Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Welcome back to the Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to the Peggy Smedley Show. 0:14 My next guest has expertise in the wireless industry and has led the development of more than a hundred unique Wi-Fi, cellular, and Bluetooth IoT test and security products. 0:25 These products are used by law enforcement, government, and military agencies around the world. 0:30 I'm pleased to welcome my friend, Scott Schroer, CEO of Berkeley Varitronics, cybersecurity subject matter expert, and the author of Hacked Again. Scott, welcome back to the show. Hey, great to be back here. 0:43 How you been there, Peggy? It is great. 0:46 Hey, Scott, we're gonna narrow in today, which I love this topic because after we see what's going on with Equifax and everybody else these days, you know, and we see so many hacks. 0:56 I love today we are gonna talk specifically about credit card skimmers. I just love the idea we're gonna narrow in on something today. Let's educate our listeners who might not even know what that is. I love that topic. 1:08 Let's talk. Yeah, absolutely. Well, cr-credit card skimmers, it's really nothing new. 1:15 It's really just evolved as they keep exploiting and realizing, these cyber thieves, how easy it is to compromise our credit cards, and that's at the ATMs and especially at the gas pumps as of late. 1:29 So even though credit cards continue to get more secure as they try to get away from magstripe, the cybercriminals continue to find ways that they could skim or steal our credit card numbers just because all our cards still have magstripes on the back of them, and that's where the problem continues to grow. 1:49 Right now, consumers are losing over two billion dollars annually around the globe, so it's become a serious problem, and law enforcement, national weights and measures, and then certainly companies like us are developing technology, so we can fight back against the cybercriminals. 2:08 Well, think about this, Scott. 2:10 I mean, if thirty-seven million Americans refuel every day, and we're paying about twenty-nine million for fuel with just a credit or a debit card, you know, the question is, how do you actually tell, you know, that they've been illegally installed? 2:26 I have to admit, I have never, ever looked. Now, I don't typically drive that often, but I have put in a credit card into a pump, and I've never looked to see if there's, you know, a skimmer on a gas pump ever. 2:39 I've never looked. I'm probably the first one to admit that right here now, but now I'm going to be paying more attention to it. I've just never thought to look at a gas pump like that. A-a-and you're not alone. 2:50 Most of us, we feel comfortable maybe at a local gas station, but especially when we travel, going up and down the interstate, an unfamiliar gas station, we have to be extra careful. 3:01 And there what's happening is skimmers are being placed in different spots, and all a skimmer really is, is an additional magnetic read head, so it r- when you put your credit card into any type of point-of-service terminal, it's normally processing. 3:17 It pulls your, your magstripe, your credit card information off track one and track two, and it's processing your credit card as normal. So you bought forty dollars worth of gas, what have you. 3:27 But that second head is also making a copy of your credit card, and it's stored in a buffer, and this could be in a plastic bezel that's over the top of the existing bezel where your credit card goes in. 3:40 And when you think about it, three-D printers have gotten really good. They can match the color, the wear, everything, and then they just literally will epoxy them on there. 3:50 So they place them over, epoxy it on, and inside that bezel is hidden a micro magnetic head that will actually skim and steal that credit card information when it slides into the slot. 4:02 It's relatively easy to do, and even if they're not that crafty, you can buy credit card skimmers already integrated into the plastic bezel that goes over that POS right on the gas pump or the ATM or any type of system that accepts credit cards. 4:20 That's scary. Now, it's, it's unbelievable. I was doing some research, and you could probably answer this better than me. 4:26 Is it true that they take as many as thirty to a hundred cards per day that can get compromised at a single pump? Yeah. That's crazy. A-a-absolutely. 4:35 And in fact, high volume gas stations where they're moving through a lot of people, there's been upwards of two hundred stolen credit cards- [chuckles] -reported per pump. So think about a big station. 4:45 They may have ten or twenty pumps along an interstate. It... and if a cybercriminal places all these skimmers in there, they can steal a lot of information. 4:55 Now, they've gotten savvy cybercriminals and gone one step further. Oftentimes we're told, "Jiggle the plastic bezel where we put the card in, in case there's a skimmer in there." That's good advice. 5:06 However, because of the way gas pumps are in this country, in the United States specifically, there's a universal locking key. So there's six basic keys to open up any gas pump. 5:17 So there's millions of pumps out there, six keys to open them up. 5:21 Those keys have been sold illegally on eBay, the dark web, other criminal organizations, and they're out there, so they can get inside of any gas pump, and what they're doing is adding the wireless element, cybercriminals. 5:35 So they take a traditional skimmer and add Bluetooth to it, open up the gas pump, place it inside, connect it into the POS where your card is read, close the machine and lock it, and it's taken about fifteen seconds for an average cybercriminal to install it and not get caught by camera or a person. 5:52 So they come in the middle of the night, cause a distraction, plant this Bluetooth skimmer. Now they have the beauty of driving up in the proximity of the-Gas pump. They don't even have to go into the lot. 6:03 They could be up to about seventy-five feet away with their computer, and then, uh, they can talk wirelessly and download these hundreds of stolen credit cards each and every day. 6:12 They go home to their cyber dungeon and burn credit cards from all these stolen ones. And then in turn, they go and buy gift cards. So it's kind of like mon-money laundering. Many hands involved in the process. 6:25 Highly organized cyber criminal gangs doing this, and again, resulting in billions of dollars annually that are being stolen from all of our credit cards at the gas pumps. Now, you know I'm gonna ask you this question. 6:38 There's got to be an app for that, that can tell you if there's a [laughs] skimmer out there, 'cause you know there's an app for everything. Is there? 6:45 I mean, is there a way so, like, the average Joe like me can say, "Hey, you know, watch out, there's a little skimmer thing out there." I mean, you go to a pump and you go, like, "I don't know I want to pump my gas." 6:55 I mean, is there something to protect you, or you just got to keep, like, hoping? What, what are tips to keep you safe if you're filling up at the gas pump? I don't know. Yeah, y-y-you're absolutely right. 7:05 There is an app for that, and it does kind of work, but it's not the ultimate solution. Both An-Android and Apple iOS, you can get an app. Some are free, some are a couple bucks. 7:17 And really what they do is they, they scan for all Bluetooth activity. I've tried it. It works if you really know what you're looking for. The problem is the average consumer has no idea what to look for. 7:28 They see a list of addresses that come up, and they don't know how to correlate to that to know is that a skimmer? Is that a Bluetooth headset? Is that a, you know, a, a smartwatch that's Bluetooth? They have no idea. 7:41 So it discourages people because they look, they scan, and say, "Well, there's a gazillion Bluetooth items on my screen. What do I do?" 7:48 What we've done is we've developed a piece of hardware that has a database in it with known Bluetooth IDs and threats, and on top of that, a direction-finding antenna. 7:59 So now you could scan for Bluetooth activity at a pump and steer toward which pump has the radio frequency transmitting out. Our product's called the Blue Sleuth. 8:10 We've, we've sold hundreds of them, mostly to law enforcement, Secret Service, national weights and measurements, petroleum groups with all the, the gas stations out there, and we've had wonderful success there finding these illegally placed Bluetooth skimmers. 8:26 Well, I know, Scott, you're gonna come speak at our Technology Days on August, uh, twenty-second, and I'm sure our folks are gonna love to hear all about that. 8:35 So Scott Schober, CEO of Berkeley Varitronics, uh, love that you are s- become such a great cyber expert, and you've got a great book called... Uh, the author of Hacked Again. 8:45 Tell our listeners where they can go to get more information on you and come listen to you speak at our event in, uh, here in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Yeah. Well, f-certainly the event looks very exciting. 8:55 We're gonna be talking about cybersecurity, little bit about blockchain and how it relates to construction and technology. 9:01 So encourage people that are in that field, please register, come out, and love to speak to you a little bit more. 9:07 You can find out a little bit more about myself and what I'm doing at scottschober.com or hackedagain.com, learn a little bit more m- about my book. 9:16 And have another book coming out, which is Cybersecurity Is Everybody's Business, and that'll be out late summer. 9:22 So I'm excited to, to launch that soon and get everybody's feedback on that and, uh, greatly appreciate all the things that you're doing there, Peggy, educating and informing all of us about these things. 9:32 [upbeat music] All right, Scott, thank you so much. All right, listeners, we are out of time for today. Remember, we are broadcasting live every Tuesday at twelve PM Central. 9:41 Check out our website at connectedworld.com or thepeggysmedley show.com. Or, as always, tweet us at ConnectedWMag. This is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. 9:52 Remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. Have an awesome week. [upbeat music] Constructek TV, your fierce advocates for construction. 10:03 Constructek TV digs into infrastructure, drills into global economic conditions. 10:09 It is changing the talent gap narrative, adopting a new vision and a voice to the new skilled worker in construction, all with the help of technology. 10:19 Constructek TV, everything you need for infrastructure, labor, and technology. 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