Security News
The coder who created the massive Satori botnet of enslaved devices and a handful of other botnets will be spending 13 months behind bars, the US Attorney's Office of Alaska announced on Friday. In September 2019, he pleaded guilty to operating the Satori botnet, made up of IoT devices, and at least two other botnets; to running a DDoS-for-hire service; to cooking up one of the evolving line of botnets while he was indicted and under supervised release; and to swatting one of his former chums, also while on supervised release.
Redmond is bulking up the security around its AzureStack hardware-to-cloud bundle by acquiring infosec firm CyberX. Microsoft says the newly-integrated security house will be used to help secure industrial gear and other Internet-of-Things devices running under AzureStack, giving companies more reason to buy into the ground-up pitch from Microsoft. "Microsoft will now provide a simpler approach to unified security governance across both IT and industrial networks, as well as end-to-end security across managed and unmanaged IoT devices, enabling organizations to quickly detect and respond to advanced threats in converged networks," Redmond boasted.
The United States Department of Justice yesterday sentenced a 22-year-old Washington-based hacker to 13 months in federal prison for his role in creating botnet malware, infecting a large number of systems with it, and then abusing those systems to carry out large scale distributed denial-of-service attacks against various online service and targets. According to court documents, Kenneth Currin Schuchman, a resident of Vancouver, and his criminal associates-Aaron Sterritt and Logan Shwydiuk-created multiple DDoS botnet malware since at least August 2017 and used them to enslave hundreds of thousands of home routers and other Internet-connected devices worldwide.
A defendant in the United States was sentenced today to drug treatment and 18 months community confinement for his admitted role in the botnet conspiracy. Prosecutors say Sterritt, using the hacker aliases "Vamp" and "Viktor," was the brains behind the computer code that powered several potent and increasingly complex IoT botnet strains that became known by exotic names such as "Masuta," "Satori," "Okiru" and "Fbot.".
A security expert predicts trouble ahead for IoT device makers and customers due to expired root SSL certificates. Dunlap and cyber security specialists are tracking the impact of expiring Certificate Authority root SSL certificates on smart devices, including smart TVs, fridges, lightbulbs, and other IoT devices.
Abstract: Best practices for Internet of Things security have recently attracted considerable attention worldwide from industry and governments, while academic research has highlighted the failure of many IoT product manufacturers to follow accepted practices. We explore not the failure to follow best practices, but rather a surprising lack of understanding, and void in the literature, on what "Best practice" means, independent of meaningfully identifying specific individual practices.
The SeamlessConnect solution ensures IoT devices can continuously send and receive data from the cloud, and works seamlessly with Thirdwayv's SecureConnectivity solution for connecting and protecting wireless, safety-critical devices and its AppAuth solution for ensuring IoT system elements can be controlled securely through a smartphone app. "Solutions that depend exclusively on a handheld device or smartphone to deliver this cloud connectivity cannot always achieve the high level of continuous data availability and device control required for mission-critical applications. SeamlessConnect solves the problem and joins our SecureConnectivity and AppAuth solutions to provide a third critical layer in our end-to-end IoT system deployment offering."
Worldwide IoT spending has been significantly impacted by the economic effects of the pandemic in 2020, although a back to double-digit growth rebound is expected both in the mid and long-term, according to IDC. IoT spending is growing 8.2% year over year to $742 billion in 2020 down from 14.9% growth forecast in the November 2019. Global IoT spending is expected to return to double-digit growth rates in 2021 and achieve a compound annual growth rate of 11.3% over the 2020-2024 forecast period.
Swittons, a P360 company, announced that its complete lineup of customizable IoT powered devices now includes integration with Microsoft Teams. "By integrating with Microsoft Teams, our complete lineup of Swittons devices are now able to facilitate remote communication that includes voice, video and online collaboration at the push of a button," stated Swittons CEO and Founder Anupam Nandwana.
Palo Alto Networks on Wednesday unveiled a new firewall powered by machine learning, a firewall for Kubernetes, and an IoT security solution. Palo Alto Networks has announced a new next-generation firewall that uses machine learning to help organizations detect and block threats.