Many of the devices involved come from Chinese manufacturers, with easy-to-guess usernames and passwords that cannot be changed by the user - a vulnerability which the malware exploits.
“Mirai scours the Web for IoT (Internet of Things) devices protected by little more than factory-default usernames and passwords,” explained cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs, “and then enlists the devices in attacks that hurl junk traffic at an online target until it can no longer accommodate legitimate visitors or users.”
The owner of the device would generally have no way of knowing that it had been compromised to use in an attack, he wrote.
So this is why I had to pump five rounds into my refrigerator when it tried to kill me.
Similar report here:
DDoS attacks flood servers with so many fake requests for information that they cannot respond to real ones, often crashing under the barrage. It’s unclear who orchestrated the attack.
Its a very smart attack. We start to mitigate, they react. It keeps on happening every time. Were learning though, said Kyle York, Dyns chief strategy officer said on a conference call with reporters Friday afternoon.
I read elsewhere the “attack” was a demo, sort of “see what we can do?”
I have a “smart” TV, but I end never set it up, or accessed it that way.
I’ve been warning about this IoT crap for years...
“In a relatively short time we’ve taken a system built to resist destruction by nuclear weapons and made it vulnerable to toasters,”
Wasn’t there a CSI episode about a ‘smart’ house killing its owner? I think it might have been CSI:Cyber, and the house was hacked.
Don’t have any “smart” hackable appliances in the house.
sec+ ping
Find out what’s feeding off YOUR modem:
http://www.komando.com/downloads/2251/see-who-is-stealing-your-internet/2
“Each computer has a unique IP address, or Internet Protocol Address. Some computer hardware have addresses, too. They’re known as MACs, or Media Access Control.”
“As soon as you boot up Wireless Network Watcher, you’ll see all the detected devices come up on the list. You should be able to recognize all the devices on it. If you don’t, you know somebody is connected without your permission.”
Download instructions
Click on the blue link below. Scroll down the page until you see in purple, “Download Wireless Network Watcher with full install/uninstall support (wnetwatcher_setup.exe). Wireless Network Watcher will automatically download. Open the executable file and follow the step-by-step installation instructions.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/wireless_network_watcher.html
Refrigerators and home heating/ac and lighting that are connected to the internet. Does not make sense to me.
I was watching This Old House on PBS and they showed a door lock with keypad that was also wired to the internet.
Said all you need to use is a smartphone....
You know a key always works. The fancy lock just complicates things. Now add in hackers. I do not want the Chinese to know how much milk and eggs I have in the frig!
What?