This transcript was generated automatically, probably contains mistakes, and has not been manually verified.
Graham Cluley
Newsflash, newsflash. Smashing Security is extremely unlikely to win anything in the Podcast Awards, unless someone votes for us. Visit smashingsecurity.com/vote, and vote for Smashing Security in the People's Choice and Technology categories. Yes, you have to create an account at the Podcast Awards website to vote for us. Yes, that's a pain, but it's nothing compared to the pain I could do to your eardrums if I decided to sing la la lee diddle lee da da da. So, smashingsecurity.com/vote if you know what's good for you.
Carole Theriault
Barbecue or dealing with family or, you know, on a march somewhere. You're not throwing your fingers off or what?
Bj Mendelson
Are blowing your fingers off. This is American pastime.
Carole Theriault
For real? Fireworks.
Graham Cluley
Fireworks. They don't actually go out with the intention of blowing their fingers off.
Bj Mendelson
It just sort of happens.
Carole Theriault
I was just thinking in my head going, I don't know what he's talking about. With guns?
Bj Mendelson
Is it guns?
Unknown
I'm a bit bored. Smashing Security, Episode 86: Elon Musk Submarine Scams and Two-Factor Bypass with Carole Theriault and Graham Cluley. Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Smashing Security. Security number 86. My name is Graham Cluley.
Carole Theriault
And I'm Carole Theriault.
Graham Cluley
And we're joined today by a returning friend of the show and author of Social Media Is Bullshit. It's BJ Mendelson. Hi, BJ.
Bj Mendelson
Hello. Thank you so much for having me back. Hi.
Carole Theriault
I'm glad that you're a returning friend. Did Graham clear that with you, that you're actually a friend of the show?
Bj Mendelson
It's the first I've heard of it, but I am always pleased to be called a friend of anything.
Graham Cluley
Now BJ, you're not just an author, you know, slagging off social media. The other part of your life is you're into comic books and things like that, isn't it?
Bj Mendelson
That's right. Just for example, this weekend I'm going to be speaking at the Florida Super Con about how to promote comic books.
Graham Cluley
And what kind of thing goes on at the Florida Super Con?
Bj Mendelson
Oh, so there is a thing called Fantasy Super Cosplay Wrestling.
Carole Theriault
Oh yeah, because you love wrestling.
Bj Mendelson
I do. I love pro wrestling. I love superheroes.
Graham Cluley
So this is the perfect mashup. You've got superhero cosplay and wrestling.
Bj Mendelson
That's right. All in one ring. What's hilarious though is I only agreed to do the conference because they were doing the fantasy super cosplay wrestling, but I said in the notes, please don't book me when the wrestling is going on because I want to see it. I was really explicit about it. So on Saturday night, as they're doing their big event, I have my panel.
Graham Cluley
Oh wow.
Carole Theriault
Can you dress like Big Daddy in homage?
Bj Mendelson
I feel like I should.
Carole Theriault
I definitely think you should.
Graham Cluley
The thing is, wrestlers do dress a bit like superheroes anyway, don't they? Because they often wear their underpants over their tights. That's right.
Bj Mendelson
It's a live-action comic book.
Carole Theriault
I love it.
Graham Cluley
Are you in the
Bj Mendelson
Are you?
Graham Cluley
What do you?
Bj Mendelson
Oh, no, I just rolled out of bed.
Carole Theriault
He doesn't sleep in it.
Graham Cluley
You never know. There might be an emergency.
Bj Mendelson
Well, though, if you're like Daniel Day-Lewis and you're really into method acting, you probably would sleep in the cosplay. Did you ever hear the story where he was on the set of Lincoln and he only would be referred to as Mr.
Graham Cluley
cosplay right now?
Bj Mendelson
President? And when Sally Field had to talk to him, she would have to text him as Lincoln's wife. And that was the only way he would respond to her.
Carole Theriault
Did she ever talk dirty? Just to say, I'm just method acting.
Bj Mendelson
I kind of wonder what 19th century dirty talk would sound like through text.
Graham Cluley
Sally Field wouldn't text dirty. She's lovely.
Bj Mendelson
I found the lovelier the people, the dirtier the text.
Graham Cluley
Hey Graham. Hey Carole.
Carole Theriault
So you run your own business, right?
Graham Cluley
I do, yes.
Carole Theriault
I run my own business.
Graham Cluley
Yes.
Carole Theriault
And how many different applications and services and software pieces do you need to buy or rent in order to run a business like ours in the technology space?
Graham Cluley
Scores, if not hundreds.
Carole Theriault
It would be physically impossible, would it not, to remember unique passwords for every single one of those apps? That, let alone your personal life and all the stuff you have there, all the chess and Doctor Who stuff you have.
Graham Cluley
Not completely impossible, because if your password was DoctorWho1 or Chess2, if you made— so you could have unique passwords. They wouldn't be very good passwords though, would they?
Carole Theriault
Yeah, so you're recommending that people have crappy passwords? No. Or should they use a password manager like LastPass?
Graham Cluley
They should use a password manager like LastPass. I think all businesses have got to really, because otherwise your employees are going to choose sloppy, rubbish passwords.
Carole Theriault
And you're going to get lazy yourself and use the same password for different accounts.
Graham Cluley
Horrendous. So you want central control of everyone inside your business and how they're using passwords and properly manage it.
Carole Theriault
Check out lastpass.com/smashing.
Graham Cluley
I don't think you need to say forward slash. Anyone who's listening to this knows which way the slash goes.
Carole Theriault
You're probably right.
Graham Cluley
Okay, chaps. Well, the world has been gripped with the story of that soccer team, those poor boys in Thailand stuck deep within a flooding cave system. The international effort to rescue them. Thankfully, just before we started recording today's episode, word came through that all 12 boys and their coach had been rescued from the flooded cave. 17 days.
Bj Mendelson
Wow.
Carole Theriault
17 days.
Graham Cluley
They got trapped underground. Amazing, isn't it?
Bj Mendelson
I've— It's really affected me, this. I've been really upset about it.
Carole Theriault
And they were really young, the kids, right?
Bj Mendelson
Yeah.
Graham Cluley
Very young.
Bj Mendelson
I have a question though.
Graham Cluley
Yeah.
Bj Mendelson
Does anyone know how they got into the cave in the first place?
Graham Cluley
Well, I believe that they just sort of walked in. It was some sort of initiation ceremony that they go up to some wall and scratch a mark or something. And then the rain came down and so they went deeper into the cave. They found that their way out was trapped and so they just kept on going deeper and deeper in.
Carole Theriault
Yeah, the area was flooding, I think, so they weren't able to escape the cave because of all the water that had locked them in there from the storm.
Graham Cluley
Absolutely horrific. And tragically, one diver on the rescue team who was delivering supplies of air, he died of asphyxia.
Carole Theriault
It's incredible though. They were bringing them air and food and warmth. It's just an incredible human endeavor.
Graham Cluley
Horrendously perilous situation the kids found themselves in. And while we were all holding our breath, there were numerous ideas on how to rescue them. I mean, for instance, some people said, well, let's drill a hole from the top and get down to them. Let's teach them how to dive underwater in a cave with no visibility, or let's leave them there for 4 months while they wait for the end of the rainy season. And one person who was approached for an idea was Elon Musk. He's got over 22 million people following him on Twitter, and someone said to him, have you got any ideas? You know, you're Elon Musk, right? You're the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, and you're basically Iron Man. And Elon Musk came up with a couple of ideas, and one of them was this tiny sort of submarine— well, it wasn't really a submarine, it was this skinny airtight capsule that they thought maybe other divers could guide through narrow space and just big enough for a kid to squeeze inside. And he posted up videos and they tested it in swimming pools and they raced it out to Thailand and it turned out it wasn't needed, but he left it there just in case, thinking it might be useful in future. Maybe just didn't want to lug it back to the airport. I don't know. But anyway, he left it there and there was a message posted in on this thread on Twitter from Elon Musk saying, even if it's not going to be used, it won't harm to have it on hand for any emergencies. Also remembered my promise from yesterday. And I was reading this Twitter thread and I thought, I wonder what Elon Musk's promise was the day before.
Carole Theriault
I don't think many people would confuse that name with Elon Musk, looking at it quickly. Well, Elobecrusk.
Graham Cluley
No, but I don't think you wouldn't necessarily see the user ID. Quite often with Twitter applications, you only see people's given name and their avatar. You don't always see the ID. The only clue that this is not the real Elon Musk is that there is no blue verified tick. So if you were following this conversation and there were further messages as well saying, take a quick look and the submarine will be useful even if not immediately, you get taken to this webpage, which appears to be from Tesla.
Carole Theriault
Now, where do they put this verified tick? You can see it on mine. It's just after BJ Mendelson is the blue check. BJ's got the blue tick. I've got the blue tick. I bet I don't. What, do you have to apply for one?
Graham Cluley
You do have to apply unless you're a real celebrity. Then you don't.
Carole Theriault
Oh yeah, Donald Trump just got it.
Graham Cluley
Just probably just got it right. So what crypto scammers are doing is they are leaping onto conversations initiated by people with high followings, pretending to be those people, and their messages are getting hundreds and sometimes thousands of likes. They're getting replies, and people think that they're speaking to the real high-profile person, and sometimes they're being duped into clicking on these links, and sometimes they are undoubtedly giving money because they think, well, it does sound too crazy to be true, but this is Elon Musk. He's got bags of money.
Carole Theriault
Okay.
Graham Cluley
Maybe he would do something like this. So I carried on following the thread and Elon Musk basically puts up a link to a webpage where he says Tesla is offering to give away 5,000 bitcoins, which is equivalent to about $32 million. Yeah.
Carole Theriault
Is it Elon Musk? Do you not think people would check how many followers someone has if they were just going into this? Well, it's certainly the name Elon Musk, but if you look, and it has Elon Musk's picture, and it's in a conversation which was started by Elon Musk, and the first message about, "Even if it's not going to be used, it won't harm to have it on hand," that does appear to be in the nature of this discussion. Of course, it's not really Elon Musk's Twitter account.
Graham Cluley
No, no, no. I don't think people would bother at all.
Bj Mendelson
His dollar store equivalent.
Graham Cluley
If you're following a thread and it appears this guy is talking about what the initial person spoke about and his account ID avatar and his name is the same, I think you just assume it's something else.
Carole Theriault
So you're thinking most people would fall for this is what you think.
Graham Cluley
I'm not saying most people would necessarily give the money, right? I'm not saying that, but I think a percentage of people probably would.
Carole Theriault
Okay. That's what a political answer.
Graham Cluley
Well, he has 22 million followers.
Carole Theriault
Yeah. But what percentage? Just say.
Graham Cluley
I don't know what percentage, Carole. Yeah, I mean, this particular tweet, the offending one pointing to the dodgy page, it had 152 likes, it had retweets, it had other people commenting on it as well. And it wasn't even the only one in the thread. There was another one just a few pages down I saw from a different fake Elon Musk. Saying, again, give us some of your bitcoins and we will give you a free Tesla car just by handing over some bitcoin or Ethereum. So crypto scammers are taking advantage of celebrities. Elon Musk is not the only one. We've also seen journalists. We've also seen some of the bitcoin exchanges as well. In some cases, they've actually had their legitimate verified accounts hacked.
Carole Theriault
Exactly.
Graham Cluley
These posts made.
Carole Theriault
I was just going to say Elon Musk's account has not been hacked in this case. This is just someone purporting to be him with a secondary account.
Graham Cluley
And in other cases, Twitter itself has been tricked into giving scammers verified accounts because they've used fake IDs, which they've uploaded to try and trick Twitter into believing they're someone they haven't. So this appears to be a real problem, and Twitter isn't handling it terribly well. Although it is shutting down lots of bogus accounts, it's so easy to create brand new ones, and it seems these devious tricks, which aren't really that sophisticated, are enough to fool people into believing that they are reading a genuine message from a tech guru, a journalist, or a celebrity.
Carole Theriault
Did I read this week that they're closing something like 1 million accounts per day on average?
Graham Cluley
Yes. Yeah, I think a lot of the accounts they're closing down may actually be at the point in which the accounts are actually created, as it were. So they're stopping them quite early.
Carole Theriault
Oh, right, right. So they're newly created and they're going, this doesn't look legit.
Bj Mendelson
Well, so just from the research I've done, even if you have a really large Twitter account, at most you could
Graham Cluley
Got you. This is obviously dodgy and that may be picking them up in a very short period of time. But there is a huge problem.
Bj Mendelson
get like a 0.1%. That's the best that you can really hope for, even if you have a large amount of
Graham Cluley
And I have seen people who've actually responded to some of these fake bitcoin scammers who are posting these messages. They reply saying, this is obviously a scammer. And within a matter of minutes, a brand new account has been created in the name of that user who has been calling them out, posting, of course, another bitcoin scam. So, you know what was happening though? Some people were saying, oh, he's just jumping on the publicity wagon. You know, he's doing this as a PR stunt.
Bj Mendelson
followers. We're not talking a significant chunk of them that would click through on it.
Graham Cluley
And that kind of annoyed me a bit. I thought, yeah, obviously Elon Musk is in some ways an utterly odious person just from what I've read. You know, I just think, oh, he just sounds vile in every way.
Bj Mendelson
I can add to that.
Carole Theriault
You guys are just jealous because he's hot, he has money, and he gets stuff done.
Graham Cluley
He certainly has money. That's true.
Bj Mendelson
He does. He does.
Graham Cluley
At least he tried to do something. I don't care if this was publicity stunt or not. He did something. And all those people whinging about, oh, look at him sending his little submarine to Thailand and it wasn't really wanted.
Carole Theriault
And so what if he's a media darling, right, Graham?
Graham Cluley
What are you saying?
Carole Theriault
Nothing.
Bj Mendelson
Kind of the cave thing, you know, that's a story where I've been following it and I was really hung up on how they got in there in the first place. But you guys have sort of broken that down. Because I'm kind of like, wouldn't you just leave how you came in? And I didn't realize.
Graham Cluley
They thought of that. They thought of that, BJ. It's good that you, you should have texted them or something.
Bj Mendelson
You should have just, yeah, right. Exactly. Right.
Graham Cluley
If only I was there with a, BJ, what's your story for us this week? Involving YouTube. So the big thing is that they're going to spend $25 million to stop fake news or stop, quote unquote, right? But when you dig into the actual article of how they're going to stop it, they're not talking about their platform at all.
Carole Theriault
$25 million? For promo videos?
Bj Mendelson
For promo videos and other things.
Carole Theriault
I wouldn't mind a piece of that pie.
Graham Cluley
We could make a video.
Carole Theriault
Yeah, I'm pretty good at the old Logic Pro.
Graham Cluley
Is anyone at YouTube actually applying some critical thinking? Is this a very good use of their money?
Bj Mendelson
No, so that's the whole thing, right? They have gone through contortions over the past year or so of, you know, we know fake news is a problem. We've got the Google News initiative and google.org and we got, you know, all these critical thinking videos we're going to make and that's what's going to solve the problem. But you never hear them stop and go, hey, maybe there's a problem with the algorithm and the way our system works. And that's the thing that we should fix. They never talk about that. Instead, you've got these weird pseudo Band-Aid things that they trot out. So they said that they're going to, you know, they're building sustainable video operations and that's what the grants are for, for the $25 million. But nowhere do they talk about the problems with the platform. And as long as they allow that to continue, we're just going to continue having these issues.
Graham Cluley
So will it be that halfway through, you know, one of those videos from who's that terrible man, Alex, whatever his name is, Alex Jones, halfway through one of his videos up will pop PewDiePie or whatever his name is saying, oh, now just, just don't be so certain about this.
Carole Theriault
Don't believe everything he says.
Graham Cluley
Don't believe everything that you've just been watching. Because I'm a YouTube-endorsed critical thinking ad.
Bj Mendelson
Yeah, I mean, that's exactly that, right? That's what it says, that they will be creating videos to raise awareness about digital literacy and help educate teens about— because that's the problem, right? Teens and not your 65-year-old father who watches right-wing propaganda. Yeah. Educate teens about identifying legit sources of news information. So that's the crazy thing to me is that, you know, we talked about the grossness of the crypto world, but when it comes to tech, they don't want to take responsibility. They'd just rather pass the buck. And so that's sort of how they're going to do it.
Carole Theriault
I think that kids and millennials would be much better at detecting fake news than the older generation.
Bj Mendelson
Yeah, exactly right. I mean, I look at my parents. My dad is 70. My mom is in her late 60s. And so they're the ones that should have, hey, let's dig up Steely Dan. You know, I don't know if any of them are still alive, but let's have the surviving members of Steely Dan come in. And say, hey, the thing you just read is probably BS.
Carole Theriault
But if you have a change of heart— My mom sometimes says to me, she goes, did you see that thing on the internet?
Bj Mendelson
Exactly. That's the people that we should be looking at, because in the United States, those are the people that voted for Trump, and those are probably the people that voted for Brexit. So you're absolutely right, the teens aren't the problem. They know this stuff is BS. It's the older, the baby boomers who could really use this.
Graham Cluley
Yeah, he's just got a bit political.
Carole Theriault
I know.
Bj Mendelson
I mean, we have to earn that explicit warning, don't we?
Carole Theriault
That's right. We've got to earn it. Good job. Good show, Graham.
Graham Cluley
So your advice for YouTube is don't spend the money on these daft adverts. Instead, hire the surviving members of Steely Dan to come out of retirement to advise the silver generation about fake news. That's basically your advice. Basically, get humans to do this.
Bj Mendelson
Yes.
Graham Cluley
Proper humans to verify these things. Spend the $25 million that way.
Bj Mendelson
Just hire people. Each time you read about this, the platforms always say, oh, you know, our algorithms are getting better every day and we'll be able to fix this. And I just sit there going, just hire people, you know, as many as you can to help police this and train your algorithms so that this stuff doesn't happen. But if you're not gonna do that, then yes, absolutely. I think the surviving members of Lynyrd Skynyrd would be perfect. If we could find them, let's find the corpse of Richard Nixon and maybe try him out for a couple of videos because if that's what they're going to do to solve it.
Graham Cluley
Carole, what's your topic for us this week? Well, I'm going to talk about social media. So you guys are, well, I won't say old.
Bj Mendelson
Yeah.
Carole Theriault
Oh yeah. I bet that occasionally you might want to have a snapshot of activity at a certain time. Maybe BJ, when your book was published, you went around on all your social channels going, "Woohoo!" Or when we won the award, Graham, right?
Graham Cluley
Oh, best security podcast. Yes, I remember that one. Yes.
Carole Theriault
Right. So you may want to have an app that helped you pull all those together and aggregate all those messages that happened during a timeframe. And this is exactly what this app TimeHop does in a nutshell. Its raison d'être is to rekindle fond memories of your past social media posts. Now, don't go and install this app just yet because TimeHop disclosed this week that it has just been hacked. The hack took place on Independence Day. And despite wild efforts to stop the breach in action, they did it for 2 hours, the baddies did get away with some of the spoils. 21 million people had their email addresses stolen and usernames, and 5 million lost their phone numbers. They use their mobile phone numbers to log in.
Graham Cluley
As their login. Yeah. I think this is an app which is very popular on Facebook. I think my wife has this app on Facebook. And so what it does, it pops up after maybe a year or something saying, oh, do you remember this from 5 years ago? You know, happy memories of the time Graham quit Facebook, you know, and let you do what you wanted.
Carole Theriault
Exactly.
Graham Cluley
I think Facebook actually has its own version of it now called Memories.
Carole Theriault
Oh, okay.
Graham Cluley
I think what's cool about this one is that you can aggregate across Twitter and different other apps. Now, way back in December, an unauthorized person used an admin's credential to log into TimeHop's cloud computing service where all the information is stored. Question is, how were they able to actually achieve this feat? It turns out they didn't have two-factor authentication turned on.
Carole Theriault
Oh, the existing proper admin of TimeHop didn't have two-factor authentication, so they were able to phish his credentials or something. But to make sure that they continued to have access, they created a new secret admin account.
Graham Cluley
Yes.
Carole Theriault
Oh, that's sneaky, isn't it?
Graham Cluley
And since December, they kept coming in just occasionally in May and in June, just to have a little poke around. And then on Independence Day, boom, they swooped in, right? Enter TimeHop's cloud computing account, which wasn't protected, transferred data and attacked the production databases. Fireworks. Not actually, they don't actually
Carole Theriault
And presumably they chose Independence Day because they thought, well, there won't be many people around to notice or respond, do you think?
Graham Cluley
go out with the intention of Yeah, that's exactly what I think. So you're out there, you know, either at a barbecue or dealing with family or you know, on a march somewhere, you're not thinking about your IT. blowing their fingers off.
Bj Mendelson
Or blowing your
Carole Theriault
I was just thinking in my head going, I don't know what he's talking about.
Bj Mendelson
fingers off, which
Graham Cluley
It's not a euphemism. With guns?
Bj Mendelson
Is it?
Graham Cluley
I'm a bit bored. Let me go another few.
Bj Mendelson
is the American pastime.
Carole Theriault
I don't have to go to work today. What can I do for fun? Now on their— TimeHop's very detailed security incident page, which I'd recommend you guys go take a look. It's timehop.com/security. I think they've done quite a good job because of course, under new GDPR rules, you need to get all your information out pretty darn quick to users.
Bj Mendelson
Yes.
Carole Theriault
In this incident page, they are warning users who have used their mobile number to log in and take some additional security steps. And I want to explain why they're focusing on the mobile number users. This is basically a warning against things called port scams. This is where a fraudster who may have collated enough information about you, maybe your date of birth or social security or last digits of your social security number, your postal address, and they might have gotten these from different breaches. And what the whole point is to pull all this together and try and dupe your telephone carrier into thinking they are you. And if they're successful, they will try and authorize on your behalf the number porting over to an account or device in the fraudster's control. Ironically, this is all about two-factor authentication. That's what they're looking for. They're looking to have your number so that if you access your bank, right, the two-factor authentication code gets sent to your phone, they get the message and they can log in on your behalf.
Graham Cluley
Now, so they've hijacked your phone number, effectively your mobile phone number. So any two-factor authentication code is sent to that instead. Yeah, that's very sneaky.
Carole Theriault
They're not going to do this unless they have information about you already. Right. You'd be surprised. I think a lot of people think that they're safe when actually their information is lurking somewhere in some old paste bin.
Graham Cluley
And as well as your phone number, they've got your email address from Timehop. So yes, I mean, correlating that with other data breaches, they may well be able to find out all sorts of information about you.
Carole Theriault
Exactly. So there's a few things you can do, and this is a good reminder for everybody. Find out if your carrier offers port validation protection. This is a fancy way to say they have a passcode or PIN number that has to be used. The fraudster won't know that PIN and therefore will not be able to get the port changed. You may also, if you're changing or if you're getting a new mobile phone, profile phone or changing carriers, ask them what information they would require in order to authenticate your identity. If it's just publicly available info, maybe go find someone else. And lastly, don't assume you've never been breached. You can go to sites like haveibeenpwned.com, which is run by a friend of the show, Troy Hunt, and put your email addresses in and see if you come up on any lists that have been potentially scooped up by baddies. And in those cases, make darn sure you change those passwords to unique, long, great ones.
Carole Theriault
Good advice. Yeah, very nice. Tell me, Graham.
Graham Cluley
It's almost time for Pick of the Week. Boom.
Carole Theriault
Hey, Graham.
Graham Cluley
Hey, Carole.
Carole Theriault
LastPass has this automated password generator, so no more do you have to sit there and dream up silly long passwords that mean nothing to you. You can just press a button and presto, you've got a 25-character, 50-character password that's impossible to guess.
Graham Cluley
Will it put all kinds of crazy characters in?
Carole Theriault
You can choose to put them in or not, depending on the website, because some websites don't let you do the crazy characters, do they?
Graham Cluley
Linking websites which don't relate to decent passwords.
Carole Theriault
Ah, grumble grumble. Check out lastpass.com/smashing.
Graham Cluley
I'm glad you said slash that time. You're welcome. And welcome back. And you join us at our favorite time of the show, part of the show that we like to call Pick of the Week.
Carole Theriault
Pick of the Week.
Bj Mendelson
Pick of the Week.
Graham Cluley
Pick of the Week is the part of the show where everyone chooses something they like. It could be a funny story, a book that they've read, a TV show, a movie, a record, a podcast, a website, or an app, whatever they like. It doesn't have to be security related necessarily.
Carole Theriault
Shouldn't be.
Graham Cluley
And my Pick of the Week is not security related.
Bj Mendelson
Ooh.
Graham Cluley
Yeah, exciting, eh? As you know, Carole, and BJ, you may not be aware of this, I'm a big lover of the great outdoors. I love nothing more than hiking in the mountains, going down the valleys, you know, going to festivals, camping, the great— oh, wonderful.
Carole Theriault
Every single time, and probably I've been outside with Graham probably 5 times in my whole entire life, and every single time he has basically almost died, and I've had to—
Graham Cluley
Yes.
Bj Mendelson
Really?
Carole Theriault
He's been swimming and sliced his foot open where I had to swim him back to shore.
Graham Cluley
We did nearly die that time. We did nearly die. Yeah. What I'm going to recommend to you today is a terrific little service called what3words.com. 3 is the number 3. They've divided the whole world into a grid of 3-meter by 3-meter squares. And you may be asking yourself, why have they bothered to do that? Well, they've done that because they have given a name to every 3-meter-by-3-meter square, they've given it 3 words, a unique address made up of 3 words. Rather than giving someone your latitude and longitude, which is going to be impossible— who on earth would do that? You just give them 3 little words. And if you give them those 3 little words, they can find out your precise location, which could be handy if you're trying to tell the pizza delivery guy to deliver to a particular place, or if you're trying to give the location of your picnic spot, or where you want the drone to land. Or if you're at a festival and there's thousands and thousands of horrible tattooed people there.
Carole Theriault
Let me just see how this works with the pizza delivery guy, right?
Graham Cluley
Okay.
Carole Theriault
So let's say you are— they're asking for your address, right?
Graham Cluley
I knew you were going to do this.
Carole Theriault
And you're going to say what? You're going to say— go ahead.
Graham Cluley
No, no, look, listen, right? Stop that nonsense right now.
Carole Theriault
Because you're going to have to tell them to go to the website first, aren't you?
Graham Cluley
No, not sorry.
Carole Theriault
You say first go to what3words.com.
Graham Cluley
Maybe you've listened to the Smashing Security podcast and you've installed the app. Right? Or maybe this is a website which has already heard about What3Words. Maybe it's built up enough momentum that loads of people are now using What3Words. Come on, we've got to use this thing. Because, okay, if you're getting a pizza delivered to your home, the pizza delivery guy's not gonna have much trouble. But what if, Carole, what if you are on a campus? What if you're at your place of work and it isn't obvious which building? The other day I was out on a gig, I was doing some speaking, and I was in one building and I wasn't in the other one and my taxi driver went to the wrong building. There was all this hoo-ha and hassle. Well, which building you're at? I'm at this building. No, you're not at this building. Blah, blah, blah, blah. If I had been able to give him my What3Words, then maybe he'd be able to find me. Or what if you are at a concert or a festival or something that and you're trying to find your—
Carole Theriault
Are you a shareholder?
Graham Cluley
You're trying to— No.
Bj Mendelson
I feel there's a pitch for a timeshare coming.
Graham Cluley
No. You're trying to find your tent or where the loos are. You've lost someone who's got the ice cream.
Carole Theriault
I know, totally.
Graham Cluley
Well, I think it's quite a clever little idea. I'll give you some examples, right? So there's, here's one: Price's Slippery Traps.
Carole Theriault
How do you spell that?
Graham Cluley
Well, as you would expect, Price's Slippery Traps.
Carole Theriault
Traps?
Graham Cluley
What is it? Yes, traps.
Carole Theriault
That's the conversation you all have with your pizza guy. That's what I'm saying.
Graham Cluley
Well, I will do if it's better than giving him the latitude and longitude, and that would take him to the Eiffel Tower.
Carole Theriault
I don't know. In England, you can kind of give your house number and your postcode, and that normally works.
Graham Cluley
Yes, that would work. But do I have to give you my scenarios once again? You're at a concert, you're at a festival, you're hiking, whatever it is, for goodness' sake. And by the way, this works without a data connection, which is handy. Oh, now you're impressed. How about this one? With harp person will take you to the Oval Office.
Carole Theriault
Sorry, what was that?
Graham Cluley
Don't even start. It'll take you to the West Wing, the White House. With harp person. I doubt he is with a—
Bj Mendelson
Are you sure it's with harp person, not bed head hairpiece.
Graham Cluley
Well, you know what? You could enter that.
Carole Theriault
I wonder if there's embarrassing ones. See, we need an app now to find all the embarrassing ones.
Graham Cluley
I think they've been careful not to allow rude words and sound-alike words to avoid confusion.
Carole Theriault
Okay. Canadian High Commission in London.
Graham Cluley
Yes.
Carole Theriault
Okay. Engage gossip face.
Graham Cluley
Now you're liking it, aren't you?
Carole Theriault
No, I think it's a bit— I'm surprised they want that. They're probably—
Graham Cluley
They don't choose them. Oh, for goodness sake. There's an album.
Carole Theriault
I mean, the Canadian High Commission's not gonna go out and you can find us at Engage Gossip Face.
Bj Mendelson
Sounds like a safe word. Right.
Graham Cluley
Okay. Enough of this. What3words is my pick of the week, and I hope some listeners like it, even though you two don't. Thank you very much. Pick of the week.
Bj Mendelson
Although I have to say, so when I was in a past life, when I was married, we lived up in the Adirondacks, and so my ex-wife and her mom would always go hiking. And one time they got lost in the woods for over 3 hours and found themselves in front of a state penitentiary. And had they not found that prison, they probably would've died out there. So, you know, I can't, I'm joking about it, but I can absolutely see instances of, all right, this could be good because you could get really lost up there and not have any other way to be found unless you have with harp person to enter into an app.
Carole Theriault
That's, that's, see, I appreciate that reason more. That makes more sense.
Graham Cluley
Glad we got BJ on the show then.
Carole Theriault
It does.
Graham Cluley
BJ, let's hear your pick of the week.
Bj Mendelson
My pick of the week is a show called Justified, which people can watch on Amazon Prime.
Carole Theriault
I've seen a few seasons of that, I think a long time ago. It must have started a while ago.
Graham Cluley
Yeah.
Bj Mendelson
So it's about a decade old at this point. It's one of those shows where people know that—
Carole Theriault
Cowboys. Ways.
Bj Mendelson
Yes. So he thinks that he's Wyatt Earp, essentially, and he works in the Marshal Service. And so just imagine Wyatt Earp running loose in today's American South. And that's the show. It really does a great job of portraying the American South in a way that you don't often see. We kind of have all the stereotypes, but when you watch the show, you kind of understand, oh, this is how bad hairpiece got elected. These people still think it's the 1870s. And so I think that the show, they should totally bring it back and rebrand it as Trump Country.
Graham Cluley
Oh no. Because I think that it would do really well these days because you would just be, oh, this is why this is happening. But that aside, the show is great. I just remember the script was quite fun. There was something quite in the writing that I really liked, I think.
Bj Mendelson
There's some wonderful lines from Walton Goggins, who plays the antagonist, Boyd Crowder. And he has some brilliant lines that I think are very memorable and very quotable.
Carole Theriault
Give us a quote. And this is from the episode I saw yesterday, so it works out beautifully. This is a bad Southern accent.
Graham Cluley
That's funny. Okay, so that's Justified, and that's on Amazon Prime.
Bj Mendelson
Yes.
Graham Cluley
Oh, cool. Brilliant.
Carole Theriault
Okay.
Graham Cluley
Yes. And Carole, what's your pick of the week?
Carole Theriault
So a few weeks ago, my lovely buddy Anna started nagging me to check out this new podcast called Dear Joan and Jericha. And I kept getting these texts from her, have you listened yet? Have you listened yet? And finally I listened and then I immediately saw why she was recommending it. Dear Joan and Jericha is played by two UK comedy stars. And it's basically agony aunts, which is my dream job, as you both know. So the comedy stars are Julia Davis and Vicki Pepperdine. They're kind of radio, kind of local radio agony aunts, but with this wacky, cringy twist, because no matter what problem they're discussing, it's always the woman's fault. And to an absolute extreme, it's a little bit edgy. This is not for children. It's very adult. I think the whole concept is they're trying to crack each other up by being more and more edgy, and it's blush-worthy, a bit like The Office. Okay, here, I'll play a bit for you. Dear Joan and Jericha, my baby's been born with white hair and a full set of teeth.
Graham Cluley
Should I be worried?
Carole Theriault
Margaret Doreen from Bolton. Well, yes, it— that's white hair, that's not blonde hair, is it?
Graham Cluley
That's white.
Carole Theriault
White hair. Yes, yes.
Graham Cluley
So it sounds to me like she's had a baby that's been born, and that's been in the womb too long.
Carole Theriault
Sounds to me like an old baby, really.
Graham Cluley
It's a very old baby. This is uncommon, but sadly and tragically, does happen increasingly nowadays with people's poor diets and lack of vitamins.
Carole Theriault
Well, it's a weird thing, isn't it, that you could— it's, as you say, it's happening more but it's still rare, it's on the up, and that is where the gestation period goes into 10 months and that's what's happened here, whereby it's aging, it's aged the baby very badly.
Graham Cluley
So this is particularly with older mums, geriatric mums, anybody over 35 who's having a baby.
Carole Theriault
If you're going to get pregnant at this very late age, you're going to expect some anomaly. I mean, she was, she's 36. Yes, she's 36. You know, this may be incidentally a pregnancy from when she was first having periods.
Graham Cluley
It's pure unadulterated filth really, isn't it, Craig?
Carole Theriault
It kind of is, but they just have this way of going, "Yeah, yeah," supporting each other as though they're saying something quite deep and wise. So as The Guardian say, this is not for the faint-hearted, but if you're into absurd toxic relationship advice, serve the slice, you know, faux sincerity, this is the one to check out. So thank you, Anna, for Dear Joan and Jericho.
Bj Mendelson
I love it.
Graham Cluley
Okay. Well, I have heard a little bit of this and it is quite fruity.
Carole Theriault
I know I did choose a rather tame example.
Graham Cluley
Fantastic. Well, on that bombshell, we've just about wrapped up this show for this week. BJ, if people want to follow you online or find out more about you, what's the best way that they can do that?
Bj Mendelson
So, BJMendelson.com, @BJMendelson on Twitter. And I think I gave this out last time, but my phone number is 646. So I've been doing a ton of podcasts, and people ask me, "Do you have any trouble giving out your phone number? Do people send you dick pics?" And so I'm pleased to say that most people are very well behaved. What I get instead, if someone wants to be cheeky, is a picture of Richard Nixon. Yes, so my actual cell phone number is 646-331-8341. If you text me the word sheetrock, I will send you a free copy of—
Graham Cluley
I'm just taking a photograph. Hang on.
Carole Theriault
Yes.
Bj Mendelson
There we go.
Graham Cluley
It's on its way. It's on its way, BJ. Enjoy that one. Yes, please don't.
Bj Mendelson
But yeah, 646-331-8341 is the phone number if people want to reach me. I got a lot of great responses from listeners of this show, so that was very cool.
Carole Theriault
Yay.
Graham Cluley
Fantastic. Well, we're not going to hand out our phone number, but we will give you our Twitter address, which is @smashinsecurity, no G, Twitter wouldn't allow us to have a G. If you want to grab some stickers or t-shirts or mugs and things like that, you can go to smashingsecurity.com/store. And thanks for tuning in. If you like the show, please rate us on Apple Podcasts. It helps new listeners discover the show, and you can find new episodes as well at smashingsecurity.com. Until next time, cheerio. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
Carole Theriault
Bye. Now, BJ, are you still single? Because last time you were on the show, I think you were single. Did you get any ladies?
Graham Cluley
I've just sent him a dick pic. That helps.
Carole Theriault
Well, if he owns a microscope. Psst, if you're still listening, remember, please visit smashingsecurity.com/vote so that you can register your vote for Smashing Security in the upcoming Podcast Awards. We need your help, guys. Thanks.
EPISODE DESCRIPTION:
The world has been gripped with the story of that soccer team, those poor boys... but enough about England's World Cup hopes being dashed, it's time for another episode of "Smashing Security".
Crypto scamming Thai cave rescue scoundrels! $25 million to make anti-fake news videos! TimeHop data breach! Phone number port out scams!
All this and much much more is discussed in the latest edition of the "Smashing Security" podcast by computer security veterans Graham Cluley and Carole Theriault, joined this week by the author of "Social media is bullshit", B J Mendelson.