Hacked - 2

Why the Internet was created is well known: back in the Cold War era, the American military was terrified at the prospect of the USSR launching simultaneous nuclear attacks on the HQ’s of all the American military installations, thereby knocking out the ability of the US to retaliate.

Thinking in the capitalists’ way, the US decided to create a network that was completely decentralized. Knocking out an entire network that was decentralized was considered impossible. At least some parts would survive the Soviet attack; and they would retaliate.

Recently, a massive attack took down many popular Internet sites (Amazon, Twitter, Netflix etc) in almost the entire US. Brian Krebs writes:

“(It now emerges that the attack was) launched with the help of hacked “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices, such as CCTV video cameras and digital video recorders.”

How the attack works using such network enabled devices is scary:

“(It) scours the Web for IoT devices protected by little more than factory-default usernames and passwords, and then enlists the devices in attacks that hurl junk traffic at an online target until it can no longer accommodate legitimate visitors or users.”

Why is this scary? Can’t it just be fixed the way we try to defend our PC’s/laptops, via anti-virus softwares that work (most of the time)? Well, it’s because many of these devices cost so little that the password is often hardcoded, i.e., they cannot be changed. Adding security to cheap devices is simply not worth the cost, from either the customer or the manufacturer’s perspective.

Unless, that is, regulations force some minimum layers of security to be added; and retailers choose to highlight the devices with such a seal of approval. Right now, that hardly seems to be the direction in which things are headed.

And so for now, we can only muse at the irony of what Ben Evans points out:

“A network designed to withstand nuclear attack, brought down by toasters.”