Do people put their phones in bags if they're going up in a balloon?

Why?

That's full of helium, isn't it?

Well, I think if you're up in a balloon and the helium's not staying in the balloon, then you're in bigger trouble than losing control of your iPhone.

Good, good point, Mark. Thanks.

Smashing Security, episode 103: An Instagram Nightmare, Crazy iPhone Deaths, and Election Ransomware claims with Carole Theriault and Graham Cluley. Hello, hello, and welcome to Smashing Security episode 103. My name is Graham Cluley.

I'm Carole Theriault.

Hello, Carole.

Hi. It sounded like your voice almost broke there.

About time.

Puberty finally happened a while ago, Carole. We're joined, you may have just heard him, by a special guest. He's new to the show. It's Mark Stockley. Hello, Mark.

Hi.

For people who don't know you, why are you here and who are you?

Wow, that's been hard.

Don't answer that.

I'll answer that.

So this is the softball you promised me to start with, is it? What the fuck are you doing on my podcast? I don't know.

As you can tell, Graham and I have known Mark for a long, long time. Mark is a writer for Naked Security. He's also pretty au fait with all things internet and technical.

He's Naked Security's backend guru, I think you could say as well, couldn't you, Mark?

Well, but mostly it's nepotism, right?

Yeah, mostly that's why you're here.

Yeah.

And just to put the show in context, we are coming to you from the past. We recorded this on election day. By the time you hear this, the election will all be over. Everything will be marvellous. Whatever the result, everyone's going to be happy with it, I'm sure.

Now, which of you have set your VPN to USA so you can sniff out the real election news and vibe?

Well, I'll just be going straight to Alex Jones on tour. Just go straight to the truth, just Google it, Carole. The truth's out there, you've just got to Google it.

Smashing Security is this week sponsored by the marvellous folks at LastPass. LastPass allows you to protect all of your passwords across all of your devices, whether they be laptops, desktops, or smartphones. And if you're an enterprise, you should really run a password manager as well, because you can defend your employees and put in place password best practices. Make sure to give them a try. Visit lastpass.com/smashing, and thanks to LastPass for supporting the show.

Okay, quiz time, quiz time. All right. What percentage of data breaches originate from email?

Ooh, 7 out of 10.

Ha! It's a pretty good guess, but you're way wrong. 96%. Oh, blimey. And one of the big things that companies have to worry about is phishing scams, because that's the kind of way that hackers and other baddies break into your company.

Because that's how they get your passwords.

That's how they get your passwords. So MetaCompliance make it easier to train and prepare your whole environment to stop these kind of attacks. They have information on phishing and cybersecurity and policy and privacy and incident management. There's all kinds of training out there. Smashing Security listeners, you guys can get 10% off by visiting smashingsecurity.com/metacompliance. That's smashingsecurity.com/metacompliance.

And on with the show. Now, you chaps, are you familiar with Kylie Jenner?

Familiar? Define familiar.

Have you heard of her? Do you know who she is?

Is she a Kardashian?

Oh, well, she's somehow related to the Kardashian family. She is, according to Wikipedia, because I've been looking up all about her, a 21-year-old American model, entrepreneur, socialite, and social media personality.

Okay, that means that she grew up rich.

Well, I think—

Carole, she's a socialite.

Exactly.

Nothing says fame earned like socialite.

She may still be quite young, but she's squeezed a lot into her life. She's been on a hit reality TV show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, since she was about 10 years old. She's launched her own line of clothing and cosmetics, and she's co-authored a dystopian science fiction novel about two twin girls who live in a biosphere.

Have you read it?

I have not. No, she's not. There's a lot of books I have to read, Carole, and I haven't got to that one.

You haven't got to Kylie Jenner's twin girls who live in a biosphere?

Where have you got to yet?

I've got sort of to Kipper and Chip, the Red Book one. Now, in the August 2018 issue of Forbes magazine, Kylie Jenner was predicted to become the youngest self-made billionaire ever. Clearly they're using some definition of the words self-made that I was previously unaware of.

It's not very well known that she produced and directed Keeping Up with the Kardashians when she was 10. Oh, so well earned, I think.

But what she has done is she has earned herself 118.6 million followers on Instagram, and there are brands out there who will pay her as much as $1 million to post something about their products on Instagram.

Wow.

It's a lot of money, isn't it? It's quite a great deal.

That must really screw up your whole sense of life if basically someone's willing to give you a million quid for you to just say, hey, like these crisps.

If that's screwing up your sense of life, Carole, please screw me. Because that's—

Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's not that type of show.

It sounds pretty fantastic to me.

I'm not promising anything.

If Snapchat wants to take a photograph of me wearing their daft goggles.

You don't think you'd become really cynical and you'd start throwing your weight around going, well, why would I talk about that? I don't love that. I don't know what we're gonna do for me.

Well, you can, no, it's a deal, right? You can post up vacuous photographs of yourself pouting on some beach somewhere. And occasionally, if you need a bit of cash to buy some ice creams or a hot dog, you do something for an ad. Why not? It sounds terrific. If people are prepared to pay for it, if you've amassed that following with your snaps, sounds wonderful to me. And I think there's many people, other people see this going on and they're tempted to see if they can make a ton of cash as well doing something else, which appears to be so bloody easy, right?

Well, I think it's gross, but okay, carry on.

Anyway, like I said, other people want to do this. They'd love to post a couple of times a day on Instagram, make themselves a fortune.

People like you. I would. Well, I'm just thinking she's setting herself up for Nicole McCauley. What's his name? Macaulay Culkin. Macauley. Macauley. Macauley.

Yeah, no, that's

What? I know nothing of celebrity world.

Crow, not only do you know nothing about celebrity world, you're referring to child actors from like 30 years ago. I mean, he's a grown man, Macaulay Culkin.

his name now.

Yeah, but that came out after, like it wasn't a movie that was I'm sure I've seen it, but anyway.

That's his name now.

Can I get to the security aspect of this story?

Is this even about Kylie Jenner? What's she done?

So lots of people are impressed by the likes of Kylie making themselves a fortune on Instagram, including an Abu Dhabi-based travel blogger called Maria Da Costa.

Okay.

And she lives in the capital city of the United Arab Emirates with her husband Jackson, and they spend their free time traveling around the place, blogging about their adventures, and they claim to have visited 42 countries and over 127 cities in 6 continents. McLearn Culkin.

Really?

6 continents?

That's what they say.

Macaulay Culkin. Right.

Over several years, they've amassed 105,000 followers, which—

That's not bad.

It's not bad.

It's almost—

It's the same ballpark.

It's, well, not really, but—

118 million versus 105,000.

Well, come on. Where do we sit in terms of judgment on this? Because, you know, we were all pretty scathing about Kylie Jenner for her not working very hard for her Instagram fame. So what do we actually— you guys, you know, professional podcasters, where's the food chain here? Are we okay with travel bloggers?

Well, I've only created an Instagram account for myself this morning in order to research this story.

I've never had one. I know nothing.

Anyway, listen, I'm not criticizing Delaine and her husband Jackson for being on Instagram, or even Kylie Jenner. Why shouldn't she?

Yeah, no, that's good. 'Cause it sounded like that.

Okay. But 105,000 followers potentially made them a bit of a target. Delaine received out of the blue an email claiming to come from someone called Angelina Reshetnikova, who said that they were representing an online store called Vince. And they wanted Delaine to be the new face of Vince. And they said, if you give us a slight reduction on a promotional post, you can choose one of our outfits.

So they basically Kylie Jenner'd her by basically treating her like a celebrity.

105,000 followers.

Is that significant?

It's not bad, is it? You might want to—

I don't know what's bad.

So I'm sure there are brands and hotels who have offered her maybe cheaper stays or free trips in order to promote them to her followers.

Right. So she's probably getting these kind of things. And this was just one another invite in her inbox.

Yeah. So she received an unsolicited email from a Russian-sounding woman.

From a—

There's nothing wrong with Russian-sounding women, personally.

I just want to clarify the details.

Yeah, Mark.

You know, it's a Russian— she got an email from a Russian-sounding woman. This all sounds fine. Everything's going to work out.

Representing—

No.

Representing an online store called Vince. And they were making an inquiry saying, what's the cost to advertise on your page? And what discounts can you offer us? And can we offer you one of our items of clothing from our new collection as a gift? And please click on the link. And the link appeared to go to Instagram. And so, of course, Delaine, our blogger, clicked on the link.

And she's au fait with Instagram, having a number of followers there.

And she was taken to a page which asked her for a username and password, and dun dun dun! You can probably guess what happened next. It was, of course, a phishing link, and she had just given her password to this hacker. And she received an email from the bad guys who are posting to her from an anonymous webmail account at tutanota@ saying, "We've hacked your Instagram account and we are going to start deleting your posts and your images." That, you know, basically we've set a countdown and you've only got 1 hour before your account is going to be deleted and you're going to lose all your photos. And they asked for $400 worth of bitcoin.

So they sent her a link. She went to a fake Instagram site. She entered her username and passwords. Bad guys grabbed it and then changed it and said, "Aha, we have all your pictures and we're going to delete them unless you give us some money." Right.

And so Delaine Costa got into a conversation with these guys. "Oh, I wanted my account back, you know, can we talk about this?" And all the rest of it. And there was a bit of toing and froing and delay. And he says, "Oh, I couldn't sleep that night and I was crying." And Jackson, her husband, he sounds like a wonderful guy. He agreed to pay the following day. And so they started up a conversation, said, "Look, we can't do $400." And the bad guy said, "Well, how about $200 instead?" And so Jackson tried to send the money.

Okay.

But the money didn't go through. Oh, it failed. Something went wrong. Maybe she wasn't able to handle the whole bitcoin thing. Didn't happen. And that made the hacker furious.

They were tasting the riches at the tip of their tongue and it was snatched away.

And they kept on messaging, asking, you know, when are you gonna pay? When are you gonna pay? And after 3 days, they'd finally had enough. They said, right, that's it, we're gonna delete your account and goodbye. And that was the last conversation they had and the account was wiped, zapped. Now, at this point, Delaine got really, really frustrated. How does she report this to Instagram? There is a method of reporting hacks to Instagram, but you have to be logged into an account to report that an account has been—

Yeah, why is it these sites don't have 1-800 numbers? I mean, you'd think big sites like this would.

Well, you know what the answer to that is.

Yes, I know, but they should.

People would phone the number.

That's why. That would be disastrous. I mean, I receive emails every day from people who claim to have been locked out of a Facebook account or need help hacking into their loved one's account because he's gone missing, or find out what my girlfriend's up to, and these sort of things. So if people are contacting me, people must be trying to contact Facebook with these sort of scam messages all the time as well. So how on earth would they wade their way through them? Well, there is a helpline number for Instagram which Delaine managed to find, and she rang them up and they said, no, no, no, no, no, you have to contact us through the app. And she felt frustrated because her username and phone number and email ID didn't exist on Instagram anymore via any particular service.

But surely someone could look at a log and go, oh, I see what's happened. Oh, interesting. Everything you say checks out.

What's in it for Instagram to provide that kind of service from there?

Yeah, why should they have support? Absolutely.

I agree.

They shouldn't even bother with customer service.

Why should they?

Fuck the users.

Right, right. Yeah. If you love Instagram that much, just create another account and off you go.

It is just, it is, if you think about the number of users involved, it is terrifying when you think about how many users you could royally piss off if you were Instagram and just write it off, or whether you're Facebook or Apple or anybody like that. You know, you can probably afford to make hundreds of thousands of users absolutely hate you. And actually it's kind of a rounding error.

So Delaine is saying the hack reporting option is fundamentally flawed because it doesn't help anyone who's actually lost complete access to their account. And eventually Instagram sent her an email saying, look, what you need to do is submit a photograph of yourself carrying a placard with your name on it and a code number and a shoe on your head or something like that.

How weird.

We want you to stand on one leg holding an ironing board. Smoking a cigarette.

And she sent them this and apparently this kept on going on for days and they kept on saying, well, what device did you use to register your account? And she's like, I don't remember. It was freaking 2012. I don't remember what phone I had or what my number was or what the code. And she just said it was absolutely no use at all. Eventually she says that she found a savior and she says she's not in a position to name them. Someone helped her, whether that was inside Instagram or not, I don't know, but her account got restored.

Oh, interesting.

I've heard that kind of story before. We published a story last year or the year before about Twitter where somebody was being really awfully harassed on Twitter and they couldn't make any headway. And it's only at the point that they managed to contact somebody who works for Twitter, they contacted them outside the normal methods, that they actually managed to make some progress. And that's not an unfamiliar turn of events.

It's not at all. In my own experience, I found sometimes it's been impossible to get some of these social media sites to respond to you unless you approach their PR department or unless you actually kick up a stink in the press. I had a situation once where I was being harassed online and unpleasant things were being threatened against me, and I went to The Register and The Register wrote it up and suddenly Facebook took action. But prior to that, it was impossible to get any response from them. So if you can't find someone or if you're not— I imagine that Kylie Jenner wouldn't have any difficulty because she's a celebrity.

Oh, that's— I was just gonna ask, what the heck does any of this have to do with Kylie Jenner? And your link, your tangential link, is she wouldn't have any trouble because she's famous.

And she's on Instagram. No, I'm just saying.

And you get to lead with the story. So have you heard of clickjacking? Podjacking? Have you heard of that?

I think what Graham's trying to say, Carole, is that Kylie Jenner is like Graham.

Exactly. This is the message.

She's famous like Graham. She has resources at her disposal to deal with these sorts of issues.

Mere mortals like you and I.

Normal people like travel bloggers and people like that.

And I would like to take this opportunity to promote my new line of nail varnish, which I am—

Porcine Pink?

That's an interesting choice for a podcaster.

Now, obviously, keep backups of your pictures. Don't just trust them to Instagram. In this case, there was a happy ending, but in many cases, that doesn't happen. We've seen many higher profile and celebrity accounts on Instagram being hacked. And I think one of the challenges is that Instagram was rather late embracing two-factor authentication. They brought it in for the first time last year in 2017. It took until August this year for them to finally add support for third-party two-factor authentication.

Do you really think that would have helped here?

I actually think it probably would have done. I think—

Really?

Yeah, I do.

Because I hear this story and I hear password manager. I don't hear 2FA. Look, I know about web development and stuff like that, but if I was going to set up a phishing site, I would just have a little field for you to type in your two-factor code, and then I would immediately pipe all the information that you've put in straight into Instagram.

Well, you can do that.

And I would log in as you and I would change the information because two-factor, you normally get a sort of 30-second to a minute. Well, you can do that, Mark. You're right.

I'm sorry, Mark. I thought this was a good idea.

A naked security backend guru.

Any kind of additional authentication will cut out an awful lot of the phishing going on. I have to say though, when I was writing up this story, I had to create an Instagram account and I can't get two-factor authentication enabled and I'm not a complete newbie.

Maybe you should ask Mark. He's a geek. He's on Instagram.

So can I just make a plug for password managers here? 'Cause you, I agree with you. 2FA is undoubtedly a good thing and there's lots of reasons why it's a great idea. In this case, maybe it would have helped, but there are ways that the phishing could have been set up so that it didn't. But if you had a password manager that automatically enters your password for you, when you go to a website, if you go to the wrong website, no matter how good the replica is, if it's not the right website, the password manager isn't going to autofill your password. And for someone like me who lets the password manager pick the password, that essentially means you can't get in.

Yes, a great additional reason why everyone should be running a password manager.

So now that you have an Instagram account, Graham, what are you doing with it?

Well, I've only got—

Are you selling nail varnishes?

Oh yeah.

Mark, what story have you got for us this week?

So my story is a mystery. So I want you to get into character.

Can I be Columbo?

I want you to forget that you're Graham and Carole for a second. You are Agents Fox Cluley and Dana Theriault of The X-Files. And if Fox Cluley sounds a bit like Columbo, then that's just a cross we're all gonna have to bear.

Okay, I like it.

So listen in as I tell you the mysterious tale of the hospital. Where all the iPhones died. So the incident in question is said to have occurred about a month ago in a multi-practice facility of Morris Hospital, which is near Chicago.

Okay.

So towards the end of an otherwise normal day, the IT department gets a call from a facility saying that all of its mobile phones have died.

Died.

Died.

Died.

Kaput.

And so they dispatch a team out there to investigate. So when they get to the facility, the team discover that the call hadn't been quite correct, which is not uncommon with IT support calls.

Did they try turning it on and off again? That's normally the fix.

I'm glad you enjoyed the story. So it turns out it wasn't all of the mobiles that were down. It was only the iDevices.

Okay.

iPhones and iPads.

It seemed an Apple shoe.

Before you said, I didn't want an Apple shoe until you said Apple shoe. And now I really want an Apple shoe. So most of the iPhones and the Apple Watches belonging to about 40 users on multiple floors in this facility had died stone dead.

Wow.

Those that were alive were experiencing problems with their cell radios, so they couldn't connect to the cellular network, or mobile network for us UKers. So they couldn't connect to the mobile network, but they couldn't connect to Wi-Fi. But most of them were just dead.

Gee.

And everything else was fine. So the Androids and the computer systems in the rest of the facility were all fine.

This is some kind of targeted denial of service attack by some rabid Android fan.

Graham's already decided who the culprit is.

Yeah, he normally speculates very early.

This is how police work works, isn't it? I think I know who did it.

Wait, that's what happens in Columbo. You find out who the baddie is at the beginning, and then you just keep on chatting to them, and eventually you're out with them. See, it wasn't raining that night, was it?

Why do you have water on your jacket then? I just don't understand.

You've got water on your eyeshoe.

You took your jacket with you, but it was 10 past 10. So you're an identical twin?

My wife!

Love Columbo. Bless him.

How can you not? Yeah. Okay. But we digress.

Do we? Can we not carry on talking about Columbo?

No, I want to know what happens. I'm interested.

Okay.

Okay. So returning to our theme of the IT help desk, as any IT help desk person will tell you, the first question you need to ask is what changed today? Well, what had changed was that they were having a new MRI machine installed. Okay. So case solved, right? MRI, it's a giant superconducting electromagnet.

Exactly. That's what I'm thinking.

Magnets and electronics don't play very well together. And so it seems pretty obvious what the answer would be.

And when you get an MRI, the first thing you want to do is go on, let me have a go in the MRI. Everyone lines up and they—

Oh yeah, because it's so fun. I've had the joy of having a number of MRIs in my life and they are fun times.

They forget to take the phone out of their pocket or whatever and it got zapped.

So do you think 40 people all lined up and went through the MRI for fun? And then when the IT guy gets there, he's going, "Has anybody been playing in the new MRI?" And 40 people all looked at each other and went, "Eh, no, no." I think that's probably what happened.

It's probably more plausible than whatever you're going to tell us.

So, case solved, right? It's an MRI, great big superconducting electromagnet, magnets and electronics don't play well together. So it seems pretty obvious what the answer would be, but remember, this only affected the iPhones. It didn't affect any of the other computer systems or Android devices.

Yes, I forgot that. Okay.

Now, the Android users were too busy trying to get their carrier to deliver a security update and on the phone to Samsung or Huawei trying to sort that out, whereas the Apple users had loads of free time. They're oh yeah, let's go check out the MRI. Okay, carry on. Tell us what happened, Mark.

You're a Columbo fan and you're hurry up, why is this moving so slowly?

He doesn't shut up and then yells at you for hurrying up. I know. He got bored with himself.

What are you when you're watching Columbo? Okay, I'm going to return. I'm going to return to the story. So not so fast. As any physicist can tell you, magnetism is rare in the natural world in that it doesn't have a strong preference for Apple products. So nobody actually knows what the answer to this is. The devices that were—

Satisfying story.

Are you serious? Seriously, we don't have a reason?

I'm just— my word. Are you a Columbo fan as well? Right. So nobody knows what the answer is. The devices that were bricked were private. So the technician got to look at them briefly, but hasn't been able to take them apart. But everybody's best guess is that this is all about helium. So it transpires that during the installation of the MRI, It sprung a leak, and about 120 litres of liquid helium evaporated into the air.

Everyone's talking this! My phone doesn't work! My phone doesn't work!

We've no idea what's going on.

Did you know Maria was on the show this week?

Is that what happens if there's a huge leak of helium? What's going on? Why are you sounding funny?

When they got there and they say, has anybody been playing with the MRI? Everybody looked at Maria and went—

Not me.

So, right, so we've got the means and the opportunity, but what's the motive? What's helium got against Apple?

Ooh. No idea. Could I call a physicist?

Can helium get into the devices more easily?

Oh. Small, yes, small molecules?

Through the headphone jack?

So it seems so. You're actually both barking up the right tree, it seems so. It seems that helium can induce the electronic equivalent of a heart attack in an iPhone. So in the heart of every computer, there's a very, very, very, very, very tiny clock that keeps a kind of heartbeat going. So you've probably heard about quartz clocks, quartz oscillators, things that. Well, iPhones don't use quartz. They use something called a MEMS oscillator. And a MEMS oscillator is a really tiny machine etched out of silicon a silicon chip. But instead of electronics, it's mechanics. Okay? And the oscillators used in iPhones are billed as the world's smallest, lowest-power 32 kHz oscillator.

Okay.

And in the world of phones, small is beautiful unless there's helium around. Because as you were saying, Carole, helium is very difficult to keep out, and the molecules are small enough that they can actually gum up the parts of a MEMS oscillator.

Interesting.

There is one final important fact that I need to tell you about this story. And that is that it originally appeared on Reddit. So there is a non-zero chance that this is actually all complete horseshit.

No, it didn't originate on Reddit. Originated on Reddit?

No, the story was reported on /r/sysadmin.

Yeah.

So someone went onto Reddit and said, this happened to us the other day.

I have read the iPhone user guide and it says helium's bad for iPhones.

I believe everything I read on Reddit. Everything.

I think the big question mark is around the concentration of helium, because 120 litres of liquid helium expands about 750 times.

Someone did their research.

Yeah, this is general knowledge, Carole.

And then you disperse that through the atmosphere in the hospital. You know, in response to this Reddit post, people have been doing tests with iPhones, putting iPhones in sealed bags of helium and things like this to see if it really does happen. And yes, I mean, if you put an iPhone in an environment rich in helium, then it dies. But the question is, in terms of the story, the plausibility of the story is what concentration of helium would actually damage an iPhone?

I just wonder. I think if I worked there, I'd be really pissed off and I would want a replacement for my personal phone.

Yeah, they're all getting replacements from the company. Yeah, it's my understanding. But, you know, interesting. Anyone who works with helium.

Yes.

Right. MRI machines. What else? Who else works with helium?

Richard Branson.

Yes. Do people put their phones in bags if they're going up in a balloon?

Why?

That's full of helium, isn't it?

Well, I think if you're up in a balloon and the helium's not staying in the balloon, then you're in bigger trouble than losing control of your iPhone.

Good. Good point, Mark. Thanks.

I don't think hot air balloons have helium in them, just to be—

They just have hot air.

Yeah, it's just heat. It's just a heater, isn't it?

Maybe what it might— a zeppelin then.

Yeah, a zeppelin or Branson, one of Branson's kind of things.

That's true. That's true. That's true.

Sorry to be slightly—

No, no, no, I think We have to hand it to Trump. In all the political craziness in the last few years, there is one thing he's done that's been pretty amazing. it's fair. It's my own happiness. Yeah.

No, I'm struggling. Really? Well, don't you think he was able to get a zillion people to care about politics, motivating the political spirit?

As of last night, I've run over your dog. I've proved you love your dog. See, I've done you a favour. No, but 9 million more people voted this year. And I think that's a good thing.

He set the template now, hasn't he? I think everyone should go and try it.

No, you don't. You don't think that.

No, I'm going by your logic.

Now, as you said earlier, today is Election Day. And there has been a spate of related technical snafus that have been going on in the media. One of them was about racist robocalls.

Oh, yes.

There was a voter machine owner manual snafu where the password protection advice, and it was really bad, they were asking to keep the passwords really simple. And there was this hacking fiasco in Georgia. So for those outside the loop, you should know that Georgia State is making a ton of political headlines. And this is mainly because the fight between Democrats and Republicans for control of the governor's seat in this state is hotly contested. Even head honchos like Obama and Trump both recently visited the state in support of their respective parties. So in Georgia, the Secretary of State is an elected official who's responsible for supervising elections.

Carole, what's your

Okay, so put that in your back pocket.

story for us this week? Okay, well, it's good to have someone in charge of the election to make sure there's fair play and, you know, everything is done by the book.

That sounds sensible. Now, earlier this year, Brian Kemp, said Secretary of State in Georgia, decided to run for the governor's seat. Now, he wanted to do this without stepping down as Secretary of State.

I bet he did.

But despite a number of strong requests— I've had an idea, guys. I've had an idea.

Well, it will save the state money, right? Rehire a new Secretary of State to invigilate the election.

Presumably there are some sort of ethics rules or laws, or is the ethics guy an elected official as well? Is that also Brian Kemp? He's also in charge of electoral ethics.

So as you guys are insinuating, many are questioning the conflict of interest here.

I think it sounds fine.

It's perfect.

Very sensible, very efficient government.

Now, you may know also that Brian Kemp has also been mentioned in many stories recently, not all favorable. Some are doing with stalling voter registrations in the state. Recently, in fact, a federal judge told them to calm down on the voter registration requirements, potentially giving thousands more people who live in Georgia the right to vote. Oh, this is the guy who was— he was demanding— oh, I can't remember what it was now. He was demanding some sort of ID, wasn't he? Now, things are hot. Remember, the race is tight.

Yep.

And it's Saturday evening.

The race is what?

The race is tight. Oh, Graham. Now, on Saturday evening, Brian Kemp, Secretary of State, the office that supervises Georgia elections, issues this statement. Okay. And this was on the home page of the official Secretary of State website.

Was it that Brian Kemp had already won?

"After a failed attempt to hack the state's voter registration system, the Secretary of State's office opened an investigation into the Democratic Party of Georgia. Federal partners, including the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation, were immediately alerted. While we cannot comment on the specifics of an ongoing investigation, we can confirm that the Democratic Party of Georgia is under investigation for possible cybercrimes."

Now, this immediately makes me suspicious because nothing screams computer competence like the Democratic Party. Noted for their expertise in securing important documents like emails. Hillary's got a lot of time on her hands these days. Maybe she's been swatting up on how to do SQL injection attacks.

She's getting back at them. Of course, many are pointing out that the timing here is a tiny bit convenient with only two days before the election was going to take place. The voting. So the Democrats, of course, are denying any involvement or wrongdoing, and of course they would. So think about it, if they had nothing to do with it, of course they would deny it. But if they had something to do with it, deliberately or inadvertently, of course they would deny it two days before the election. So it's really an irritating argument that this has come forward without any real evidence, and that's one of the big problems here. There seems to be a distinct lack of evidence in the public sphere a Democratic Party is involved in any way in this quote unquote hack. Really? Wow.

So I misheard. Carry on. Well, it's just him who's saying it's a hack as well, isn't it?

Well, listen, yeah, I did a little digging. In the Washington Post, a reporter said a spokesperson for the Secretary of State office said to her that Kemp's decision to investigate the potential cyber breach was proper because she said an email from Democratic Party officials contained software capable of trying to hack into the state's election system. I think there's been someone who crafted this very carefully. Using such software is a crime, she said.

So I've heard a bit more of the Democrats' argument regarding this. And what they've been saying is that someone who wasn't connected with the party had found a vulnerability on this voter registration page, not a hack. They'd found a vulnerability as they found vulnerabilities in the past. And they had emailed the Democrats to say, "I think you should know, on the state's vote registration system, there's a vulnerability here," which obviously is a bit of a worry. And apparently, whoever found this vulnerability also informed the news media. And the news media, because there have been a number of occasions when other vulnerabilities have been found on this particular website, which hasn't necessarily reflected terribly well on Brian Kemp, who is, of course, Secretary of State as well as running Smashing Security.

So he's in charge

So he's in charge of this website. So it looks slightly embarrassing if there is a vulnerability. And so if they are saying that the Democrats emailed them with software code or whatever, which could have exploited the web page, that may simply be vulnerability disclosure. Right, it may simply be telling them, hey guys, there's a problem with this kind of code.

of this website.

You could access information on this website or exploit a vulnerability.

You know what, were that the case, Yes, I did read that, but were that the case, surely the Democratic Party would be coming really being loud about this and saying, here's the email we sent them.

Well, I don't know if it was just them communicating. I think there were other third parties as well who were in contact. So I don't know exactly what was said where, and who might have said it. But certainly that's the argument which I'm hearing is, this wasn't a hack, no data was taken. This is the counterargument. No data has been taken, so there's been no evidence of that. And maybe what this simply was, was a vulnerability. And there was a story, I think it was in Politico, where they said silently the website got fixed for some of the vulnerabilities. They actually tried it out themselves to see if they were able to access some of the information.

On one side, you could say, okay, it's a failed hack. There's a little bit of hanky-panky going on between them, but there is a serious problem here because many US voters apparently visit the Secretary of State website for voting-related information. Like, where do I vote? What hours are the polling stations open? So that means that between Sunday and Tuesday night this week, Georgia voters who went to the Secretary of State website actually saw this cyberhacking message that I read earlier.

Yep.

And it basically plainly says that Brian Kemp's opponent, Stacey Abrams, her party is being accused of cyberhacking. And how may that impact the vote across the state? Interestingly, I didn't see any mention of this accusation on Brian Kemp's for governor website. Of course, he has a precedent of getting cyber attacks wrong. In 2016, it was Brian Kemp who accused the Obama administration of raising unwarranted fears of election cyber attacks. Then months later, he accused that same administration of a failed attempt to break through the firewall that secured voter registration information. So déjà vu, anyone? The charge was completely debunked 6 months later. And in fact, actually, in November 2016, he actually turned down federal help to help secure his systems against cyber threats. So there you go.

Well, by the time people hear this, it'll all be over, won't it? Either—

Well, it may just be beginning.

Oh, really?

Because if it's a narrow race and the Republicans win, I mean, that's quite a strong accusation to make against the Democrats. Although the thing I struggle with, it's very easy to paint a picture where Brian Kemp looks like a shady character. I mean, Brian Kemp sounds like he's doing a great job of painting himself to be a shady character. But if you remove the Republican-Democrat labels from this and you just say, you know, one political party is accusing the other political party of trying to hack into a voter registration website. Does that sound implausible? Frankly, no. You know, it's not a standard of behaviour that falls below where we've come to expect it. So although it sounds from the story as if, you know, Brian Kemp is kind of a serial liar about these kind of hacks, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that one political party is trying to get one over on the other one with a bit of hacking.

No, I know. And you know what, if you were in a race and two days before the vote you see something like this, is it your duty to tell your constituency, especially if it benefits you because you're in the race? So this is the whole advantage of being a secretary of state and, you know, running for governor.

I think I would probably have felt better about that announcement if it had come from the police.

Exactly right. Indeed.

It's very interesting because all our listeners already know what's happened, and we do not right now at all. So there's some weird time warping for you.

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Hey, Clue.

Hey, Carole.

Did you listen to my little bit about MetaCompliance and their e-learning?

Oh yeah, I heard that earlier in the show. Yeah, did you? Yeah, okay.

Well, have you signed up yet?

Well, no, I've been doing the podcast, Carole. I haven't had time to sign up for it, have I?

Well, women know how to multitask. Surely you can get a move on and sign up. We get 10% off. Just go to smashingsecurity.com. You should know that website, /meta-compliance, and enter the code SMASHING with a G.

SmashingSecurity.com/meta-compliance, enter the code SMASHING. Terrific.

With a G. Cool.

And welcome back. And you join us at our favorite time of the show, the part of the show that we like to call Pick of the Week.

Pick of the

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. Doesn't have to be security related necessarily.

Week. Pick of the Week. Better not be.

And my pick of the week this week is not security related.

Is it a book?

And it's not a book.

Good.

And it's not a TV show, a movie, a record, a podcast, a website.

Is it Doctor Who?

No, it's not. It's definitely not Doctor Who.

Thank God.

I'm rather unimpressed with Doctor Who actually this year. We'll talk about that another time because my pick of the week is an erasable pen. I have a young son. He does homework. He gets mad and crazy every time he makes a mistake and wants to rub it out. He doesn't always want to use a pencil.

Give him a pencil.

No, I've given him a pen because he wants to color in with pen. He doesn't want to go over the lines.

But I've—

Well, the kind of pen which I think he really likes are erasable pens. Have you come across erasable pens? Graham, I hate to break this to you, oh, you're going to tell me these have been around for years?

Even way back in the '80s, we had erasable pens. I love that you just discovered them.

Do you know how erasable pens work, Carole?

No.

Has it got something to do with helium?

No, it has something to do with heat. The friction of rubbing out, as it were, heats up—

Sets fire to the paper? No, no, no. Heats up the ink to over 60 degrees and makes the ink disappear. This is with the Pilot FriXion, with an X, erasable pens. With the pen?

If you put—

You erase and then you write the thing back in?

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Fridge. Put it in the fridge.

Put it in the fridge. And if it goes below 10 degrees, it will reappear. This is also a spy communication device.

Yes, I love that.

Now you're interested.

Now I'm interested.

So you don't need Tipp-Ex to white out your mistakes.

Did you say below 10 degrees?

Yes.

So the UK, basically. This is a fantastic device for—

Maybe it's minus 10.

Reasonably hot countries.

Maybe it's minus 10. Hang on, because I'm getting upset with you now.

What?

Maybe it's minus 10. I'm going to look.

No, because the fridge doesn't go to minus 10.

No, I've just Googled, or used an alternative to Google actually called Startpage. The ink reappears at temperatures of under minus 10 degrees centigrade. I made a mistake.

Oh, so it can't be the fridge, it's the freezer.

Well, all right, the freezer.

So you actually haven't played this game at all.

Someone rubbed out the minus sign in my notes, and that's why it said 10 degrees rather than minus 10. Anyway, I think this is very cool. It doesn't matter if they're new or not. Just as I've recommended Beatles albums in the past, I can make my pick of the week anything from the history of creation if I wish.

Okay, listeners, you understand that after 100 episodes, Graham has got nothing else to pick. So if he writes on his skin, do you have to put him in the freezer for a bit?

No, I have not put my child in the freezer, Carole.

Good, good, good. Excellent parenting there.

Thank you very much. Pilot FriXion erasable pens. Some people love them, some people hate them. Some people say they had them when they were at school 30 years ago. That is my pick of the week.

Well done for battling through that, Graham.

Mark.

I don't know why he's getting all angry.

Well, I think it's because we just—

Did what he does all the time.

No, Carole, this is actually what you did last week as well on pick of the week. I had a pick of the week and you criticised the pick of the week and you usurped it with your superior pick of the week.

Obviously. Did you

You didn't like my 10 years, which had actually been recommended by a listener. Someone from Brazil had written in with his pick of the week.

Why are you flogging a dead horse? We did all this already.

I'm just saying, well, I'm just saying, yet again, you'll criticise my pick of the week. Get better, Mark.

not hear my section?

You better pick of the week.

Mark, good luck with your pick of the week.

Okay, so I was going to recommend the first half of Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, but something happened this morning. There is a tips line for Naked Security. People email things into Naked Security stories, and we received one this morning, which is PR press release, which I thought was very pertinent. Elections can be boring. What? So today is midterm elections in the USA. Okay, but there's good news. If you're not very excited about the election, somebody has emailed Naked Security's tips line with a way to liven them up.

Right.

So for a bit of electoral excitement, there's— it seems that a popular adult webcam platform has come up with a new technology for the elections called Pollcast. That's with a P-O-double-L, which is a platform that allows people with connected male and female sex toys—

Say no more.

No, I want to hear how it ties in with erections. I mean, the election.

It seems— where shall I start? Okay, it's a platform that allows people with connected male and female sex toys to sync them to the frequency of the vibrations coming from the results of today's elections.

Okay, I'm tuning out.

So if your political party is winning, the vibrations get stronger, and if they're losing, the vibrations die down. So if you find elections dull, well, this is for you. And apparently, apparently this comes hot on the heels of something else which was called BitCast, which was a similar technology that allowed you to enjoy your cryptocurrency investments in an entirely new way.

Unfortunately, they've been going down for a while, haven't they?

Mark, are you sure this was a tip? Do you have investments in this firm? It just sounded a bit like an ad. It sounded a bit—

You too can enjoy the midterm elections.

Enjoy the elections like you never have before.

What worries me is the election TV shows, they tend to go on for about 8 hours, don't they?

What if, yeah, what if you feel those great heights again and again? Those desperate lows?

It's a pretty low pace of election, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. I'm going to pass on that one, but thanks for the recommendation.

It's your first time on the show, isn't it, Mark?

It's been fun.

Kroll, what's your pick of the week?

Mine's a great pick of the week, so beat this, Graham. Beat this. Isle of Dogs by the great Wes Anderson, director of Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou, an excellent film. The Royal Tenenbaums, excellent film. Fantastic Mr. Fox, excellent film. And now the even better Isle of Dogs came out earlier this year, and it's only now making our way to home cinemas. So of course I didn't leave the house to see. Now it's set in Japan where dogs have been banned from the city by a bunch of cat-loving government types, and the story is about Atari Kobayashi, a 12-year-old Japanese boy who undertakes the dangerous journey to find his lost/stolen dog on the Isle of Dogs, also known as Trash Island. Now, things I loved about this— all Wes Anderson films, incredible attention to detail, lovely, lovely, lovely. Characters are well thought through and they're imperfect. Graham, it's you. I love them I love you. You know, imperfect and thought through. Now what's really cool about it is the dogs speak in English, but the human, because it's set in Japan, the humans speak Japanese, but they don't conventionally translate the Japanese to English. So as the viewer, you're kind of put in the position of the dog of only getting a few commands or a few phrases because you don't understand, you don't speak Japanese.

Oh, I see.

Yeah, but they— there's unconventional ways to get meaning, so they're using all the visual help they can to get the meaning across. It's very cleverly done. There's a lot of thought in it.

Presumably in the Japanese version of the movie they've switched it round.

So what you're saying is in the Japanese version, the Japanese people can't understand what their dogs are saying?

Yeah, Graham, they wouldn't have changed it. Exactly.

That's an incredibly radical way of looking at the world, so that the humans don't understand what the dogs are saying. The dogs are speaking a different language from the humans.

In Japan, they can— they relate to the people.

What? No. To have the same film experience in Japan, if you were Japanese watching this movie, they would have to change— they would have to redub it.

Why?

Because otherwise you'd just hear the humans speaking. You wouldn't hear what the dogs were saying.

Yes. Well, you can hear it.

You can hear it, but that's not the movie.

Graham, is there something you want to— can you speak to dogs?

That's a different movie.

Yes, okay, I have a suggestion. Go flipping watch it.

I should have done it in Welsh.

Shut up, shut up, shut up. You're trying to hack away at my idea. Just— you can't. Go watch it, and you're gonna— next week you're gonna say, okay, Carole, you know what, you were right. It was really amazing, and I loved it.

Your husband— your husband speaks Japanese.

Yes, we watched it together.

Oh, so what was his experience like?

Oh, probably different than mine.

Well, I'm very interested.

Probably got a few more expressions. Yeah, why don't you watch it if you're interested?

Well, I don't speak Japanese.

Oh, just ask John.

Did you see Fantastic Mr. Fox?

Yes, I did.

Was it fantastic?

It was good. Yeah.

You just thought it was good?

The title is the review.

It was wonderful, but it wasn't called The Wonderful Mr. Fox. The wonderful Wiley folks. It was called the Fantastic— it was terrific. Superb.

Good. Well, I think you're going to like this even better.

Well, that just about wraps it up for this week. Mark, I'm sure lots of people having heard about your pick of the week would like to follow you online and connect with you. What's the best way for folks to do that?

You can follow me on Twitter. My Twitter handle is Mark Stockley.

Oh, brilliant. And you can follow us on Twitter as well at Smashing Security, no G. Twitter wouldn't allow us to have a G, and that's a good idea because occasionally we tweet out little codes so you can save some money in our online store.

And funny things occasionally, sometimes funny.

Oh yes, some fun stuff as well. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe in Apple Podcasts, your favorite podcast app, so you don't miss any episodes in future. Be sure to tell all of your friends as well. And if you're really keen, you can even rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

Actually, you don't have to be that keen. I'm okay if you're medium keen. Just tell us you're keen.

Some people aren't keen at all and they leave us reviews on Apple Podcasts.

Well, if we could just get those people to write it in erasable pen, we could just go along after them and rub it out.

Until next time, cheerio.

Bye. Bye.

I think that's a record.

Okay, well, allons-y with the editing, eh, Graham? I hope tonight, tonight, while you're lying cozily in bed this evening, it might be 4 AM, or tomorrow, anytime before midnight tomorrow. I want you to picture Graham and I feverishly trying to pull this together into something coherent. Oh gosh, I love you both.