Gadgetory

good morning on Monday February 12th it's episode 354 of the 359 podcast I'm BVG and in the house today we've got Alfred Inge and Roger Chang to talk about something stuff yeah happy Monday heck right here we go here we go all right so what we're talking about Verizon's new policy it's a scoop from CNET about Verizon basically locking down their phones reversal of it's fairly generous unlocking policy we'll break it all down in the podcast we'll also be talking about blockchain our colleague Steven Shanklin has a nice explainer piece on what blockchain is if you've ever wondered and lastly we'll talk about the Olympics because who doesn't love the Winter Olympics me crickets crickets yeah come on I actually have been watching I didn't like it but it turned out the Olympics were hacked on day one Alfred has all the details so if any of questions leave it in the comments section Brian will pick up the bass and we'll get to them in three minutes and 59 seconds from three to welcome to the 359 I'm Rutter che I'm Alfred Aang Verizon is locking down its phones starting today Verizon will start locking phones down to combat theft for now it'll unlock phones immediately after you activate your service but in the springtime they're gonna start extending that lock period so even if after you buy that phone it'll be locked for a period of time which they haven't specified yet I'm confused how does this prevent theft again so the idea here what they're trying what they're arguing is that these can basically take these unlocked phone turn around and sell them right away so if these phones are locked down so you can't use another carrier SIM card in that phone that it's a lot less appealing for thieves right once they take that phone they can't actually turn around sell it in my market they couldn't bring it overseas because they're locked down but do you think that when somebody steals a phone though it's not like the phone has a massive like Verizon like logo on either they'd be able to say oh that phones locked I'm not gonna steal it no for sure that's a really good point there are tons of unlocked iPhones out there their argument was there been there's been enough stolen goods even going to Verizon stores and or add from Verizon stores themselves that they're putting this in a new policy in place and I understand this has been frustrating for a few folks yeah consumers are not liking this now look at her background Verizon actually agreed with agreed to unlock all their phones as part of a deal with the FCC when they bought a certain swath of spectrum from 700 acres this is a spectrum the powers their LTE network and so basically ever since LTE phones came out they've unlocked all their phones they have actually the most generous policy in place every other carrier does require you to wait between 40 to 60 days before they will unlock your phone so this is a this is a big change and it's it's a hassle for folks who have to go overseas and who are just law by assistance and with a verizon phone alright so next up the one talk about blockchain I'm sure you've heard of blockchain or at least Bitcoin cuz everyone's talking about it Stephen Shanklin has a nice piece breaking down the foundation for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and its core is it's a lot of walking us to it but at its core blockchain start helps build trust in these untrustworthy times there is actually a really sweet animation in the story that yes explains at all because yeah blockchains been out for a bit of a while now but I every time I try to explain how to like dive deep into it it's just I have no clue what's going on here right it's the idea of like the sort of dispersed network of blocks of data that are all individually encrypted but all kind of work together right there at my head just kind of get blowed up but shanks piece doesn't just look at big Honan cryptocurrency but looks at how basically can ensure other it can ensure how products are either are actually legitimate whether diamonds are conflict diamonds whether the food that you're getting is actually you know well did not counterfeit and so really the way it affects our lives in more ways than just yeah yeah so up next officials confirmed on Sunday that the Winter Olympics have been hit with a cyber attack it happened during the opening ceremony and it lasted for about 12 hours their Olympics website was taken down and the Wi-Fi network like at the stadium in Pyeongchang was wasn't working but you know if you watch the opening ceremony you might not have noticed it at all it all went off without a hitch anyway yeah All Things Considered that not really that terrible and it seemed like the hack was definitely more about inconvenience yeah anything so researchers had taken a look at the malware and basically noted that this attack wasn't really to you know steal any information there are a lot of public officials there you know the Mike Pence was there South Korean president absolutely so there's a lot of information that you can get out of this but this attack was mostly just to mess things up and like you know take down the network and things like that it's still too early to say who had done this attack but taking a look at the code it does reference a lot of it was just for destruction purposes there you go for these stories and more checks on CNET I'm Roger Cheng I'm Alfred aying thanks for listening and that attack was in fact called the destructor right they owned a destroyer oh yeah so this was this was the name given to it by the folks that were looking at the code its Cisco yeah yeah destructor yes that was one of it that was that was so there were three different parts so there was like something steals like credential stealer browser stealer which is how they got like credentials to it in the first place and then destructor was the one that like basically deleted all the memory and the attack the recovery process so that's why I was down for like 12 hours as opposed to like if you just delete a bunch of stuff usually you're able to like reboot and just get it back through your process yep deleting things yeah so it was like actively deleting it and all the copies of it so this was the like this was clear that they weren't trying to steal the information because they were actively getting rid of it all right well there you go all the like I said all things considered considering all the hacks that we have seen they've been a lot more destructive that's not that's not the worst yeah I mean maybe this is teased for more oh my god yeah to be fair there's no signs that like it means that they're completely out of their system right right nothing is sacred anymore however when you'd said one of our lead stories is going to be hacking the Olympics I had this like weird image of like neo in the matrix and like uploading all the medals away and there's a beating in real time like in real space there at the ceremony and then out of nowhere it's just like well North Korea won all the gold medals just give it to well that kind of happened with Russia of four years ago dinner that's not our place to go either that or hacking the Olympics resulted in oh we thought we were all gonna be snowboarding today nope spoilers boating I don't even know where to go with that one shall we jump into some chat questions do it for one Matthew dad sure what's up - does the Olympic hacker get a gold medal ooh I mean I think that's more of a somber Summer Olympic more injured more importantly how far how soon is hacking going to become an Olympic competitive sport I don't know they're saying eSports are yeah I mean they have they have competitions at like a lot of major hacking conferences they have a capture the flag thing at blackhat at Def Con it's not Olympics oh yeah boy I was kind of joking I know I'm also kind of not yeah that's the thing like if eSports can be put into consideration it's not that much yeah they have a lot of these competitions there was one in 2016 at Def Con where was BOTS only like it was like which BOTS can write the best malware to get around this like I mean that'sthat's kind of somewhat of the Olympics in like ten years from now it's gonna be all bots yeah it's gonna be like which Olympic which BOTS can run faster it should just be like no shouldn't it should just be a whole country of bots like the nation of bots robot robot nigga or something I feel like that's coming there's like a dystopian great button on that note that sure wants us to shift gears over to Verizon all right will Verizon still allow us to bring our own phone yeah you're talking about so there is a grandfather clause at play so yeah they're want to clarify that these are phones that Verizon is selling so they will still accept unlock phones coming in there's no change of that policy this is really just for the phones that you purchased from Verizon directly but as we see a lot of these partnerships grow and grow and more exclusives starting to hit the market this could become a consumer concern yeah I mean look this is a this is definitely a potential annoyance for consumers but you know you sort of have to the counterbalance is that you know there is a fairly active theft market it has gone down in recent years but it's still it's still significant enough that that Verizon I'm still not buying their explanation for this policy I real don't think that if somebody's stealing a phone like when they're like stealing it from somebody they're gonna see you like oh this was Verizon you can have it but no no sorry so the point isn't to I mean really the theft of turn isn't necessarily for you as consumer it's more stealing phones from Verizon directly okay their supply like basically now that they know that this is a this is a truck heading to a Verizon store than well this may not be as attractive isn't like we can't sit doesn't have that yeah because all the other all the other carries have their phones locked down and ready so Verizon's are the only ones that are unlocked from the Oh so it actually it is from from a theis perspective if they see that this is a verizon phone they see this is a shipment of Verizon phones or if they're at a Verizon store they want to steal Verizon phones from the stores themselves they already know these are unlocked phones that I can easily turn around okay so there's more to protect them than the it's more about protecting Verizon okay but also I mean how is that policy helped out all these other companies that I have locked phones though like are they not being like robbed anymore I had that I don't know I thought I mean but there's a reason why these other carriers have policies in place that are 40 50 day wait yeah I think it's probably worth time to try to make a rough breakdown like you said the blockchain video the animation that's up is really fascinating and it does really help spell things out in a way that the layman can understand yes but maybe we could try to put a little perspective on it and hear to the best of our abilities again this is a really complicated issue maybe with our forces combined we can make it conversation worth having who wants to take a stab at that do you want us to define blockchain for you yes please as someone who is completely stupid to the cryptocurrency and blocks thanks very valuable no look I mean that's the thing like even I tried to offer a brief definition on the during our podcast taping and the idea that these are literally blocks of encrypted data that are linked together and and that kind of contained in different computers the idea that they're sort of decentralized makes it theoretically yeah so so the idea is like the whole theory of like decentralizing something Shanklin starts a story off with like it's really hard to trust things on the internet there's like that famous New Yorker cartoon like on the internet no one can tell your dog well really can't trust anything in life yeah so the idea is like blockchain because it's decentralized so it's not just like me saying something to you like that information is like I would have that information that you know this guy is a dog online then Roger would also have that information you would have that information and like it's uploaded to all these different computers and then the idea would be if that dog tries going online and saying like I'm not a dog I'm like a human and they're like there's everyone that has this data that there's tiered accountability yeah basically like that's a dog like the idea like for I think effective analogy I feel whatever wonder example he gave was with the the DMV analogy yeah idea that like the DMV owns your database and if you go in there and you have to DMV we'll all of a sudden you know you can change names or whatever but if you know the DMV is blockchain to contain all the state to store all this data you couldn't go in and have to be envied yeah you couldn't hack every single computer that has that data verifies that you own this car yeah that's the idea of like being decentralized essentially like that's what provides is like authenticity to it and what we are worried about is what do you mean I'm still like I'm still kind of in the in the dark about this as far as what risks there are inherent risks to blockchain and how it functions uh well in terms of risks I mean there are some downsides to it obviously with cryptocurrency people are using or investing in high powered rigs to mine for currency that is a massive waste of energy no waste but it's it's math it consumes a massive energy right there I most of the risks that I look at for blockchain has to do with like malware and cryptocurrency stuff right just like it sits which what my story on that's coming out in a few days just essentially and we do have a story looking at the downsides of all this yeah and I was in the next few days this is part of a larger package of stories that that talks about blockchain cryptocurrency Bitcoin there was a story over the weekend about just all these like government websites that had been infected with a crypto jacking where they take over a website and then the more you that you're on it like you're you're actually helping like somebody mined for cryptocurrency that way and so if you're on a website it's loading like really really slowly there's a good chance that like you know there's a crypto minor like put on it and I've been seeing a lot of stories over the last few weeks about like all these crazy places that it's been in like hospital equipment yeah they put a crypto miner on a hospital equipment so that's the new thing now so instead of like malware like asking you to give them money it's like you're essentially helping them make money without like even knowing about it well isn't that kind of like the plot of the movie office space I never watched off his face what shut up really I actually never watched I've seen scenes for me but I never watched I mean so the plot of office space is the plot of Superman for right so it's basically kind of just know that that was hijacking accounting systems microtransactions microtransactions what are you talking about is hijacking computer cuz this is another complicated bit about Bitcoin cryptocurrency you can actually mine for your computer can solve complex mathematical puzzles to award themselves Bitcoin or cryptocurrency it's really difficult to get a lot of power but what these hackers do is basically write programs that take over all of your computers and have them kind of run the run those process computation got it foremost for you yeah so instead of you wasting all that money you know on your electric bill like all these like thousands of people whose stuff you've infected are doing it now for a minute there wasn't there I don't know was it NASA or somebody they were using like a third-party application that you could load on a computer that it would essentially utilize you're volunteering your computer's processing power yes so it kind of in a similar vein is not exactly except this is voluntary yeah right we're taking yeah it's like if your computer is running a little bit slower than normal there might be a reason for that gotcha can I just say that the more more we talk about the stuff in the terminology that comes up like crypto mining the more and more know Jackie Chan you I know the more real life sounds like an episode of Law & Order yeah there I treated out this today there was research from Malwarebytes about drive-by crypto mining which that's a whole nother thing where I thought that was a joke when you said it no other term like that so it was basically if you log on to like a different Wi-Fi network and this specifically targets Android devices if you log on to like a random Wi-Fi or something like it'll take you to like a capture page where it looks like a normal capture page which is like just endless like ever every second that you're on there it's actually using your processor to like to the max and like mining from Manero which is another cryptocurrency and it's gotten like 800,000 visits and like per day for like less yeah now they're not gonna get the money I keep under my mattress well thing it's not taking it's not taking anyone's money it's not stealing anybody's money it's just it's stealing you the computational power your phone so yeah we're down the battery makes your phone run slower and you're not getting any of the money for it yeah you're not getting paid naturally I did just funny that we're talking about this so much because I went to a restaurant over the weekend and on their their website I've never been there before I was like I wonder what's on their menu and it's this Italian joint and right front page on their website it's like we accept Bitcoin oh really and it's like your website was built in Geocities but you're accepting Bitcoin it would just caught me off guard it that was like a front page thing for this like old family restaurant out in Queens nice that's probably a bad idea for them my favorite thing my favorite story with cryptocurrency or any kind of like blockchain stuff is all these companies that add blockchain to their names and get like well that was Kodak right they announced they're like you're doing we're going to the blockchain Long Island iced tea company with Reuters like your stuff more than doubled yeah it worked thank you to Dan McClane for pointing out that that was actually the plot of Superman 3 Superman's re had nuclear amman right you're right worst thing yeah happened to come my bad my bad good call Michael Brown is asking what carriers any of us here on the show have out of curiosity is anyone here a Verizon customer I have a Verizon yeah my work phone is Verizon and my personal phone is at t-mobile because I'm on my parents plan yeah I ended up combining my work and personal phone in because I don't like caring too much my jackets and I'm I'm not an AT&T cuz full disclosure we get a discount can I scare ya wait we get AT&T as a as an option I thought it was Verizon and like the whole way when I started 10 years ago I got AT&T with through CBS and I got my discount mother did yeah so that that's my current situation but that yeah not all that interesting imagine soggies asking about the potential thieves for the verizon phone yeah what do thieves turn around and do how is it different 45 60 days down the road so the idea of the the wait period is it shows that you're like an active customer you've been on for at least two months and that's usually studies have shown that you have to drop off period like before the month is over what what they found is a lot of folks sign up with stolen identities get the phone and within a couple of days within a couple of weeks turn around they'll just drop the service stop payment service take the phone and sell in the black market you could sell it overseas or you could sell here and sorry I lost my train of thought there but block channeling some really weird I know convoluted complicated things today all at once so yeah but again that's that's sort of wide that there's there's a waiting period basically for the carriers it shows that you're actually a legit customer who wants to stay on the service as opposed to trying to turn around sell that phone right gotcha we are just about out of time but before we go I want us to theorize what the Robo Olympics will bring for us I for one who can mine for the most blockchain welcome our future robot overlords what competitive sport ollie drone racing well I was gonna say take place in the Robo Lin really I'm like robot battles well battle bots for sure yes flagship that's going to be the oldest giant like giant yeah yeah it's not the TV show mecha fight I want the giant next another we saw we had seen something at sea - if the mecha racing remember that yes yeah yeah yeah I think there'll be a lot of maybe virtual race Racing's not nothing I want I want them to actually like tear each other apart yeah I would pay good money to see right right right human pilots are strictly automata because that video pilots video from Boston dynamic of that robot that did the backflip yes yeah robot gymnastics camisa oh yeah okay it's all right here pretty much with one backflip come on hey so what else out there a competitive vaping like cloud no that's a robot look like the different like like I've seen videos it's stupid as this is stupid but I'm saying like that's in the running I think that's in the running and that's not a robot doing it though that's like a person I mean technically holding something for losing the attack yeah I guess yeah what other quote what else qualify has anybody got any thoughts in the chat the claw machine not the claw machine were like the most stuffed animals real-time oversized mechanical Tetris oh yeah these are all this is bad just take just tape a knife onto a Roomba and see who gets a knife duct tape to the top that's that's a plot of metal head right there yeah okay I think that's gonna do it for the day we need to go decompress after this blockchain crap I just I don't I would say wake of it yeah where we got a full week of blockchain stuff we can we talk about no facets it's gonna be great no no it's gonna be good questions we've got a great package it's called blockchain decoded check it on SEANET first story obviously Steven Jenkins piece and if you liked anything you saw or heard on this podcast please check us out on CNET our podcast is also available on iTunes tune in stitcher he burned Google Play Music and the Amazon echo thanks y'all I'll see you tomorrow see you tomorrow