Bricker bot: A silver lining to force accountability for IoT security?
The Bricker bot made the news a couple of weeks ago for knocking unsecured IoT devices offline rather than hijacking them into other botnets and using them for a DDoS attack like the massive event we saw last year against DYN. This is the third botnet that targets insecure IoT devices, but the only one that is destructive. The second, dubbed Hajime, breaks into IoT devices, but instead of bricking them, it makes them more secure by disabling remote access to the device from the internet. Of course, Mirai was the first, but it has the same purpose as other botnets, which is to enslave IoT devices and use the computing power of its collection of bots for the purposes of the threat actor behind it.
While the Bricker bot may not yet be a worm with mass adoption, it could be a precursor of things to come. It has all the early indications of potentially being very dangerous (even more than it is today) as it gains greater appeal. Read more…