Hackers Battle For 3 Million Strong Mirai Botnet
By: Brian Karas, Published on Nov 28, 2016
Login to read this IPVM report.
Why do I need to log in?
IPVM conducts unique testing and research funded by member's payments enabling us to offer the most independent, accurate and in-depth information.
Related Reports
Verint Victimized By Ransomware
on Apr 18, 2019
Verint, which is best known in the physical security industry for video surveillance but has built a sizeable cybersecurity business as well, was...
Security Fail: ASISNYC Auto Emails Passwords In Plain Text
on May 14, 2019
ASIS NYC automatically emails a user with the password the user just entered, in plain text, when one registers for the site / event, as the...
LifeSafety Power NetLink Vulnerabilities And Problematic Response
on May 20, 2019
'Power supplies' are not devices that many think about when considering vulnerabilities but as more and more devices go 'online', the risks for...
Dahua Wiretapping Vulnerability
on Aug 02, 2019
IPVM has validated, with testing, and from Dahua, that many Dahua cameras have a wiretapping vulnerability. Even if the camera's audio has been...
Uniview OEM Directory
on Sep 11, 2019
This directory lists 20+ companies that OEM products from Uniview, with a graphic and links to company websites below.
It does not cover all...
Critical Vulnerability Across 18+ Network Switch Vendors: Cisco, Netgear, More
on Aug 26, 2019
Cisco, Netgear and more than a dozen other brands, including small Asian ones, have been found to share the same critical vulnerability, discovered...
Warning: Windows 7 Update Crashing NVRs
on Aug 26, 2019
Windows 7 updates are causing VMS servers to fail to boot.
After running the update, impacted systems do not boot as normal, instead display this...
ONVIF Exposure To "Devastating DDoS Attacks" Examined
on Sep 06, 2019
ZDnet reported "Protocol used by 630,000 devices can be abused for devastating DDoS attacks", citing exposure of ONVIF devices.
And after an...
Dahua New Critical Vulnerability 2019
on Sep 23, 2019
Dahua has quietly admitted 5 new vulnerabilities including 1 critical vulnerability with a 9.8 / 10.0 CVSS score and 2 high vulnerabilities (scored...
Wyze Massive Data Leak
on Dec 26, 2019
Wyze has exposed millions of user's data, as reported by Twelve Security, and confirmed by IPVM, who has spoken with Twelve Security and reviewed...
Most Recent Industry Reports
Hanwha Wisenet X Plus PTRZ Tested
on Feb 14, 2020
Hanwha has released their PTRZ camera, the Wisenet X Plus XNV-6081Z, claiming the "modular design allows for easy installation".
We bought and...
PRC Warns Against China Video Surveillance Hacks, Hikvision Targeted
on Feb 14, 2020
Hackers are targeting China video surveillance manufacturers and systems, according to the PRC's main cyber threat monitoring body.
The hackers...
IPVM Conference 2020
on Feb 13, 2020
IPVM is excited to announce our 2020 conference.
This is the first and only industry event that will be 100% sponsor-free. Like IPVM online, the...
Bosch Dropping Dahua
on Feb 13, 2020
Bosch has confirmed to IPVM that it is in the process of dropping Dahua, over the next year, as both IP camera contract manufacturer and recorder...
BluB0X Alleges Lenel, S2, Software House Are Dinosaurs
on Feb 13, 2020
BluB0X is running an ad campaign labeling Lenel, S2, Software House, Honeywell, AMAG and more as dinosaurs:
In a follow-up email to IPVM,...
London Live Police Face Recognition Visited
on Feb 13, 2020
London police have officially begun using live facial recognition in select areas of the UK capital, sparking significant controversy.
IPVM...
Converged vs Dedicated Networks For Surveillance Tutorial
on Feb 12, 2020
Use the existing network or deploy a new one?
This is a critical choice in designing video surveillance systems. Though 'convergence' was a big...
Monitoreal "Completely Autonomous" Home AI Tested
on Feb 12, 2020
Monitoreal claims to allow users to "see the things you want (people, vehicles, animals) and ignore the things you don’t”, using AI to distinguish...
Cisco Video Surveillance Is Dead, Long Live Cisco Meraki Video Surveillance
on Feb 11, 2020
A dozen years ago much of the industry thought that Cisco was destined to dominate video surveillance. They stumbled repeatedly, failing. Now it is...
.jpg)
BICSI For IP Video Surveillance Guide
on Feb 11, 2020
Spend enough time around networks and eventually someone will mention BICSI, the oft-referenced but only vaguely known standards body prevalent in...
Comments (11)
Sean Patton
This is a really interesting article, great job. My question in follow up to this article, is there even much that can be done to prevent this type of stuff from happening? The cat has been out of the bag for so long, and there so many criminal and militaristic (irony?) opportunities for these networks, that I see no fix to these types of bot/zombie nets. You can try to avoid buying products that can be cracked, but theres new vulnerabilities every week, its a losing proposition.
From a network security standpoint there are Firewalls from PaloAlto/Cisco/Fortinet/Baracuda/etc that can detect and deny DDOS traffic attacks, prevent your botnet infected devices from communicating out, but those tools on high enough throughput hardware can run in the multithousands of dollars price range.
As you mention, strong passwords could be a huge fix to a large chuck of these botnets, but we all know that's a lost effort. Unless you can overhaul the entire alphanumeric password string paradigm (you cant).
Create New Topic
Brian Karas
I think there are a few things that are easy and help reduce the problem:
Manufacturers could make a huge leap in reducing device exploitability if they were willing to make it a priority, and willing to invest proper effort into building more robust devices, by adding secure boot capabilities.
Some SoC suppliers, such as Ambarella, have been adding secure boot functionality into their chips, but it does not appear that security manufacturers are doing anything with it.
In short, secure boot can be utilized to ensure that even if an attacker could gain access to a root shell, they could not load/run unauthorized code.
Secure boot would make it several orders of magnitude more difficult to create botnet's, as the hackers could not just download software to make the camera/recorder do whatever they want. This is roughly similar in concept to how an iPhone cannot run software that has not been officially vetted by Apple, meaning that manufacturers like Axis would not have to give up the ability to run 3rd party apps on their cameras.
Like most things, creating software that is more secure and goes through additional authentication processes would take more effort on the manufacturers or developers part, but the result would be significantly increased security, and trustability, of recorders and cameras. But, the manufacturers are only likely to add this in if there is financial benefit to doing so, either by customers requesting it, or the support headaches of hacked devices becoming significant.
Create New Topic
Undisclosed #1
Yes, couldn't agree more: Simple Solution To Default Password Conundrum...
Create New Topic
Undisclosed Distributor #2
The problem that will continue to exist is that there are hundreds of thousands of these cameras that are already out there and that will not be updated due to ignorance of the problem, not wanting to revisit old installations, or just not caring. For most products sold in the last year or so, the vulnerability was addressed by closing the telnet ports to deter infection of the devices. This botnet will continue to function due to the old cameras that will not be updated, not due to new cameras being purchased today or even within the past several months.
Create New Topic
Undisclosed #3
Create New Topic
Undisclosed End User #4
Very informative which I was not aware of.
Create New Topic