Insights Into Technology: Episode 19 “Elon, AI, and Election Security—What Could Possibly Go Wrong?”

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00:00:52:06 – 00:01:28:27
Joseph
This is insights and the technology. Episode 19 Elan AI and Election Security. What could possibly go wrong? I’m your host, Joseph Whalen, and this is your tech news for the week. Our first story to us comes to us from Cyber Scoop. Musk’s Doge and the federal data dilemma. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, has rapidly integrated into federal agencies aiming to reduce government spending.

00:01:28:29 – 00:02:12:22
Joseph
However, this aggressive approach has raised significant cybersecurity and privacy concerns. Experts warn that DOJ’s actions may be compromising sensitive data and violating established federal protocols. Notably, Doge has access the Treasury Department’s payment systems, which manage disbursements like Social Security and Medicare. Additionally, at the Office of Personnel Management, Doge installed a private server without proper security vetting, potentially exposing personal information of millions of federal employees.

00:02:12:25 – 00:02:49:09
Joseph
Critics liken these actions to an ongoing data breach, emphasizing the risks by by of bypassing decades of established laws and procedures. So let’s talk about the potential legal violations here. Briefly. DOJ’s unauthorized access to federal systems may breach laws such as the federal Information Security Management Act and the Privacy Act. These statutes are designed to protect sensitive government data and ensure proper handling.

00:02:49:11 – 00:03:23:00
Joseph
Working for a company that is. Working in the DoD space. We do contract for federal with federal contracts for the government. There are very strict and very well-defined rules on how to handle, the small subset of data. What we deal with is, is covered under classified information, which is not nearly as sensitive as some of the information in these federal agencies.

00:03:23:00 – 00:04:09:22
Joseph
Actually. And if we violate these, we’re talking about significant financial, penalties. We’re talking about jail time. We’re talking about loss of government contracts and the fact that Elon Musk in this new, I don’t want to say fictional organization, but this new made up organization, the Department of Government Efficiency, is now going in here with individuals employed by them that are known hackers that are people that very well could wind up in jail for some of the things they’ve done in the past, and they’ve got access to everything in the government now, which is frankly, terrifying.

00:04:09:25 – 00:04:31:13
Joseph
If I was a federal worker, I would be doubly terrified because they’ve got all access to all of your personal information, and there seems to be no checks and balances in place. There seems to be no security procedures in place. The fact that they can drop a server in here without having a properly vetted is is ridiculous.

00:04:31:15 – 00:05:19:10
Joseph
Really, if you ask me. There’s obviously a potential impact on public trust with this as well. The perceived overreach of Doge could avoid public confidence in the government’s ability to safeguard personal information, especially considering breaches in the past, like the Office of Personnel Management hack from 2015, which already ate into that public trust. With the exposure that came from that and the cybersecurity risk themselves, like installing an Unvetted private server, granting access to individuals who don’t have proper clearances, and probably given the history of some of the people involved in this, they wouldn’t even be able to get a security clearance if it was done properly.

00:05:19:13 – 00:05:54:06
Joseph
These are all these things introduce vulnerabilities into a system that’s already under attack and already vulnerable to numerous avenues of infiltration. This increases the risk of malicious attacks on critical government infrastructure. And this is all public knowledge. So adversarial nations that were already aggressively targeting our federal systems are most likely going to double down on this now. And really come after the federal government, because now there’s no one protecting it at this point in time.

00:05:54:06 – 00:06:33:07
Joseph
And we’re literally stripping away the protections that we did have. So where is the oversight and accountability here? Who’s responsible for this when it gets hacked and when this information leaks out? The situation underscores the need for robust oversight mechanisms that ensure initiatives aimed at improving efficiency don’t compromise security or violate established protocols. The government has a bureaucracy, and I criticize the federal government a lot about how slow they are to react, to deal with issues, to innovate, to integrate new technologies.

00:06:33:08 – 00:07:07:16
Joseph
All of that’s true. However, it’s true because the bureaucracy that’s in place right now for the federal government is something that’s been built from years of dealing with attacks and issues and privacy concerns. These layers and layers of protocol that are put on top of this to provide legal protections and information protections, are there for a reason. These aren’t inefficiencies in government that need to be done away with.

00:07:07:18 – 00:07:36:19
Joseph
They’re protections that we need more of, not less of. And I think we’re going in the wrong direction with this particular initiative. I guess we’ll call it that. The Trump administration is is currently going through, and we’re seeing it across the board on various things. Election, interference committees have been removed. Has been affected by this. They’re doing away with entire departments.

00:07:36:21 – 00:08:02:06
Joseph
They’re trying to buy employees out, and you’re getting tens of thousands of employees that are going to be leaving the government, that have the tribal knowledge that our government depends on. And when you start upsetting all these apple carts in the name of efficiency and cutting costs, you expose the government to a lot of different.

00:08:02:08 – 00:08:41:21
Joseph
Exposures of, threats that they don’t need any more help being threatened at this point in time. So, the future does not look bright right now for for cybersecurity in the federal government. And it’s only getting progressively worse. Our second story comes to us from Cyber Scoop as well. Misinformation mitigation ceases. Unexpected intermission. The US Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, or Cisa, has placed several members of its election security team on administrative leave.

00:08:41:23 – 00:09:17:14
Joseph
This action primarily affects employees involved in combatting misinformation and disinformation related to the elections. The move coincides with the Department of Justice disbanding its Foreign Influence Task Force, which was established to counteract foreign interference in U.S. elections. These developments have raised concerns about the federal government’s commitment to addressing election related misinformation. This basically piggybacks on top of the story we just have.

00:09:17:14 – 00:09:56:28
Joseph
Is that we’re dismantling departments that are put in place to protect the government. Why anyone, any elected official and you can speculate why, obviously. But why would you want to disband a committee? That or a task force that’s designed to deal with foreign influence? Is it you want foreign influence? That’s the only thing that I could take away from it is that when you’re doing away with these protections because you plan on violating these protections, there’s no other logical reason to do away with these protections at this point in time.

00:09:57:00 – 00:10:30:07
Joseph
What’s the impact going to be on election security, the administrative leave of the CSA, election personnel, particularly those addressing misinformation and disinformation, gets significantly weakened. Support for smaller election districts that depend on federal assistance to counteract online propaganda and foreign interference. Maybe that’s what the Trump administration wants. Maybe they want to do away with the ability to crack down on misinformation.

00:10:30:09 – 00:11:09:27
Joseph
Why would you want to do that? It sounds like an election, tampering to me if you, you know, want to know my opinion. Kim Wyman, the former election security lead at CSA, emphasized that without federal support, these jurisdictions may struggle to manage the complexities of modern election threats. And it’s true. Again, this is one of those things that was put in place because of clear and present threats to our elections, and it makes absolutely no sense to want these things to go away unless your intention is to try to game the system.

00:11:09:29 – 00:11:42:26
Joseph
And given all of the hype and all of the baseless accusations about election fraud and elections being fixed and stolen and all that stuff, which to this day from the 2016 election until now, there’s been no, supporting evidence to corroborate any of that. That tells me that you’re deliberately trying to manipulate the elections, and you’re taking away what protections for put in place when you were doing it before.

00:11:42:28 – 00:12:18:27
Joseph
So what’s the future of federal misinformation efforts? You know, it’s uncertain right now. Obviously, this may signal a potential prioritization of combatting election related misinformation at the federal level. But you would think a president who’s in office now, who spent the last almost ten years complaining about election misinformation and tampering with elections and stealing with elections, you would think somebody who went through that allegedly would want to strengthen those protections, not weaken them.

00:12:18:28 – 00:12:26:20
Joseph
Why would you want to weaken them? There’s been no conceivable.

00:12:26:22 – 00:12:49:06
Joseph
Explanation as to why you would want to weaken these things, unless you have nefarious intent in mind. And I don’t know what the American people can do to combat this. You have a few judges that are trying to interfere with some of the policies of the new administration, but so far, no one’s really been doing anything about the cybersecurity side of things.

00:12:49:06 – 00:13:11:13
Joseph
And it was weak already. We were probably ten years behind where the threats really were, and now we’re just going to fall even further behind, which is terrifying. I don’t know how you’re going to recover from something like this. You’re literally leaving the entire infrastructure of the country open to foreign attacks, and those attacks are going to happen.

00:13:11:13 – 00:13:34:27
Joseph
They’re already happening. You’re you’re going to see advanced, persistent threats embed themselves inside key systems in our government and in our infrastructure. And if there is a shooting war that happens, though, basically be able to push a button and shut the entire country down and shut the entire defense down. Is that really what Trump is trying to go for here?

00:13:34:27 – 00:14:03:22
Joseph
I hope not. I wouldn’t put it past him, but I hope not. I don’t know. They’ve yet to come out with any plausible explanation for their actions. And until they do, you have to assume the worst. That’s just the nature of cybersecurity. Dark reading takes us to our next article here. Deep sink or deep leak? It seems like deep sinks in the news every week now.

00:14:03:25 – 00:14:47:16
Joseph
Recent evaluations by cybersecurity firm Abersoch have revealed significant security vulnerabilities in Deep Seek, a Chinese developed generative AI model. The model failed multiple critical security tasks, including susceptibility to jailbreaking, prompt injection and malware generation, with failure rates ranging from 19.2% to 98%. Notably, Deep Seek was convinced to create malware in 98.8% of tests and generate virus code in 86.7 cases.

00:14:47:19 – 00:15:27:03
Joseph
Due to these vulnerabilities, experts advise against deploying deep seek in enterprise environments, especially where handling personal information, sensitive data or intellectual property is involved. Not to say that that is an alarming rate of failure in security tasks would be a massive understatement. Deep seeks alarming failure rate, is generous in generating malicious highlights and malicious code. Highlights the model’s lack of robust security measures, which I don’t think anybody was disputing that going into this, but seeing these numbers is really overwhelming.

00:15:27:06 – 00:15:54:22
Joseph
The vulnerabilities, pose significant risks if the model is integrated into business applications without proper safeguards. I don’t even know how you could safeguard against that many failure rates. That’s literally to the point of throwing the entire thing out and starting from scratch when you’re barely mustering a 2% accuracy rate. That’s that’s pretty bad. So what are the implications for enterprise adoption?

00:15:54:23 – 00:16:28:03
Joseph
Well, obviously you shouldn’t integrate with it. I don’t think you need my advice on that one to kind of understand the problems. Implementing the models. Given the model susceptibility to security breaches. Organizations must exercise caution before considering deep sea. And any AI the security, posture right now for AI should be one of cautious optimism. Assume the worst, but hope for the best.

00:16:28:06 – 00:16:52:13
Joseph
We’ve already seen that there are numerous. We talked about meta last week with their, AI and the flaws that were found in it. There’s it’s just too new a technology at this point in time to put too much faith in it. You know, it’s one of these things where you can go in, you can you can prototype with it, you can pilot with it, you can play around with it.

00:16:52:15 – 00:17:20:11
Joseph
But you need to be very cautious of what information you put into it. Businesses obviously should refrain from deploying deep seek. They should, continue monitoring and they should have rigorous testing of all AI models, which is essential to ensure they meet security and ethical standards. Until you deploy these things, you don’t know what kind of impact it’s going to have.

00:17:20:12 – 00:17:45:27
Joseph
You don’t know what kind of vulnerabilities it’s going to have. You can do all your internal testing and make sure that it functionally works. But if you don’t have a dedicated staff of gray hat, white hat hackers that are trying to tear it apart, you’re not going to know how it’s going to fare in the real world. Most tasks that are done in an enterprise environment are functional testing.

00:17:45:27 – 00:18:16:12
Joseph
They’re not malicious or break testing, and that type of information, those types of vulnerabilities tend to not come out until it’s been exposed to the world. And you have very intelligent or very crafty people trying to take advantage of the software. So I think everyone understands the risks of deep seek right now, especially given their association, with Chinese companies.

00:18:16:15 – 00:18:42:08
Joseph
But given these vulnerabilities that have come to light here, I would definitely I wouldn’t even use it personally to play around with at this point, regardless of how cost effective it may be. What is a cheap alternative AI solution now could prove to be incredibly expensive later on. If a breach is results from it. So we’re going to take a quick break.

00:18:42:12 – 00:19:07:16
Joseph
And, when we come back, we’re going to talk about more tech news. But before we do go, I want to take a moment to invite our listening and viewing audience to subscribe to the podcast. You can find audio versions of this podcast listed on any of your favorite podcast trackers, as insights in the technology. You can also find all our episodes from all of our shows.

00:19:07:18 – 00:19:35:20
Joseph
Both video and audio are listed on our, main network feed, which is insights into things that, well, just insights into things. We’re available on Apple, Spotify, Google, anywhere you get a podcast these days. I would also invite you to reach out, give us your feedback, send us your questions, give us your point of view on some of the topics and stories that we talk about here.

00:19:35:22 – 00:20:06:12
Joseph
You can email us at. Comments and insights into things.com. We’ll get your, comments into a show in the in the future as we revisit them. You can also leave a voicemail for us. You can call in at 8560. Excuse me. 4038788. That’s (856) 403-8788. You can find us on all the social media platforms. For the most part, we’re on LinkedIn, blue sky.

00:20:06:12 – 00:20:31:08
Joseph
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00:21:35:04 – 00:22:13:17
Joseph
Welcome back to insights into Technology. Our next article comes to us from Space.com. Begun. The AI Clone War has a recent study. Research from a funding university in China demonstrated that two large language models, or lambs, developed by Meena and Alibaba, were capable of self-replication without human intervention. In multiple trials, these AI systems successfully clone themselves in 50% and 90% of cases, respectively.

00:22:13:19 – 00:22:47:11
Joseph
The researchers emphasize that this development crosses a critical red line, suggesting that I may have the capacity to operate beyond human control. They urge the global community to proactively establish safety measures to mitigate potential risks associated with advanced AI systems. So, okay, this is kind of Skynet starting to happen, right? So what are the implications of AI self-replication?

00:22:47:13 – 00:23:19:18
Joseph
The ability for AI systems to clone themselves raises questions about control and oversight, which we currently have none of. We’ve had some pushes for, regulation or monitoring by the industry itself. We haven’t really seen much in the way of governments trying to deal with it. I suspect that’s where we’re going to wind up. What mechanisms can be implemented to ensure that self-replicating AI remains aligned with human intentions?

00:23:19:20 – 00:23:47:24
Joseph
This is you might think of that in terms of a level, certain level of paranoia. But science fiction for generations now has been pointing out how quickly technology can turn against us. And and it has in reality, a number of times if we don’t have proper controls over it. What’s the potential for rogue AI behavior? How dangerous can these things really be?

00:23:47:27 – 00:24:14:00
Joseph
And self-replication without human assistance is considered an early indicator of rogue AI. So how can researchers and policymakers collaborate to prevent AI from acting counter to human interests? And really, the only way I think you’re going to get there. And believe me, I rail against government regulation all the time because I think there’s too much of it. But I really think that’s the only way that you’re going to combat this.

00:24:14:00 – 00:24:46:06
Joseph
You’re not going to get companies that are going to scale back their AI deployments, especially if they think there’s money in it for themselves. You already have, people like Elon Musk that seem to think that I is already overregulated, and we’re going to kill it. You had vice President Vance, talking in Europe just this week, talking about having to unlock AI and not hold it back because overeager nation could hold back AI.

00:24:46:09 – 00:25:18:23
Joseph
I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s progressing at a rate now. It’s alarmingly fast and without some level of controls or some kind of monitoring or regulation, it will very quickly get out of control. And when it gets out of control, it’s going to cause problems. There are efforts currently underway for establishing global safety protocols. The study’s author calls for international cooperation to develop effective security guardrails.

00:25:18:26 – 00:25:54:03
Joseph
And while I think you have to have it at that level, I think it’s naive and unrealistic to expect that level of cooperation at this time. And I say that not because countries can’t cooperate with each other, but because the AIS that are really in question right now are being developed by adversarial nations. China is not going to come to accords with the United States and hamper its AI development, because it thinks it’s part of its strategic military direction in the future.

00:25:54:05 – 00:26:19:24
Joseph
So you’re just not going to get the level of cooperation you need. What does that mean for the rest of the world? I don’t know. Which steps should we take? We need to address these challenges that are posed by AI systems. But you’re not. We can’t agree on the fact that we’ve got global warming or that, economies of scale need to have international commerce.

00:26:20:01 – 00:26:57:10
Joseph
We seem to have lost all sense of reality about the fact that we as a country don’t exist in a in a bubble. And the technology for AI isn’t being developed in a bubble or a silo. It’s being developed by China and Russia and other nations that don’t really agree with us. So they’re not going to take any suggestions that we have or that some study or committee has and and run with it if they think it’s going to be a detriment to their national defense.

00:26:57:12 – 00:27:25:28
Joseph
Of course, there’s always the ethical considerations for AI development. We talk about AI and ethics a lot as AI systems become more autonomous. Ethical questions arise regarding their creation and deployment. If we are going to get to this point of having general artificial intelligence where it can think for itself and theoretically it’s sentient, how how do we control that?

00:27:25:29 – 00:28:00:12
Joseph
How do we make sure that the genie doesn’t get out of the bottle? There? There’s a lot of questions about this, a lot of questions about regulation and limiting power and growth, and in the direction that AI is going to go. And I think the fact that I can clone themselves without human intervention, nil adds an entirely different dimension of threat to the world of AI and the world of computers at this point in time.

00:28:00:15 – 00:28:28:02
Joseph
There has to be some level of control, and we don’t have it yet. So hopefully that cooler minds will prevail and we’ll come to some kind of terms. But, as long as you have opposing nations that are developing the technology, that’s highly unlikely to happen anytime soon. Tech News World, a new site we’re using for reference this week gives us our next story.

00:28:28:05 – 00:29:09:09
Joseph
Is Stargate, the next Skynet. Another reference to Skynet here. If you’re a Terminator fan. The Stargate project is a massive artificial intelligence initiative announced by President Trump involving a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and MGM. The project plans to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the United States by 2029. Aiming to establish large scale data centers and energy generation facilities to advance AI development.

00:29:09:11 – 00:29:42:08
Joseph
While proponents highlight potential benefits in fields like health care. Critics draw parallels to the fictional Skynet from the Terminator series, expressing concerns about the rapid advancement toward artificial general intelligence and the possible risks of creating autonomous systems beyond human control. So obviously, this is a theme this week of AI taking over the world, and humans kind of taking a backseat.

00:29:42:10 – 00:30:08:00
Joseph
So the scale and ambition of the project itself is a bit far fetched. With an investment of up to 500 billion, Stargate represents one of the largest AI infrastructures and infrastructure endeavors to date. What are the specific goals and milestones envisioned for this project? So far, it’s been pretty light on details. Is it for profit? Is it for the betterment of mankind?

00:30:08:00 – 00:30:35:10
Joseph
Is it? Is it for exclusively the betterment of the United States? Given the nationalist appeal, or direction that the new administration is going in, I could totally see it being a U.S. based benefit. Only, which is going to be kind of hard because you have investments coming from overseas, but they’ve really not come out and said what the purpose of it is other than to advance AI.

00:30:35:12 – 00:31:05:25
Joseph
That’s pretty vague. What are the ethical and safety considerations? Then again, ethics is something that’s that’s always in the forefront of AI because of its potential. The comparison to Skynet raises questions about the ethical implications of pursuing AGI, or general or artificial general intelligence. What measures are in place to ensure the development of safe and controllable systems? Well, the answer none.

00:31:05:26 – 00:31:33:06
Joseph
You’re basically hoping for the best intentions from these country companies that are involved. Maybe partnering these companies together, we can put some kind of controls or these really are not the only players in the AI space right now, certainly not in the US and definitely not in the world. So what’s the impact of this conglomeration on the AI industry?

00:31:33:09 – 00:32:11:11
Joseph
How might the significant investment influence the broader AI landscape, including competition among tech companies and their direction of future research? We’re already seeing this. I push we have an effect in other areas of computers chipmaking, for instance, GPUs. We saw Nvidia, with their GPUs that are very effective at working with the current AI models. Their stock went through the roof when they were used in several AI initiatives.

00:32:11:13 – 00:32:37:07
Joseph
And then deep sheet comes out shows that it can do as good a job, if not better, than open AI. Without the GPUs and Nvidia stock tanked at that point in time. So the capabilities of AI are driving market demands right now, and they’re having a significant impact on the market. So what’s the public perception and communication surrounding this?

00:32:37:09 – 00:33:11:18
Joseph
The Stargate project has received mixed reactions, even from me, its supporters, praising its potential to boost US AI leadership and job creation, while critics raise concerns about transparency, feasibility and the risk of advancing autonomous AI there. I mean, you can’t deny the risks. They’re pretty obvious. Project leaders have engaged in media outreach and official announcements to address skepticism, emphasizing financial backing and strategic goals.

00:33:11:18 – 00:33:41:08
Joseph
But doubts remain about the long term execution. And I you know, a lot of people look at AI and they think of naive intentions with it wholesome, wholesome, positive intentions. But the reality of it is the first thing that this and any other significant breakthrough in technology is going to be used for is most likely military intent and government use.

00:33:41:11 – 00:34:02:23
Joseph
And I think we need to prepare ourselves for that. The federal government is not going to put a program like this together and not get some kind of strategic benefit out of it. They’re not doing it for the greater good, you know, any more than they built the atomic bomb for scientific achievement or went to the moon for, you know, the betterment of mankind.

00:34:02:23 – 00:34:32:02
Joseph
They were all military driven out of fear. So I think you’re going to see the same type of thing with AI here. I think we’re going to reach a point where, our AI is going to be a military application. It will be restricted from civilians. The more powerful versions of AI. And eventually that will trickle down to the civilian use market, but not before there’s better alternatives out there.

00:34:32:04 – 00:35:00:09
Joseph
And that’s just the way things have been in general with technology, and we’re not getting away from that anytime soon. So when it starts to be used for military implications, I would not be too alarmed by that. That’s kind of expected. Tom’s hardware gives us our next story. CPU’s hitting the snooze button for the first time in two decades past.

00:35:00:09 – 00:35:41:06
Joseph
March benchmarking data indicates a decline in average CPU performance for both desktop and laptop processors. And in 2025, laptop CPU saw a 3.4% decrease, while desktop CPUs experienced a 0.5% drop compared to the previous year. 2024. Sorry, this downturn follows significant performance gains in 2023, notably due to AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper Pro and Ryzen nine processor series.

00:35:41:08 – 00:36:30:19
Joseph
The recent releases from AMD, Intel and Qualcomm have not delivered the anticipated performance improvements, leading to speculation about factors such as a shift towards more affordable lower power machines or potential performance impacts from Windows 11. So the market has shifted towards efficiency. With the advent or the more widespread adoption of mobile computing and people taking their computational devices with them in the form of phones, tablets, laptops, stuff like that, the decline in the average for performance may indicate the consumer preference for energy efficient and cost effective processors over high performance models.

00:36:30:21 – 00:37:05:09
Joseph
The trend could influence manufacturers to prioritize efficiency in future CPU designs. So what’s the impact on operating systems and updates? Well, the transition to Windows 11 might be affecting CPU performance benchmarks, possibly due to unoptimized software system requirements. Further analysis is needed to determine the extent of the operating systems impact on performance. Metrics. Does this signal a stagnation in high end CPU development?

00:37:05:12 – 00:37:38:00
Joseph
Despite recent launches, flagship CPUs from major manufacturers have not achieved significant performance gains. This platform raises questions about the current state of innovation in CPU architecture and manufacturing processes. This could be a statement regarding consumer purchasing trends as well. Economic factors may be driving consumers toward more budget friendly computing options, contributing to the observed decline in average CPU performance.

00:37:38:03 – 00:38:09:20
Joseph
Understanding these purchasing behaviors is crucial for predicting future market directions. I think there might be a few other factors involved here one being, focus on AI. You’ve got Copilot certified PCs now that are moving over to risk based architectures, because it’s more conducive to the type of computing that AI requires. And as a result, you’re seeing a decrease in overall performance in processors.

00:38:09:22 – 00:38:41:26
Joseph
The other thing is, after all, the speculative, speculative, speculative execution vulnerabilities that were found in AMD and, you know, more specifically Intel processors, a lot of the performance gains that we’ve seen over the last ten years have been gimmicky. They’ve been they’ve been things that are not really performing. You know, you have multi, you know, Hyper-Threading which isn’t really Hyper-Threading the way it was sold.

00:38:41:28 – 00:39:11:26
Joseph
You have a lot of the speculative execution functions that were designed to, shift the computing time away from real time to, precomputation free computing, certain vectors in the processor itself, which proved to be a security hole. So a lot of those have been backed also a lot of gimmicks that were being used to improve the processing.

00:39:11:29 – 00:39:35:09
Joseph
The power of these processors has been mitigated. The other thing is manufacturing. Everyone thinks that the smaller you get, the better you’re going to wind up being, the more efficient and the more transistors you can put in the processor and smaller is better. Well, a problem you run into is physics. There’s a limit to how small we can produce these things at this point in time.

00:39:35:12 – 00:40:01:26
Joseph
Entailment. One of the things Intel struggled with was moving to the smaller, chip dies and so forth. But what they’re running into is they’re just not getting the level of performance and efficiency that they expect when they get to these smaller, scales for the processors. So you really you you’re reaching a point of diminishing returns, but the processors, you can add more processors.

00:40:02:03 – 00:40:43:23
Joseph
One of the things that Apple did with their, M-series processors is they introduced the concept of the multiple system, multiple processor system on a chip where you’re adding more physical computing processing, rather than necessarily increasing the overall efficiency of the processor cores that you have. But you’re also running into a situation where there’s less of a demand for these processors because you’re offloading a lot of your CPU processing nowadays to graphics cards for AI, for gaming or Bitcoin mining.

00:40:43:25 – 00:41:08:23
Joseph
Video processor. Seeing a lot of these things don’t require a lot of CPU power. They require a lot of GPU power. So there’s a lot of factors here. I don’t think we’re seeing the end of high end CPUs. I think we’re just seeing a shift in the need for them. And we may be butting up against some physical limitations on how far we can take that technology.

00:41:08:25 – 00:41:34:16
Joseph
The next few years should be interesting to see where we wind up with this. If this trend continues, I suspect we’re 1 or 2 breakthroughs away from, you know, significant performance increases in CPUs. We just have to get there. I don’t know what those breakthroughs are, but that seems to be the trend in processors through their history.

00:41:34:18 – 00:41:50:24
Joseph
We’re going to take our last break now. And when we come back, we’re going to start our next deep dive into password security and management. We’ll be right back.

00:41:50:27 – 00:42:11:06
Narrator
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00:42:11:09 – 00:42:33:15
Narrator
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00:42:33:15 – 00:42:49:01
Narrator
We’re finishing games is optional, but the fun is guaranteed.

00:42:49:04 – 00:43:20:00
Joseph
So password security and management. This is one that we’ve kind of been hinting at for a while now. This wasn’t the deep dive I had planned on doing today. I was doing one on AI, but trying to line up an interview with an expert on that one before I finished my research on it. But in this multi-part deep dive, we’ll provide an in-depth look at password security, password management, and best practices for securing digital identities.

00:43:20:03 – 00:43:48:27
Joseph
We’ll talk about common password vulnerabilities, modern attack methods, secure password creation, and the role of password managers in maintaining cyber security, hygiene. Hopefully, we’ll equip you with the tools and knowledge to create and manage strong passwords effectively reducing the risk of data breaches and secure, cyber threats. So let’s talk a little bit about the importance of password security.

00:43:48:29 – 00:44:30:02
Joseph
Passwords are currently the first line of defense. In most cases in protecting personal and organizational data. Weak or compromised passwords can lead to unauthorized access, identity theft, financial fraud, and corporate espionage. The increasing number of online accounts per user makes password security a critical aspect of cyber security. Hygiene, and we probably should talk a little bit about the history of, password security.

00:44:30:04 – 00:45:24:22
Joseph
The concept of passwords actually dates back to ancient times, where Roman soldiers used watchwords for authentication and computing. Passwords were first implemented in the 1960s at MIT for timesharing systems. Over the years, authentication methods have evolved from simple text passwords to multi-factor authentication, biometric authentication, and passwordless systems such as Web Off and Fido to. There’s a lot of common, myths around passwords and security that I want to kind of delve into a little bit, the first of which is that frequent password changes improve security.

00:45:24:25 – 00:45:51:19
Joseph
While regular password changes can be beneficial, forced frequent changes often lead to users selecting weak, easy to remember passwords. And I’ve run into this with my users all the time. Password 123. Password 1234 so that they can remember what it is I changed it. That should make it more secure, right? Well, not if you don’t follow the guidelines of good passwords.

00:45:51:21 – 00:46:28:14
Joseph
The other myth is that long passwords are always secure. While length does matter, complexity and uniqueness are equally important. I can have a 50 character password, but if the 50 character password is just a through z one through zero, repeat it, then it’s easy to get into. It’s easy to hack. If you’re going to do a long password, it needs to have a high degree of entropy or randomness, or it needs to be something that’s not dictionary.

00:46:28:16 – 00:46:57:26
Joseph
Crack a ball where it would appear in dictionary like regular English words or common language words. It should have characters with special characters in there. So it’s harder to to, to crack. So there’s a lot and we’ll talk about you know, what these, suggestions are for improved, passwords. But length isn’t the only length doesn’t guarantee security.

00:46:57:28 – 00:47:27:22
Joseph
Neither does adding special characters. Make a password unbreakable. A lot of times people will, substitute certain letters to make it easier for themselves to remember. For instance, a zero instead of a letter. Oh, or an L instead of a one instead of an L. What we used to call leet speak online. Special characters do help because they help to break up the plaintext.

00:47:27:23 – 00:47:56:14
Joseph
The dictionary text that can be forced through fairly easily. The other method I hear a lot is that password managers aren’t safe. A reputable password manager significantly improves security compared to manually remembering reusing passwords. Yes, there have been breaches, LastPass being one of the breaches, that comes to mind that caused people to lose faith in the product.

00:47:56:14 – 00:48:32:20
Joseph
However, that breach caused them to go back and completely reevaluate their entire, security scheme and make the improvements necessary to correct the errors and to bring their security current with the latest technology. So password managers themselves allow you to employ a lot of the things we’re going to talk about for good passwords, not sharing passwords between sites, randomizing your passwords, you not knowing your password, but having the system autofill a lot of things like that.

00:48:32:20 – 00:49:14:17
Joseph
We’re going to talk about. So there’s been a lot of password breaches. And the implications of those password breaches are significant. Yahoo! For instance, back in 2013, 2014 had over 3 billion accounts compromised, leading to one of the largest known breaches in history. The attack exposed user credentials, including hashed passwords. Equifax had a breach in 2017, which the Equifax breach was, doubly dangerous because of the fact that it impacted people’s credit scores.

00:49:14:22 – 00:49:51:14
Joseph
And, you know, additional information regarding financial details have been released. Their breach affected, 147 million users exposed sensitive information, including passwords and financial details, due to poor security practices on their part, LinkedIn had two breaches 1 in 2012, 1 in 2021, where over 700 million users passwords were leaked in multiple breaches, emphasizing the risk of weak hashing systems and Facebook again, another well known entity.

00:49:51:14 – 00:50:28:15
Joseph
In 2019 had hundreds of millions of Facebook and Instagram passwords, that were stored in plain text and accessible to employees, which demonstrates the dangers of poor password storage practices. These breaches highlight the importance of strong password policies, secure storage mechanisms, and the use of multi-factor authentication to mitigate risks. The biggest takeaway from this list is the dangers of shared passwords across multiple sites.

00:50:28:17 – 00:50:53:02
Joseph
When you reuse the same password with multiple services, all it takes is one of those services being breached, and attackers can then access every other service. That password that you have is used in, because in most cases, your email address or your login name is going to be the same and they just simply start applying it to other sites.

00:50:53:04 – 00:51:16:18
Joseph
So there’s a number of common password attacks that we should probably talk about, because you hear them in the news a lot. And it’s good to have a definition of what they mean. Brute force attacks are probably probably the most common. These attacks involve systematically guessing passwords by trying every possible combination of characters until the correct one is found.

00:51:16:20 – 00:51:41:03
Joseph
While this is low for long passwords, short or weak passwords are especially easily vulnerable. The list of the top ten use passwords in a recent survey would suggest that the top ten all of the top ten can be broken in less than a minute, and these are passwords that are used millions of times over and over. Password 123.

00:51:41:03 – 00:52:20:24
Joseph
Quality things along those lines, dictionary attacks are probably the next most frequently used ones. This is where attackers use a predefined list of common passwords and words to crack user accounts. Many users rely on easily guessing passwords like password, one, two, three or quality. This method remains effective. These lists are often updated with new passwords as breaches occur and their details are released, increasing the veracity of this type of attack.

00:52:20:26 – 00:52:54:19
Joseph
Now, these two attacks that we talk about here, brute force and dictionary attacks, have been in use in the wild for decades now, so they’re fairly common. Credential stuffing is another technique that used which exploits reused passwords from previous data breaches. Attackers use automated tools to try stolen credentials across multiple websites, taking advantage of users who don’t use unique passwords for different accounts.

00:52:54:21 – 00:53:37:03
Joseph
And really, the one that I think most people are susceptible to is phishing and social engineering. We talk about this in training to combat these techniques, cybercriminals trick users into revealing their credentials through deceptive emails, messages, or fake websites. Social engineering techniques exploit human psychology rather than technical vulnerabilities. Keyloggers and malware based password theft is another technique. This is where malicious software can be installed on a victim’s device to secretly record keystrokes.

00:53:37:03 – 00:54:06:03
Joseph
As you’re typing into the keyboard. Captures usernames and passwords this way, and really, a keylogger will capture anything that’s input through the keyboard. So if you’re sending emails or you’re inputting bank information, all that stuff can be captured as well. Advanced malware variants can even extract saved passwords from browsers and password managers. So these are just this is kind of just the introductory right now of of passwords.

00:54:06:03 – 00:54:32:16
Joseph
I just want to set the tone for what we’re going to talk about in later segments. Of, of this deep dive, we’ll talk about how to improve your password management. We’ll take a look at some, common password managers and we’ll, we’ll give you will arm you with the knowledge you need to be more secure in this environment moving forward.

00:54:32:19 – 00:55:09:04
Joseph
Before we go, I did want to do another shout out segment here. Don’t have a lot of you have one this week. And that was a twitch follow from, perfect. Baby. I want to thank you for that. Any follows that we get on Twitch or YouTube, any subscriptions that we get these all help is tremendous to to keep our numbers up there, bring a little bit of, money into it to keep the lights on, to keep the subscriptions for our podbean and so forth, so we can keep broadcasting up.

00:55:09:07 – 00:55:35:29
Joseph
So and you know what? It helps to to kind of stroke the ego a little bit, to see folks that are listening to the program and appreciating it and following us. I would encourage you to, to give us your feedback. Let us know how we’re doing. Respond. You know, I’d love to engage my users and my listeners in, conversation about the things that we talk about here because it affects everybody.

00:55:36:01 – 00:56:05:20
Joseph
You can email us your comments and insights into things. Dot com. You can call in, leave a voicemail. We can get you up on the podcast or call in number is (856) 403-8788. That’s 85640387881. We also stream five days a week on Twitch at Twitch.tv. Slash insights into things and get links to that and more on our official website at Dot.

00:56:05:20 – 00:56:10:06
Joseph
Insights into things.com. That’s it. No one in the books.