Speaker 3: Appreciate the fact that this MapQuest update feature, speaking of
- 9:20Speaker 3: software updates, like we talked about in the last Last segment, right?
- 9:24Speaker 3: Software updates don't just fix vulnerabilities and bugs.
- 9:27Speaker 1: They add capability. Or in our.
- 9:30Speaker 3: Increasingly digital world, potentially take away functionality. Oh, well, you
- 9:34Speaker 3: like that heated steering wheel in your car?
- 9:36Speaker 1: Not for you unless you want to pay the subscription fee.
- 9:39Speaker 1: Like those heated seats? Oh, your air conditioner? Yeah, that's
- 9:42Speaker 1: going to cost extra.
- 9:43Speaker 2: That's insane.
- 9:43Speaker 3: Because you're not paying the subscription fee. That's where we're
- 9:45Speaker 3: headed with all of this. But, you know, again, back
- 9:48Speaker 3: to the election machines and such, software updates are critical
- 9:52Speaker 3: because they fix vulnerabilities, flaws that could be exploited. They
- 9:56Speaker 3: fix bugs, things that make the software not function the
- 9:59Speaker 3: way it's supposed to, but they also, also give you
- 10:02Speaker 3: the capability to change the functionality. Today, I certified this, right?
- 10:08Speaker 3: And then a software update comes out. Well, unless I
- 10:11Speaker 3: recertify it, how can I know for sure there wasn't
- 10:13Speaker 3: a change in the software that changed the behavior, a la,
- 10:17Speaker 3: in this case, adding new functionality that shows you these
- 10:21Speaker 3: surveillance cameras? Hopefully what I'm saying is making sense to folks. Again,
- 10:26Speaker 3: In the old days when something was mechanical, right, and
- 10:28Speaker 3: you bought it, well, it couldn't just change itself overnight
- 10:31Speaker 3: with a software update. It couldn't be your smart refrigerator
- 10:35Speaker 3: that bricked itself and ruined the food or burned your
- 10:38Speaker 3: house down due to a software update that caused it
- 10:40Speaker 3: to overheat or something like things can now. And this
- 10:43Speaker 3: is my point that I keep trying to drive home
- 10:46Speaker 3: to folks as we make everything digital.
- 10:49Speaker 1: Everything has software in it.
- 10:51Speaker 3: Sometimes you get a benefit like, hey, I can see
- 10:55Speaker 3: these surveillance cameras in my MapQuest app now. Sometimes things
- 10:59Speaker 3: change and they might tell you, they might not tell you,
- 11:04Speaker 3: or it could be hackers that have broken into the
- 11:06Speaker 3: source code of that and changed it without even the
- 11:09Speaker 3: vendor's knowledge.
- 11:10Speaker 1: That has happened many times, all well-documented, Brian. So, yeah,
- 11:15Speaker 1: that's where we're at.
- 11:16Speaker 2: That's frightening stuff. Waymo. Robo-taxi operators. There's some new scrutiny
- 11:21Speaker 2: over station. 651-55-KRCD talk station. Dave Hatton, Interest IT, doing
- 11:28Speaker 2: the Tech Friday. And, well, confirming for me more that
- 11:32Speaker 2: I'm not going to do automated vehicles, Dave. I don't
- 11:36Speaker 2: think we're there yet. And apparently the federal government's going
- 11:38Speaker 2: to start getting involved because Waymo and other robo-taxi operators
- 11:42Speaker 2: can't manage, I guess, first responder emergency vehicle interactions. What's
- 11:47Speaker 2: going on with this one, Dave?
- 11:48Speaker 3: Yeah, there's all kinds of wild stuff, but I want
- 11:51Speaker 3: to take just one second to tell you two things, Brian.
- 11:53Speaker 3: First off, since I know you're into this sort of
- 11:55Speaker 3: thing personally, and I imagine a lot of your listeners are,
- 11:58Speaker 3: I belong to the Kenton Game and Fish Association.
- 12:01Speaker 1: Our annual fall turkey shoot is this Sunday.
- 12:03Speaker 2: Oh, cool. Love it.
- 12:04Speaker 3: If you or any of your listeners want to come
- 12:05Speaker 3: on down, it's open to the public. It begins at noon,
- 12:08Speaker 3: Kenton Game and Fish. It's on Locust Pike. You can
- 12:10Speaker 3: find it online, and I'll be sharing it in my
- 12:13Speaker 3: social media. And if you want to hear me talk
- 12:17Speaker 3: your ear off about more of this stuff, you can
- 12:19Speaker 3: meet me in person and I'll tell you the stuff
- 12:21Speaker 3: we can't talk about on the.
- 12:22Speaker 1: Radio, Brian. Then you'll really, really be sorry that you
- 12:25Speaker 1: know me.
- 12:26Speaker 2: No FCC oversight in offline communications. Anyway, let's get into this.
- 12:30Speaker 2: We've got about three minutes to boil down the robo-taxi operator.
- 12:33Speaker 1: All right.
- 12:34Speaker 3: And then real quick, last thing. Queen City Con Cybersecurity Conference,
- 12:37Speaker 3: November 13th through 15th. You all should come. That said, yeah,
- 12:41Speaker 3: so Brian, you know me pretty well now after all
- 12:44Speaker 3: the years we've been friends. I'm not riding in any
- 12:46Speaker 3: autonomous cars anytime soon.
- 12:49Speaker 1: Will these things eventually get to the point where they're trustworthy? Probably.
- 12:53Speaker 3: But you have a vehicle with a bunch of sensors
- 12:56Speaker 3: on it, right? Different types of sensors, cameras, LIDAR, all
- 12:59Speaker 3: kinds of different sensors. They've been trained in real-world driving simulations.
- 13:03Speaker 3: They've been trained in simulated driving situations. But you keep
- 13:09Speaker 3: seeing issues with these things. Now, again, I know the
- 13:12Speaker 3: experts and the people who are for this will tell me, oh, well,
- 13:16Speaker 3: if you look at the stats over time, they're much
- 13:19Speaker 3: better than human drivers.
- 13:20Speaker 1: OK, that may be the case.
- 13:22Speaker 3: All I know is we keep seeing examples where in
- 13:25Speaker 3: real world situations where a reasonable human driver would make
- 13:29Speaker 3: a different decision like, hey, let's not block the emergency vehicles. Hey,
- 13:33Speaker 3: let's not drive into a construction zone. If you look,
- 13:38Speaker 3: and I'll, again, post a bunch of these articles in
- 13:40Speaker 3: the show notes that show you this, there are continuous
- 13:43Speaker 3: problems with these kind of vehicles where they do things,
- 13:47Speaker 3: they get stuck. In one instance, they went into a
- 13:50Speaker 3: neighborhood and just jammed up the whole neighborhood. People run
- 13:53Speaker 3: up and put an orange cone on the hood, and
- 13:54Speaker 3: the thing doesn't know what to do. Again, you can
- 13:58Speaker 3: argue that in a perfect.
- 14:00Speaker 1: World, would a machine be better than a human driver? Maybe.
- 14:06Speaker 3: For all the reasons I've stated in the last two segments,
- 14:08Speaker 3: these things are full of software. They're connected to other systems.
- 14:12Speaker 3: What happens when those systems go down? What happens if
- 14:15Speaker 3: a sensor gets covered up?
- 14:17Speaker 1: Again, I'm not against this per se.
- 14:20Speaker 3: I think like so much of the technology that I
- 14:23Speaker 3: rail on all the time, and you know I'm not
- 14:25Speaker 3: an anti-technology guy, Brian. This is what I've done for
- 14:28Speaker 3: more than 30 years. This stuff is moving way too fast.
- 14:31Speaker 3: The incentives for you as a consumer are from a security,
- 14:35Speaker 3: both physical and cyber perspective, and your privacy are all
- 14:39Speaker 3: wrong for you as a consumer. And we just keep
- 14:43Speaker 3: putting more software in things. I've talked about some of
- 14:46Speaker 3: the problems. In fact, one of the things I'm gonna
- 14:47Speaker 3: talk about at that cybersecurity conference and have talked about
- 14:50Speaker 3: a lot recently the abysmal state of software security. As
- 14:53Speaker 3: a recovering software engineer that did it for 25 years,
- 14:56Speaker 3: there is literally no bad practice I have not personally
- 14:59Speaker 3: done because for most of my career, I was not
- 15:02Speaker 3: focused on security or privacy.
- 15:04Speaker 1: Those were not my objectives. I was not incentivized to
- 15:07Speaker 1: care about that. I hope this makes sense to you.
- 15:10Speaker 3: So when I tell you I don't have a smart
- 15:11Speaker 3: refrigerator or a smart coffee maker that can be hacked
- 15:14Speaker 3: online and used to burn my house down, these are
- 15:18Speaker 3: the reasons why. I know how this process works. Trust me,
- 15:23Speaker 3: they are not building this stuff with software in it
- 15:27Speaker 3: that is designed for your security and your privacy. And
- 15:31Speaker 3: that's why I'm not going to be writing any of
- 15:33Speaker 3: these kind of things soon. And I have a lot
- 15:35Speaker 3: of concerns about them because even though it doesn't get
- 15:39Speaker 3: a lot of press, it is documented out there. And
- 15:41Speaker 3: there are many examples where these things don't work right.
- 15:45Speaker 3: And yeah, it's not for me.
- 15:47Speaker 2: Appreciate the message. I've heard it loud and clear, and
- 15:49Speaker 2: I follow your directive, Dave, because I know you're right.