Hour 1 | @ConwayShow Cybersecurity Problems @MarkTLive

Major airlines today reported impacts from the cybersecurity problems. Alex Stone joins the show with updates // Fork Fire in Angeles National Forest // Crowdstrike outage affected mobile ordering at Starbucks / Pete Buttigieg impact on CA transportations / Spirit Airlines worker outburst. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
It's KMF I Am six forty andyou're listening to the Conway Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app five everywhere onthe iHeartRadio app. Mark Thompson sitting in
for Tim. Much to do today. We'll double back, we'll pick up
some politics. We'll talk about lastnight the former president's speech ran long,
but why not. I mean,you're the guy. I don't see why

(00:23):
it's so bad that he ran long. If I was there with a big
my name there in lights, Imight let it rip a little bit myself.
So we'll we'll talk about the dustsettling there and more to the point,
the future of Joe Biden. Evenas he says he'll continue, there
is a pushback, and now yetanother high profile politician on the Democratic side

(00:46):
says it's time to step back,step back from running again. So we'll
update that situation. But you nodoubt woke up or were otherwise aware this
morning of this massive outage. Computeroutage affected flights. I suppose those images
of airports closed everywhere around the worldand flights essentially grounded everywhere around the world.

(01:11):
Those are some of the images thatstuck out. But it affected hospitals.
It affected law enforcemtens, affected governmentsaffected, I mean city governments like
Washington, d C. So there'sa lot going on, and Alex Stone's
been on this story all day.So Alex set me straight. What happened
and where are we now? Well, more importantly, did you say Del
Taco is the number one fast food? Joined now voting on that? It

(01:36):
was a USA Today poll apparently,and so you know, please take that
Ford, the KFC get number two? Was that where they were? Oh?
Was it number two? Was KFC? Possibly? I think they were
in the top. I think wehave issues with you. And then of
course they Chick fil A had beennumber one. They've dropped to number three.
That was sort of the big breakingnews of that poll. Maybe Trump

(01:57):
is right polling Candy Truss, thisis what we're talking about. Yeah,
so this is a it's a bigmess today and even in the last hour
the numbers have gone up again.Ten thousand, five hundred and twenty five
flights have been delayed today in theUS, two eighty four have been canceled.
And this all goes back to thisproblem with the program crowd strike,

(02:21):
which is software that typically is runningin the background. It's essentially antivirus software
so bad actors cannot get into twobig companies that they run this software.
It's always being like your virus softwareat home, always being updated where whatever
that threat is, they're they're updatingit. Well, whoops, they updated
last night. The code they putin doesn't work with Windows computers and it

(02:45):
bricks them. They go to theblue screen of death and then we get
the problems that we've got today.This guy is at LAX. He's been
waiting all day to get on aflight, fifteen hours, sixteen hours in
the airport, So look at outof airlines like we're just covering the cost
of a fly, but we don'teven know if it'll go. So I
just hoping and praying. He's beensitting at LAX for fifteen hours. And

(03:07):
there are a lot of people whowere on planes getting ready to board planes
last night at like ten or eleveno'clock when the system went down, and
they have been waiting because Mark,there's not there aren't any open seats that
in this week, the TSA hadone of their top three busiest travel days
ever. Planes are full. Soif you say, well, I'll just
get another flight to JFK. Therearen't any seats on that, so the

(03:28):
airlines have to figure this out.Delta is the hardest hitting all of this,
And I'm just looking at their numbersat LAX right now. Delayed to
Maui, delayed to Santiago, delayedto Seattle. I mean, it's just
delayed, delayed, delay, andcanceled, cancel, cancel, and they're
gonna probably take a couple of daysto figure this out and get planes where
they need to be and crews wherethey need to be. United's hit pretty

(03:50):
hard in this as well. American, a little bit American just sent us
a note a few minutes ago sayingthat they think that they're going to have
a pretty good day tomorrow, thatthey'll be pretty much back on schedule at
America. And then there was aSpirit Frontier in Sun Country that they too
were running this software and their computerswent down today. The two that came
out kind of scott free in thiswhole thing that apparently either didn't update their

(04:12):
computers or aren't running this software areSouthwest Airlines in Jeed Blue. They have
a few delays just because the wholesystem is stressed today. Sure, but
they did not have this. Allthe others were grounding their flights today and
not taking off, and Southwest andjeb Blue were like, come aboard,
we're flying. They were rolling downthe runway. Meantime, there are nine
to one one services that were effected. I was seeing Phoenix. The nine

(04:33):
one one computer dispatch center was Iguess operational, but there is a part
of their dispatch where they went down. Computers weren't working, so you could
get the phone call in, butthen they were doing things manually. Anchorage
their system went down San Diego.They could not process inmates into the San
Diego County jail, so they hada problem overnight where they didn't have the

(04:58):
systems up to get the processing gogoing on. There are gas stations in
Wisconsin that can't take credit cards tonightbecause they're still offline, that they can't
process credit payments to serve gas.DMV offices in Missouri that have been shot
down today. I mean, thisreally shows you how connected we are.
And this was one program from acompany that sells these programs to run on

(05:23):
computers, and these computers go downinto the blue screen of death and we
all fall apart. Imagine if itwas more widespread than this Internet wide where
we wake up some morning and justeverything whether by mistake or by bad actor,
has gone down. And I meanwe're talking via internet right now.
This is how we communicate. Ifyou still have a home phone at home

(05:46):
that's over the Internet, that's notcopper any longer. For the most part,
with a few exceptions, this ishow we transportation, communication, emergency
response. Everything is connected now downto pretty much everything in our home that
that goes down and we're in bigtrouble. This is so true. And
this is the point here that thiswas a spontaneous act. I mean,

(06:12):
it happened not as a result ofas a bad actor, as you say.
But I remember in twenty twenty whenthere was that major cyber attack,
they thought it was the Russians.They still think it's the Russians. And
it penetrated thousands of governmental organizations inthe US government, all the way to
military Pentagon and across the spectrum ofUS government agencies. And you realize,

(06:36):
wow, I mean, just asyou said, I mean, we're far
more vulnerable than we think, andthey still think. Just back to that,
I think it was called solar Winds, was the name of the software
program. They still think that theremight actually be pieces of that breach that's
still embedded in a lot of thegovernment software. Yeah, like Trojan Horse

(06:58):
to come alive. Yeah, Socybersecurity experts and lawmakers today they're saying another
reminder, what was it about ayear or two ago, Remember when the
FAA had their problems and planes weregrounded. That was a computer update as
well. So it can be asimple mistake or it can be somebody getting
in there. It seems like thesesimple mistakes do this more often than bad
actors, which you know, maybetells you we're that good that these software

(07:21):
companies are that good at keeping thebad guys out. But then there are
problems. But if somebody could getin and do something, if we woke
up in the morning and couldn't communicateand your cell phone didn't work and you
didn't have internet connectivity, I mean, it shows you something like this little
taste of that and it wakes everybodyup. Well, there's definitely ransomware,

(07:41):
and you know we've experienced that fromyou've reported on it, I think,
and yeah, schools, banks,sure, government agencies, it's a but
this is wild that this crowd strike. It was such a simple thing and
it's caused so many issues. SoI suspect we'll be talking to you again
with follow up because it sounds likemaybe a few days. But I appreciate
the update. You got it,Dell. Yeah, Alex Stone go to

(08:01):
Del Del Taco. Yeah. Everyonehere is like, did he just say
no? That was a d atthe beginning of that hit the Del Taco?
Yeah you too. Wow. Stillto come. Uh, we'll check
on the uh the cost of newhomes in Los Angeles. It's kind of
interesting. By the way. Speakingof new homes, there's an old home,

(08:26):
high profile home in Malibu that wasmuch talked about that did sell.
I'll tell you, Oh yeah,yeah, I'll tell you about that.
Maybe we'll guess on the number asto what it's all. I'll give you
way more in the way of details, and then maybe we'll guess on the
numbers. That's still to come.It's The Conway Show, Thompson sitting in
for Tim kf I AM six fortylive everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're

(08:48):
listening to Tim Conway Junior on demandfrom kf I AM six forty. You
may smell the smoke. It's smellable. By the way, there's a pretty
healthy fire going in the Angelus NationalForest right now. They're calling it the
Fork brush Fire. My wife justtexted be a picture of the smoke from
our house. Yeah, that's rightfrom your place. I think you can

(09:11):
get a much more pungent sort offeel for it. It's a hot Friday
afternoon to be fighting a brush fire, but that's exactly what's happening in the
Angelus National Forest. Always, ofcourse a good sign because it means that
this area already burned and there's nomore brush here to catch on fire.
But there's also something else I wantto show you. You see that red

(09:33):
line there right there in the middleof the shot. That is fire retardant
that has been dropped by one ofthe firefighting aircraft. The goal is that
they're gonna hopefully be able to boxit in in this canon and keep it
from growing any more than it has. The official word on it is that
it's about ten acres, but Ican tell you that that's going to grow,
and it's going to grow by alot. Where we're at is East

(09:54):
Fork Road, right off of GlendoraMountain Road, and I should add that
East Fork Road is actually shut downfrom Glendora Mountain Road all the way to
Highway thirty nine. And this isa very popular area with hikers, with
campers, with cyclists, and there'sactually a really popular spot called Camp Williams
that is just to our west thatwas threatened when we initially arrived on Sane.

(10:18):
Everybody who was there has been evacuated, so at this point there will
no longer be any threat to life, but of course that property is still
at risk here with those structures stillbeing threatened. Now, this is a
fire that is burning in the forest, but we're directly north of Glendora,
So if you are anywhere in theAzusa area, Glendora, Glendora, really

(10:39):
anywhere within the San Gabriel area,you're going to see this very large plume
of smoke that at this point I'mputting out about ten thousand feet because we're
currently finding out about eighty five hundredand it goes way above our heads.
Again, at this point, thecause of the fire is still under investigation.
It's officially ten acres but growing.Wow, who is that? She's
good, really good, Marino.What channel is that NBC? She's really

(11:05):
good? Yeah, it's so it'sit's above Glendora, if you want to
think of it that way, SanGabriel Valley. It's and it's and she's
right. I mean, there areprevailing atmospheric conditions that are favorable. Right,
it's not particularly a windy day,but you know, as we always
hear these mark We've also got thishere on ABC seven, a brush fire

(11:28):
near the freeway that we can takethe audio hereaway and Latuna Canyon Road.
It has virtually tripled in size justin the last two minutes as we have
stumbled on this fire here, thefirst firefighting helicopters arriving on seeing there is
a strike team already in place,but it is growing very very fast,
and it is sandwiched in between LatunaCanyon Road and the two ten Freeway here

(11:52):
already knocking out the right lane onthe eastbound side of the two ten freeway.
Would not be surprising if this endsup shutting down the two freeway on
this Friday afternoon. Not to mentionLatunic Canyon Road. Just up that embankment,
seeing that in just a second asyou widen out, it is approaching
the Latunic Canyon Road right now,and that road is almost certain to be

(12:13):
shut down. Here a few minutes, he attends to this situation again,
a fast growing brush fire right alongthe two ten freeway here at Talk reporting
Live Front Air seven. Wow,and that is a nasty one right alongside
the freeway. I mean, hugeflames. What does it look like on
Latunic Canyon. There's people just stoppedon Latunic Canyon Road, like pulled over

(12:35):
to the shoulder, like at leastfive to ten cars just sitting there on
the shoulder like they're watching the fireand they're like fifty to hundred yards from
it. Yeah, I mean Ibelieve it. I mean it's it's so
this is a weird way to putit, but like impressive looking. I
mean it's in But yeah, Iwould not be stopping to look at it.
But that's what we do. Crouch, we stop. We had looking

(12:58):
at fires, We stopped and lookat accidents. But we're watching those two
fires today and let's hope it doesn'tturn into anything more. I think the
Angels National Forest Fire is likely togrow. Maybe they can get a handle
on this Latuna Canyon fire. I'msaying that because it's right alongside the freeway,

(13:20):
so maybe it's more manageable. We'llwatch it for you through the afternoon
here at KFI. When we comeback, I do want to double back
to what's going on with the withthe crowd strike outage. It did affect
a lot of different areas of life, and it's still affecting areas of life

(13:43):
even as they've got a lid onit. Also the price tag for the
much anticipated sale of a Malibu home. We'll get to that as well.
In addition, as I say,to the breaking news of those two fires.
So all that's still the comments.Thenway Show, Mark Thompson sitting in
for Tim on KFI AM six fortyLive everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're

(14:05):
listening to Tim Conway Junior on demandfrom KFI AM six forty. It's The
Conway Show. Mark Thompson sitting infor Tim, who's back on Monday.
We're watching two developing situations with rushfires, one on Latuna Canyon Road near
the two ten and the others inthe Angelus National Forest, and we're going

(14:30):
to keep you posted on that obviouslythrough the afternoon. I mean, neither
one of those situations is under controlyet, so we're watching it for you.
The other thing we're watching is anydevelopments in the situation with Joe Biden.
And you know, you see allof these various interviews with people from
the Biden camp. I'm chuckling becausethere's a weird thing that the media does,
which is, you know, wewere talking to someone with the Joe

(14:50):
Biden campaign. This is the numbertwo person, not the Joe Biden campaign.
And I want to ask you ifthe if the president is thinking about
stepping back, and they always sayno, because you're talking to somebody with
the Biden campaign, exactly, whatdo you expect them to say? It
was the same thing with is itCorinne Jean Pierre? Yeah, so she's

(15:13):
the White House spokesperson. So theother day at the White House, the
same questions asked six times, isPresident Biden going to step back from the
campaign? Even as a lot ofprominent Democrats have asked it, and six
times she gave the same answer.No, there have been no plans to
change anything on the on the president'sschedule, or the existing strategies of campaigning.

(15:37):
He is going to win and goingto serve another four years. What
do you expect her to say?I mean, I don't know whether that's
true or not true. But Iknow exactly what she's going to say,
which is that it's true. That'sher job. It's not like the sixth
time that you asked, she's goingto go, you know what, you
got me? All right, He'sgonna pull back. He really is.

(15:58):
But so I would just say,look at these various comments from people that
are in official relationships with the Bidencampaign through that prism. Anyway, we're
watching that situation for you. Look, this CrowdStrike thing today was huge,
and again if you missed it,this is a cyber security situation. CrowdStrike

(16:22):
is a cyber security software that's designedto keep out a lot of bad actors
who could mess with everything from transportationto government to law enforcement systems. But
there was a glitch in that softwareand that's what brought worldwide travel to its

(16:45):
nees and continues to be an issue. They're just now getting online and a
lot of these various governmental agencies.It is reminiscent to a degree of what
was feared with Y two K.Remember when Y two K was this thing

(17:06):
that was much talked about, muchfeared that essentially computer technology as advanced as
it was, and it was notvery advanced in two thousand. You think
about how far it's come, butthat somehow it was not loaded to handle
the new date and the new agethat would come to pass January first,

(17:32):
two thousand and every manner of storyand every computer nerd on the planet was
telling you why both we had nothingto do worry about, and also we
had to do things to make certainthat nothing bad happened. Wow, you
ring in the year two thousand,Your home computer may have a nasty surprising
store for computer makers. The yeartwo thousand is missioned critical Total tech failure

(17:57):
is what a lot of people thoughtwould happen as we ushered in a new
millennium. In the countdown to twothousand, computer programmers realized that many machines
might not interpret the date correctly,effectively setting the clock back to nineteen hundred
and so the Y two K bugwas born. I think we're a little
concern Yeah, a little concerns.So I want to try here, get

(18:18):
some things prepared just in case somethingcomes up. But unlike today's software glitch
that grounded flights and brought businesses toa halt, industries had ample warning about
the problem. The FAA systems arefully Y two K compliant. Just in
case the lights go out. InDenver, they're handing out many flashlights to
air travelers. The United States spentmillions of dollars shoring up infrastructure, and

(18:42):
engineers across all sectors work tirelessly toprevent computer malfunctions from taking the country offline.
Of course, being online looked alot different twenty four years ago.
Oh one to three zero zero,So yep, they got it. Notice
the date, January third, thenew year, fell on a Saturday.

(19:04):
It wasn't until that Monday that mostAmericans logged in at work to check on
their computers after spending a holiday weekendunplugged. That's wild because what you could
never conceive of now is going throughthe entire weekend with somehow not being connected
to the web. AM I right, But back in two thousand, that

(19:25):
was the thing, you know,it was your smartphone didn't exist. I
mean, the original iPhone was seven, isn't that what it was? Or
I think that that's right. Andyour connection that you feel now that you
don't think twice about, you justdidn't have. So it really was affecting
personal computers, business computers. Butyou weren't on the computer all the time.

(19:52):
This is a whole different animal now, and with computers now handling everything,
this crowd strike, this cyber securitytechnology that again was glitch today.
It affected so many more areas wewere saying, you know, in Alaska,
the nine to one to one andnon emergency call centers weren't functioning.

(20:14):
In New York City, emergency serviceswere operational, but there were other smaller
aspects of life in New York thatwere affected. Hospitals, for example,
the Superior Court of Los Angeles,they had significance system wide connectivity issues.
And you heard Alex Stone talk aboutthe fact that there were literally people who

(20:36):
were supposed to be whatever the wordis inducted into the prison system, brought
into the prison system today and therewas no way to do it because those
computers were down. So again,the Department of Justice was affected in other
ways than just that, and therewere other law enforcement agencies affected in other
ways than just that. But itwas crazy what happened at the airports worldwide.

(21:00):
Again, this is a glitch.This wasn't a bad actor. So
it makes you realize, I think, just how vulnerable this entire thing is,
and even as we deal with softwareof this sort that's designed to keep
out malware, bad actors. Youknow, various phishing scams that have you

(21:22):
load in all kinds of bad stuff, fud of the computer. It's the
very software that's designed to get preventthat, to make that impossible, the
very software that is designed to dothose things that brought down the whole system
today. It is reminiscent of thefears what was talked about with Y two

(21:45):
K. In a sense, itwas a sliver of that today. And
as also mentioned by Alex Stone,we talked about the beginning of the show,
it'll take days to work this throughthe system, because now you've had
so many flight delays and cans relationsthat it's impossible to catch up with that
over the course of two even threedays. It may take the better part
of a week to get through it. I mentioned a very high profile home

(22:11):
on the market in Malibu. Wewill give you the details. You tell
me how much it's going for,I'll give you the details. Next meantime,
we're watching those two brush fires andwe'll continue to update that through the
afternoon. You're listening to Tim ConwayJunior on demand from KFI Am six forty.

(22:37):
Mark Thompson here for Tim Conway Junioror watching this Fork fire. Here's
the fast moving wildfire burning into theAngels National Forest. They're calling this now
the Fork fire. And as youcan see, there's a tremendous amount of
fuel there, so it's burning quickly. They said seventy five acres, but
that is probably going to change significantly. You could see this fire all over
southern California as La County Fire andthe Forest Service try to hit this fire

(23:00):
right now. But it's out therein a stretch of mountains right now.
And from what we understand, thereare some evacuations underway in an area called
the Bass Trail. It's Camp Williams. There were people there. They're trying
to get those people out. They'realso being told that there were a number
of children in that area. Aswe try to get an idea of how

(23:22):
bad this fire is. But youcan see it all over southern California.
A number of our cameras can spotit. This is our Long Beach camera
showing that tremendous amount of smoke comingout, and you can see it from
many other cameras as well. Yeah, it's absolutely both visible and you can
smell it, you know. Soit's above Gleund door in the Angelus National
Park and we'll continue to watch thatfor you and update that. The outage

(23:45):
that I was mentioning, the majorsystem wide outage, worldwide outage today did
affect southern California. Do you wantthe serious or do you want the I'll
give you the serious, But letme open with Starbus was affected. That's
right. Starbucks apologized early this morningbecause their mobile ordering system was affected by

(24:07):
the crowd strike outage. So thevery thing that was affecting airlines to banks,
to government agencies affected mobile ordering inthe Starbucks network, and Starbucks apologized
for that. There were minimal disruptionsat La Area ports after this outage,

(24:33):
but there were issues in and aroundLos Angeles with all of this. So
this is not an area in southernCalifornia that escaped at all. And Pete
Budhajedge, who of course, Departmentof Transportation is under Pete Budhajeedge, and
he spoke to this outage and howit affected the transportation network, and I

(24:59):
just I'll get to that, butI do want to note the fallout continues
from this. I mean even asthey have powered up a lot of these
computer systems. As we were saying, both in technologies and also in the
healthcare network Kaiser Permanente, some ofthe systems there were affected. So the

(25:23):
city departments, the Mayor's office inLos Angeles, LAPD, LAFD. I
mean, these are all areas thatsort of endured a ripple effect from this.
So all of these things right noware efforting some kind of online presence
that they didn't have before. Inany case, Buddha Jed spoke on all
of this, and the Secretary,Buddhajet told me that his office has been

(25:45):
speaking with airlines all day to helpthem get back on track and make sure
that they don't burden passengers with thismess. The crowd strike outage causing a
nightmare for vital industries that power theglobe. Hundreds of trucks at the Port
of Los Angeles and Long Beach waitedhours for cargo to be released and loaded.

(26:06):
At Southern California airports, some flightswere grounded, causing cancelations and delays.
So what does the Secretary of Transportationthink about all of this? I
think a lot of people around thecountry and around the world are shot to
discover that a single issue with asingle piece of software can have that many
knock on implications, and I thinkthat'll be a question that really goes to

(26:26):
the design of our systems for thelong term. We caught up with Secretary
Pete Boudajadge at an event in EastLos Angeles Friday, where he said the
greatest impacts are to those traveling byair. I've also directed our team to
make clear to the airlines that theyneed to take care of passengers if they
get stranded or delayed. We donot consider this the way we would a
weather event. This is something thatthe airlines are responsible for addressing, and

(26:49):
I've been focused on making sure theairlines hear that message and know that we
will be enforcing any applicable passenger productions. CrowdStrike is a US cybersecurity company that
is amted to being responsible for theerror and is working to correct it.
Buddhajedge told us he thinks airlines couldbe back to normal by Saturday, although
it was a rough night and startto the day. The Port of Long

(27:11):
Beach told I Witness News they're goodto go. This is not a cyber
attack. Basically, this was abreakdown by a Microsoft Com, a subcontractor
doing a periodic update to the cloud. So I think that's going to be
corrected. It has in many casesand in terms of what and it's been
at global impact. So Buddha Jegesays that although airlines may be able to

(27:33):
retract, that guy was pretty cool. That's kind of who I want to
hear bad news from this guy.You know, he's very chill about the
whole thing. Basically, this wasa breakdown by a Microsoft Com, a
subcontractor doing a periodic update, doinga periodic update that so I think that's
going to be corrected. Yeah,But I mean the last part, which
is and it produced a worldwide shutdownin many cases and in terms of what

(27:59):
and it's been at global inpact.So Kudajet says that although airlines may be
able to resolve most of their issuesby today, there could continue to be
some impacts to rail freight and transitthrough the weekend. Yeah, we were
talking about that here. I didread and you'll see this. I think
if you're around Instagram or TikTok orwhatever social media, you will see moments

(28:22):
like this that have now gone viral. There was a moment of exasperation from
a Spirit Airlines worker who I guesswas so frustrated. Everybody's so angry,
you know, and there's nothing thatthis Spirit Airlines worker could do. A
lot of these Spirit Airlines passengers arealready kind of irritated because they're on Spirit

(28:42):
Airlines and it's not exactly super comfyall the time. But the thing that's
gone viral is a Spirit employee atthe gate talking to scores of passengers who
are away to yelling, everyone's gonnashut up, and we're gonna say this

(29:03):
once and we're only gonna say itagain because we're frustrated as hell. We
apologize to our guests for this experience. So there we have audio of this.
Oh we do, yes, wejust hear it. Oh my god,

(29:26):
I just gave you a dramatic reading. It was beautiful. Yes,
if it was so beautiful, whydid you break in and say we've got
the audio. Let's compare the twoand see which one we perform? Well
do when we get back? Ohh, I'm always in competition at this
place. What is it with you? You're always you and your little friends

(29:47):
always want to get me into thegladiator of ring, because that's when you're
the most fun. I see,are you not entertained? Yeah? Seeing
you in your gladiator outfit? Unentertained? Does it Mark look good today?
Angel? All right? All right? Settled out? All right? When

(30:07):
we come back, we'll play youthe actual audio from that incident at the
airport. We're also watching those brushfires, and as they say, we're
watching the Biden situation. Anything breaksthere, all of these things. As
the afternoon continues, It's the ConwayShow, Thompson sitting in KFI AM six
forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Conway Show on demand on the iHeartRadio

(30:32):
app. Now you can always hearus live on KFI AM six forty four
to seven pm Monday through Friday,and anytime on demand on the iHeart Radio app.