British Hacker Admits Using Mirai Botnet to DDoS Deutsche Telekom

An unnamed 29-year-old man, named by authorities as "Daniel K.," pleaded guilty in a German court on Friday to charges related to the hijacking of more than one Million Deutsche Telekom routers. According to reports in the German press, the British man, who was using online monikers "Peter Parker...

Hacker Admits to Mirai Attack Against Deutsche Telekom

A hacker that goes by the name “BestBuy” admitted to a German court on Friday that he was behind an attack last year that knocked close to 1 million customers of German ISP Deutsche Telekom offline. The suspect is a 29-year old British man who is only identified as “Daniel K.” He was arrested Feb...

Who is the GovRAT Author and Mirai Botmaster ‘Bestbuy’?

In February 2017, authorities in the United Kingdom arrested a 29-year-old U.K. man on suspicion of knocking more than 900,000 Germans offline in an attack tied to Mirai, a malware strain that enslaves Internet of Things IoT devices like security cameras and Internet routers for use in large-scal...

IoT Malware Activity Already More Than Doubled 2016 Numbers

The number of new malware samples in the wild this year targeting connected internet-of-things IoT devices has already more than doubled last year’s total. Honeypots laid out by Kaspersky Lab researchers mimicking a number of connected devices running Linux have attracted more than 7,200 differen...

Scan of Internet Reveals Millions of Exposed Services

If you thought WannaCry inspired a global wakeup call and a massive crackdown on exposed and dangerous ports, you would be wrong. In its annual National Exposure Index report, Rapid7 found 160 million computers, IoT devices and servers with open ports that should not be exposed to the public...

The Time Has Arrived to Embrace Hackers

BOSTON—More than ever, hackers are getting a welcoming embrace from law enforcement, governments and business. Bug bounties and vulnerability disclosure programs are becoming the norm across industry, and hackers are no longer universally viewed as a pariah. Simultaneously, however, groups such a...

Hajime ‘Vigilante Botnet’ Growing Rapidly; Hijacks 300,000 IoT Devices Worldwide

Last week, we reported about a so-called 'vigilante hacker' who hacked into at least 10,000 vulnerable 'Internet of Things' devices, such as home routers and Internet-connected cameras, using a botnet malware in order to supposedly secure them. Now, that vigilante hacker has already trapped rough...

Mirai and Hajime Locked Into IoT Botnet Battle

Security experts say a white hat hacker is responsible for the Hajime IoT botnet, which is on a mission to secure IoT devices vulnerable to the notorious Mirai malware. Divergent goals between Mirai and Hajime, experts say, will spark a perpetual back-and-forth between Mirai black hats and a lone...

To Protect Your Devices, A Hacker Wants to Hack You Before Someone Else Does

It should be noted that hacking a system for unauthorised access that does not belong to you is an illegal practice, no matter what's the actual intention behind it. Now I am pointing out this because reportedly someone, who has been labeled as a 'vigilante hacker' by media, is hacking into...

On SAS 2017, the Microsoft IIS Zero Day, and Mirai

Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook preview this year’s Security Analyst Summit and discuss the news of the week, including a Microsoft IIS zero day, a new Mirai variant, and the broadband privacy ruling. Download: ThreatpostNewsWrapMarch312017.mp3 Music by Chris Gonsalves...

New Mirai Variant Roars into Action With 54 Hour DDoS Attacks

A variant of the Mirai malware pummeled a U.S. college last month with a marathon 54-hour long attack. Researchers say this latest Mirai variant is a more potent version of the notorious Mirai malware that made headlines in October, targeting DNS provider Dyn and the Krebs on Security website. Th...

DDoS of Past, Present and Future

The pervasiveness of technology has meant automation of tasks, allowing better productivity, with more time to do more. However, the dark side of technology would be that enterprises and individuals alike are vulnerable to cybercrimes, compromise of identities, loss of data and subject to malicio...

Dahua Patching Backdoor in DVRs, IP Cameras

A California firm is rushing to patch a backdoor that apparently exists in a host of DVRs, CCTV and IP cameras it manufactures. Engineers with Dahua Technology USA began pushing firmware updates for the issue on Monday, something the company says stems from “a small piece of code.” The company sa...

Hacker Who Knocked Million Routers Offline Using MIRAI Arrested at London Airport

British police have arrested a suspect in connection with the massive attack on Deutsche Telekom that hit nearly 1 Million routers last November. Late last year, someone knocked down more than 900,000 broadband routers belonging to Deutsche Telekom users in Germany, which affected the telephony,...

Windows Botnet Spreading Mirai Variant

A Chinese-speaking attacker is spreading a Mirai variant from a repurposed Windows-based botnet. Researchers at Kaspersky Lab published a report today, and said the code was written by an experienced developer who also built in the capability to spread the IoT malware to Linux machines under...

Schneier Brings Campaign for IoT Regulation to RSA

SAN FRANCISCO—Bruce Schneier on Tuesday called on technologists to get involved with policy, insisting that as the Internet of things continues to unfold, the knowledge security experts have will become more applicable. Schneier, CTO of IBM Resilient, stressed in a talk here at the RSA Conference...

New Windows Trojan Spreads MIRAI Malware To Hack More IoT Devices

MIRAI – possibly the biggest IoT-based malware threat that emerged last year, which caused vast internet outage in October last year by launching massive distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks against the popular DNS provider Dyn. Now, the infamous malware has updated itself to boost its...

Four New Normals for 2017

Let’s not talk about cybersecurity predictions for 2017. Let’s talk instead about new normals, things that have ceased to be novel because, well, they happen all the time and everywhere. Let’s concede that things such as greedy ransomware, imposing IOT botnets, high-profile bug bounties and...

On Yahoo's One Billion Breach, a DDoS-For-Hire Crackdown and More

Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook discuss the news of the week including Yahoo’s latest breach announcement, a DDoS-for-hire crackdown, hackers seeking help with Mirai, and some new Adobe patches. Show notes: Yahoo Discloses Data From 1 Billion Accounts Stolen in 2013 Beta Firmware Updates Available fo...

Mirai Giving DDoS-as-a-Service Industry a Boost

The availability of the Mirai malware source code online isn’t a guarantee that just anyone can quickly convert it into a money-making IoT-based DDoS botnet. Researchers at Digital Shadows have been combing dark web sites such as the Hackforums where black hat Anna-Senpai dropped the Mirai code i...