The Brave (Insecure) Little Toaster

The Brave (Insecure) Little Toaster

Originally shared by Ralf Haring

"I don’t actually own a wireless toaster. But I devised a test. Renting a small server from Amazon, I gussied it up to look like an unsecured web device, opening a web port that hackers commonly use to remotely control computers. Instead of allowing real access, though, I set up a false front: Hackers would think they were logging into a server, but I’d really just record their keystrokes and IP addresses. In cybersecurity circles, this is called putting out a honeypot—an irresistible target that attracts and ultimately entraps hackers and the scripts they use to find vulnerable servers."
...
"I switched on the server at 1:12 p.m. Wednesday, fully expecting to wait days—or weeks—to see a hack attempt. Wrong! The first one came at 1:53 p.m. ... The next hacking attempt, from a different IP address and using different login credentials, came at 2:07 p.m. Another came at 2:10. And then 2:40. And 2:48. In all, more than 300 different IP addresses attempted to hack my honeypot by 11:59 p.m. Many of them used the password “xc3511,” which was the factory default for many of the old webcams hijacked in last week’s attack."
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/10/we-built-a-fake-web-toaster-and-it-was-hacked-in-an-hour/505571/

Comments

  1. Timothy StreetNovember 4, 2016 at 7:46 AM

    I am surprised at the naiveté of the author - malware probes and attacks are constant.

    ReplyDelete

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