[ExI] IoT futurists' predictions - not bad

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Sat Dec 10 09:32:30 UTC 2016


On 7 December 2016 at 14:56, Dave Sill  wrote:
> IoT devices are a challenge because they're cheap and often not easily
> patched, if the manufacturer even fixes bugs. I've got some at home, but my
> home network is pretty secure: Only one system is reachable via
> externally-initiated connections, and only via two protocols. Hacking my IoT
> devices isn't impossible--and they could contain malware out-of-the-box--but
> it's hard enough that most attackers will move on to easier targets.
>


The Botnet That Broke the Internet Isn’t Going Away
Lily Hay Newman 12.09.16.

<https://www.wired.com/2016/12/botnet-broke-internet-isnt-going-away/>

Quotes:
When the botnet named Mirai first appeared in September, it announced
its existence with dramatic flair. After flooding a prominent security
journalist’s website with traffic from zombie Internet of Things
devices, it managed to make much of the internet unavailable for
millions of people by overwhelming Dyn, a company that provides a
significant portion of the US internet’s backbone. Since then, the
number attacks have only increased.

Mirai is a type of malware that automatically finds Internet of Things
devices to infect and conscripts them into a botnet—a group of
computing devices that can be centrally controlled. From there this
IoT army can be used to mount distributed denial of service (DDoS)
attacks in which a firehose of junk traffic floods a target’s servers
with malicious traffic. In just the past few weeks, Mirai disrupted
internet service for more than 900,000 Deutsche Telekom customers in
Germany, and infected almost 2,400 TalkTalk routers in the UK. This
week, researchers published evidence that 80 models of Sony cameras
are vulnerable to a Mirai takeover.

One reason Mirai is so difficult to contain is that it lurks on
devices, and generally doesn’t noticeably affect their performance.
There’s no reason the average user would ever think that their
webcam—or more likely, a small business’s—is potentially part of an
active botnet. And even if it were, there’s not much they could do
about it, having no direct way to interface with the infected product.

There are some precautions consumers can take to improve their
personal IoT security. By assessing the IoT devices they have in their
homes and eliminating superfluous “smart” products that directly
access the internet for no reason, people can reduce their exposure to
attack.
--------------

Or, easier solution, just don't buy any 'smart' devices that connect
to the internet.

BillK




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