Hackers could ‘bring down the internet’ using this terrifyingly cheap cyber-weapon
Hi-tech hoodlums are selling a digital weapon of mass destruction for just £5,000
Huge internet attacks could soon become commonplace as criminals can now buy weapons capable of causing total digital meltdown for shockingly cheap prices, it has been revealed.
After an enormous cyber-attack on Friday, experts have issued a terrifying warning about the grim power of "botnets" made up of thousands of hacked computers or devices.
Hi-tech hoodlums are now hacking the 'Internet of Things' (IOT), which refers to smart devices or anything that has connectivity via the internet.
The IoT targets used to help with Friday's attack were recently revealed to be DVR CCTV cameras, which are cameras with an internet connection.
A Chinese electronics company has recently come forward to reveal that its products inadvertently played a huge role in the cyber attack on Friday.
Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology admitted its DVRs were partly to blame for the attack due to their weak default passwords and security vulnerabilities.
A malware known as Mirai has been used to take advantage of these vulnerabilities by attacking devices and using them as 'bots' in DDoS attacks.
RSA, a large security firm in the US, was able to find a number of hackers advertising access to an enormous IoT botnet on a criminal forum.
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These bots were put up for sale with the seller claiming they would be able to generate one terabit of traffic, which would make it the world's largest DDoS attack ever.
The prices of these bots came in as little as $4,600 for 50,000 bots and $7,500 for 100,000.
When using 100,000 bots, a hacker would be able to down huge websites with DDoS attacks, and if people were to spend more and collate larger quantities they would be able to down several extremely large sites at once, which is what we saw on Friday.
in which they advised people to use smart devices with caution, as with the increase of interconnected devices, such as smart light bulbs, wearables and connected cars, hackers are finding more electronics they can target in attacks.
For those of you wondering how you can make your devices more secure, an easy solution is to change the default passwords on every connected device you have.
As while you may not think it would make much difference, as the huge DDoS attack on Friday shows, nearly any device can be used in a cyber attack.
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