This article was 1st published on our sister Site, The Internet Of All Things.
New research by Kaspersky Lab shows that in the first half of 2018, malware designed specifically for Internet of Things (IoT) devices grew three-fold with over 120,000 modifications of malware.
The security firm’s IoT report revealed that the growth of malware families for smart devices had grown manyfold, and could leave consumer devices vulnerable to illegal activity including cryptocurrency mining, DDoS attacks or being used in large scale attacks by becoming part of a botnet.
Kaspersky Lab said it was aware of these threats and the company had set up its own decoy devices called “honeypots” to lure cybercriminals and analyse their activities online.
Using brute force to guess passwords at a shocking rate is the most commonly used methods of attack by criminals, accounting for 93 per cent of hacking methods they use, while routers were the most used type of equipment to bombard what the company describes as “honeypots” – the IoT test devices used as a gateway for an attack.
“For those people who think that IoT devices don’t seem powerful enough to attract the attention of cybercriminals, and that won’t become targets for malicious activities, this research should serve as a wake-up call,” David Emm, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab said.
