DailyPost 1059
IOT DISTRIBUTED DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACKS
The Internet as we understand today is being termed as the Internet of Information and we go moved further machines got connected with machines and now literally everything is getting connected to Internet. This is what is called as the Internet of Things. Everything would have an IP address, courtesy IPv6 and would be a part of the hyperconnected world. With benefits galore, the bad guys cannot be far behind. Their is likelihood of 50 billion devices becoming a part of the Internet of Things in the near future.
With endless interactions between them internet connect things it would be an exponential rise of the Threat Surface Area, which happens to be the sum of the different points or attack vectors through which an enemy can strike. While trillion dollars economies are being shaped by world’s smartest research and technology firms, most of the IT security depts are still struggling with zero day attacks or the malware vulnerability crisis of the day. Every technology has some variant of cyber crime or hack or breach methodology attached to it and for IoT given its pervasiveness by sheer numbers, it has turned out to be the happy hunting ground for DDoS attacks.
Mirai malware gained notoriety for botnet enabled massive DDoS attacks infecting smart devices which would run on ARC processors. After attacking the website of well known security expert, the hackers released the source code to the world. This code is believed to be behind the massive attack that brought down the domain registration services provider, Dyn, in Oct 2106. Reaper another IoT, DDoS newsmaker is able compromise IoT devices at a much faster than Mirai.
The story goes on. World’s largest 1 Tbps DDoS attack was launched from 152,000 hacked smart devices. France based hosting provider company was the victim to the record making DDoS attack peaking at 1 Tbps. Z-Wave the pairing protocol downgrade attack left over 100 million IoT devices to hackers. In 2017, Hajime Vigilante Botnet hijacked 300,000 IoT devices worldwide. Behind the sheen of the IoT is the reeking backend, sufficient enough to bring enterprises on their knees.
INTERNET OF THINGS TAKES VULNERABILITY TO A DIFFERENT LEVEL.
Sanjay Sahay