Hajime – the “vigilante” IoT worm that blocks rival botnets – has built up a compromised network of 300,000 malware-compromised devices, according to new figures from Kaspersky Lab.
The steadily spreading Hajime IoT worm fights the Mirai botnet for control of easy-to-hack IoT products. The malware is billed as a vigilante-style internet clean-up operation but it might easily be abused as a resource for cyber-attacks, hence a growing concern among security watchers.
Hajime, like Mirai before it, takes advantage of factory-set (default) username and password combinations to brute-force its way into unsecured devices with open Telnet ports. The malware was first discovered [PDF] by security researchers at Rapidity Networks in October 2016. Since then it has spread steadily but inexorably. Most of the targets have turned out to be Digital Video Recorders, followed by webcams and routers, according to Kaspersky Lab.
Hajime avoids several networks, including those of General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, the US Postal Service, the United States Department of Defense, and a number of private networks. Infections had primarily come from Vietnam (over 20 per cent), Taiwan (almost 13 per cent) and Brazil (around 9 per cent).