The Future of the IoT
A few days ago we wrote about the lack of security on the IoT (The Internet of Things), and on Friday, the USA got a quick lesson in just how vulnerable the IoT is. We also learned how the IoT’s generally lax secuity, can affect the Internet’s biggest, most successful Web sites, a well as Internet communications and Internet commerce.
This is from today’s (October 22, 2016) “USA Today”. We thought you’d find it interesting…
SAN FRANCISCO — Technology experts warned for years that the millions of Internet-connected “smart” devices we use every day are weak, easily hijacked and could be turned against us.
The massive siege on Dyn, a New Hampshire-based company that monitors and routes Internet traffic, shows those ominous predictions are now a reality.
An unknown attacker intermittently knocked many popular websites offline for hours Friday, from Amazon to Twitter and Netflix to Etsy. How the breach occurred is a cautionary tale of the how the rush to make humdrum devices “smart” while sometimes leaving out crucial security can have major consequences.
Dyn, a provider of Internet management for multiple companies, was hit with a large-scale distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), in which its servers were flooded with millions of fake requests for information, so many that they could no longer respond to real ones and crashed under the weight.
Who orchestrated the attack is still unknown. But how they did it — by enslaving ordinary household electronic devices such as DVRs, routers and digital closed-circuit cameras —is established.
The attackers created a digital army of co-opted robot networks, a “botnet,” that spewed millions of nonsense messages at Dyn’s servers. Like a firehose, they could direct it at will, knocking out the servers, turning down the flow and then hitting it full blast once again.
The specific weapon? An easy-to-use botnet-creating software called Mirai that requires little technical expertise. An unknown person released it to the hacker underground earlier this month, and security experts immediately warned it might come into more general use.
Do you think this is just a test and that worse things are coming? Or do you think this was just one-time attack and it’s not going any further than it did on Friday?
With all of the things we have seen going on pertaining to the election and hacking and now the attack yesterday, I think we will see attacks of all types in the future. Our country has to get much more serious about securing our systems and not take these things lightly. In my own home, I have taped over all of my web cams as you have suggested. As far as hearing anything over my microphone……I live alone…..so that will only be a problem when I talk to myself which is usually a very dull conversation.
The attacks will just keep coming. The moe electronic devices such as DVRs, routers and digital closed-circuit cameras and more digital devises you have in your home the worse it will get. Emsisoft is very good at protection my computer and that is the only digital devise I have. Emsisoft don’t fail me now.
I am taking a class online which prepares us for the future, and we were told months ago that the next ‘wars’ will be ‘internet wars.’ We were told that nothing and no one is safe from what is happening and what will be happening. We were told that banks will be hit as well. The ‘hacking’ is not being done by ‘countries’ per se, but being carried out in countries by a group of individuals working for whomever has monies to hire them. Many are working from their homes instead of an office building, etc. Soooooo…… expect more of this.
All countries will be vulnerable, not just ours. And things will be done to make it appear it has been done by a specific country, when in fact, it was not. Welcome to the ‘science fiction’ reality that now has become science fact!
It’s not going to get better in the future I’m sorry to say. We are in the age of destroy lay waste. Hold on to your hats, it’s going to be bumpy ride.
Sorry about the misspelling. I meant to say destroy and lay waste.