On average, we have 10 connected devices in our home,
smart speakers, game consoles, thermostats, security cameras,
all constantly connected to the internet. Sure.
These devices provide convenience and entertainment,
but what if they were secretly spying on us or used for some other
purpose. It can happen and it has happened.
Welcome to another episode of Cautionary Tales from the Dark Side,
where we delve into some infamous case files and see just what lessons
they have to teach us.
In today's tale we'll be looking at how vulnerable IoT devices were used
to create an army of bots,
which carried out a distributed denial of service attack that created havoc
across the internet. This is code name Talos.
[Inaudible].
By today's estimates, there are over 31 billion IoT devices,
coexisting with us here on planet earth,
and another 127 being added every second.
An IoT devices is any object that can communicate information over the internet.
Every IoT device contains computer hardware and software that lets them
do the thing they're supposed to do, like turn on a light,
but also allows them to communicate back to some other location where they can
send data and receive commands. Just as with any other computer,
they too can contain flaws and bugs, which can be exploited.
Which leads us to our story,
how a common overlooked vulnerability on these devices
was used to turn our helpful IoT devices into an army of
bots.
October, 2016, the news exploded with reports,
a company that controls much of North America's DNS infrastructure was attacked
by the largest scale distributed denial of service attack in history.
Which left most of the internet inaccessible across the East coast
of the United States.
This attack impacted sites like [
Organisation Identification Redacted]. And many more. A distributed denial of service attack typically works by overwhelming some target with a massive amount of network traffic causing anything from slowness, all the way to taking it offline.
In 2016, a DDoSs attacks weren't anything new,
but what made this account interesting is that it appeared to be
the first time IOT devices were harnessed to conduct such an
attack.
IOT devices themselves aren't usually very powerful,
but what they lack in power, they more than make up for in sheer volume.
Tens of millions of IOT devices were turned into obediant bots through a
malicious worm called Marai. Marai,
infects IOT devices that are weak or no security hijacking the
device to help spread the worm to other devices and to carry out
instructions issued by the person behind the network of bots or bot
net. As of 2019,
researchers found that the Marai worm is still around and has been
optimized and evolved to target more commercial IOT
devices and exert more control over its IOT hosts.
Short of throwing all our IOT devices into the ocean,
what can we do to protect ourselves?
One of the simplest things that we can do is to make sure we change our device
passwords from their default and use a strong password with a combination of
letters, numbers, and symbols,
the original variant of Mariah specifically targeted devices that had
default or no passwords,
which provided an easy path into the device. Next,
make sure to keep your device firmware updated.
As manufacturers find vulnerabilities and bugs,
they will usually issue regular updates to fix those things.
If your device is so outdated, that updates aren't provided anymore.
It's probably time to consider upgrading.
Outdated and unpatched devices are easy targets for attack,
many corporate networks and some home users will also segment off their IOT
devices into their own physically separate network or V LAN
to better monitor and control access to those devices.
While most of this is common sense.
We should be aware that there is a level of upkeep and personal
responsibility required for our connected devices. I
T devices and their potential vulnerabilities.
Aren't just limited to our favorite antagonistic smart speakers,
most modern medical devices like respirators and MRI machines are
also IOT devices.
Our power grid and transportation networks are filled with IOT devices.
Compromised connected devices have been used to create real world damage
and have even been used to sabotage military targets.
The IOT, Genie is out of the bottle. The question is,
are you taking the proper steps to protect yourself?
If you enjoy this episode, do give us a thumbs up,
subscribe and reach out in the comments we'd love to hear from you.
I'm Scott Fletcher, and this has been cautionary tales from the doors.