The Pitfalls of Cybersecurity

Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:

• Columbia University and DEI.
• David Malicoat on the border and cybersecurity.

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Well, what we need is morecommon sense, common the youth old common
breaking down the world's nonsense about howAmerican common sense will see this through with
the common sense of Houston. I'mjust pro common sense for Houston. From
Houston dot com. This is theJimmy Barrett Show, brought to you by

(00:27):
viewind dot Com. Now here's JimmyBarrett. I I got a couple of
clips to play here during our openingsegment on this Friday afternoon, so I
guess I better get right to asecond work this right And you saw or
heard about the protest going on atColumbia University involving Israel. Hennahmas, it's

(00:47):
it's getting in. They had onehundred and eight people arrested. I had
no idea how long they were injail. My guess is they weren't in
jail long enough to get, youknow, anything more than booked. And
my guess is absolutely nothing's going tohappen to them. But it was amazing
to take a look at how thesepeople were behaving themselves. Now, I
don't know if these are all students, if these are student activists. Obviously

(01:10):
they're activists, but I don't knowif they're activist students, or if they're
just activists on campus who were portrayingthemselves like the other students, some of
them actually identified them as Hamas,identified themselves as being Hamas, not being
Palestinian, not being pro Palestinian,being actual Hamas a recognized terrorist group,
at least as far as I'm concerned. So let's start with this Columbia's president.

(01:34):
I think this was on Tuesday.Her name is Moud Shadif. She
is an Egyptian by birth. She'sthe president of Columbia. Here she is
getting questioned about some of the activitieson her campus, with some reaction on
the other end from Senator Ron JohnsonPresident Shavik. Earlier today, the question
was posed, are chance of fromthe River to the Sea anti Semitic?

(01:56):
And Professor Schitzer, head of theAnti simpson As force at Columbia, say,
I guess you gave a very clearanswer. Yes. You, on
the other hand, hemmed and hawedand then eventually said I hear them as
such. Some people don't. IfI were to go through a number of
other racial slurs and ask you ifthose are offensive of these are racist,
I don't think you'd say I hearthem as such. Some people don't,

(02:17):
would you, I think I believe. I'm happy to give you my personal
opinion, but I think the questionthat you're really asking me is are they
forbidden to be said at Columbia.That's not what I'm asking. Actually,
I'm hacked. We saw your instinctis that you're I'm wondering, who are
you risking? Who are you worriedabout offending? That's my quest. I

(02:38):
feel like I'm speaking as president ofColumbia. Well, first of all,
what troubles me is just a doublestandard. We have at least a dual
system of justice in this case.You know that this free speech is completely
allowed. Can you imagine if thesewere people with the red mega hats on
blocking highways, I mean, theywould be you know, ripped out off

(02:58):
those highways violently. The FBI wouldhave a huge task for the devote all
kinds of effort to round everybody upand throw them in jail and throw the
book at them. You know,the left wing protest is the pro Hamas
group. We have left wing groupsbailing them out if there is any kind
of arrest, certainly encouraging no arrestswhatsoever, no punishment, So again,

(03:20):
it's just a double standard that isgrotesque, and the bias and hipoxy within
the media. They are given apass. They're apparently on the right side
of the radical left wing narrative ofthis, and so yeah, they're going
to be given a real pass.And Harris, that is what is really
destroying this country is the deep division, a division that is being driven by

(03:42):
these hate groups. I would Iwould call Hamas obviously a hate group,
but things like critical race theory,identity politics. That's what's storing this country.
The double standard again, we shouldhave equal justice on the law.
We should abhor all kinds of hatespeech and all types of you know,
forms of genocide. And apparently genocideagainst Israelis is not a problem for some

(04:04):
people. Either the First Amendment appliesto everybody or it applies to nobody.
He really is quite that simple.Now here's very forceful. I didn't get
a chance to play this this morning. This is a very very forceful opinion
from the esteemed Alan Drsowitz, whois a former Ida League professor in addition
to being a world class lawyer.He says, the Columbia problem, the

(04:27):
problem we're seeing on these campuses allcomes down to one thing d I.
The core problem is DEI diversity,equity and inclusion, intersectionality. These dominate
universities today and they're the sources ofanti Semitism. Let me tell you a
story about one professor. His nameis Joseph Massaide. He is the one

(04:48):
who praised Tamas on October seventh andsaid what they did was a wonderful thing.
He is pro Hamas. I opposedhis tenure. Before he got tenure.
I told you university he was athird rate academic. He had called
on a Jewish student as a teacherand when the student said and started talking

(05:08):
Joseph massa the professor said, youseem to have an Israeli accident? Are
you Israeli? He said yes,He said, can't speak in my class
unless you are prepared to say thatIsrael has committed to war crimes. This
is a professor. He hadn't gottentenure yet and Columbia University gave him tenure.
Not this is being anti Israel,but precisely because of it, they

(05:32):
wanted anti Israel professors on the facultybecause they will getting funding from anti Israel
countries. This is a much deeperproblem. This goes back years and years
and years and until and unless universitieslike Harvard and Columbia get rid of up
root completely from top to bottom,the DEI bureaucracy and the intersectionality bureaucracy,

(05:58):
this will continue and it will destroyevery major university in America and turn American
universities into the same third rate institutionsthat Professor Joseph Massad is as a third
rate scholar. So, boy doesshe have work to be done. And
some of it's going to be difficultbecause her faculty wont supporter. Many of

(06:18):
our students swown supporter. The problemis a lot deeper than what we see
on television today. What we seeon television today is the tip of the
iceberg. But don't call these peoplepro Palestinian. They are anti Palestinian.
They're pro Hamas. Hamas has beendestroying the Palaestinian cause they hang gays,
they murder dissidents, they discriminate againstwomen. They cause the death of all

(06:44):
these people by using human shields.So these pro Hamas people are not pro
Palestinian. They're anti Jewish, they'reanti Palestinian, and their anti decency,
well, sup had Palestinians can figurethat out because they elected Hamas as their
government as their leadership in the WestBank. That's that's that's a fact.

(07:05):
So it's too bad they evidently theFalasittings had not woken up to this.
All right, take a little break. We were talking about cybersecurity. Next
day of small Texas town had awater tower that overflowed by remote control and
they think it was the Russians.More in that story coming up in just
a moment here on AM nine tofifty KPRC. All right, cybersecurity.

(07:35):
We're like, thereof is something whilewe're talking about on our show here today,
I was telling you before the breakhere we had a incident in Mule
Shoe, Texas, small little townin Texas where they think Russians were able
to hack into their water tower.Not sure how they did that, but
they released water. It took thirtyfive to forty five minutes in order to

(07:57):
be able to shut the water down, and they had to do it manually
before they finally did. And theythink the Russians might be responsible for this.
I don't know if they've got theclues necessary to tell them for sure
who is responsible for it, butit brings into question the cybersecurity issue and
how you know how the water supplymight be threatened. I mean, we've
had other incidents. We had nineto one one call centers down. Two

(08:20):
of them were here in Texas.Interestingly enough, one in Del Rio and
the other one in Eagle Pass.That seems kind of strange, doesn't it?
Joining us talk about all this isDavid Malacote. He's a cyber security
expert, host of the Professional CIOpodcast, CIO standing for Chief Information Security
Officer. Let's start with a watertower. David, what kind of telltale

(08:43):
signs do you think they found thatwould tell them the Russians might be involved
in this. So typically when youtalk about an attribution, they there's indicators
of compromise or IOCs, and whatthose tell you is they use these particular
ways in which they attack, inwhich they go in, and what they'll
do is they'll they'll find a wayin and then the lateral move and then

(09:05):
they'll escalate some privileges. The waythat they do that are like a fingerprint.
And so whether it be Russians,Iranians, Chinese North Koreans, they
each have their own individual weight.That's how they do the attribution. So
they take that those innovative indicators arecompromise and then they map it back to
what those players look like. Okay, I don't know if there's a good
answer for this, but why wouldthe Russians take a little tiny town in

(09:28):
Texas. So typically the smaller towns, the municipal water districts or the co
ops let's say, tend to haveless money. And so what they want
to do is they want to causefear, uncertainty, and doubt or FUD
as we call it in the cybersecurityworld, where they just want to come

(09:48):
in and kind of cause that chaosand they just kind of want to muck
about with us. And typically it'sthose small towns that have the least amount
of resources to have their cyber defensesat a level that they can they can
combat this. Yeah, but youknow, I think, for example,
a city like Houston, you know, our infrastructure is done in the world's
best shape. I'm pretty sure sureour security is not really up to date.

(10:09):
And we're a metro area of youknow, six and a half million
people. If you could shut downthe water supply, even if it was
for an hour, that could bringit that would really bring some chaos.
W wasn't it absolutely? I thinkthat they that's their their direction. They
want ahead. I would honestly seethis as as more of a warning,
uh and not necessarily explicit warning,but to say, hey, we can

(10:31):
get to you in the small towns, and we're going to try to work
our way up to change. Mostlikely. So they assumed that the that
the US government knows that this wasthem that did this, and that this
is a warning to the US government. I would say it's a it's a
warning to the people of the UnitedStates, like we we know what what
where you're where you're soft, weknow where your defenses are lower, and

(10:54):
we're letting you know that. Soin regards to the nine one one call
centers, I don't know that we'veheard an official explanation yet about why they
went down for a period of time, but it was it was interesting.
It was you had the two citiesI mentioned before here in Texas Eagle Pass
in Del Rio, you had LasVegas, Nevada. You had an area

(11:15):
in Nebraska where it went down,and one other state. So there's four
states involved with this, and Iwould think that there's no real link between
the nine one one centers and anyof those four states other than the fact
that they were the ones that gothit upon for whatever reason or went down
for whatever reason. Or are theyall links somehow? I think they're linked
in a certain way, and Idon't know for sure. I haven't looked

(11:37):
at see the infrastructure on each.But there's two right now. There's really
two different types of nine to oneone. You still have the old analog
systems in play, which are theold two wire you know, ring ring
ring, and those are very secureinsomuch as they're so simple that you would
actually have to tap the wire withyou know, directly physically to be able
to get in there. The nextgeneration nine to one one is basically voiceover

(12:01):
IP or computerized telephony, and soin this case, most likely we're talking
next gen nine one one, andthose type of systems can be hacked very
similar to any other type of computersystem, you know, you know,
the hackers always seem to be onestep ahead. And we still have companies.
AT and T comes to mind.I happen to be an AT and

(12:22):
T customer, so my personal informationis out there along with millions of other
people, probably on the dark web, somewhere. They always seem to be
one step ahead. Why why isit that we can't anticipate what the next
thing is that they may try todo and prevent it from happening. It's
very simple but not easy. Whichis we as the defenders, have to

(12:46):
be right all the time and theattackers only have to be right once.
And that's very very simple concept,but it's very difficult when it plays out.
I can tell you as a asa cybersecurity practitioners and all the folks,
my colleagues and as well as everybodyin the industry work very very hard
to make sure that the organizations thatwe protect our safe. Unfortunately, computer

(13:09):
code is written by humans, andby that nature, it is fallible,
much like humans are. So inthe end, you cannot anticipate every single
potential vector that an attack can comethrough, particularly through human code made by
humans, and so in the end, it's those vulnerabilities, those bugs in
the code, that those attackers willexploit and they're always going to be there.

(13:31):
How difficult it is to take thisback to its origins. To you
said that you know the Russians,the Chinese, they'll have different methods is
far and kind of leave a fingerprintabout you know where it came from,
or I guess who did it notnecessarily where it came from, or can
we figure out where it came from? And is do you think there's any
chance, because I'm sure, asyou're well aware, there's been a lot
of concerned about the number of militaryage Chinese men who've been coming across their

(13:56):
southern border. I mean, isthere a possibility that the Chinese could have
into some of our systems from righthere in the United States? Absolutely,
I think that's there's an aspect ofcybersecurity, which is it creates an even
more complex situation, which is actuallyhaving physical access to whatever you're trying to
hack. And so by the natureof having more of those military age males

(14:20):
from whatever country that may not befriendly in the United States could definitely be
a major consideration as far as thethreat goes. Of course, the most
chaotic thing I would think that anycountry could do to us would be to
somehow turn off our electricity. Ifthey could turn off our power plants and
render us in the dark, takeus away, they could take us right

(14:43):
back to the Stone Age, AndI would think that the panic that would
set in the chaos that would setin after an event like that would probably
have this country in pretty sad shapeand fairly short order. Don't you think
I would agree? I think withthose threats. Again, me being in
the in the industry, so tospeak, I look and I say,

(15:05):
I want to make sure that Ihave fresh water. I want to make
sure that I have some sort ofof sustainable food or food that is it's
safe to eat over a period oftime. If there were some sort of
disruption, I would not want tobe dependent on the store every other day,
just at least have something in myback pocket to get me through,
you know, a week or so, to make sure that if there is

(15:26):
that type of disruption, especially withthe essalated threats that we're seeing, that
you know we would we would beokay. Now, where where do you
see the biggest threat? Which countriesdo you think pose the biggest threat?
In what way do you think theythreaten us the most? I think overall
the biggest threat that I see isChina, uh and it's because of how

(15:46):
well coordinated they are and how resourcefulthey are. Now, I will say
more recently Iran. Iran tends tobump up and down depending upon how things
are going in the Middle East withIsrael and things like that. So I
think the hottest one right now isIran, But in the end of the
bigger the bigger issue overall, longterm would be China just because of how

(16:08):
how organized and how this NonStop theyare, because they just they are relentless.
Okay, at the end of theday, are we throwing enough resources
at this? Do you think arewe being proactive enough? You know we
we in the past, I thinkwe've been guilty of just you know,

(16:29):
patching things as they go along andhoping for the best. Have we got
to pass that? Now? Arewe being a little more proactive? And
when it comes to cybersecurity, arewe still kind of lagging behind? We're
still being We're being proactive, butwe do have a way to go.
I think there's and I say,innovation and innovation of thought, innovation of
approach, and innovation of of ofthe technology itself. I think one getting

(16:52):
on with AI. I think beingable to embed AI in a safe way
in our cybersecurity products to help cipherour cycle time as far as defense goes,
will be huge. And I'm seeingthat already, which is a very
good sign for us. I thinkthere are for our soft underbelly. I
need the infrastructure that we're talking aboutwith the water and the electricity, things

(17:15):
like that. I think there's opportunitiesthere to have a public private partnership that
will allow those organizations with less resourcesto be able to increase their cybersecurity maturity
quickly and effectively and help you deterthose threats. So I think there's areas
that we can do things there.But as far as the technology innovation goes,

(17:38):
I think that that side, we'redoing well and getting better. Good
to hear, David, Thank youfor me on the show today. Was
good to talk to you. Iappreciate it. Same. Thank you so
much for having me. You betyou cybersecurity expert, the host of the
Professional CIO podcast, David Balakot,all right, we're back with moreing and
mom with Jimmy Bartt show. You'rean AM nine fifty k PRC. All

(18:07):
right, this will follow up nicelyon the interview we did with our cybersecurity
expert a little bit earlier this hour. It's it's not just about cybersecurity,
it's about infrastructure. Now nine toone one. I mentioned the call centers
with him that went down, andtwo Texas towns were impacted by this,
and that was Del Rio and EaglePass, which had found very interesting,

(18:29):
you know, two border towns.Basically that's the only place they had the
problem. But the problem existed infour states when it happened. So is
this a cybersecurity problem? Is thiscrumbling infrastructure? I mean, we know
we have some infrastructure problems, whichprobably makes it a lot easier for the
hackers to get into US and todo the things they do. Anyway,
Senator Josh Holly was on Fox yesterdaytalking about our infrastructure problems. He sounds

(18:56):
a little frustrated by them. Itjust strikes me that more and more nothing
really worked in America anymore. Imean, our roads are falling apart,
our bridges are falling down right infront of our eyes. Pieces of airplanes
are falling out of the sky.Now we've got these outages. And yet
at the same time, the Congressof the United States and the President,
what do they want to do?Spend hundreds of billions of dollars more on
foreign wars, use tax dollars tosubsidize Chinese industry electric vehicles, paying the

(19:22):
Chinese to make stuff we don't want, whereas our country, or while our
country is falling apart. I mean, if ever, this was the moment
to say wake up and start investingin America, it would be right now,
you know it used to be,or that our government could at least
do some basic stuff, you know. I mean, after all, we
did see a man of the moon, you know now. I mean we
couldn't do that today if we tried. The government is so incompetent. Things

(19:44):
are falling apart all around us.And what does Joe Biden want to do?
Ukraine? Ukraine? Ukraine? Wegot to spend more money to other
people's wars. We got to securetheir borders. My message is rebuild America.
I mean, it needs it,We need people deserve it. That
ought to be our focus. Ourborder is wide open. It's wide open
to the Chinese, It's wide opento everybody. And in terms of China,

(20:04):
this administration, let's not forget,is literally paying China, paying Chinese
manufacturers to make electric vehicles we don'twant, and sell them back at US
at a huge price, upgrade,a huge a huge markup all while mandating
we buy them. I mean,it is insane. It is literally the
deliberate bankrupting of this country. Idon't know they're going to get it done,

(20:29):
but they're supposed to have the Trumptrial, the jury selected by by
the end of the day to day, so they can have opening arguments on
Monday. I have my doubts ifthat's going to happen. But it's been
interesting to watch here as the reactionis changing and coming in and from some
unsuspected sources. Do you know whoStephen A. Smith is? If you

(20:51):
watch if you watch sports, youprobably know who Stephen A. Smith is.
He's he's a sports commentators. He'sa black man. I'm pretty sure
he's relatively liberal, but by thesame token, I don't think he's progressive.
And he made a statement that Ifound fascinating. Stephen A. Smith
is not the kind of person youwould think that would stick up for Trump,

(21:14):
and actually, in reality, he'snot really sticking up for Trump.
He is, however, more thanhappy to chastise Democrats for what they're trying
to do to Trump because he seesit as a cowardly thing to do.
So here is Stephen A. Smithwhat he had to say about this crazy
Trump trial in New York. Andat the other end, you'll also hear
from Kevin O Larry, the SharkTank guy who's Canadian by birth but does

(21:41):
business all over the world and hasbrought a lot of business to the United
States. He's getting asked all kindsof questions about the Trump traustl here's the
both of them. There's much adoabout nothing. To my liberal friends out
there, all you're doing is showingthat you're scheduling. Can't beat them on

(22:02):
the issues and the merits. That'swhy he keeps saying it's a political campaign
against me. That's why he keepssaying they can't beat me at the election,
at the polls. This is theonly way they could do it.
You have given more fodder to thatargument, which means we'll never have peace

(22:23):
in this country because tens of millionsof people see what extent the other side
is willing to go through just tokeep them out of office because they can't
beat them on their own merits.What is this? This hurts the American
brand. I keep saying that Iwas in Geneva last week, one hundred

(22:44):
and fifty countries represented there. Everybody'stalking about this, saying, what is
this porn star thing like. Thisis an American president. This is the
office of the United States of America'shighest office, and we're doing this.
This is sheer stupid, and I'lltell you what should happen. This should
be pushed until after he wins ordoesn't win. This should be not part

(23:06):
of this election cycle at all.And this is not a Trump loving comment.
This is about the American brand whereI bring capital from all around the
world to invest here. We looklike clowns, Yes, yeah we do.
We do to the rest of theworld. We do kind of look
like clowns right now. It reallyis a clown show. But whose fault
is that clown show? The peoplewere attempting to persecute Trump, and Steph

(23:30):
Nay Smith is exactly right. Thereason why they are is we've talked about
many times, the reason why they'redoing what they're doing is they don't think
they can beat them, not basedon the issues. They know that what
they're trying to sell your average Americanis the average American doesn't want. All
they can do is try to makeyou so afraid of Donald Trump that you

(23:51):
will vote for Biden because at leasthe's not Trump. And they think that
because it worked last time, orseemed to work last time. I don't
know if I again trust the votecount, but okay, let's assume that
vote count was legitimate. There wereplenty of people. Ten million more people
voted for Trump in the last electionthan voted for him in twenty sixteen.

(24:15):
So this is the way they think, the only way they think they could
beat him. All right, onemore for you here? What was that
one? No? The idea?Yeah, let me find this real quick.
Oh, gambling. You know,I've been asked three times in the
last month to endorse various different onlinesports gambling sites, and every time I've
said no. The only reason whyI've said no is is not because I

(24:37):
have a problem with gambling. Ifyou want to gamble, go ahead and
gamble. I'm very libertary when itcomes to that kind of stuff. But
I know a lot of our listenershave more objections to gambling, and honestly,
I don't think it's worth my timeto try to talk people into gambling.
If you like the gamble, you'llfigure out way to do it.

(24:57):
If you don't like the gamble,you won't. But there's a couple of
other reasons to consider too, asidefor morality, why gambling might not be
such a great idea. Here's DanaBrino and Brian kill Me. They're on
Fox and I actually was on thefive talking about sports gambling. I believe
that sports gambling, and especially theonline nature of it, especially for younger

(25:19):
people that are over the age eighteenbut are not quite fully formed yet,
it's going to be the new opioidepidemic. Mark my words. Interesting.
It's the most the most easily understoodaddiction by far. It is ruining sports.
No one follows teams, They followtheir own bets. It started with
rotissary league and then it went intoa fantasy league. Now people have following

(25:41):
their players have following their teams.You may think it's good in the short
term. By the end you don'thave that loyalty that we had by a
team growing up, in the memoriesof twenty years of going back to that
team and I finally win. It'sgoing to be how much I make a
make on that game, on thatplayer. I'm mad at that player for
not getting one hundred yards. Hegot seventy six my team. I don't
care. I lost money. That'sthat's cashing in. But in the big

(26:03):
picture, you're destroying sports. AndI know I'm a caveman on this,
but fundamentally I think we're beginning toruin the golden goose. Yeah, I
agree, and I don't think you'rea caveman about it. I think that's
a realistic look at it. Andyeah, gambling is highly addictive. Now,
so's drinking alcohol. You know,I would be happy to do a
commercial for Specs. They sell alcoholand leave it up to you as to

(26:26):
whether or not you know, youwant a drink or you don't want to
drink. But as far as thegambling thing goes, yeah, I don't
need to endorse you gambling gambling onsports. You know you if you want
to do it, you do itwith whoever you want to do it with.
And for the rest of us,nah, no, thanks, take
a pass on that. Not reallynot really interested. The one thing I

(26:49):
don't like losing money. I worktoo hard to make it all right,
Listen, y'all have a great weekend. I'll see a Monday morning breaking nearly
five am a share on news radioseven forty KTRH. We will be back
here at four. I think Iam nine fifty eight yrc