{"id":339295,"date":"2017-04-26T06:39:15","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T22:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1481230"},"modified":"2017-04-26T06:39:15","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T22:39:15","slug":"brickerbot-is-a-vigilante-worm-that-destroys-insecure-iot-devices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/brickerbot-is-a-vigilante-worm-that-destroys-insecure-iot-devices\/","title":{"rendered":"Brickerbot is a vigilante worm that destroys insecure IoT devices"},"content":{"rendered":"

A hacker called The Janitor<\/a> has created multiple versions of a program called Brickerbot, a system that searches out and bricks insecure IoT devices. A researcher named Pascal Geenens has followed the worm for a few weeks and has seen it pop up and essentially destroy infected webcams and other IoT devices.<\/p>\n

Devices all use a Linux package called Busybox and had exposed telnet-based interfaces with default passwords. These devices were easily exploited by the Mirai botnet which essentially turned them into denial-of-service weapons.<\/p>\n

Brickerbot<\/a> finds these devices and renders them unusable. The first version attacked about a thousand devices and alternate versions attacked thousands more. It disabled the devices by formatting the internal memory.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike so many others I was dismayed by the indiscriminate DDoS attacks by IoT botnets in 2016. I thought for sure that the large attacks would force the industry to finally get its act together, but after a few months of record-breaking attacks it became obvious that in spite of all the sincere efforts the problem couldn\u2019t be solved quickly enough by conventional means,\u201d wrote the Janitor. \u201cI consider my project a form of \u201cInternet Chemotherapy\u201d I sometimes jokingly think of myself as The Doctor. Chemotherapy is a harsh treatment that nobody in their right mind would administer to a healthy patient, but the Internet was becoming seriously ill in Q3 and Q4\/2016 and the moderate remedies were ineffective.\u201d<\/p>\n

This sort of vigilante justice is fun and clever. If a user can\u2019t secure their own systems perhaps a bit of discriminate destruction is just the thing these things need to stop leaving admin passwords wide open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A hacker called The Janitor has created multiple versions of a program called Brickerbot, a system that searches out and bricks insecure IoT devices. A researcher named Pascal Geenens has followed the worm for a few weeks and has seen it pop up and essentially destroy infected webcams and other IoT devices. Devices all use a Linux package called Busybox and had exposed telnet-based interfaces… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-339295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}