Article: Reaper: Calm Before the IoT Security Storm?
By: Brian Krebs
Published: Oct 23
In one of Brian Krebs' more recent articles, he talks about how it might be possible that there is another huge IoT attack just waiting to happen at any point. In the beginning, he brought up the malware from a huge attack last year that brought down multiple websites and "enslaved IoT devices" which was named "Mirai". Apparently, there is malware named "Reaper" and "IoTroop" that is alarming experts. It is believed that the malware has affected a very large amount of organizations; however, instead of causing harm to the systems, the malicious code seems to be sitting and waiting. On Oct 19th of this year, researchers from a security firm named CheckPoint "announced they've been tracking the development of a massive new IoT botnet" that they believe has the capability to "take down the Internet." One very large issue with this new malicious code is that it tends to not set off alarms for being suspicious activity and as a result, is hard to notice and catch.
The good news that comes out if this, however, is that now that we know the malware is there, we are able to try to create security systems that can catch it better than what our current systems can. Along with trying to upgrade our security systems, organizations also have time thanks to this warning to try to create a backup plan in case of an attack. One things Krebs also says to do is to "make sure your network isn’t part of the problem" and gave a link to a site that had patches available for different network systems.
This article really caught my attention with the fact that there is another big virus just sitting and waiting to try to take out the Internet. I really hope that there are computer security experts working to figure out how to protect against the code and anything similar that might pop up. The general public needs to be aware of the current situation and should stay updated through reliable news sources.
Article & Picture: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/10/reaper-calm-before-the-iot-security-storm/#more-41218
By: Brian Krebs
Published: Oct 23
In one of Brian Krebs' more recent articles, he talks about how it might be possible that there is another huge IoT attack just waiting to happen at any point. In the beginning, he brought up the malware from a huge attack last year that brought down multiple websites and "enslaved IoT devices" which was named "Mirai". Apparently, there is malware named "Reaper" and "IoTroop" that is alarming experts. It is believed that the malware has affected a very large amount of organizations; however, instead of causing harm to the systems, the malicious code seems to be sitting and waiting. On Oct 19th of this year, researchers from a security firm named CheckPoint "announced they've been tracking the development of a massive new IoT botnet" that they believe has the capability to "take down the Internet." One very large issue with this new malicious code is that it tends to not set off alarms for being suspicious activity and as a result, is hard to notice and catch.The good news that comes out if this, however, is that now that we know the malware is there, we are able to try to create security systems that can catch it better than what our current systems can. Along with trying to upgrade our security systems, organizations also have time thanks to this warning to try to create a backup plan in case of an attack. One things Krebs also says to do is to "make sure your network isn’t part of the problem" and gave a link to a site that had patches available for different network systems.
This article really caught my attention with the fact that there is another big virus just sitting and waiting to try to take out the Internet. I really hope that there are computer security experts working to figure out how to protect against the code and anything similar that might pop up. The general public needs to be aware of the current situation and should stay updated through reliable news sources.
Article & Picture: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/10/reaper-calm-before-the-iot-security-storm/#more-41218
Comments
Post a Comment