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THE GROUP RESPONSIBLE for knocking both Xbox Live and Playstation Network offline back in 2014 hacked thousands of cameras and used them to carry out attacks.
Lizard Squad made a name for itself after carrying out DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, overwhelming a site with fake traffic and causing it to go down.
Such attacks use numerous computers, usually infected by malware without the owner’s knowledge, to carry out the attacks, making it next to impossible to track down the source.
Now it’s used thousands of webcams and Internet of Things (IoT) devices – everyday items like fridges and TVs that can connect to the internet – to carry out attacks for it.
When their bandwidth is combined, they have been able to launch botnet attacks as large as 400Gbs and have targeted gaming sites, government institutions, internet service providers and financial institutions.
The hacking was discovered by the security firm Arbor Networks, which has been tracking the program causing these attacks since it was released back in early 2015.
The reason why it has targeted IoT devices is because security is usually treated as an afterthought for manufacturers. Using a stripped down version of Linux leaves less room for security features and in some cases, they reuse the default password making it easier for someone to hack a device.
More devices are now including internet connectivity as a way of improving them and making them smarter. However, there have been cases where such devices have been unwittingly used for botnet attacks.
Recently, another security firm Sucuri came across a botnet consisting of more than 25,000 internet connected closed circuit TV devices which were used to carry out DDoS attacks.
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Seriously though why would you need an Internet connected fridge.
Cybermilk! What rock have you been living under Keelan?
Because it’s cool…..
I’ll show myself out.
Exactly, and why would we ever need more than 48k or RAM?!
So you can check at work how much milk you have left to decide if you need to pick some up on the way home!
Famous last words @Fozz
So the fridge can automatically order any items below low stock level and then send final list to you to sign off and then orders online automatically with tesco etc for delivery. You can also now buy fridges with iPads integrated on the doors for cooking advise calorie count and can also use the barcode on the package to control the stock of food . It can also advise of food in the fridge which is about to go off soon so you can cook that first and prevents the older food creeping to the back of the fridge to hibernate and become a little smelly . Wonderful stuff
If your fridge breaks down while you’re at work, you’ll get loads of spam messages of great fridge deals. Although I suppose they are not spam if you do need a fridge.
Keelan- for megabytes- boom tish@
Very good permo, very good… Nobody NEEDS an internet connected fridge just like nobody NEEDS a phone. Tbh a lot of IOT talk has been around some things that are convenience gimmicks bit there’s far wider use than that.
Last time I checked the first D in DDos stood for “Distributed” and not “Direct”, it is how the attack works, by distributing the attack across multiple machines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack#Distributed_attack
More nonsense reporting by the journal. IP CCTV devices are not ‘Webcams’
Not really. I like your new haircut by the way.
Just a technical clarification – the image shown is not a webcam – it is a Polycom vsx7000 – which is a dedicated video conferencing appliance – no record of it ever being hacked to the best of my knowledge
Crazy
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