Latest / Brian Thomas / Tech Friday w/ Dave Hatter - Sponsored by Intrust IT - 6/26/2026
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: At six, starting on a Friday morning, Ready to go
- 0:04Speaker 1: with some Friday tech talk with a credentialed cybersecurity consultant.
- 0:12Speaker 1: We also know him as Doomsday Dave. Dave Hatter back
- 0:16Speaker 1: with his son fifty five KRCE the talk station. Dave,
- 0:19Speaker 1: good morning, How are you?
- 0:21Speaker 2: I'm good, Gary Jeff, how are you?
- 0:23Speaker 3: You know what?
- 0:24Speaker 1: Just just ducky. I got to see got to see
- 0:28Speaker 1: my dad this week for Father's Day. Spend time with
- 0:31Speaker 1: mom and Dad. I had a fantastic trip and.
- 0:36Speaker 3: There was very little.
- 0:39Speaker 1: Probably the only time I brushed with technology was this
- 0:44Speaker 1: iPhone and of course my computer on wheels that we
- 0:48Speaker 1: drove down to Tennessee and and back. But other than
- 0:51Speaker 1: that kind of a tech free as much as you
- 0:57Speaker 1: can be, it's really difficult to be totally tech free
- 1:03Speaker 1: here in twenty twenty six in America, isn't it?
- 1:07Speaker 2: It really is, Gary Jeff, And you know that's it's
- 1:10Speaker 2: funny and we could take so many different angles here,
- 1:12Speaker 2: but here's a headline for you, since you mentioned your
- 1:15Speaker 2: computer on wheels.
- 1:16Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 1:16Speaker 2: Automotive Cybersecurity News Q one twenty six Vehicle vulnerabilities double
- 1:22Speaker 2: year on year and hackers brick thousands of cars. So
- 1:26Speaker 2: for your listeners who are not familiar with the term
- 1:28Speaker 2: brick as it applies to technology, that's what Yeah, that's
- 1:31Speaker 2: what nerds like me would say, Like when you upgrade
- 1:34Speaker 2: a computer and it won't reboot. It's bricked. It doesn't
- 1:37Speaker 2: work anymore. So you know they're they're pointing out in
- 1:41Speaker 2: this article that you're so called smart car or fill
- 1:45Speaker 2: in anything after the word car is as you mentioned,
- 1:51Speaker 2: a rolling computer on wheels essentially an Orwellian nightmare and
- 1:54Speaker 2: can potentially be remotely controlled, remote access and either a
- 2:01Speaker 2: bricked or b potentially turned into some sort of weapon.
- 2:05Speaker 2: If imagine this for a second, You're in an autonomous car.
- 2:09Speaker 2: It's taken over by hackers or a nation state actor
- 2:12Speaker 2: like the Chinese Communist Party, and they decide to tell
- 2:16Speaker 2: it to just accelerate until it can't accelerate anymore, or
- 2:19Speaker 2: jam the brakes on, or any number of things. And
- 2:21Speaker 2: I noticed probably sounds far affetched to some people. But
- 2:23Speaker 2: going back as far as I believe it was twenty fifteen,
- 2:26Speaker 2: Wired had two hackers work with a reporter and a
- 2:29Speaker 2: great Jeep Grand Cherokee, which was way less sophisticated then
- 2:33Speaker 2: than it is now and they were able to do
- 2:35Speaker 2: all kinds of things to it. It actually called a
- 2:37Speaker 2: recall or it caused a recall rather. So, you know,
- 2:43Speaker 2: as we add more and more and more technology into things.
- 2:46Speaker 2: And I think you know this Gary, Jeff, because we've
- 2:48Speaker 2: talked about it many times. You know, I spent most
- 2:50Speaker 2: of my career as a software engineer. I was a
- 2:52Speaker 2: guy that wrote software for businesses to automate stuff. Right now,
- 2:57Speaker 2: I'm not talking about smart devices and so forth. I'm
- 3:00Speaker 2: saying this business oriented software. I want to track my widgets.
- 3:05Speaker 2: You know, how can I optimize this process? That sort
- 3:07Speaker 2: of thing? Right So, I've done this for a very
- 3:09Speaker 2: long time, and you know, one of my major concerns
- 3:13Speaker 2: about all these so called smart devices again, we put
- 3:18Speaker 2: software in devices, The software itself potentially has vulnerabilities in it,
- 3:23Speaker 2: and the incentives for consumers are almost always wrong on
- 3:26Speaker 2: this stuff here, Jeff. It's not focused on your privacy,
- 3:29Speaker 2: your security, your usability, your robustness and resilience of the
- 3:36Speaker 2: device so that it will keep working even if the
- 3:38Speaker 2: software doesn't work or not. It's generally focused on speed
- 3:41Speaker 2: to market, ease of use, market share, profit collecting. As
- 3:45Speaker 2: much of your data as possible. And and my long
- 3:48Speaker 2: winded point is, again everything is now smart quote unquote
- 3:53Speaker 2: what happens when the software and it breaks and the
- 3:56Speaker 2: device doesn't work anymore just because software have issues. I
- 4:00Speaker 2: would bet you there's not a single person in your
- 4:03Speaker 2: listening audience who hasn't run into some kind of problem
- 4:06Speaker 2: with some kind of software at some point. And that's
- 4:09Speaker 2: not cyber security related. That's not a cyber attack per se.
- 4:13Speaker 2: That's just the nature of software in the fact that
- 4:16Speaker 2: it's complicated and difficult, and the more of it you add,
- 4:19Speaker 2: the more things connect with each other, the more difficult against.
- 4:23Speaker 2: But then imagine specific back doors built into it. Backdor
- 4:28Speaker 2: just meaning the software itself is designed with flaws that
- 4:31Speaker 2: can be exploited by someone else. Okay, imagine something like
- 4:36Speaker 2: the Carrington event. Have we ever talked about the Carrington
- 4:39Speaker 2: event or do you know what the Carrington event is? Scary, Jeff,
- 4:41Speaker 2: I've been onto this is a hot topic for me lately.
- 4:43Speaker 3: Uh.
- 4:43Speaker 1: You know what all I remember about the Carrington's won't
- 4:47Speaker 1: take the family on Dynasty.
- 4:49Speaker 2: They were This is a different, carrying, different carr event
- 4:53Speaker 2: back in the late eighteen hundreds. I encourage all of
- 4:55Speaker 2: your listeners to go look this up. Again, it ties
- 4:58Speaker 2: back into the smart device conversation we're having your refrigerator,
- 5:01Speaker 2: your car or whatever. Back in the late eighteen hundreds,
- 5:05Speaker 2: a solar storm hit the earth and it was so
- 5:07Speaker 2: strong it actually set telegraph wires on fire and burned
- 5:12Speaker 2: out a lot of telegraph stations. Now, again, this is
- 5:15Speaker 2: not something I'm making up. This is well docued. In fact,
- 5:18Speaker 2: the Smithsonian not too long ago did an article on
- 5:20Speaker 2: this talking about the potential risk to society as we
- 5:24Speaker 2: add more and more tech.
- 5:25Speaker 1: And we weren't leaning on technology the way we are
- 5:29Speaker 1: today obviously, and the eighteen hundreds when this occurred, but
- 5:33Speaker 1: it's still as you mentioned, set telegraph wires, it limited
- 5:37Speaker 1: our ability to communicate as best we could back then.
- 5:41Speaker 1: So and that imagine that happening today.
- 5:46Speaker 2: Bingo, you're literally making my point. Imagine today, whether it's
- 5:51Speaker 2: the banking system that's all digital and all tech based,
- 5:54Speaker 2: the power grid, everything that you're doing on a daily basis. Right,
- 5:58Speaker 2: you mentioned it's hard to get away from ten. And
- 6:00Speaker 2: that's my point. I'm not against this stuff, right, I've
- 6:03Speaker 2: made a whole career out of it. My issue is
- 6:06Speaker 2: we are adding this stuff into our society at an
- 6:10Speaker 2: increasingly rapid pace with little to no thought about what
- 6:14Speaker 2: happens when it breaks, whether it's a solar storm like
- 6:17Speaker 2: the Carrington event, again well documented. I encourage people to
- 6:20Speaker 2: go look this up for themselves. And this is a
- 6:23Speaker 2: scenario where again, what are you gonna do about the sun?
- 6:26Speaker 2: Sun's gonna do what the Sun's gonna do, right, whether
- 6:29Speaker 2: it's an EMP attack with low grade nuclear weapons that
- 6:33Speaker 2: creat an electromagnetic pulse that potentially knocks this stuff out,
- 6:36Speaker 2: also well documented. I'm not coming up with this stuff
- 6:41Speaker 2: in my fever dreams at night. Carry Jeff. There are
- 6:44Speaker 2: people much smarter than me, concerned about national security, concerned
- 6:48Speaker 2: about critical infrastructure, who have been warning about this stuff
- 6:52Speaker 2: for a long time and talking about not let's not
- 6:55Speaker 2: have technology, because that's not my point. My point is
- 6:58Speaker 2: let's slow down and let's build technology that is robust
- 7:02Speaker 2: and resilient and can withstand these kinds of things so
- 7:06Speaker 2: that if and when when were to happen, whether it's
- 7:08Speaker 2: an adversarnation state or the Sun just decides to get cranky,
- 7:12Speaker 2: our entire society doesn't suddenly get I shut off.
- 7:15Speaker 3: I hate it.
- 7:15Speaker 1: When the sun gets cranky. Before Joe Strecker gets cranky,
- 7:20Speaker 1: he's telling us to break. When we come back, I
- 7:23Speaker 1: want to talk about flock cameras, and I want to
- 7:25Speaker 1: talk about surveillance pricing, which I didn't even know about.
- 7:35Speaker 1: We're talking with Dave Hatter on a Friday tech talk
- 7:37Speaker 1: segment on fifty.
- 7:38Speaker 3: Five KOC the talk station, and.
- 7:41Speaker 1: I mentioned before the break Dave flock cameras and surveillance pricing,
- 7:47Speaker 1: surveillance pricing. But also I just saw this headline in
- 7:52Speaker 1: this Toughew cent Sinister in car spy tech that can
- 7:56Speaker 1: kill your engine will be mandatory next year under a
- 7:59Speaker 1: Biden policy, sparking major privacy fears. But yeah, I don't
- 8:05Speaker 1: understand this, and I don't understand why it can't be
- 8:09Speaker 1: reversed under President Trump.
- 8:12Speaker 2: Well, I agree with you. Obviously, anything that was done
- 8:17Speaker 2: by an executive order could be undone by an executive order.
- 8:21Speaker 2: Now I don't know in that particular case of that.
- 8:24Speaker 2: I think that was legislation passed by Congress, because if
- 8:27Speaker 2: I recall correctly, Thomas Massey actually was one of the
- 8:31Speaker 2: people that was against it. But I would just say
- 8:36Speaker 2: that scared Jeff whether Congress passes a law that says
- 8:40Speaker 2: that your car can be remotely disabled and let's say
- 8:44Speaker 2: like a chase with the police or whatever. Yeah, this
- 8:48Speaker 2: concept is not new, and it goes back to what
- 8:50Speaker 2: I was sending the last segment. Anything that is quote
- 8:53Speaker 2: smart unquote has software in it that's what makes it smart,
- 8:57Speaker 2: and then it generally connects to the internet. Somehows right,
- 9:01Speaker 2: anything that is smart. There's a guy named Miko Opponent.
- 9:04Speaker 2: He's a well known cybersecurity expert, wrote a book called
- 9:07Speaker 2: If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable. And I've got a blog
- 9:10Speaker 2: on my substack all about the Internet of things and
- 9:14Speaker 2: why this is a problem. Again, I covered a lot
- 9:16Speaker 2: of it in the last segment. But if you have
- 9:18Speaker 2: software in something, right, that software can have vulnerabilities in it,
- 9:23Speaker 2: not on purpose, just simply because human beings made it,
- 9:26Speaker 2: or there can be purposeful vulnerabilities. And as we rely
- 9:30Speaker 2: on electronics to make things work, you know your seventy
- 9:34Speaker 2: eight dollge power wagon just had a carburetor and probably
- 9:36Speaker 2: no computer at all. Right, now your car is a
- 9:40Speaker 2: rolling computer full of computers and sensors tracking your every move.
- 9:43Speaker 2: I encourage all your listeners go look up Mozilla, the
- 9:46Speaker 2: people that make the Firefox web browser, and Mozilla privacy
- 9:49Speaker 2: not included. It's helpful for any of this IoT stuff
- 9:53Speaker 2: as it relates to privacy. But they did a big
- 9:55Speaker 2: expose a couple of years ago on new cars and
- 9:58Speaker 2: how they are surveilling you, and you would not even
- 10:01Speaker 2: imagine who are they given that information to? You? Are
- 10:04Speaker 2: they giving it to your insurance company? But back to
- 10:07Speaker 2: your point, you know, if the car is electronic, and
- 10:11Speaker 2: back to my earlier point about the Carrington event or EMP,
- 10:14Speaker 2: a strong electromagnetic pulse will burn out the electronics. So
- 10:19Speaker 2: whether it's a cop could pull up and potentially send
- 10:23Speaker 2: a signal that disables your car, or they hit your
- 10:25Speaker 2: vehicle with an EMP gun or a solar flare, or
- 10:28Speaker 2: bad software. As our vehicles become basically rolling computers. Like
- 10:32Speaker 2: you said in the first segment, this is all very
- 10:36Speaker 2: doable and as you might guess, I have a lot
- 10:39Speaker 2: of concerns about this. But it's not just your car, Gary, Jeff,
- 10:42Speaker 2: It's anything that has technology like this in it and
- 10:46Speaker 2: relies on chips. But I'll go a step further. Have
- 10:49Speaker 2: you are you familiar with the idea of right to
- 10:50Speaker 2: repair and Digital Rights and Management Act or milan em ACT.
- 10:55Speaker 3: Yeah, a little bit. You and I discussed it in.
- 10:57Speaker 2: The past, so you know, this just gets into the
- 11:01Speaker 2: idea that you buy a new car or anything new
- 11:04Speaker 2: tractor from John Deere. They've gotten a lot of grief
- 11:07Speaker 2: over there. Well, who really owns it? You know, it's
- 11:10Speaker 2: a mechanical device of some sort, But now that it's
- 11:14Speaker 2: full of software, that software is someone else's intellectual property,
- 11:18Speaker 2: and they'll do things like, oh, hey, those heated seats, Yeah,
- 11:21Speaker 2: you can't really use those unless you want to pay
- 11:23Speaker 2: a subscription fee. We'll give you the first month free,
- 11:26Speaker 2: but we're going to remotely disable your heated seat and
- 11:28Speaker 2: your heated steering wheel unless you pay a subscription or worse, well, yeah,
- 11:33Speaker 2: you know, you don't really own that car that the
- 11:35Speaker 2: CEO Ford was just recently talking about the idea of
- 11:38Speaker 2: right to repair. Yeah, you know, you really shouldn't work
- 11:40Speaker 2: on your own car. It's too complicated for you now.
- 11:43Speaker 2: And yeah, we're like John Deere. And again I don't
- 11:48Speaker 2: remember all the specifics of this, but I believe they've
- 11:50Speaker 2: been sued several times because people buy these very expensive
- 11:53Speaker 2: tractors and then they want to work on them themselves,
- 11:55Speaker 2: and they're like, yeah, sorry, you can't do that because
- 11:57Speaker 2: that's our intellectual property. And you can't repair that expensive
- 12:01Speaker 2: tractor that you think you own. And I'm not picking
- 12:05Speaker 2: on John Deere specifically, or Ford or anyone. I'm saying
- 12:07Speaker 2: that as we add technology into devices. You know, I'm
- 12:12Speaker 2: old enough like you, Garret Je. Have to remember when
- 12:14Speaker 2: you bought a toaster, you put toast in it. You
- 12:17Speaker 2: push the thing down and heated up. It made toast.
- 12:19Speaker 2: It didn't need to connect to the internet. It didn't
- 12:21Speaker 2: need to report you to your insurance company. It didn't
- 12:25Speaker 2: need to have a subscription fee to let you make
- 12:27Speaker 2: dark toast the way you like it versus well, you
- 12:30Speaker 2: can only use light toast and make light toast unless
- 12:32Speaker 2: you pay the subscription fee. You know. Oh your coffee maker. Yeah, sorry,
- 12:37Speaker 2: you can only get six cups out of it unless
- 12:39Speaker 2: you pay the subscription fee. Oh wait, my whole business
- 12:42Speaker 2: was hacked and burned down because someone hacked the smart
- 12:44Speaker 2: coffee maker in my office, got to my servers and
- 12:47Speaker 2: encrypted all my data and I'm out of business. I
- 12:50Speaker 2: know this stuff sounds far fetched people, and I know
- 12:52Speaker 2: it's hard to connect the dots for people.
- 12:54Speaker 3: It's dame.
- 12:55Speaker 1: It's all just as horrifying as the thought that people
- 12:59Speaker 1: want the government to control every aspect of your life.
- 13:02Speaker 1: That's that's just as bad. If the software is controlling
- 13:08Speaker 1: every element of your life and what you can do
- 13:10Speaker 1: and what you can't do.
- 13:13Speaker 2: Go ahead, and software software has bugs, it can be hacked. Yeah,
- 13:17Speaker 2: So it's not just the control, it's the risk of
- 13:20Speaker 2: this stuff is creating and again the focus on it,
- 13:23Speaker 2: the people making it is wrong for you as a consumer,
- 13:26Speaker 2: and that's my real issue.
- 13:27Speaker 1: At six forty eight, we're talking with Dave Hadter. One
- 13:29Speaker 1: more segment to go on Friday Tech Talk. As we
- 13:31Speaker 1: continue on fifty five KRC, the talk station.
- 13:35Speaker 3: July fourth, twenty twenty six, the two hundred.
- 13:38Speaker 1: And fifth o'clock here, very little time, two minutes on
- 13:42Speaker 1: flock cameras.
- 13:43Speaker 3: Why should we be concerned?
- 13:45Speaker 2: Well, let me just give you one headline, not a
- 13:47Speaker 2: one off. More Colorado stop by police after data errors
- 13:51Speaker 2: triggered flock alerts. A seventy six year old grandmother is
- 13:54Speaker 2: among the Colorado ons repeatedly pulled over after data errors
- 13:58Speaker 2: triggered inaccurate flock cameras. So this fits into the same
- 14:01Speaker 2: bucket you mentioned the surveillance pricing. We've been talking about
- 14:04Speaker 2: IoT problems with these things. Who in your listening audience
- 14:09Speaker 2: has not used software that did not work correctly or
- 14:12Speaker 2: that had bad data that caused it to work in correctly.
- 14:15Speaker 2: You know there are documented examples. I'm not making this
- 14:18Speaker 2: stuff up. And again from the same article, if you've
- 14:20Speaker 2: got an O or a zero on your Colorado license plate,
- 14:23Speaker 2: good luck out there. You might be a suspect and
- 14:25Speaker 2: not even know it. There's another story Kyle Dallisman, a
- 14:28Speaker 2: driver who kept getting pulled over after flock cameras alerted
- 14:31Speaker 2: police to a driver where a warrant was in the area.
- 14:33Speaker 2: He didn't have a warrant, but his plate wrongly entered
- 14:36Speaker 2: a hotless database used by flock cameras and he couldn't
- 14:39Speaker 2: get off the list. And then they have other people
- 14:41Speaker 2: experiencing similar problems. Yeah, I'm not a fan of this stuff.
- 14:46Speaker 2: We do not have them in Fort Wright and won't
- 14:48Speaker 2: have them in Fort Right as long as I'm involved.
- 14:53Speaker 2: I'm against the Orwellians surveillance state we're building, not only
- 14:57Speaker 2: because I'm against it in principle, but because this stuff
- 15:00Speaker 2: is immature. It doesn't work right. Here's an example of it.
- 15:05Speaker 2: It's full of software. The software can be hacked. We've
- 15:08Speaker 2: talked about all these different things again, you know, Gary, Jeff,
- 15:11Speaker 2: I'm a technology guy. I'm not against this stuff per se.
- 15:15Speaker 2: I'm against the way it's being implemented. I'm against the
- 15:18Speaker 2: speed with which it's being done. I'm against the fact
- 15:20Speaker 2: that it's not focused on resilience and robustness. SISA, the
- 15:24Speaker 2: Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, just came out recently warning
- 15:28Speaker 2: that you can expect adversarial nations like China, Russia, Iran
- 15:33Speaker 2: to knock out our infrastructure thanks to all of this
- 15:36Speaker 2: technology now, and not to stop thinking about defending it,
- 15:40Speaker 2: but to focus on resilience or what are you going
- 15:42Speaker 2: to do when it goes down?
- 15:44Speaker 1: Coming from me, coming up on our two hundred and
- 15:46Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary as a country, I harkened back to one
- 15:50Speaker 1: of the founders who said, those who sacrifice liberty for
- 15:54Speaker 1: security will have neither. It's as old as America, this
- 15:59Speaker 1: idea that you're just talking about there, surveillance pricing. Maryland
- 16:05Speaker 1: passed a law banning this and grocery stores and other places,
- 16:09Speaker 1: and just a real brief description of what surveillance pricing is.
- 16:14Speaker 2: Well, this is all interconnected, Garry Jeff. There's so much
- 16:16Speaker 2: information being collected about you now, from the apps on
- 16:19Speaker 2: your phone, from your car, from your computer, from everything
- 16:22Speaker 2: that you do online, that they're able to say, okay,
- 16:25Speaker 2: it's entirely possible. You know, dynamic pricing has been around
- 16:28Speaker 2: for a while. You live in a different zip code
- 16:30Speaker 2: than me. Your zip code appears to be more affluent
- 16:33Speaker 2: than buying, so you get a different price than me. Well,
- 16:36Speaker 2: now they're taking it to the next step surveillance pricing,
- 16:38Speaker 2: where because they're able to surveil you at such a
- 16:42Speaker 2: granular double of detail now by your data from all
- 16:45Speaker 2: these different places, they know that you are more capable
- 16:48Speaker 2: of paying more than me, not just because of your
- 16:49Speaker 2: zip code. They know that you've expressed an interest in
- 16:52Speaker 2: this thing before, you make this much money at your job,
- 16:57Speaker 2: You've bought something like this before, so you're more likely
- 16:59Speaker 2: to pay more than I would, so you get a
- 17:01Speaker 2: different price. And if you think about it, as we
- 17:04Speaker 2: move into an era of things like digital price tags
- 17:07Speaker 2: and stores, you walk into your local supermarket and now
- 17:10Speaker 2: instead of somebody with a price gun going around it's
- 17:13Speaker 2: all digital, literally based on you walk them through the
- 17:16Speaker 2: door with your phone. They can identify you and say, oh,
- 17:19Speaker 2: it's Gary Jeff. He'll spend five dollars more for this
- 17:22Speaker 2: pound of coffee because he's a high roller versus you know,
- 17:25Speaker 2: old Doomsday Dave over there, who's washing out the aluminum
- 17:29Speaker 2: folder we use again. So that's what surveillance pricing is about,
- 17:33Speaker 2: and all of this technology is leading us there. I'm
- 17:36Speaker 2: glad Maryland bandit.
- 17:37Speaker 1: I feel better about that because I am notoriously cheap