Smart Home Devices were the reason of Friday’s deadly internet attack

According to analysts, last Friday’s DDOS attack that took down big websites was a major cause of the internet connected devices. Devices such as CCTV cameras and printers became a loop hole for the hackers to target one of the important internet service providers, Dyn.

The analysts have confirmed that hackers were able to do the attack because of the connected home devices.

DNS service is an important part of the web infrastructure. On Friday, hackers attacked the DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) and bombarded the system with an overwhelming amount of traffic. The security analysts explained that the hackers used the “botnets” which was infested with “Mirai” malware.

Brian Krebs, a cyber-security expert, explained that connected devices that are controlled by factory-default user names are the major target of the Mirai. Their easy to guess user names and passwords are the cause of Friday’s attack.

These devices are mostly Chinese products and their easy passwords allow the hackers to enter a system and exploit it. The owners of the devices cannot be blamed because they can never have a clue that their camera or printer is being used for some malicious purpose.

The media website BBC also came under attack in the Friday’s incident. Although BBC itself does not directly rely on DNS for its services but it does use third party services that depend on domain name system for its facilities.

Amazon was also caught up in the attack and got disrupted by the DDoS assault. The Friday’s attack was a major concern for the authorities as this kind of attack can possibly be even bigger the next time.

The use of home devise for attacking the DNS might be new but it will become more common with the passage of time. Mirai software was released in September enabling anyone with the skill to build one’s own attacking botnet.

According to experts, the reason for this attack is the connection of cheap embedded devices with the broadband services. The internet infrastructure needs to be built strong enough to be able to resist such kinds of attacks in future.

Via: BBC