How not to get hacked in 2019
A guide to all the latest cyber criminal tricks, and how to beat them
IoT botnets
As more and more objects and devices become internet-connected criminals have been devising new ways to hijack them by using nodes in huge botnets. These botnets are used to conduct distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, mine cryptocurrency, infiltrate networks for the purposes of espionage or data theft, or even create chaos by "bricking" the device, taking it permanently offline or demanding a ransom to restore it to full functionality.
These types of attacks are on the rise and in 2018, SophosLabs saw significant growth in the volume of attacks targeting IoT devices. One of the reasons for this is that it's challenging to detect a device is affected until something goes horribly wrong.
The fix: Prune your networks
The government's Secure by Design initiative will help with IoT security, but there's plenty you can do to shore up your network yourself, such as not using default passwords and making sure the device is updated. One important thing you can do, however, is to make sure that you keep your network under control by regularly auditing your IoT devices.
A new IoT device that's a replacement for old devices makes it increasingly easy to forget about every connected device on your network. But old IoT devices may carry old security protocols, forgotten passwords, and a whole host of other threats to your networks.
Each IoT device is a potential weak point that has to be secured. So if there are old access points that you no longer use, you'll want to thoroughly disconnect them from the network and even go as far as to do a factory reset on the gadget and reduce the number of openings you'll have to keep an eye on.
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