A massive and sustained Internet attack that has caused outages and network congestion today for a large number of Web sites was launched with the help of hacked:Internet of Things” (IoT) devices, such as CCTV video cameras and digital video recorders, new data suggests…
According to researchers at security firm Flashpoint, today’s attack was launched at least in part by a Mirai-based botnet. Allison Nixon, director of research at Flashpoint, said the botnet used in today’s ongoing attack is built on the backs of hacked IoT devices – mainly compromised digital video recorders (DVRs) and IP cameras made by a Chinese hi-tech company called XiongMai Technologies…
As I noted earlier this month in Europe to Push New Security Rules Amid IoT Mess, many of these products from XiongMai and other makers of inexpensive, mass-produced IoT devices are essentially unfixable, and will remain a danger to others unless and until they are completely unplugged from the Internet.
It is fascinating that there is a rapidly growing network of devices that will never be securable, and the internet of things is still in its infancy. As it grows, everything from our washing machines, to lamps, to alarm clocks will each be able to send pings, and overwhelm the system.
The irony is, as the network grows, and becomes populated with ever more insignificant items, those increasing numbers of items will have ever less security. This problem will get worse.
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I work in IT, we’ve seen the writing on the wall for years. The IoT was never secure, at no point did security even seem to be a consideration. It almost makes you wonder if it was intentional, as the idea of a large distributed bot-network is almost as old as the internet itself…
What’s needed is a more complete internet connection, a router I guess, built into each device. I expect this will be doable in the next round of the technology. To a fair extent it’s something the manufacturers of lamps etc. weren’t even thinking of, just looking for the smallest cheapest chip they could put in their appliance.