With the rise of the internet of things, the internet and its advantages as well as dangers have become much more integrated with our devices. This also creates an opportunity for hackers to launch cyberattacks targeted to those connected devices. Due to the inherent properties of software, the internet of things can never be 100% secure.
Lately a botnet has been created out of a large array of cameras and other devices that fit into the internet of things. This so-called Mirai botnet consist of more than half a million nodes. The targets of this botnet and the consequences are not small with recently reported DDoS attacks to Dyn’s Domain Name System management services (DNS) infrastructure, resulting in outages of websites such as Twitter, Spotify and Reddit. It is estimated that just around 10% of the nodes of the botnet were used for this attack.
Examples of Internet of Things devices that are used in this Mirai botnet are for example security cameras. Ironically, many of those cameras cannot be easily updated to increase their data security. The amount of devices that can be used for such a bonnet is ever increasing. As it is impossible to control for the security of all software that is put on internet of things devices, the problem is only likely to become worse.
After a hacker put the source code to this botnet online on a hacking forum, more DDoS attacks were predicted by CERT, the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team. Given that the source code was published before the outages of e.g. Spotify and Twitter, this is also what happened.
What do you think about the future of this development? If software (or accompanying hardware) can never be 100% secure and the amount of connect devices increases how secure is the future even? Apart from DDoS attacks, how about all the internet connected sensors of these connected devices and its effect of the inherent properties of software on security and privacy? Let me know what you think!
https://motherboard.vice.com/tag/The+Internet+of+Hackable+Things
https://motherboard.vice.com/read/criminal-hackers-have-launched-a-turf-war-over-the-internet-of-shit
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/internet-of-things-malware-mirai-ddos
https://motherboard.vice.com/read/twitter-reddit-spotify-were-collateral-damage-in-major-internet-attack
