Are All Hackers Sociopaths? Why Bad Actors Exploit Tragedy for Personal Gain

Welcome everyone to another Petronella Technology Group podcast. Unfortunately, Craig is not here with us today. He's super busy, but we do have myself and BJ. It's the last day of March in 2022.

Tomorrow is April Fools Day!,

is it though, or you just messing with me?

How could Craig be busy. It's not like there's cyber fires all over the world. There's no cyber or anything. It's not like it's like taking every news headline these days

Speaking of news headlines. Pretty much everything that we talk about is interesting, but this one goes along with my whole saying that hackers have no shame. they will use a tragedy to their advantage, just like any sort of sociopath out there. And I think actually it might be even worse because if this was occurring in real life, it would maybe be harder for some people, but I feel because it's through the computer and they don't see the person.

Let's this use the term sociopath, right? Cause that's kinda what it fits, right? That's the mold it fits when just attacking people for no reason that don't deserve your harm. So when you think of it, that way, a sociopath in real life, has to worry about being seen, being caught, facing an adversary that's more strong than they are so not wanting to attack, but when you take a sociopath and put them in a cyber space, they feel really empowered because. They don't have to worry about some of those things that they worry about in real life. So then you have an outlet for an extreme type of sociopath that's a suppressed sociopath, right? Cause in real life they can't do their sociopathic activities. So they've suppressed them. And so cyberspace gives them a whole new outlook. And that's a dangerous situation, so this is eye-opening. This is a good lesson learned like that headline that you brought up, that hackers are exploiting, the situation in Ukraine with phishing attempts go lower and stuff From a psychological perspective, because we know that. When you consider hacking and cyber crime, you have to consider the actual event and you have to consider the psychology of it. Just like they use social engineering for their attacks. You have to do the same. You have to put a mirror there and look at the hackers from that same viewpoint, this is eye opening for people that feel like, oh, it's not going to happen to me. Or, oh, cyberspace is not as dangerous as people act like it is, the threats aren't as real as they act like they are or anything like that. Consider the fact that, they're exploiting ruthlessly and without conscious. It seems the tragedy of others they're exploiting it and using it. Before a launching pad for cyber attacks, and these people don't deserve their harm. But they're doing it anyway.

Yeah. And another thing too, is that I don't think all these people would even necessarily be sociopath, but they're able to dissociate from the people because they don't have contact with them. So even if a person's not a full fledged sociopath, they may be confined. Any sort of excuse that they can come up with, so if there's Russian hackers that are doing this to people, they can be like, oh, I'm doing it for, mother Russia.

Yeah. All humans are probably made up of this. Potential for different types of behaviors and mindsets, but it's a matter of which one you choose to resonate with and, you choose to exemplify, but people don't usually do their dirt out in broad daylight. They usually do it under the cover of darkness. And so that's the danger with cyberspace. You hear about horror stories from the deep web and stuff, because that part of the psyche that is willing to do the dirt has a place in the fiber space,

exactly. I think this is important for listeners to hear too. I'll link this in the description, but according to Google's threat analysis group or tag one actor is impersonating military personnel to extort money for rescuing relatives in Ukraine. That's just disgusting. And it says the over the past two weeks tag is observed three, particularly active criminal groups trying to monetize the war in Ukraine. So just be careful, especially if something is this heartfelt sob story, just don't buy,

don't click on anything

you did not ask for an email. you get an, I am, if there's a post.

Yeah. Even if you did, I'm not going to name the eye doctor because this can happen to anyone. But listen, I had an experience where I had a legitimate appointment with an eye doctor, but. I received a correspondence for an appointment that was not my correct time. So somehow someone became privy to the information that I was a client or a patient. And that I had called, it was on their books somewhere. And then I was fished, a phishing attempt, came with a link to click on. And I normally would have thought, oh, this is fine to click on because I legitimately had an appointment with this eye doctor. But no, it wasn't the right link. It wasn't good. So that's a hard reality to face because we don't want to live in a world like that where you can't even click on something. Your eye doctor sends you, even though you have an appointment. That's just such a yuck world, but listen, that's where we are right now. And that doesn't mean that's where we'll be a year from now, but that's where we are right now. So right now we have to take caution and right now it's best to err on the side of caution and I just don't click, It's quite apparent that this is not sustainable. This type of an environment is not sustainable. So obviously there's high hopes for what can emerge from cybersecurity and even from a quantum cybersecurity perspective where there's not just telemetry, which is normal cybersecurity, but depth perception in the telemetry where things can get really interesting as far as, AI's ability to track and monitor and, Analyze and categorize threats correctly. That possibility is on the horizon. But in the meantime, no click is definitely the best route.

Yes, exactly. No click. When in doubt, don't click, make sure you hover over the link to see if it's a real link and don't use the link that they send you. For example, with your eye doctor, right? So if you get a link or a message from your eye doctor, and it's click here to review your appointment, and they give you the wrong appointment. They could know that it's the wrong time. And then they're just trying to beat you with it.

That's a good idea.

Wait, that's on my appointment. Let me check.

I'm going to click and correct this. Yeah, we're talking about psychology in hacking and believe me. That's what they do also. They consider how will a normal person react in a situation like this? And they prey upon that information and they use it against us, and so it's very important to consider the psychological aspect

and they probably do split testing. Craig is real big on split testing, and as he should be, it's good to experiment and see. Which works the best and you better believe these hackers are doing the same thing. So if they're inside that computer, they know the date and time of your appointment, so maybe they're like, let me try this. Let me just tweak this a little bit and see what reaction I can get.

People don't understand that every good thing has, it's a shadow, that emerges. And technology is wonderful for humanity that the doors that's opening for us are remarkable, there's also a flip side to that. So obviously they're using malware in an automated fashion. And we used to think that when it came to phishing emails, we could sort them. Usually when you got an email. And it wasn't incorrect English, right? That used to be a red flag that everyone pretty much, collectively identified as a red flag. That's not necessarily the case anymore because there are a lot of AI driven writing tools that can be used, and. I've seen a definite reduction in the amount of identifiable language barrier issues, definite reduction lately. We can't use our old intelligence and think that it's going to stay that way because, as good things evolve, so does the shadow, right?

Yeah, exactly. Anything can be taken advantage of, and I guess the slippery slope fallacy, a lot of people call it, but the thing is. You do have to think about these things, anything that can be positive can usually be turned into a negative, unfortunately,

so the more of us that band together and decide that we want to have a secure cyberspace, it just we want to have a good world free of war and a peaceful place and stuff. The more of us. Are in agreement about these things, the less momentum flows to the bad guys, the bad actors, there's only so much momentum available in the world, right? And so the more of us that take that momentum and use it for good, the less likely that these negatives are very sustainable.

I just saw something else. So I was on that other site and I got more cyber security news about Russia. All right. So it says Russian aviation authority switches to paper after losing 65 TVs.

Oh boy, she'll say a whole lot,

a lot of data They suffered a major cyber attack on saturday.

Wow. This whole situation is a ticking time bomb of its own.

that's crazy. That is so going on right now. I remember my boyfriend was. We're talking to his dad about it, he's real big on history. He's a history professor. And they're like, this is going to be over in two days, by the weekend, I think it started on Thursday or something. That's what it was going to be over. And the fact that it's not

oh, it's so complicated. The world is a complicated place. Isn't it just like cyber spaces. So is the world. There's just so much out there and there's news outlets and there's so many question marks, there's so many question marks everywhere, onto places where there's no question marks is phenomenon. The cosmic kind, There are no question marks there. So factual information that is outside of the ability of human kind to manipulate is the fact that there are a lot of solar flares going on these days. So this is important from a cybersecurity perspective, because the sun has just now entering a new cycle. It's new 11 year cycle, but at this transition time of the 11 year cycle, It's a very important time. The last time we were in this type of a transition of psychos was a major solar flare, major. And it affected technology big time. Now technology being so much more advanced, the impact it would make. Now we have so much more in place than we did in the fifties that now, the effect would be who knows what? Like huge. There's been a lot of solar flares lately, and they're really gaining momentum. So one sunspot alone, let off 17 flares the other day. Cue coronal mass injections, which is a whole different category because these are eruptions of charged particles that are leaving the sun and into space. Usually the magnetic field of earth will prevent them from really interacting much with us. But we know there's been anomalies in the magnetic field as well. Two of these sea MES Are supposedly hitting earth today, ironically. And they're meeting each other in space because of the difference in speed of the CME. So they're meeting each other It's very important as Craig has talked about before to have an even power supply for your devices, especially if you're a business that has. A big network with a lot of IOT connected devices is very important to have an even power supply. And so that's a ups device, right? So two parts to this. Not only seeing the increase in solar flight. The quantity and the magnitude. Now we're seeing some new, not new, again, it's happened before, but I guess it's not happened recently. Solar tsunamis. And this is this week as well. There's a lot going on with the sun. having a ups device right now is becoming very important because uneven power. Affect your networking. A lot of ways, it can also damage your devices because your device is neat. If you imagine like your human heart do you want it to spike up and down drastically? Or do you want it to be more even, it's the same thing for your devices. You want to try to give them more even power. The life of your device can be affected by uneven power supplies. So two parts to this, it's definitely factual that the sun is becoming very active. So with that in mind, ups devices are very important along those lines. So is the configuration of your ups device because we saw an article about a large number of ups devices being remotely hacked into unfortunately. So ups devices definitely look into them at this time. Configure them correctly and make sure you have appropriate cybersecurity in place, because it's very important to have, but it is another pathway for bad actors to attempt to access your network.

And what's interesting too. I shared this story with you. I was at the summer about the solar flares, the video on it. The solar players actually caused a. Voting discrepancy. it was somewhere in Europe. Maybe Poland, I could be wrong about the details. But basically a solar flare hit and it caused a switch in the voting thing to switch from Idaho.

That can happen often.

Yeah. So because of that, it added an additional 4,000 votes to be cast in a place where there weren't even 4,000 voters, you're like, what is this? And the only thing they could think of, it was something with the numbers and the, where it switched. And it caused

the moral of the story here guys is that the solar flares can absolutely affect things on earth. We learned that back in the fifties, when a solar flare that was so big, it was called the Carrington event, but it was so big that machines were running on electrified air that had to be unplugged from power supply. they were charged by the electrified air. And so they're being plugged into a power supply. It was an overload of power. And so they had to be unplugged and even unplugged they were working. now we're in a whole new age, depending on how you want to look at it, AI has always been around to a certain degree. But it's to a much higher degree these days. We're in a different time now than we were in the fifties. Who knows, we have a big enough solar flare where to hit machines, start operating without needing to be plugged in. We've got a whole new set of question marks. And it could be good ones. We couldn't shift from shadowy question marks too bolding question marks. That would be a good thing. note to self everyone, solar flares can absolutely impact what happens on earth and they can absolutely impact your machinery and your equipment to look into it, ups supply. And by all means, look into it. If you need help configuring it, get. A cyber expert that can help get it configured correctly. Because the last thing you want to do is try to protect your network and devices and actually open it to new vulnerabilities.

It's crazy. Even airplanes and spaceships, especially spaceships, they're blasting past the. atmosphere, so they're not protected as protected. So there's more of a chance of something hitting the switch, flipping it over so they have redundancy, multiple redundancies set up in the ships in on the airplanes.

We lose sight of the fact that the human species is still dependent on nature and phenomenon of nature. We lose sight of that because we have so many advancements. We have houses and cars and airplanes. So sometimes we start to feel detached from the natural environment, the sun and the moon and the stars, the air things like. We feel like we can just, do whatever we want to it and it's going to be okay. These types of situations that we find ourselves in now with a son that's very active right now. And it's ironic because we're actually in a period where it would be expected to be inactive because we're in this possible grand solar minimum time, but it's becoming very active. So we're definitely in odd times from a solar perspective. But that reminds us that we are still very attached to that natural background. We are not removed from those as I shared with you, I've heard a mathematician and I thought it was brilliant. I never heard this analogy before. I would fight him if I could remember his name, but I don't remember it. But he said that a computer is basically lightning in a rock. And if you think of. What is the computer made of it's made of natural products, that they need to source from the earth, different materials and what power is it? What makes it process, what makes it spin and process? It's some type of active force that's readily available in the cosmos. We didn't create that active force. It's just readily available to be tapped into. Internet message was sent. Yes, someone created the framework to send those messages, but they did not create the fact that the message could be sent upon this signal. That signal was not created. That signal has always been, and we're getting reminded of our attachment to the natural background in events like this, with this very active sun that we're now seeing. Your technology has definitely not separate from that. That's a good reminder for everyone that your technology is not separate from the natural universe. It's actually very much a part of it.

That's a really good point. This might sound a little crazy. I have not seen avatar, so people are like, oh, avatar, but if you think about it the internet is really just almost mirroring the mycelium network in a way. We can't see it. We can't see the internet. It's not like with the mycelium network, we see the roots.

Yeah, it's looking at a strike of lightning. Have you ever seen it, picture that as the internet that's the, what the mycelium network is. It's the 1.618, right? That goes throughout all creation, but it's there. And the internet signal we don't see, but. There's a debate on who supposedly started the internet or created it. There's debate on when that first message was successfully set, but whoever sent it. They had knowledge of this signal that was available to send messages on, they didn't invent the signal nor did they create it. They just had awareness of the signals existence. And then they figured out a way to build upon that signal. But it's a good time for us all to remember that signal was there. We discovered it, but we didn't create it and it's still there and we still use it every day in our computing. And we haven't made aware of it. And so we should be aware of it at this time, because that signal is experiencing some anomalies. So that's a good time to really pay attention. I never really took it seriously. Craig's always been preaching about ups. He's actually really a authority on the figure on the topic because he, I have identified for companies before the actually an uneven power supply was the source of their problems with their technology behaving. If their technology didn't always work right. Or, it didn't function the way it was supposed to. He, a lot of time was able to pinpoint the problem to uneven power supply. He's written a lot of articles on ups and the need for ups because of uneven power supply. A lot of times it could be a root problem. No matter how good your equipment is and how good your networking team is and your it architects. If you don't have an even power supply, if it's getting shoddy power and sometimes it's getting a burst that's way too high. And then sometimes it's getting away nearly enough. Yeah. It's uneven. If you're going to flat iron your hair, do you want it to go 500 degrees and then 20 degrees? Or do you want it to stay even? It doesn't matter how pretty your equipment is and how well you network your stuff together. If it doesn't have an even power supply. It's going to be sporadic and it's not going to behave properly.

Now that's a really good point.

Yeah, we forget about the backbone of the internet, which is that signal itself. And it is connected to power of the cosmic kind, solar flares, solar winds, all these things affect the way our technology operates.

Right. And a lot of times we take it for granted to the us, even there. Hey Blake. How's it going?

Gosh, it's a busy,

blake, you're just a technical guy all the way around. But we were just talking about uneven power supply because Craig's always been a real big I picture him as a power supply evangelist. He had experiences before where companies having problems with their equipment and their technology not working. And he pinpointed it to power supply problems, uneven power supply. Have you ever seen anything in your experience where power supply has definitely affected, the way a network functions properly?

Not a network, but obviously power draws a lot to do with everything electronic. For example, in my world, my real world when I bought an X-Box, I lost the power for when I moved and there was a special type of X-Box called. That is required because it has to draw a certain amount of power from theoutlet, and harness that power in a way that the Xbox uses it. The other plug worked and it plugged into the machine and it was designed for the same type of port, but over a certain period of time, apparently from my understanding, the Xbox would just cease to work.

Yeah, I've experienced that. How you get when you get a new phone, especially a nice phone. It comes with a special cord for that phone. And then I like everyone else probably has had something happen in how to run out and get a replacement cord. And sometimes we'd hit up the dollar tree or the dollar store and they have a little $5 Ford and I've done that myself, but I've definitely known. That doing that has then brought on issues with the device before too long.

I started upgrading my life and started using a USBC adapter. It's a wall outlet to a USB-C and then a USBC to an ad phone, a lightning charger. Because that charges the phone. 10 times faster, versus a normal USPA.

Why?

Because of the power draw for USBC. So I was able to supply more Watts

must be a cleaner power or two then if it can do that.

Yeah. Also think about this from the apple world. If you buy a 15 inch back book, Or a larger display laptop. They give you a larger power supply. Versus if you buy a smaller laptop, a smaller power spot same thing with iPads and iPhones. if you buy an iPad, they give you a little bit larger power supply, versus if you buy an iPhone, they give you no power spot at this point. But anyways, it's able to pull and push more power so I can charge my phone. I've got a battery pack for my phone. That's an apple designed double battery life. It gives me about 48 hours of battery capability, video streaming capabilities. But anyways, now I can charge them both at the same time. So it'll charge one battery, they'll charge an extra one. I can get 48 hours of battery from both devices. It takes probably about three hours to charge them both in Thai.

Wow. That is a really interesting point. Do you have different power cords and power boxes, because they require different types of power, different levels of power. And I never thought about that until you said that. And I think about my wearable tech that I use, I have smart glasses. I have smart watches. They use a different power supply altogether. If I look at my glasses, it doesn't plug in. It attaches to the friends and it's four dots, four gold dots and they had attached to four gold lines. And so obviously it needs maybe a smaller current of power, but spread to the right areas maybe. And the same thing with my smart watch, it has for circle dots around a circle that just attaches to the back of the wash, it just magnetizes on to it,

yeah. Yeah. I Think about this too, even a broad, right? I don't know if you guys have traveled abroad, that there's different travel adapters, for example, in the UK, they have different outlets in Europe. They're different. And New Zealand, they have different olives and Australia. They have different outlets. And of course in the states and those all supply different amps or wattage's. That's the reason why travel adapters with surge protectors exist. You're able to convert please don't quote me on this, but I think it's 240 wide device to 140 volt outlet. Or something like that.

Even with my microphone, I don't know when I got the new microphone extra special USB cord of some sort. I'm not sure all the details, but I would actually use the wrong chord thinking it was the right chord, but my microphone wasn't working because it wasn't getting the right amount of power to it.

Yeah. And if you can hear that sound in the background, that's my refrigerator. So yeah, I think I need a ups for my house. I think I'm going to look into getting one at home.

The surge protector.

yeah, the uneven power supply so that it regulates your power, like a conductor of an opera or something, it's regulating power and keeping your everything level of power and not avoiding the bursts and the dips.

Not only does it distribute power, but also some UPS's have a backup battery capabilities, if, for example, you have a certain watt backup battery. Let's just say, for example, you have a computer that's drawing 140 watt hours and you have a backup battery best designed. For easy math, a thousand watt hours, you would literally be able to use your computer or charge your computer. The math is really funky, but let's just say you had a constant draw, 100 Watts and you had a thousand, a lot backup battery. A hundred Watts per hour. You'd be able to use that device for 10 hours.

Oh, that's a big deal in an emergency situation,

that's what a lot of it, whenever we go on site and they have a server rack there's always on the rack. There's always a backup battery and yeah, it's designed to keep the servers running for as long as possible so that where there's no interruptions at all, and usually they're. For anywhere from five to seven hours, seven hours or be an extreme outage seven plus hours of being extreme outage, usually designed to keep the servers running for at least seven hours.

Wow. That's pretty interesting. That's a very eyeopening and we really need to start looking at the powers as a species, we're always guilty of rushing to the reward and not diligently traveling the journey. we love our convenience of our devices, but let's not neglect the power. That powers, these devices, and keeping that power clean and keeping that power level, and regulated and all that. That's very important.

Have you seen those new solar phone chargers that are a little backup? Yeah. You set it up in the sunlight and it's charged. And you can run your device and charge your device from it. And then whenever the battery dies, you just put it in the Sonic.

We need to get some solar batteries for our boat. We don't have any on our boat right now, but those are really helpful.

That's good advice for our listeners too, to start just thinking about what your power supply is and we talked about cyber hygiene, power hygiene as well, making sure that you're paying attention to what, the actual foundational layer of the internet, the backbone, the power itself, that powers all these devices.

It can be annoying obviously to have to reset stuff, your devices and your hairdryer, that always has a reset button. Not that I use one, cause my hair is already too big, but it can be annoying to figure it out, once you realize what it's for it's going to keep. And advice from frying or blowing up. You're not blowing up your house But what was it that caused the fire that Jonathan had to put out? Was it something that the uneven power source?

no, he forgot to flip the switch. Something was set to receive a certain amount of power and he didn't flip the switch and he kept it at that same amount and then it got up. So yeah, it was that's exactly what it was. It was a burst of power that was too strong. Yeah, Erin. Exactly. I said no, but then as I cleaned it, I was like, wait a minute. That's exactly what I'm explaining didn't happen by accident. It was user error, but because Jonathan didn't flip the switch and tell it to bring less power in, it let too much current in that current absolutely set the device on fire.

Literally it can burn a whole house down

oh my goodness. How many house fires are there and they don't know how they start from times. They call it an electrical fire. There's a reason it started, and it sometimes is it a burst of power that's too high for a certain device. Jonathan was holding this device in his hands and it received too big of a current of power and it literally burst into flames in a data center. So yeah, it can happen.

We really need to get Jonathan on the podcast at some point to tell that story.

We've went pretty long. That was a good one though. That was a very useful information. That's eyeopening. Cause even in our position, I'm thinking, I really need to look at a power supply for my smart home.

Yeah. Everybody should,

Yeah, get one and to make sure it's properly configured and you have your cyber hygiene in place because everything that's connected to power it's also a vector, it's a place where, it's a pathway, so

We, I think this is a good place to wrap up. Thank you, Blake, for jumping on. I know you're busy, but it's good to have a technical perspective. So we appreciate it. Also everyone don't forget to join us live on Mondays. We're going to switch it to just doing live broadcasts on Mondays. And we have a fantastic guest on Monday. We're really excited for her. She works for prevail which is one of our trusted vendors that we use. And she eats sleeps, breathes compliance. Any questions about CMMC she has a great story it's Noelle. She just joined them. I think she had a couple months ago.

Yeah, she's got lots of experience with the DoD.

She's great. She was a breath of fresh air. She really was, it was just nice talking to herself. I'm really excited about having her on there. She'll give a lot of great information. Yeah. So don't forget to like our YouTube channel too. That'd be really great. You can do that, like subscribe all right you guys have a good one and we'll talk soon.

Bye.