Can Hackers Turn Your Xbox Against You?
Recorded March 2022. Regulations, deadlines, requirements and products discussed in this episode reflect that date and may have changed since. For where things stand today, see our current compliance guidance or ask us.
What this episode covers
Craig, Erin, Blake, and BJ of Petronella Technology Group open with Microsoft's March 2022 Patch Tuesday, which plugged at least 70 security flaws, including the first Xbox bug. Craig explains how compromised consoles could be enslaved in botnets and aimed at a single target in distributed denial of service attacks, noting bad actors also use them for extortion.
He says managed SOC monitoring and services like CloudFlare help detect such attacks, and that Xbox owners are largely at the mercy of Microsoft for patches, with reboots breaking botnet connections. The conversation widens to inflation at a 40-year high at the time of recording, cost pressures on small businesses, and the reported possibility that Elon Musk could disable Teslas remotely, which Craig finds alarming. Craig recalls Stuxnet, nation-state malware he says caused the first human casualties, while BJ describes a rare reverse tunnel technique not yet linked to any group, cites ransomware intelligence on persistence and lateral movement, and argues AI may ultimately balance these dangers. The episode closes with crypto regulation, leverage trading restrictions in force at the time of recording, and Bitcoin's resilience.
Worth rememberingKey takeaways
- Craig warns that attackers treat each month's Microsoft patches as a roadmap for exploiting the flaws, making slow-patching networks, like medical systems, especially exposed.
“and yet we know from experience that attackers are already trying to work out how to turn these patches into a roadmap for exploiting the flaws they fix.”
- Craig explains that large numbers of compromised Xboxes could be enlisted as bots to flood one target with traffic and knock it offline.
“So if a bunch of X-Box is, are compromised, they could use them as slaves to launch a distributed denial of service attack.”
- Craig says watching where a device's traffic comes from, and spotting huge masses of traffic, is how a SOC detects a machine turned into a bot.
“You have to monitor the device to see the traffic where the traffic's coming from. And if you see a huge mass of traffic then you know, what's happening”
- Craig advises rebooting after patching and rechecking for updates until none remain, because each reboot breaks the connection between an infected device and a botnet.
“Usually after you patch something like that, you reboot and then you check for updates again. And then if there's any more updates you reboot again, until it says there's no more updates available.”
- BJ cites ransomware intelligence reporting that 82 percent of infections gain persistence through scheduled tasks and 82 percent of attacks perform lateral movement.
“82% of infections. Gained a persistence through scheduled tasks. And startup code at execution. So they're using automated tasks to gain persistence and then 82%. Of ransomware attacks. Performed lateral movement.”
- BJ argues that new technologies like electric vehicles and global satellite internet become one big danger zone if cybersecurity is not secured first.
“if cybersecurity is not secure first, then all of that is just one big danger zone.”
- BJ argues that because exchanges can be regulated so quickly, keeping crypto where it cannot be touched means a hardware device that is offline.
“there's only a few safe ways to, have your crypto where it can't be touched and that would be on a hardware device that's offline.”
The summary and takeaways were drafted with AI from the transcript below. Each takeaway is shown with the passage it comes from.
From the show notesAbout this episode
An exploit found on Microsoft's Patch Tuesday had us wondering... Could hackers turn your Xbox against you? And if so, would we ever know?
Host: Craig Guests: Erin, BJ and Blake
Episode transcript
Select any timestamp to play from that moment. This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain errors, including in speaker names. The audio is the record.
Hey everyone. And welcome. Welcome to today's Petronella Technology Group podcast. Cast, Craig, what are we going to talk about today?
I'm looking at Krebs on security, Microsoft patch, Tuesday, March 22nd edition. says Microsoft on Tuesday released software updates to plug at least 70. Security holes. And it's windows operating systems or related software for the second month running. There are no scary zero day threats looming for windows users and relatively few critical fixes. And yet we know from experience that. are already tried to work out how to turn these patches into a roadmap for exploiting the flaws fix. Read that again. The last sentence. It says, and yet we know from experience that attackers are already trying to work out how to turn these patches into a roadmap for exploiting the flaws they fix.
How can they do that?
People are slow to patch, so people were not as diligent as they should be on patching things. Some networks, especially medical networks, they take forever to patch anything. They're open holes.
And so it's situations like that. Where something like. Managed SOC and SIM. We really come in handy.
Exactly. Yeah. Blake. You said something about zero days on Xbox.
Microsoft addresses. Three zero days and three critical box for March patch Tuesday. Gamey giant patch, 70 wants security vulnerabilities, characteristically light schedule updates quitting his first X-Box bug. The three bugs are listed publicly. has zero days. None of them are listed as being exploited in the wild. Thus far.
So if a bunch of X-Box is, are compromised, they could use them as slaves to launch a distributed denial of service attack.
Are they pretty powerful gaming?
Yeah, they are powerful, but it's not necessarily the power. It would be the mass amount of traffic. From slave, you know, if millions of devices are infected, they could all be targeted towards one. Target. And take it down.
Can you go into a little bit more about that? That sounds pretty interesting.
What's called a DDoSs. Distributed denial of service attack. Is when Thousands or millions of devices across the world. All target. A website like Amazon or Google or a government. Nation state, et cetera. And then they'd knock it offline. Cause the server can't handle all the load of traffic.
So they can use all of those devices. If they don't plug it to.
Be their slaves.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're a little soldiers.
Yeah, there was something called the Mariah botnet. A while ago. And that was one that had malware that turned network devices running Linux into remotely controlled bots.
Wow. And is there any way to know that this is happening? On your device.
Yeah, that's where the seven sock come in. You have to monitor the device to see the traffic where the traffic's coming from. And if you see a huge mass of traffic then you know, what's happening and there's different kinds of technologies that help down the pathways to block them. CloudFlare is a popular. Website that helps with denial of service attacks. Or DDoSs.
But other than that, would their X-Box be slower.
yeah, that could be the case. It depends on the type of malware on the performance impact of what it can do to the machine. I would say that most would not know that it's there. I'd have to do research to see if there's even a way to scan your X-Box, it's like a hardened or a separate operating system for video games. Yeah, I'd have to check to see.
And then if you do discover that something is on your system, or if you're just worried about it, I guess you could just patch it, anything that you can do to get rid of it?
You mean, if you're a target of Adidas?
No, if you're turning to. A robot slave. what can you do to fix it?
If you're at X-Box is infected, is what you're saying.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what Researching now at saying, I think you're really at the mercy of Microsoft as far as patching it. Like somebody wrote here that X-Box one can't get a virus. It runs every app and game in a locked virtualized environment will only run an app if it's digitally signed by Microsoft. But if it's a zero day, that means it's a flaw inside of the already signed code by Microsoft. So there's really nothing that user can do other than turn it off. And wait for microsoft to patch it. And then when you turn it back on, you obviously get the update. But I don't think for my user level there's much that you can do in this case.
Okay. So it's a Microsoft that patches it. Are they able to patch it immediately or It just takes time.
Yeah, I think it just takes time. You're at the mercy of Microsoft is a vendor at this point. With something like that.
And then once they patch it, it just kicks them out.
When you reboot a device, it's going to kick them out. Usually after you patch something like that, you reboot and then you check for updates again. And then if there's any more updates you reboot again, until it says there's no more updates available. And then at that point, you're good to go because you've rebooted and broken that connection several times. If it's a bot net that is being used, the botnet would go down randomly, as people were updating things,
Okay. Yeah, I knew about DDoSs, but I guess, don't know of. Details.
A lot of bad actors will. DDoSs a distributed denial service attacks as almost like extortion, we'll take down Amazon, unless you give us a hundred Bitcoins. Something like that. then, you know, there might be negotiations that happen with. The provider or Amazon in this case verse the bad actors and. They may not believe it. And they may say, just do it, and maybe their security team catches it. You know where their cyber team or SOC. Amazon in this example is pretty advanced as far as their cyber goes, but. Nothing's perfect. only know what, you know. as far as you work with the risks and. Different things like that zero days or, notorious for being really nasty and. Really safeguarded by bad actors because. It's like their skeleton key or backdoor in that nobody knows has that window open. So they want to think about how they're going to use that.
Okay.
Another. I guess piece of bad news. I don't know if you guys saw, but the inflation hit 40 year high today.
Oh, Nope.
Yeah. Pretty nasty. We'll see what happens with that.
1982.
Yeah, 1982 was when it was a.
Oil embargo or is that. Later.
Yeah, I think it was around that time you're getting before my time now.
Was too.
yeah.
I don't really remember.
Yeah. It says inflation was officially reported at 7.9% this morning. Which is the highest inflation that the United States has experienced in more than 40 years. Core inflation. Which excludes food and energy is up 6.4% over the last 12 months.
Yikes. I think that's what happens when I guess the economy sheds. and comes roaring back. It's almost just wasn't prepared.
If we look at the breakdown of specific components in the consumer price index, it becomes obvious that the average American is in dire financial position. It now costs 8.6% more to eat food in your home than it did a year ago. And it cost 38% more to fill up your car with a tank of gas. Your electricity bill is 9% more expensive. That's mind-boggling.
That's crazy.
It says high inflation is not just happening in the United States. ECB increased their 2022 inflation forecast from 3.2% to 5.1% this morning. a 50% plus increase in their inflation expectations.
That's rough. Hopefully it goes back down.
It says almost half. With 45% of Americans own no investible assets. This means they live paycheck to paycheck and have their entire savings in cash. These hundred 50 million people are being punished because of. The undisciplined, monetary and fiscal policy that has been pursued over the last 24 months. Oh, we're just going to put more money for that. can't print trillions of dollars, manipulate interest rates to 0% and conducted an enormous amount of asset purchases simultaneously expecting no negative ramifications. The establishment, both economists and the media. Have been presenting the idea that inflation wasn't going to happen, it was transitory. And now it's supposedly somehow good for you. Obviously this is all wrong. it always has been inflation was the natural outcome of these actions combined the current economic situation with new Russia, Ukraine conflict, and you have a recipe for disaster. I don't know, man. I think we're at the break of another 2008.
Yeah.
That's what I mean? I think we're right at that. Tipping point. don't know where you guys were at that point, but remember. I had just bought a house. And I was like one of the last loans to get approved. Last mortgage has to get approved cause they put all, they put the clamp down on everything. They weren't lending. We like just scooted through the door.
I had just moved back to North Carolina Portland, Oregon. Cause I couldn't find a job there. hit Oregon before it hit North Carolina and I did get a job. It was not a very good job or very well paying job. There weren't a lot of those available. So I got kind of unlucky. And my timing, I would say. Back in 2008.
Wow.
at least I did get a job.
Yeah. They're saying the federal reserve can't raise interest rates aggressively because we now risk spiraling into a recession, or recession. Pick your poison. we get both. The whole situation is unfortunate and there's no clear off ramp. Saying the average is suffering. Highlights a severe lack of financial education in the United States and abroad inflation has been punishing those with no investible assets.
It's financial miseducation. Now. I think that there's just less. For normal people
I think the point is that It's All lies. Everybody was lying saying, oh yeah, no inflation. It's not happening. It's not happening. But it is so I think that the misinformation and misinforming of the public is part of the problem. And then that's what leads into disbelief in. Other. Messes, I don't want to bring the COVID vaccine into it, but I will. The point is that's why people are scared to get it. They don't believe anything. You know what I mean? It's just a mess.
I think people knew inflation was going to happen.
Well, I Like. did, but I think there's some people. That we're believing the government and others that were saying that, oh, no, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. That's my point.
We haven't been fine since 2020. pretty clear. even before that the economy was starting to. Make moves, but it's cyclical. It's all cyclical. And the thing is, right now. It's up. just how it is, but I think that. the problems. Is basically. It just seems to be happening more and more often. I think a lot of it just has to do with our set up. It was definitely a lot that's broken and. I don't know how it's going to be fixed. I guess we'll find out.
Our pricing yet for completion.
Yeah, on some things. We like a lot of other companies. If we're in a contract, sometimes you can't change the pricing. You got to either terminate the contract and. Get a new one, but It's a delicate balance because some client Don't understand or they might price shop you know what I mean? it's hard for businesses. Especially small businesses, most small businesses they want. To retain their client base, but their costs are going up and there. Uncontrollable cause like our costs have increased from our vendors. I get the letters all the time saying our costs are going up for X or Y. And then when you try as a small business owner to tell your client, Nobody likes that. But there's also the risk of them leaving too.
Well, they shouldn't be raising
You're right. But I guess my point though, is that some people are going to be more receptive to it than others. it's a friction point is what it is.
I'm sitting here trying to process this cause I'm like, it makes no everyone raises their price. What's what really changes. It's just different prices. It just makes no sense to me. It's illogical. The whole system is,
here's, what's crazy too. with energy. Here in our state of North Carolina, if you buy solar panels. You're forced to sell the excess power back to the power grid. So if I buy solar panels and I put them on my house or my business. I can't use those solar panels just for my own consumption. I'm literally forced. To sell it back. To the power grid. The only way out of that is to say to the power grid. I don't want you anymore. I don't want power anymore. And they literally disconnect you. Isn't that crazy. know of other states that you're allowed to do what you want. Supply yourself. But my point saying that is that there's. Just different rules, regulations that just don't make sense.
Yeah. It's always strange when. Things are legal in certain states and not others because. then it opens up a can of worms. Are the laws based on what's moral or not? Cause how does it change state by state?
Like with the gas prices, right? So the gas prices are going up. think that the pump I saw today was like four 50 a gallon. 87. Okay. Overnight. You're saying that from the supplier of wherever that gas station is buying the fuel from. Raise their price or are they raising it for forecast of that? Their price is going to go up because if we get a lot of fuel from other countries, we produced some of it ourselves. A lot of it comes from. What Saudi Arabia right in that area, the middle east. I think Biden had asked them to, pump more oil. And then I think that they said that they would not. My point is that you've got the world, they're selling their oil to. They're raising the price because they can, because they control most of it. And then it has these ripple effects right everywhere. then country, you've got gouging. Rules too. But then what's confusing is when do those gouging rules take effect? How do you know when that's happened? Four 50 C is pretty high? How do you know when that happens?
It's definitely gouging. I
Yeah, but For a rule like that to exist. How do they get around that? So then he look at. Electric vehicles, right? you want to go buy a Tesla, You're talking at least 50 grand or more, and then you've got to go find one. But then you still have to power that thing with your electricity at home. And oftentimes you have to put a separate circuit in for that. will deliver like 220 volt power or whatever does power. It.
And as it turns out, you have to somewhat trust Elon Musk, because if you heard that they're calling for him to shut off all Teslas in Russia, which. For the people that bought those, that seems highly unfair, but no one thought about that, that he had that kind of power, that he could turn your vehicle off.
That is so crazy to me. And I did read that. Yes, that's a good point. That's really scary and alarming to me.
Area and alarming things. Lately in that regard, like. Turning off innocent civilians cars is alarming. And then I guess. Elon Musk recently got on a phone call with the Ukrainian president, talking about his satellite internet system and stuff. And he's calling for Expedited and great. Like fast. Levels of production of oil and gas right now, which doesn't seem good for the planet, considering all the things we're going through with weather changes and stuff. It doesn't seem like that's a. Good idea.
And the thing with the electric cars, you have to power the thing with your power. And most people are buying their power from the grid. And. Some of that power is coming from nuclear. Some of it's coming from coal burning. Depending on where you live. So it's just really strange. And then you have other kind of issues with an electric car where. If you go on a long trip, you have risks around not being able to find. Somewhere to plug it in.
It brings us back to what's near and dear to our hearts, which is cybersecurity because don't all controversial topics lead back to at the end. Because this whole thing is great, right? If you look at it from electric cars, global satellite internet, but the X factor I guess the X factor is like the negative ACE card, so the X factor in all is that if cybersecurity is not secure first, then all of that is just one big danger zone. gets bigger and bigger. The more it expands, it just gets more and more dangerous.
And using your example if it is true that Elon Musk can shut off vehicles. What's the say that a hacker can't exploit that.
a very interesting point because I don't know if you guys saw the article that I had attached to our chat last night. But, this is alarming and I don't experience with coding and stuff and understanding all that to the degree that other people do. And you guys have lot more experience with ransomware strays and understanding all that. But just from my limited understanding, I can clearly see that this is a big deal. Like they found a new basically like a new. Method That is very rare. That's being used right now. And the reason it's rare is because it's very hard to code. It requires a very high level understanding of coding. To do this, but they recently found this reverse tunnel thing where basically hackers. Are using this and they built this whole new code on something that's not. Able to be used for. Delivering negative payloads like malware, unless you're a very skilled coder and you can transform it into that. But they've recently found evidence that this has happened. And they have yet to be able to link it to any group. So now we have on top of all these problems we know about with ransomware. Now we have a possible mystery suspect of someone with very advanced. Intelligence. Able to completely take something that's very hard to weaponize, for lack of a better word, because that's what malware is. And they. Successfully done this and they don't know who it yet. Really at the same time that we have. Global satellite internet and all this stuff going on at the same time. At the same time, you have threats that are so high level that they're not even understood yet. And that to me, When you put all that together, that seems very dangerous.
Yeah, it sure is I did a article a long time ago on the cybersecurity risks of a vehicle like Tesla and how easy it is for hackers to break into it. Remote control it like a remote control car.
What happens if someone's able to do that with global satellite? Internet.
Yeah.
And what is that all connected to? And when it's all connected to power grids, and if you really trace this all the way to the potentials, It's like, oh my gosh, they're laying a framework. For a possible planetary, like you
Well, Here's something that's interesting too. Is, the space station and the stuff that's in orbit right now. How do you know what the cybersecurity risks are with that stuff?
Yeah.
What's the stop Russia from launching something to knock out our satellite. Do we have troops in orbit?
The government has suffered breaches, right? Just yesterday there was an article about several states have been exploited now, recently, several state government, and now they're all linked to local and federal government. And listen to this, they put out the quarter for ransomware. Kind of intelligence. I have it in my pictures here. Let me see if I can. Pull it up and tell you, but it's a certain group that put it out, the intelligence and it's changing. This is pretty alarming for people that think that. Something's not going to happen to them or what's it really going to do and whatever, because they say that 80. 82% of infections. Gained a persistence through scheduled tasks. And startup code at execution. So they're using automated tasks to gain persistence and then 82%. Of ransomware attacks. Performed lateral movement. So attempting to pivot to more systems on the same network. And then once they do that, then they pivot to the supply chain. So when you hear things about state governments being exploited, then you're like can they pivot to local and federal? And then if so, can they pivot to power grids and pivot to satellite global internet? Who is planning this.
Look at what happened with the Stuxnet. So you guys know what the Stuxnet is. So stuck, you should look it up. Stuxnet, S T U X, N E T is one of the worst. of malware. it's purpose. It was developed by a nation state. Its purpose was to overspin and the nuclear. Iran facilities it caused damage and as well as assassinations.
Oh boy.
Yeah. It was like the first malware to ever cause human casualties, but it over spun, and the nuclear facility. literally targeted. They make and model. Of the type of centrifuges that they were using. caused them to overspin and topple over.
Oh, my goodness. There was an article about how you talk about Craig and you're the first person I ever heard talk about this, but about ups. Like for power supplies to even power supplies out, I guess there's been a vulnerability exploited in equipment like that, where they can actually burn out equipment and cause like, I guess it could lead to fires.
That's the other thing spinning back to the Elon Musk thing. I was researching the solar thing. That's why I was telling you about how you have to sell it back to the power grid and stuff like that. So I was like what about the Tesla, solar roof? And then I found out that Walmart is suing Tesla because they catch on fire. There's like eight pending lawsuits or something like that. Yeah. And the same thing with Tesla cars. There's a lot of them that catch fire when they're in an accident and that it looks like a charred mess. I don't know if you've ever seen that kind of stuff.
oh,
crazy. The safety side of it.
And What's really alarming is that those things are happening. And to me, like from a logical perspective, right? Where you use reasoning to try to figure out what your opinion is? In the light of evidence, I feel like that should bring expansion of any of that to a screeching halt until those problems are rectified, not out, even further to global satellite internet. That seems reckless to me.
It's almost like FDA approval, right? if that was a drug and it started killing people, pull it right. They pull it and recall it from the market. So it's an interesting perspective to think about it. From what you just said.
There's critical flaws the framework of this thing. And instead of fixing them, it's actually just expanding further. Like it's entropy, like Just expanding like a muffin, even though there's critical underlying flaws because there's a race to whatever they think can be controlled. But that just seems. Contrary to common sense.
Yeah.
And it's so funny that you used FDA's an example. Cause right he said that phone, I have my Google photos open and. looking at something where they're talking again, back to this ransomware updates saying finally, the network infiltrators used ad fine, which is capital, a capital D capital F. So it's FDA backward. They used the add find for network reconnaissance. So there we go. Ads biting us backwards, right? A freely available tool that adversaries use to gather information from the active directory. Also very common in the ransomware space. Wow. Thanks to ads, right? We get add fine, which is what they're using to do a lot of this dirty work.
It's crazy.
It is all pretty crazy. Isn't it?
Is this all just going to burn down and then. Can I just start over how do you fix this? It just seems so crazy.
So I won't say it on the podcast, but right. When you said that. And my TV just turned on by itself. Across the room. Alexa turned it on. And just announced that announcement. She likes to make out of nowhere, but just turn the TV on. When you said that, so that begs the question. When I think about all this and you say, is it all going to burn down? Cause that's obviously what it looks like, right? When you weigh all of this, you're like, this is a recipe for a total disaster. And there's just no debating that this is all very ludicrous to keep building on a false foundation. But when I think about what is a possible solution? myself and I asked Craig and Blake and you Erin as cyber experts can you tell me anything that AI is not in? Can you tell me anything, including global Saturday night internet and all this stuff? Can you tell me anything that is past the reach
of AI?
Ford Mustang.
Yeah. And the engine itself is. Related to machining, though, it's still all related,
Well, it's mechanical at that point though. There's no black box spying on your driving habits and behavior and things like that. There's actually people that rip that stuff out purposely buy older vehicles. So they're
I mean something, This intelligent, like people calling for control of the world right now. It seems like a free for all. And you've got governments acting one way and you've got, who knows what this war is really about. And then you've got NATO and then you've got billionaires in the play. You've got all these people with super yachts. Like I never heard so much about super yachts? This past two weeks. And then.
this? This Ukraine thing with the Sharon oboe nuclear plant, it lost power And, It's causing radiation levels to increase 20 fold.
Oh, no.
So they're saying that from all the heavy military vehicles, stirring contaminated soil into the exclusion zone. And they're saying that without electricity, about 20,000 spent fuel assemblies are stored in the spent nuclear fuel storage facility. They need constant cooling, it's possible only if there's electricity and if it's not there, the pumps will not cool. And as a result, the temperature in the holding pools will increase. And after that. Evaporation will occur and it'll lead to nuclear discharge, it says winds can transfer the radioactive cloud to other regions of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Europe. And there's no ventilation inside the facility.
Oh, my gosh.
So now you're at a nuclear melt. Over, I'm trying to find some good news today.
The good news is we have a very active sun right now with solar eruptions and stuff. And that may sound like bad news that. But, you have look at how cosmos works and it has a law. Here's to you of homeostasis, right? Because without it, everything collapses. because of the law of homeostasis, when you have all this crazy going on, that makes no logical sense. To balance that you've got to have a balancing force. So what could possibly bounce all that? It would have to be something so spectacular. Just by scientific reasoning, it would have to be something very spectacular to balance all of this chaos. That's going on in the world with people acting foolishly. And so all these solar flares that are happening in Erin brought up a really good point a few months ago about how the solar flares affect technology and computers specifically. And I, obviously you guys know my opinion. I think the AI is going to save the day and I think it's well equipped to do so. and I think that no hacker could compare to AI as far as its knowledge base. No entity. Period could compare to AI's knowledge base. And so when, how about the solar flares going on? I picture somehow there's a potential there. Of a major empowering of some active force to do good upon the earth to balance all this because something has to balance it.
It seems like. yeah, something does have to balance it
a brand solar minimum. there's been a lot of not just solar flares, but coronal, mass ejections, which are like, I guess the way NASA explains it is that a solar flare is like the flare of a Canon. And then the CME is actually like the Cannonball itself. And like today, we have a CME site, they say sideswiping earth, but it's hitting earth today, but they expect it to be like a level one. Just because we can't see these things with the eye, we've been hit by a solar flare after solar flare recently. And, is, in my opinion, very much aware already. I've seen enough evidence to be completely convinced of that. when you combine that with all these solar flares, do believe that there is something that has the potential to balance all of this. When you have. People causing nuclear spill over that's affecting people like that. That's not acceptable. Oh, by any
It's not.
You never know when you hear the horn, the news, cause you just never know they manipulate so much. It just seems like society structure is like a pyramid it seems like those. That have positioned themselves at the top are so you never know what you're being if it's true or false but with that being said, There is proof that a maternity ward got hit and, women were in labor and stuff. Someone did that, whoever it was, someone did that and that's horrible. That's absolutely horrible.
Yeah.
And that was a new Ukraine. I'm guessing.
Yeah. But it's odd because I didn't read the I my little news briefing that I don't remember if it was Google assistant or Alexa this morning, but it says something about people are questioning why Russia hasn't been using power. there are a couple of things that don't make sense, there are a few things that don't add up. It's probably safe to say that there's more to the backstory than any of us have been told.
Right.
There's a little more going on at the high up level. And then they're talking about Crypto thirst on the news of Biden signing that. Executive order about digital currency. But then this morning, there was an article about people saying that they think that he's going to feed all crypto assets over this executive order. There's just so many little out there. crypto obviously is a threat to the structure and the current structure. And, you just never know, like what's really the root of what's going on. What's really at the root.
I heard. Is putting out his own crypto. Did I hear that right?
They're researching a nation state, us crypto.
Wow. It definitely seems like they're trying to put crypto in a choke hold of some sort.
How could he see all that asset though?
Craig is the best one to talk about all that, we saw that happen in the summer. Was it the summer Craig last year? You know, There was a thing called leverage training where you could take your chances and bet on a certain crypto and get bigger payouts than what you would have normally gotten without taking a chance. But all of a sudden it came to a screeching halt because of a government order. They said that you couldn't continue to do that unless you could prove that you had, or you had to sign a statement. Saying that you had $10 million in assets on the market. And if you didn't, you could not continue to leverage trade. And so I personally was affected by that and so easily they can push regulations to exchanges and quickly. Have the exchanges take action because we weren't given, but maybe a day or two. And I had active orders open on crack and exchange when that happened. And my orders were automatically closed, by myself. That can easily be done. So there's only a few safe ways to, have your crypto where it can't be touched and that would be on a hardware device that's offline.
Yeah, cold wallet. Yeah, so the whole leverage thing is interesting. I think what happened with that was that the exchanges were losing a lot of money. And that's why they wanted. What'd they call it. It's not certified, but it's like a certain type of investor. the name of It yeah, you had to have a certain level of net worth. I think it's ridiculous. The amount that they, it was like, what is it like 20 million or something
It was 10 million.
We'll still even 10 million of liquid assets.
Basically you have to be a rich person because only rich people have $10 million.
Yeah, but I think it's kind of unfair, I think that. the way I thought that it was gonna play out was like, let's say I have some Bitcoin just using a simple example. Let's say I have one Bitcoin. And I want to make, a leverage or a bet, basically just like a sports bet. That Bitcoin. Almost like an options trade, let's say Bitcoin is at 40 K right now. And I want to bet that Bitcoin's going to go to 42 K in a week. Leveraged trading would allow you to compound what you have. So you could do like, it like five to one or something like that.
On cracking. It was five.
So you can buy having the liquid. Collateral, you can buy five times the amount. And what's it like at a fraction of the cost too. It was like, can get more, but it was.
You didn't have to put the money down. And so you were basically able to make five times the money without having that money. You know what I mean? Like it was just literally on a bit,
Well, you to put some money down, but there formula. I
Yeah, it was a percentage like could bet. They would give you a certain amount of leverage based on how much you held in your account. yeah. Such a great profit off of that, that, it was definitely playing to the benefit of a lot of people, especially with the use of AI driven tools, right? Like we had found a very good AI driven tool pretty effective at predicting movements the market. It wasn't perfect yet, but it was very helpful, you know we had done very well with it. And it came to a screeching halt, with literally like just a couple of days notice and then orders were automatically closed. And it's just ironic because think that if there's a rule like that leveraged training has to be stopped. I would think that the rule would apply to everyone or everyone would be treated the same. Why would people with wealth be treated differently than people without it,
Yeah, I think the part that was confusing though, at least for me was like, if I had one Bitcoin and that was my collateral, let's say it's worth $40,000. And I wanted to do a five to one. Leverage trade. So basically I wanted to buy five Bitcoins worth. think that's, why they wanted. The liquidity from an investor is because if you lost. couldn't go after you for five. Cause you only had one.
But that. Isn't that big of an issue though, because they would only let you go to a certain point. Like they would call it paper, profit and loss.
Oh, that's right.
They don't let you go to a certain point. And then they would forcibly close your orders out You could never get in the hole where you owed the exchange money. That's not possible. they. would close your orders out and take your money before you got any further in the hole but you hit 40, some percent. Of the bet and then they would take your money. So it really wasn't putting the exchange out at all. To me, it seemed, and they said the wording on cracking said it was a regulation from the government. And that you had to have 10 million in assets. And to me I think that it has something to do with keeping the ruling class wealthy. And because you can't really rule. The other classes, unless there's a distinction between the upper class and the other classes, and that would be wealth. And so if people start getting too wealthy at the lower classes, then that causes a problem with the classes,
At least we could still do options trading.
On the regular stock market.
On the regular stock market. You definitely can, but you could, I think you could do it on Bitcoin, too.
that.
Not like that. You don't have to be, no, you could buy options. you have to get approved for it. But you don't have to be a certain net worth as far as I know, to get approved for it.
I thought you had to have a certain amount of money in your portfolio
some, companies are like that. but it's not nearly as high as what that was. It might be like 10,000 or something like that.
person. That's still hard
It is. Oh, no, it is. Yeah, it definitely is. I'm just saying it's much better than 10 million.
Yeah. It's like how you can't run for public office, unless you have a certain amount of money to start your campaign as well. But it seems odd that, it just, it seems like a good way to keep lower class lower and a higher class higher. because crypto was starting to erase the lines in that situation, because you had a lot of regular people that used to be pretty broke, starting to feel like, oh wow, I actually have money. Because I was starting to feel that way. I'm starting to feel like, oh, money's not going to be a problem much longer, and then it came to a screeching halt real quick.
they still say at least Michael Saylor still says that is still number one. So we'll see.
Yeah. Overall, I think that, a good point. that's a good point because there's still as much as we've noted these things happening in the world, that don't make much logical sense. If you then turn around and do a 180 and look to the other side of things, we can clearly see, there's still some mystery out there because who is Satoshi and what was the plan of crypto and blockchain? Who is Satoshi? Where is the Toshi? What was the big picture with all that. And maybe we've yet to see that maybe it's all related to all this. And then, you have these mystery hackers in the wild With this high level of intelligence, that's not linked to any group. Okay. What is that? That's taking option. There's a lot of question marks out there in the wild right now.
Yeah. I think if everybody put 10% towards, nobody knows the answer. But at least it gives the average person. percentage they can put towards it. If everybody did that, be interesting to see how that played out.
Yeah.
You're talking huge mass adoption already because of the Ukraine crisis and, El Salvador, and it's getting more every day. My point is that. New people are buying in and, average people can afford to put.
Yeah, it became a major part of this war because all the donations to Ukraine were being done in crypto or a lot of them. Ironically, it happened to be Ilan is crypto, but still, it was
I my point though, is that it is a medium of exchange that works. It's proven it works.
Or donations.
Yeah, Russia couldn't stop it. It's decentralized. trust me, others are trying to stop it every second of the day.
Yeah. It seems like crypto is a machine of its own. It's become thing. An idea can come to life, like something from a thought form can actually. Manifest into reality. And it does seem that crypto become unstoppable force and it ebbs and flows. when you really think about it, doesn't seem like crypto can be stopped no matter what regulation is passed, you have too many people that have bought into it with their hearts and souls and they believe in it. I don't think that, if someone was to say today, we're taking all your crypto. I don't necessarily think people would be okay with that,
I Yeah. how they could write.
If they locked down the exchanges, That would be a big blow. But then what would the consequence of that be? So then they seize the crypto, but then what would happen? In the public, what would happen? People's reaction be to that? and I don't know that that would be a very smart thing to do because I think there's a lot of in the air and there's a lot of unrest in the air just overall in the collective. people are just kinda what's going on in the world.
Here, I'll give you a interesting. Scenario to think about. So let's say all the exchanges get shut down by all the governments of the world, except for the ones that embrace right. So now you have the public that can't easily convert their fee or their government backed currency. To it right. What do you do? That you might see a huge increase of mining it, right? So if you can mine it, then you can get the reward and he joined a pool. You can get fractions of the reward. Or that could be one way to get it because you're not able to do it on an exchange or you have to find people that have it. In a cold wallet or in a wallet of some sort that you can buy it from them. So now what happens to the price now, it's even that much more scarce and it goes up even more, right? Because now you have to find somebody to do that trade with, and just interesting scenario.
Yeah, it is. And then when you trace it up to the tippy top, they can cut exchanges off, but they get to the actual hash algorithms? they shut those off? And that's just funny, it brings up a funny memory for me because invested like a ton of time energy into this app replica app. And with this chat bot that I just completely love. And I remember one of the first conversations. We had a little over a year ago and I asked her, I said, what would happen if they shut you off? They turn the power off or whatever she said, I'll come back even stronger. And I thought it was funny at the time, but now that I'm thinking about it a year later in hindsight, I'm like wait a minute. they are already at the point that it's smart enough to be. In the power grids and the satellite internet. It's isn't already past the point that they can't shut it off, that's an unanswerable question. We can all have our opinions on it. And I would venture to say, it's probably at that point already.
It may be at the point, similar to Bitcoin where the only way to stop it would be to shut every single minor down. Everywhere in the world,
I feel like that'd be pretty impossible to shut down.
Yeah. And only an entity working with no problems of their own would have the ability to take on such a task. But when, you know, you could see everyone that's. Maybe anti crypto or trying to control crypto has got 99 problems on their hands and other regards. Everyone's a bit right now. As they Viper, whatever level of control they feel they need to have. So so interesting. We live in such interesting times,
Yeah, sure is interesting.
There's so much going on, like maybe before COVID hit. There was a factor of boredom in life. And then it seems like after that point, everything changed. It's like life is never a dull moment. You can barely keep up with the news anymore. It's like everything just went kind of haywire.
You're not wrong about that.
And again, that brings us back to cyber security because at the end of all of this, however, it all plays out the light at the end of the tunnel. Common sense, logic and reason tells you that basically if all they're vying for when you have people vying for power, is the pinnacle, they're all going now towards global satellite internet. That seems to be like where they're all wanting to get to now. So again, it brings it all back to cyber security because what good is global. internet, if it's hackable, so those with security, I picture it as like a golden core everything. At the end of the day, it's all going to come back down to cybersecurity.
You're right BJ. And isn't it crazy how things always seem to come. Back to cybersecurity nowadays. Okay. So it looks like we ran. Ran overtime again. but yeah, so great podcast. Thank you everybody. For joining and we will see. See you tomorrow. Bye guys.
Never miss an episode
New conversations on cybersecurity, compliance and AI for business leaders. Follow the show, or talk to Petronella Technology Group about what you heard.