hundreds of thousands of objects are currently connected and can be used to launch attacks.
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We still do not know who has run and sponsored the powerful cyber-attack that has paralyzed a part of the Web, mainly in the United States, Friday, October 21. Details have however emerged on the mode of operation : a part of the flood of connections which have brought to its knees some of the most important sites in the world came from a network of connected objects hacked.
Read also : attack, a computer science major has paralyzed a part of the Web for several hours
According to Dyn, a company targeted by the attack, ” tens of millions “ of objects have been diverted from their primary function to saturate the infrastructure, a finding corroborated on Monday, October 24 by the minister of internal security, american, Jeh Johnson. Dyn is part of the companies providing the Domain Name System (DNS), a service crucial to the proper functioning of the Web : it translates a domain name (www.siteweb.fr) technical instructions that are used to connect to the desired website. Without this referral, some sites are inaccessible, even if they are not directly attacked. The attack of 21 October was an attack on so-called ” denial of service “ : by saturating artificially the infrastructure of Dyn, hackers were able to make a part of the Web difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.
After it was accused of its products – from connected cameras and digital recorders – have provided the bulk of this cohort of objects ” zombies “, the chinese manufacturer XiongMai announced the recall of some of its products sold in the United States and the strengthening of their protections.
Holes gaping
the director of strategy for Dyn and the researchers of the specialized enterprise Flashpoint have indicated that a portion of the connected objects involved in the attack was driven by Mirai, a malicious piece of software already used to conduct several attacks of momentum in recent weeks. This tool takes advantage of the glaring defects present in some of the connected objects – most of the time, the simple fact that the password is identical and defined during the manufacturing process, has not been changed – to bring.
once infected, the object can be commanded remotely to send instructions to a site : at a rate of several hundreds of thousands of objects simultaneously, it is sufficient to block infrastructure is extremely robust. This malware also has the ability to spread autonomously to objects that are connected to vulnerabilities similar. As if that wasn’t enough, the creator of this software has published the source code of his tool on the Internet, allowing anyone to be inspired and to replicate the operation.
Read also : The source code for a powerful program of computer attacks made public
Intelligent but dangerous
now It’s been years that computer security experts concerned about the multiply connected objects defense computer virtually non-existent, like so many little soldiers that can be recruited into the attack magnitude. In the spirit of the equipment manufacturers, to connect an object to the Internet has the merit to make it smart. Many are those who seem to have forgotten that this also makes it dangerous : many companies continue to manufacture and sell devices that access passwords are known to all. According to the researchers of Flashpoint, a half-million devices and a variety of inherently defective computer major are currently connected to the Internet and vulnerable.
security is not the core business of a manufacturer of fridge or thermostat. But the attacks with their products exert a power of nuisance considerable and growing. In theory, users could also be to blame for not having changed the default password on their devices : but, in some cases, the password is not changeable without complex technical maneuvers. How to get out of the impasse ? The authorities are struggling for the moment to capture this topic.
last October 10, the government Centre of watch, warning and response to cyber attacks (CERT-FR) French, which depends on the general secretariat of national defence, recommended that ” the greatest caution during the installation of connected objects on the Internet “ :
” The software embedded in these objects [connected] may contain vulnerabilities, or defects configuration to take control. If these objects are directly connected to the Internet, they can represent easy targets for attackers, who can use [...] as a vector of attack. “
A labelling system, on the model of the one that exists for measuring the energy consumption of household appliances, would have, according to the website Euractiv, the favours of the european Commission to put in value the objects more secure.
In the meantime, and in the absence of in-depth reform, millions of smart devices, but dangerous you’ll find on the market, and the attack that hit Friday on the Web in america will be the first of a long series.
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