October 28th, 2016
The Internet of Things is a hot topic these days. From your internet enabled thermostat, doorbell, bike lock, front door, to your dog monitoring camera; connected or smart devices are everywhere and your house may be full of them.
The problem is though, once you connect anything to the internet, hackers can and will find it and break in. A lot of IoT devices are relatively inexpensive and manufacturers aren’t investing the money to make them secure or patch known vulnerabilities after the fact. There has been an increase in criminals using this to their advantage by building huge armies of IoT devices and using them in nefarious ways.
When kitting out your home with smart devices, make sure you follow sound security practices within your local network so that hackers have a harder time finding them and exploiting them.
For some further reading on the topic, check out these links:
How 1.5 Million Connected Cameras Were Hijacked to Make an Unprecedented Botnet [1]
Mirai, Mirai, on the wall – through the looking glass of the attack on Dyn [2]
DDoS on Dyn Impacts Twitter, Spotify, Reddit [3]
Three Simple Steps to Securing Your Home Smart Devices [5]
As always, if you have any questions or concerns regarding cyber security, please feel free to reach out to us. We are always glad to help you feel safe online.
Written by: Chris Sowley (Cyber Forensics Analyst, Information Security)