Latest / Brian Thomas / Tech Friday w/ Dave Hatter - Sponsored by Intrust IT - 8/21/2026

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Tech Friday w/ Dave Hatter - Sponsored by Intrust IT - 8/21/2026 · Brian Thomas

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Speaker 1: Deep talk Station. If you have KCD talk station, Happy Friday,
0:05
Speaker 1: a special time here on Friday. It's on the morning show.
0:08
Speaker 1: It's time from intrust It, which you can find online.
0:11
Speaker 1: And if you're a business and you have a computer
0:13
Speaker 1: or computers, you need a game plan. You need someone
0:16
Speaker 1: who can get at you out of problems. When you
0:18
Speaker 1: ultimately get hacked, which apparently is going to happen, you's
0:20
Speaker 1: got to wait for it. Intrust it dot com Dave
0:23
Speaker 1: Hatter's company, the best in the business is the business courier.
0:26
Speaker 1: Dave Hatter. Welcome back and thank you for the service
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Speaker 1: you provide to a lot of folks in this country
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Speaker 1: through this this discussion.
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Speaker 2: Always my pleasure.
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Speaker 3: Brian, happy to be here, and I hope we're doing
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Speaker 3: some good out there.
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Speaker 1: Well, when I read this subject matter hackers hack North Korea,
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Speaker 1: I was thinking maybe they're going inside North Korea to
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Speaker 1: steal their information and data. But no, it's more it's
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Speaker 1: more of an eye opener than that. This is a
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Speaker 1: frightening revelation. Talk to my listeners about what these people
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Speaker 1: who hacked into North Korea found.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, Brian, this just shows you that the war
1:00
Speaker 3: that folks like me have been putting out there for
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Speaker 3: years about hackers and infiltration, critical infrastructure, etc. Are real,
1:09
Speaker 3: and I agree with you, this is very disturbing. So
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Speaker 3: Wired magazine ran this story and a security researcher basically
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Speaker 3: was able to hack into some North Korean hackers. North
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Speaker 3: Korea has been in the press a lot around this subject.
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Speaker 3: If you can go back a few years, you'll see
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Speaker 3: the FBI, for example, has warned about North Korean hackers
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Speaker 3: being hired by American companies purportedly as employees and then
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Speaker 3: stealing secrets, money, that.
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Speaker 2: Sort of thing.
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Speaker 3: Wow, so this is not new, but this really kind
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Speaker 3: of confirms these warnings and really puts a finer point
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Speaker 3: on what folks have been saying about this. So this
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Speaker 3: guy was able to through a mistake they made, hack
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Speaker 3: into their systems, their network. And I'll just read directly
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Speaker 3: from the article. Since Greek based cybersecurity researcher Evangelis Stichis
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Speaker 3: gained system North Korean systems twenty two months ago. He
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Speaker 3: says he found evidence that one thousand, six hundred and
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Speaker 3: forty companies across fifty seven countries have been impacted by
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Speaker 3: the country's hacking operations. Among these stichis will detail at
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Speaker 3: black Hat. Black Hat is a cybersecurity conference that just
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Speaker 3: ended out in Vegas. Around seven hundred to eight hundred
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Speaker 3: impacted organizations. They had really damaging intrusions. So I'm reading
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Speaker 3: directly from the article. So sixteen hundred companies across the world,
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Speaker 3: many in the United States. It goes on to say,
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Speaker 3: now this gets a little nerdy, but it's company access,
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Speaker 3: its root access to servers. It's root access to AWS,
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Speaker 3: that's Amazon Web Services, you know, think Google Workspace, Microsoft
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Speaker 3: A sixty five. The term route means the highest level
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Speaker 3: of permissions in a computer system. So essentially he's an
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Speaker 3: administrator or they, or rather are these North Korean hackers
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Speaker 3: have gained access to these companies? Is that essentially have
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Speaker 3: an administrator access to their system, meaning they can do anything.
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Speaker 3: They can create new accounts, they can delete accounts, they
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Speaker 3: can install backdoors, they can launch a ransomware attacker. Really,
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Speaker 3: they can do anything they want. They have access to
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Speaker 3: the entire system. So any information that you might not
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Speaker 3: want them to have access to, they're eventually going to
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Speaker 3: find it because of this quote root unquote. That's again,
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Speaker 3: that's the super nerdy thing. Brian level of access they've gained.
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Speaker 1: That's well, man, it's terrible. Individual information, people's medical records,
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Speaker 1: people's criminal history, anything anybody has gathered together as far
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Speaker 1: as information, most notably like, for example, how about the
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Speaker 1: intellectual property day that's worth billions of dollars out there,
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Speaker 1: and apparently they've hacked in and stolen billions of dollars
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Speaker 1: worth of intellectual property too.
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Speaker 3: Intellectual property depending on the organization, could be military secrets,
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Speaker 3: could be employee data, customer data. Yeah, to your point, Brian,
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Speaker 3: it could literally be anything. So if you get further
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Speaker 3: into this article, and I will say, Wired lately has
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Speaker 3: really been putting out some good stuff in the realm
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Speaker 3: of hacking. So if you're interested in these topics and
4:06
Speaker 3: if you want to sort of see the state of affairs,
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Speaker 3: Wired is a great source for that. And it's always
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Speaker 3: I'll link this in my notes, but he says, the
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Speaker 3: researcher says, these include Boston Children's Hospital, what's called the
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Speaker 3: vast COVID nineteen database of American's personal health, the large
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Speaker 3: Japanese tech firm aon smart technology, Chinese phone manufacturer OPO,
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Speaker 3: cryptocurrency firm, so on and so forth, and then It
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Speaker 3: goes on to say Japan's Computer Emergency Response Team says
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Speaker 3: it confirmed the Securities Research security researchers findings and work
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Speaker 3: with a on smart technology on remediation. So again this
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Speaker 3: there seems to be evidence from people, you know, third
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Speaker 3: party validation of what this guy is saying. And I
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Speaker 3: think the bigger point for me, Brian is people like
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Speaker 3: me are constantly screaming about this, trying to get organizations
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Speaker 3: to take this stuff seriously. And there's still this ongoing
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Speaker 3: mentality of why I'm too small, this will never happen
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Speaker 3: to me. I'm boring. I don't have anything worth stealing.
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Speaker 3: Your money is worth stealing, your trade secrets are worth stealing,
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Speaker 3: your data is worth stealing. And it might be that
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Speaker 3: they're trying to break into you to get to another
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Speaker 3: party through you.
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Speaker 2: Like the Target hack, it's we gotta wake.
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Speaker 1: Up LinkedIn dot com where you find Dave Hatter and
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Speaker 1: the articles he's referring to don't go away. We're gonna
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Speaker 1: find out if maybe the same hackers stole are stole
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Speaker 1: your McDonald's dossier. Creepy coming up more Yes, six point
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Speaker 1: thirty six fifty station six forty fIF you have Kcdcalk
5:26
Speaker 1: Station MP Friday Tech Party with Dave hat Or Intrust
5:29
Speaker 1: dot Com, Businesses, interest it dot Com. You need to
5:33
Speaker 1: get Dave and his crew on the job prevent things
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Speaker 1: like the foregoing segment talked about and pivoting over. You know,
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Speaker 1: I read this day this article about McDonald's building dossier's
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Speaker 1: on people. It's creepy, But then I immediately thought, well,
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Speaker 1: isn't that what the Kroger cards all about? Dave Hatter, Well.
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Speaker 3: Ryan, yeah, this is for people like me who generally
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Speaker 3: don't join loyalty programs. Right now, I understand the argument
6:00
Speaker 3: in favor of it, and understand why people do it.
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Speaker 3: And you know, I put on my twenty five plus
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Speaker 3: years experience as a guy building the sort of systems
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Speaker 3: that are collecting the data we're about to talk about,
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Speaker 3: and I say, do I really want to let them
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Speaker 3: build this extensive dossier on me? And now I know
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Speaker 3: folks are going to argue, well, if you pay with
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Speaker 3: a credit card, they're going to know this anyway. Maybe,
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Speaker 3: but the least number of hands that have this information
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Speaker 3: about me the better. And I can always choose, at
6:31
Speaker 3: least today to not pay with a credit card. Right So,
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Speaker 3: I get why people do this, and I think, to
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Speaker 3: a large extent, Brian, it's because people don't really realize
6:41
Speaker 3: as this Yet another Wired article points out the amount
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Speaker 3: of data that is being collected and then how it
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Speaker 3: can potentially be used not only by the organization collecting it,
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Speaker 3: by whoever ultimately buys it from them. Because did you
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Speaker 3: read the eighty page terms of service confused that says
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Speaker 3: they're probably going to sell your data to other companies.
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Speaker 2: No, we not, and even if you did, you probably
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Speaker 2: wouldn't understand it.
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Speaker 1: So you sign up for a McDonald's loyalty program so
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Speaker 1: you get a discount on fries or whatever. And that's
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Speaker 1: the moment in time when they started collecting every single
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Speaker 1: purchase that you made. And as this article points out,
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Speaker 1: we have somebody in California who apparently, in California, you
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Speaker 1: can get the data they've collected on you. And when
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Speaker 1: we got it back, Dave five hundred and fifteen page
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Speaker 1: file on one customer.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty wild. So the article I'm going to
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Speaker 3: quote says when customers sign up for loyalty programs like
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Speaker 3: the one opportunit the McDonald's app, they might not realize
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Speaker 3: the extent to which their data is being aggregated and
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Speaker 3: using predictive models. And then again they might not realize
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Speaker 3: how that data could be sold to other third parties
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Speaker 3: who sell it to other third parties who sell out
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Speaker 3: to you, fifth parties, sixth parties, et cetera. Data brokers,
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Speaker 3: these companies behind the scenes, collecting and aggregating all this
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Speaker 3: data and building incredibly detailed profiles of you, and then
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Speaker 3: sometimes data. Even if these companies are all above board,
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Speaker 3: even if you've essentially consented to this because you've signed
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Speaker 3: up for the thing, then the data gets leaked. We've
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Speaker 3: said this so many times on your show, Brian, I
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Speaker 3: can guarantee you there's probably not a single person in
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Speaker 3: your listening audience who hasn't gotten at least one data break.
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Speaker 2: Notification oh from some company that had their data.
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Speaker 3: In many cases, they don't even know how that company
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Speaker 3: got their data because it's happened to me. It's because
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Speaker 3: of data brokers and companies like this selling your data
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Speaker 3: or leaking your data. But to dig down into this,
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Speaker 3: you know, I encourage people. I'll post the link here
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Speaker 3: in a bit on my substack. I'll link it from
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Speaker 3: LinkedIn Facebook acts all that stuff. I encourage people to
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Speaker 3: read this so you'll understand. And this is not just
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Speaker 3: a loyalty app. It's the so called free apps on
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Speaker 3: your phone. Yeah, it's the so called smart devices that
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Speaker 3: are collecting your data. So yeah, this is just from
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Speaker 3: the table this guy put together. Estimated a number of
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Speaker 3: visits during the next six weeks two point one six.
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Speaker 3: Estimated average order spend during the next six weeks thirteen
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Speaker 3: point five Yeah, four nine dollars customer attriction likelihood zero
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Speaker 3: dollars frequency monetary derived top product large diet coke, uh
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Speaker 3: top drive product, wraps chicken.
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Speaker 2: I mean, And then he goes on to explain this
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Speaker 2: in detail.
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Speaker 3: They talk to people like the Center for Democracy and Technology,
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Speaker 3: you know now based saying here, McDonald's takes data privacy
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Speaker 3: and security seriously, and we take robust steps to safeguard customer.
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Speaker 3: McDonald's spokesperson tells Wired, how many times have we talked
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Speaker 3: about data breaches on this show, Brian More, If your
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Speaker 3: listeners have gotten that letter saying your data has been.
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Speaker 1: Breached more times than I'm sure to remember.
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Speaker 3: I'm sure they do take it seriously. That doesn't mean
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Speaker 3: it won't get leaked either. Through them or through a
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Speaker 3: company they might be selling it to.
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Speaker 1: This is like five hundred and fifteen page. This guy
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Speaker 1: went to McDonald's way too many times is the one
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Speaker 1: thing I can conclude.
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Speaker 2: I mean serious, agreed.
9:50
Speaker 1: Wow, you might want to take a take some stock
9:53
Speaker 1: in your health. Oh we'll be doing that in the
9:54
Speaker 1: seven o'clock hour with Keith and George are restore wellness folks,
9:57
Speaker 1: and I'm sure they will tell you do. I don't
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Speaker 1: go to McDonald's now, Dave, don't go away, because it's
10:03
Speaker 1: got one more to talk about. Flock. I know your
10:05
Speaker 1: favorite thing or flocks. You've seen the talk station six
10:09
Speaker 1: fifty fifty five KCD talk station Brian Thomas with Dave
10:13
Speaker 1: Hatter from intrust It interest it dot Com our tech
10:16
Speaker 1: genius and Guru heed what Dave has to say, And
10:20
Speaker 1: don't go down the road to flock cameras. I guess
10:22
Speaker 1: I saw Oxford, Ohio, and I misstated it was the
10:25
Speaker 1: most recent city to get rid of flock cameras, but
10:28
Speaker 1: the first one in southwest Ohio. I guess to get
10:30
Speaker 1: rid of flock cameras. Everybody's revolting against them, the surveillance state.
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Speaker 1: People are starting to pay attention to it. And you've
10:36
Speaker 1: been on that bandwagon for a long time, Dave, And
10:37
Speaker 1: I guess it's just getting worse.
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Speaker 2: It is getting worse, Brian.
10:42
Speaker 3: But I want to go back to that last and
10:43
Speaker 3: then story and connect it back to this in a second.
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Speaker 3: So again the McDonald's dot CA from this Wired reporter
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Speaker 3: You'll see where I'm going with this. So again from
10:52
Speaker 3: the Wired article on many of the data points of
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Speaker 3: McDonald's report, when viewed individually, seem innoculous. The accumulation of
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Speaker 3: information over years creates a creepily create picture of habits
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Speaker 3: you know, blah blah blah blah, as well as it's
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Speaker 3: processing through AI can create pretty invasive and personal information
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Speaker 3: about when you're going to be there, what you do
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Speaker 3: during the day, and so forth. So that's the point
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Speaker 3: I'm always trying to make over time company excess collected
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Speaker 3: this data?
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Speaker 2: Company?
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Speaker 3: Why collect some data? Companies? E collects data. It's bought
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Speaker 3: and sold. So McDonald's or whomever has a loyalty program
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Speaker 3: might be enriching their data about you from other data sources.
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Speaker 3: All this data is everywhere, and then AI is processing it.
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Speaker 3: Do you want McDonald's selling this information to your insurance company.
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Speaker 2: So that your.
11:40
Speaker 3: Insurance company knows that you eat six quarter pounders a
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Speaker 3: day and drink thirty five diet cokes.
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Speaker 2: You think that's going to help your insurance premium.
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Speaker 3: Wow, So that's the point people often don't connect up
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Speaker 3: is that's and if you trust, go ahead.
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Speaker 1: I was just saying, that's like our autobiles collecting data
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Speaker 1: about our speed and driving habits and selling off our
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Speaker 1: insurance companies as well. One more headed data points.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, so even if you trust the company that's doing
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Speaker 3: the initial collection, again, they could leak the data. The
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Speaker 3: data could be sold to another company you don't trust,
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Speaker 3: and then they The last point I want to make
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Speaker 3: so California has a privacy law as Kentucky does now
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Speaker 3: where you can request this data and they basically have
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Speaker 3: to give it to you, and then depending on the
12:22
Speaker 3: state and the law, you might be able to demand
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Speaker 3: that they delete it. So I think we're moving in.
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Speaker 2: The right direction on this.
12:29
Speaker 3: That is, and now to get back to the flocks.
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Speaker 3: So there's another company out there signal trace. The idea
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Speaker 3: here is in addition to the capabilities of the flock cameras,
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Speaker 3: which I don't think most people really understand, and I
12:42
Speaker 3: won't go too deep down this because frankly, I find
12:45
Speaker 3: this even more disturbing than the capabilities of Flock. And
12:48
Speaker 3: you know, Flock has become the coke of this conversation. Yeah,
12:51
Speaker 3: I mean is you know a lot of people will
12:53
Speaker 3: say coke when they mean pepsi or some other type
12:56
Speaker 3: of yea coke.
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Speaker 1: Like drink, Kleenex for facial tissue, same thing.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, yes, So there are other companies that build
13:05
Speaker 3: technology very similar to Flock, and I just want to
13:07
Speaker 3: point that out because saying get rid of Flock, Okay,
13:10
Speaker 3: well we don't have Flock, Well, do you have some
13:12
Speaker 3: other type of mass surveillance technologyhot?
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Speaker 1: Well taken.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, this company is building something that ideally reads the
13:20
Speaker 3: Bluetooth signals coming off the devices in your car. So
13:24
Speaker 3: you know, you happen to ride to work in a
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Speaker 3: car pool every day, and let's say there's three other
13:27
Speaker 3: people in there. Well, their phone, their EarPods, their other
13:32
Speaker 3: they're smart watch, there are other devices that are throwing
13:35
Speaker 3: off some sort of Bluetooth signal or other type of
13:39
Speaker 3: Wi Fi RFID type of signals gets picked up and
13:43
Speaker 3: gets associated.
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Speaker 1: With that car, uniquely ident each one of those is
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Speaker 1: uniquely identifiable, right, it is.
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Speaker 3: Internally it has like a Mac address and other unique identifiers.
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Speaker 3: But you know, I'm just just real quick and I
13:57
Speaker 3: because I know we're going to run out of time.
13:59
Speaker 3: You know, you don't have to look too far to
14:00
Speaker 3: find examples of people pulled over because the license plate.
14:04
Speaker 2: Reader was wrong.
14:05
Speaker 3: You know, there's an article that wrote a very detailed
14:08
Speaker 3: and very disturbing story about how he ended up at
14:10
Speaker 3: gunpoint because he was testing a range Rover and it
14:12
Speaker 3: was reported as stolen and next thing you know, the
14:15
Speaker 3: guys surrounded by cops pointing guns at it. Here's a
14:18
Speaker 3: story from Breitbart mag gasine. A couple driving through Sherwood,
14:23
Speaker 3: Arkansas in February was stopped and coveed at gunpoint. Where
14:25
Speaker 3: are six week year olds six week old son and
14:29
Speaker 3: another child in the vehicle? Let go after police identified
14:32
Speaker 3: the confused stolen vehicle based on misreading of the license plate.
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Speaker 2: Is this has happened many times? That said, I imagine
14:41
Speaker 2: the next step.
14:42
Speaker 3: Now the smart watch you're wearing writing in the carpool,
14:45
Speaker 3: or that someone is wearing writing in the carpool with you.
14:48
Speaker 3: Somehow through all of this data aggregation and sale and
14:51
Speaker 3: identification through AI that we just talked about from the
14:54
Speaker 3: McDonald's article says, Hey, this smart watch was linked to
14:58
Speaker 3: a crime.
14:59
Speaker 2: It was in your car. At some point, your car.
15:02
Speaker 3: Drives by one of these things, the license plate reads it,
15:04
Speaker 3: and next thing you know, you're pulled over again.
15:06
Speaker 2: Wow, because that.
15:07
Speaker 3: Smart watch was associated with a murder or whatever fill
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Speaker 3: in the blank. So I'm hoping that by going back
15:14
Speaker 3: to this McDonald's thing and the data collection and the
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Speaker 3: data sale and the idea of using AI and other
15:20
Speaker 3: technologies to enrich this data filled out ever more data
15:24
Speaker 3: and link things together could potentially have you pulled over
15:28
Speaker 3: at gunpoint because some device that was in your car
15:31
Speaker 3: doesn't even belong to you. Somebody was riding in your
15:34
Speaker 3: car is now getting you pulled over.
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Speaker 1: Frightening stuff.
15:41
Speaker 3: It's it's literally pre crime, right out of Minority Report. Yeah,
15:46
Speaker 3: you know, I've been on the Internet of Things for
15:48
Speaker 3: a long time, Brian and trying to warn people how
15:50
Speaker 3: all of these devices that seem so cool and so
15:52
Speaker 3: convenient have this very large potential downside, not the least
15:57
Speaker 3: of which is at some point they could all be
15:59
Speaker 3: switched off or used in some sort of nefarious way
16:03
Speaker 3: to flood the Internet with traffic report wrong data like stucksnet.
16:07
Speaker 3: You know, we have rapidly progressed into this incredibly interconnected
16:12
Speaker 3: digital society and it is unbelievably fragile, and it's fraught
16:16
Speaker 3: with all of these issues that unless you do what
16:18
Speaker 3: I do, you can't It's difficult to understand. And I
16:22
Speaker 3: get that, but I'm just saying, folks, we have got
16:24
Speaker 3: to shed ourselves of this sort of thing. You know, Brian,
16:28
Speaker 3: these sorts of canvas were used by Russia to target
16:32
Speaker 3: things in Ukraine. They were used by Israel to target
16:35
Speaker 3: things in Iran. This goes so far beyond just well,
16:40
Speaker 3: you know, I don't like the mass surveillance, which I
16:42
Speaker 3: don't like. We have got to really get serious about
16:46
Speaker 3: defending this stuff and thinking about does this.
16:49
Speaker 1: Make sense all of this stuff? No, it doesn't. These
16:52
Speaker 1: are all finer points on why we shouldn't use these devices.
16:55
Speaker 1: Just let your default position be ludite and then move
16:58
Speaker 1: forward from there. I guess the best thing you can do.
17:01
Speaker 1: Dave Hatter, God bless you, sir. I listen to what
17:03
Speaker 1: he has to say. He's not lying, He's looking out
17:05
Speaker 1: for our collective best interest, so Leen Ludit says Dave
17:09
Speaker 1: hatter that's my boiled down summary. Dave will do this
17:11
Speaker 1: again next Friday. Tinfoil hat friend, keep up the great
17:15
Speaker 1: work and I'll recommend again LinkedIn search for Dave Hatterer
17:18
Speaker 1: to get the articles. Dave, have a great weekend, my friend.
17:22
Speaker 2: Thanks Brian, I look forward to chat with you next week.
17:25
Speaker 1: Appreciate that