[00:00:19] Does the term high-tech apocalypse come to mind? Happy to have you along, my fellow tech enthusiast. I'm Sam Bushman. I've got Jay Hill with me as well, and this is Tech Watch. We keep an eye on tech so you don't have to. Jay Harrison with me, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome, sir. How's it going? It's going, uh, I don't know. Rowdy week in tech, huh? It is a rowdy week in tech. Everybody's scribbling. But this is brought to you by NetworkProvidersInc.com. Check out the website. You can check out the podcast.
[00:00:48] You can check out our webinars. You can check out the video version, the audio version. We're working on a transcription version or a summary version as well, Jay. Just great things are happening internally at least. Exactly. We're just getting bigger and better every time, every day. That's what we do. That's who we are. Sadly, I'm getting bigger, yes. That's not really the goal. But I know what you're talking about. But the sad part is it's kind of an apocalypse in tech. It really is. And I know people say, oh, this isn't that bad. It is for the web guys, for sure.
[00:01:18] It is that bad. 70% of the web affected big time, to say the least. Critical PHP. Security flaws trigger urgent website repairs worldwide. So let's just talk about PHP for a second and kind of bring it down to the kitchen table. PHP is a language that people write in. Right, Jay? That's right. Yep. It's sort of like Java or things like that that are on the web. Yeah, like C or C plus or Pascal or whatever you want to say. Basic. It's a programming language.
[00:01:47] And PHP has been around for a long time. And governments and businesses have been using it forever. And it really runs pretty much almost the whole internet, Jay, to some degree or another. Yeah, I think it's like a recursive acronym. Like PHP stands for PHP Hypertext Processor or something like that. It's one of those weird like GNU acronyms where people just, you know, loop it into itself.
[00:02:14] And the sad part is even people who aren't using PHP for everything, oftentimes there's PHP under the hood or there's PHP being used somewhere. Everybody uses it. They would know whether they know it or not. And so that's the problem. Now, there's a lot of technologies that aren't using it that are on the web too. That's why they say it affects about 70% of the web. It doesn't affect everything. But I'll tell you what it affects the most is WordPress. Yeah, exactly. If you have a WordPress site, you're running PHP. And that's the concern. And so here's the bottom line.
[00:02:43] This critical bug was found by what, AI, Jay? Yeah. So in AI, I think it was Anthropic, but I'm not 100% sure on that. You may have the data on that. But, you know, they're doing all these amazing checks. I mean, you saw Firefox and Chrome recently where they found hundreds of new bugs. Well, they found this bug in PHP, and it's been around for like 20 years, and nobody has discovered it. And it's pretty critical.
[00:03:07] It allows you to log in and run commands on the server as root access without having to have credentials even. So it's not like, oh, my password might be out there. It doesn't even need your password. It just bypasses it and can run anything, whether that's stealing data from your server, if you have sites and users and passwords, or running CryptoMiner or whatever on your server, or, you know, harvesting things, redirecting shopping carts, collecting credit.
[00:03:37] The havoc is endless. Yeah, it's endless. Once you have the key to the back door like that, and you can just walk in, you can do whatever you want. The keys to the kingdom create an endless variety of things that can be done. And so a lot of websites are so entrenched in PHP, especially a lot of government and big business sites, Jay, that especially overseas, for example, they've had to just flat out turn off all their websites. That's exactly right. And just stop it and say, hey, we can't do anything else until we mitigate this work. We can't quickly put in a patch. We've got to do this, this.
[00:04:07] They've just flat out shut down a ton of sites and said, we'll come back when we're ready. I mean, it's that catastrophic. It is. It's that important. And that really is the smart thing to do, I think. Yeah, you don't want to be down, but until you can fix it, you're better to be offline than to let somebody in. Because a lot of times people will just get in and leave something that lets them kind of stay present and get back in later.
[00:04:29] And even if you upgrade, if you don't get rid of that code or whatever, you might still have a vulnerability or an exploit sitting there, and you don't even know about it. Now, NetworkProvidersInc.com is a solutions provider, ladies and gentlemen. If you have any PHP issues, you can reach out to us and we can help mitigate those. We've got a web team that really knows what they're doing. And this is big time because you've got to realize that even if you're not using PHP,
[00:04:55] if you are on a hosting provider or a server that uses PHP, you've got to be careful because it's possible that they might be able to co-op that old version of PHP that has holes in it via some weird something backdoor even though you're not, quote, using it. So don't just look and go, oh, I'm not using PHP. I'm good. You've got to go into your hosting providers or whatever your online services are and make sure that you don't have those older versions of PHP with the bug running even
[00:05:23] because you've got to kind of double secure yourself. That's right. It's one thing to say, oh, I'm running PHP, so I really got to do it. Absolutely. But secondarily, if you have PHP running on a server, even if you're not using PHP, I'd be really careful that you disable all those versions and only enable a patched version, Jay. I agree, and I don't think that you should run any. I mean, I know on one site that I worked with, there was a bunch of different versions all the way back to version 5. That was my stuff, wasn't it?
[00:05:54] I'm not pointing fingers here, Sam, or anything. No, I know, but here's the deal, though. So sometimes hosting providers make all those versions available because in the past it was thought to be secure and there was firewalls and different things in place, and they thought, hey, we don't know what version your applications are running, so we're going to just make all these different versions available, and you can kind of swap and choose what you want to. And those days are gone, too, is the point. Yeah. I mean, the effort is kind of like Windows. Like, let's be the most compatible for everybody. Exactly.
[00:06:21] But when you have a bug like that, your best bet is really just to roll it up to the latest patched version and then get rid of all those legacy versions. You just don't need them on your server at all, and that's the smart way to do it. There is, I mean, somebody will make the case. I'm sure somebody's going to go, well, if you're not actually running it, you can have them there. But what's the point? I mean, it's just taking up space on your server. There's no good reason to have the old versions. My response is, you can say that, but I'm going to be blunt for all you people who want to be naysayers.
[00:06:48] That's what they said about PHP, and that's why all those versions are available, and they were wrong, right? Right. So how do you know? And the answer is you don't know. You don't. In fact, we don't even know that this version doesn't have any bugs, right? That's right. Of course. But here's my point. If it's not there, Jay, you do know. The latest version, by the way, as of this broadcast, is 8.3.36. There's also some 8.4, 8.5. They're kind of like beta stuff that are good. But the good stable version, at least you should be on, is 8.3.36. All right.
[00:07:17] Now, but here's what I'm saying, though. So whether you're using PHP or not, don't leave those old ones laying around because you don't know if they can be exploited. You think they can't because you're not running them. Logically, that's true. But logically, we said, hey, PHP is one of the most stable. If before this happened, of all the different things available to you, you would say, well, PHP is probably one of the most stable, safe systems. You know, software out there. It probably is, too. Yeah. And it probably is. But the point is, you don't know.
[00:07:45] And because you don't know, if you remove those versions, then the likelihood of you being extra careful and extra secure. Yes. Is it going the extra mile? Absolutely. But is it smart? I would recommend yes. But, you know, the other thing is that I'm not interested in anybody challenging me and telling me, oh, that doesn't make any sense. It does make sense. And it's the wise, cautious road to take. Anybody worth their salt will tell you that, Jay. Yeah. And it's a good opportunity, really, to clean house and get rid of those old versions.
[00:08:10] And in fact, Sam's take on it was, and I agree with this position, too, is I don't care if it breaks something. We'll fix that later. We need to plug the hole now. Absolutely. Because what's worse? Something broken on my website, and everybody knows that this is a massive problem. And Sam's working on it, getting it fixed. Other sites that are way bigger than mine are all the way down. And I've just got a couple of things to kind of work through, as opposed to leaving that hole gaping wide open. Yeah. I think that's a smart plan.
[00:08:36] You know, even when you work with ChatGBT and stuff, you'll see it's very cautious. And it's like, let's do this. And let's do this. And sometimes you just got to say, OK. No, man, it'll take forever. You don't have time for that. Let's just do this. And then we'll get the problem. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, we don't want to beat this to death. We do want people to understand this is serious. And again, we don't mean to get over everybody's head with this, but it is a critical scramble. Everybody in the IT world is scrambling all over the world.
[00:09:04] NetworkProvidersInc.com can help you if you seem to be stuck somehow. When we get back, Apple's first foldable iPhone reaches stores $2,000. Jay is getting a couple of them just for a backup. And he's going to tell me about them. We'll do it in seconds. This is NPI TechGuys, where we keep an eye on tech so you don't have to. We're brought to you by NetworkProvidersInc.com, your PHP mitigation specialist.
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[00:11:12] Apple began selling its iPhone Duo or Foldable. Wow, not affordable, that's for sure. The Foldable, the Duo. It's not affordable. On Friday, October the 23rd, ladies and gentlemen, that's today. And I guess it's restricted in several markets for some reason. It's limited to customers who ordered it online, which is kind of weird. And, um, I don't know. They say it's going to be slipping and how quick people can get it.
[00:11:41] It seems like a limited rollout, Jay, to say the least. That's the best kind. I mean, it gets pressed, right? I guess, yeah. It's not the best kind of your own one. You want them lined up down the block waiting to get the Apple Fold. I know, Jay, but if you want one and you're not on that list, it's not the best. It kind of sucks. No, it makes you feel really good when you finally get your Apple Duo. You know, you're just like, I want to be elite. You just start whipping it out everywhere you're at. You're at the bank. You're at work. You're different. We just pop that dude out.
[00:12:09] It's like, hey, man, I got the Duo. Exactly. They're selling the feeling. They cost $2,000. Do you think they're really going to take off, Jay? They start at $2,000. They really cost $2,500 to $3,000 if you want one, you know, that's kind of decked out to the specs you're looking for. And or if you want one where you got to get the extra 40-watt charger blocked, you got to do this. You got to do that. You got to have your case. You got to get your screen protector. You got to, you know, I mean, it's a to-do, baby. It should come with a free, like, MacBook or something or, you know.
[00:12:41] Buy an iPhone and get a free MacBook. Okay. Get all in on the ecosystem. What do you think, though? Do you think it's going to do well? Do you think these foldables are the, you know, the in thing that's really going to happen? I'm going to have my doubt. I think this thing folds the wrong way, number one. Well, it's interesting. I do like the way that it folds. I have seen a lot of videos on it. You know what you just fold in the other direction? Like the old flip phones where it opens from the top or from the bottom and, you know, the screen goes. No, I like this version of it.
[00:13:10] A lot of people were kind of down on it. They were pretty down on it when it first came out and, you know, they kind of made fun of it and stuff. But I've seen some reviewers now that have got it in their hands and even guys that were pretty poo-pooed on it at first. Now that they have one in their hands and they're probably, they're like, this is actually really impressive. So a lot of really popular reviewers have really gone, wow, this is amazing. There's so many, and Apple's known for this. There's so many little tiny, wow, they really thought this out.
[00:13:39] They really put a lot of effort into making this seamless that are in this phone that it just continues to surprise and delight people. And I think that's a really smart way to go where you think, oh, it's just the gimmick you fold. But then you compare it to other things. People are always like, well, Samsung's had this out for five years or seven years or whatever. Yeah, but you look even at their, like their screen, for example, has this nano recording on it where it doesn't have reflections and stuff.
[00:14:10] Let me see what's going on here. All right. There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. All right. Let's talk about a couple other quick things, then we'll have our guest coming up in a minute. Florida driver records hit by hackers. Jay, this is bad news. This is serious business, man. This is. This is bad news. And one of the problems is that Florida, and a lot of states do this, they sell their driver's records out to people. What the heck would they do that for? Because they make money on the back end on it, you know, I don't know. But they do sell to data brokers.
[00:14:36] But Florida's Highway Safety Department is mailing letters to drivers whose license and vehicle records were exposed when a hacker logged into the state system on September 4th and stole credentials. The intruder gained access using a Plant City Police login that an employee had improperly stored on a personal device. The state said officials blamed unnamed international cyber criminal organization and said there's no sign that the data has been misused yet.
[00:15:03] But a hacking group called Shiny Hunters, this is the same guys that broke into the FBI, they have given a September 11th deadline to pay and stop the leak. We don't know if that's happened yet or not. But the state hasn't named the group. Hacking and pay and stop the leak. What does that mean? Well, you know, they're ransoming. No, dude, we don't pay those people ever. I know. I agree with that 100%. No, we're not paying. We're not doing that. The only remedy they've said is so far, affected drivers will receive a free identity and credit
[00:15:33] monitoring for a year plus $1 million in identity theft insurance. They need to do more than that. I know. Nobody uses. Nobody takes it. They've got to take this stuff more seriously. They've got to do something about it. Well, I want some attorneys, or if the government did this, I want some attorneys that are going to mitigate this thing for me until they can claim that I'm cleaner beyond this now. Right. Otherwise, I'm just stuck in this no man's land where I don't have money to repair things
[00:16:00] or I don't have the knowledge to get to the bottom of the mitigation that needs to take place for this or whatever else. And hey, three years later, five years later, if I don't take care of this, I could get pulled over or whatever and have a problem. Or it could affect my voter records because they've tied voters to this now, too. I mean, it goes on and on, Jay. It does. It really does. And you don't know. I mean, I don't put a lot of faith in those identity theft or insurance things that they offer. I don't think they can do much. Especially for a year because you might not even know for six months if it gets held up
[00:16:27] and then put on the dark web and then they concatenate information that they get different places. And it might take a little bit before you even see the effects of that thing, too. That's exactly right. Agreed. It's a disaster is the bottom line. And the other issue is the other 50 states need to take a page out of the playbook and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So are we in trouble, too? Because this isn't just a Florida thing, Jay, in my view. Now, and another thing is one police person's login in Plant City, that should not be able
[00:16:55] to exfiltrate a giant database or even significant portions of it. You know, I could see them doing records lookup, but there should be something that at some point throttles that and says, whoa. Records lookup should be read only, Jay. Well, yeah, that's true. And, you know, but there should be some limit on it, some practical limit. Like, okay, you can do 50 in a day or something. Oh, no, you can take the whole thing home on your computer. Yeah. And that way you can spy on chicks and do whatever you want to do with that data. I mean, it's just insane, folks.
[00:17:22] And I don't mean to exploit that in a laughable way. It's not a funny thing when that happens. What I'm saying is that the idea that we've got all this security everywhere for all these things and then so-and-so can just get on their laptop and it's like, oh, man, I just leaked the whole database and it's crazy. And that stuff shouldn't even be, I don't know what's going on over there, but something needs to be looked into. And I would recommend that all the other 50 states get serious about this stuff ASAP because it's coming to a theater, pardon the pun, near you. That's for sure. Holiday airfares are out of control, Jay. They really are.
[00:17:52] So flying for this holiday is going to cost more this year than at any point in the last decade, believe it or not. Average domestic round trip is running 31% higher than last year for Thanksgiving. It's 23% higher for Christmas right now. Wow. That works out to about $402 for Thanksgiving and about $454 for Christmas on average for airfare driven by jet fuel costs tied to the war in Iran. Travelers booking earlier than usual now.
[00:18:20] International fees are going up too with the biggest jumps in Europe, Mexico, and the Caribbean. The day matters as much as the destination though. So returning on Saturday after Thanksgiving runs over $600 while Thanksgiving day itself and Black Friday are actually the cheapest seats. If you want to travel. Who the heck wants to go on Thanksgiving? Now, Black Friday, I'd rather be there than at the store. But all I'm saying is on Thanksgiving, who wants to, you know, come on now. Some people's families do it on different days, you know, like they'll do it the day before or sometimes the day after. I understand. I'm just saying, come on, man. I know.
[00:18:48] Don't be chopping up my special day. You know, just anyway. The bottom line is between $400 and $500 for the fares. And I'm telling you right now, folks, if you're waiting for a better deal, I'd not wait because it might get worse too, Jay. Well, and my advice is just don't fly if you can help it. Drive if you can. The open roads beats the crowded skies any day, in my opinion. And plus, road trips are so fun. I like that. Better than waiting around an airport. I disagree with Jay because I actually can't just spend days and days and days on the road and everything else, you know.
[00:19:13] Jay wants to stay in hotels and buy food at dive diners and just, you know, 42 days there and 42 days back. I understand, but I'm just saying, wow. Anyway, bottom line is we wanted to make sure you were aware of that. And I'm just telling you right now, if you're waiting for lower prices, don't bet on it, folks. I'm telling you right now, the likelihood of less price or pricing is less. Plus, American Airlines taking a big old beating in the industry as well right now, showing a big old loss. And so I'm telling you, they're not going to be dropping fares anytime soon. That's for sure.
[00:19:42] Feds expect ransom, Jay. Yeah. They're negotiating. This is interesting. This is virtually the same kind of story, right? Well, it's a little bit. There's an interesting twist on the end. So the federal investigators are pursuing, of course, shiny hunters for attacking the FBI. We talked about that. But what's interesting is they've discovered negotiation firms that are having some really close, very, very suspect ties with this group.
[00:20:08] So the sources close to the investigation say the executives in the United States have even helped shiny hunters and operate websites that pressured victims into paying a ransom. So it kind of reminds me of, you know, we've speculated before on some of these like ADA troll places where you've got on one side, you've got lawyers that are doing these trolling and on the other side, you've got lawyers that are helping you fix it. But sometimes you wonder if they're even on the same team.
[00:20:33] Well, this actually happened here where you've got the shiny hunters ransomware and then you have executives supposedly helping that are encouraging people to pay them. And they're on the back end somehow or associated with these groups that are doing well. Welcome to shiny hunters. Are you on the black or the white hat team? Yeah. And then you find out it's all a gray hat team. They're playing both sides. So that's not cool. It's a sad tale to tell folks, but I'm telling you this stuff is serious and that's why you
[00:21:00] need a company like network providers dot com or others that can take your security seriously. You know, you think it's not that big a deal until you get hit. Then you learn your lesson in a very not pleasant way because it gets it gets difficult. You lose business information or you got to cave and pay the ransom people. That's why I say you've got to be prepared yourselves and just be ready to not pay. You know what? I'm just not going to pay. I won't do it. I will not pay. That's all there is to it.
[00:21:24] And so generally to understand that generally good preparation, good backups, good, you know, cold sites, whatever that you can. You can really avoid this. Even if you do get hit hard, you can avoid paying the ransom, which not only saves you a ton of money, but it saves you a ton of face. And, you know, if everybody didn't pay the ransom, these guys would just evaporate overnight. So it would. And that reason that they stay around is because they do get paid. U.S.
[00:21:48] Treasury is proposing broader restrictions on overseas technology investments. The Treasury Department is. They say there's sensitive technologies that relate to China, other designated countries. And the proposal has varying details about supercomputing, hypersonic systems, AI. It generally covers investments exceeding 50 grand or more.
[00:22:18] And anyway, so it's good news because I think that there's a lot more bad actors in places like that. I'm not telling the Treasury Department is necessarily a bad actor, but there seems to be this, I don't know, less of a firewall between the good guys and the bad guys in many of those countries, Jay. Yeah. And I wonder about this because they want to restrict investment in technology. I don't think that's necessarily the way we want to go, but I assume this is just for overseas investments in technology, right? Yeah, that's what it is. It's overseas. Yeah.
[00:22:48] So, you know, I'm a little bit mixed on that. Well, because it's hard to know like the Russian government. Hey, are there hackers for the Russian government that are going to use some of this stuff to, you know, point things in America and stuff like that? You know, you never know. Yeah. Hackers are some of the best in the world. And last thing we need to do is enable them. But I've got news. I don't think that they need a whole lot of help from us now. I think they've already got enough technology. And I think they're, you know, they're advancing fast enough on their own. So is Chinese deep seek and AI and everything else. That's right. So you got to be really careful.
[00:23:16] Now, Meta falls 7% as technology shares retreat in the markets. This is interesting because Meta is the Facebook people and the whatever. They're announcing plans for a new class of shares to help raise funding. So they're diluting themselves. Even Nvidia fell 4% while the NASDAQ declined. Anyway, Philadelphia Semiconductor dropped 6% as well. So a bunch of these people are kind of taking a hit.
[00:23:46] I don't know if it's a long-term hit or a temporary hit, Jay, because the markets are kind of a wild swing in October. You've kind of heard of October surprises and such. They always are, yeah. So there you have it. Exactly. I don't know really where to go with some of this. I just want people to understand there is all kinds of swings in the market that we need to be really careful of. And the problem that it relates to, Jay, and I've been talking to some of my IT friends about this because it's important.
[00:24:13] You've got situations where because of AI now, power costs are going up to where it's starting to get difficult to even get a computer, Jay. That's true. It's expensive. It's very expensive. A computer that costs you $1,400 now costs you $2,100 and going up now. I know. Anyway, there you have it. Be careful when you drive your car. If you have the auto driving vehicles, don't get too confident in it. They say that's where crashes happen the most these days. So there you have it. I'm Sam Bushman.
[00:24:43] He's Jay Harrison. NetworkProvidersInc.com. We keep an eye on tech so you don't have to. Make it a great tech day, will you? Thanks.