US Has A Strategy To Defend Against Another Massive IoT Attack

The US Department of Homeland Security is working with law enforcement and private companies to find ways to prevent another distributed denial of service attack like the one that occurred on October 22nd.

The basic pattern of a DDoS attack is nothing new: an attacker uses malware to recruit internet-connected computers into a globe-girdling robot army, which upon command overwhelm their target with unwanted requests. What’s changing is the tremendous growth in the Internet of Things, or IOT, the devices, from PCs to home routers to smart refrigerators, that we attach to the net. Far too many of these are installed with widely known factory-default passwords or other vulnerabilities, making them easy recruits for bot armies.

“The volume of DDoS attacks has more than doubled over the last 18 months. It’s now approaching 650 gigabytes a second. That’s only possible because they’ve been recruiting IOT devices,” said one government official with direct knowledge of the attack. “We need to have a deliberative conversation about baking in security as much as possible into Internet of Things devices.”

US officials believe the cyberattack that interrupted Twitter, Netflix and other websites has been mitigated, Homeland Security Department Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement recently. DHS held an information sharing conference call with 18 major communication services providers the day the distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack occurred, said Johnson.

DDoS attacks involve hacking into unsecured computers and other internet-connected devices, then using those devices to flood a site with more requests and commands than it can handle. The recent attack targeted Dyn, a company that provides web optimisation services to numerous major Internet companies.

Johnson confirmed security researchers’ reports the attack used a type of malware called Mirai, which targets connected devices such as webcams and entertainment systems, and was earlier used to attack the website of cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs and a French internet service provider.  

The DHS cyber operations hub, the National Cybersecurity Communications and Integration Center, is working with law enforcement and private companies on ways to combat the malware, Johnson said.

DHS is also working on a set of strategic principles for securing connected devices, known as the Internet of Things, which will be released in coming weeks, he said.

The Internet of Things has grown exponentially in recent years but the security of those devices has lagged, Joshua Corman, director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, told reporters in a conference call today. Many connected devices carry known software vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, but consumers either don’t know how to patch those vulnerabilities or, in some cases, aren’t able to, he said.

On an individual level, those vulnerabilities—a connected refrigerator sending out spam emails, for example—are not particularly dangerous, he said. When those vulnerabilities are taken in aggregate, however, they can do great damage as the Dyn attack showed.

“There’s a strong instinct to focus on safety critical [systems] where bits and bytes meet flesh and blood,” Corman said. “The cognitive dissonance from this particular set of attacks is you can’t neglect lower-priority devices.”

DefenseOne:     DefenseOne:     Hackers 'weaponised' Malware To Mount  Massive Assault: