mirai botnet | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Mirai Botnet is getting stronger and more notorious each day that passes by. The reason: Insecure Internet-of-things Devices. Last month, the Mirai botnet knocked the entire Internet offline for a few hours, crippling some of the world's biggest and most popular websites. Now, more than 900,000 broadband routers belonging to Deutsche Telekom users in Germany knocked offline over the weekend following a supposed cyber-attack, affecting the telephony, television, and internet service in the country. The German Internet Service Provider, Deutsche Telekom, which offers various services to around 20 Million customers, confirmed on Facebook that as many as 900,000 customers suffered internet outages on Sunday and Monday. Millions of routers are said to have vulnerable to a critical Remote code Execution flaw in routers made by Zyxel and Speedport, wherein Internet port 7547 open to receive commands based on the TR-069 and related TR-064 protocols, which are meant to use by

On Thursday, we compiled a story based on research published by a British security expert reporting that some cyber criminals are apparently using Mirai Botnet to conduct DDoS attacks against the telecommunication companies in Liberia, a small African country. In his blog post , Kevin Beaumont claimed that a Liberian transit provider confirmed him about the DDoS attack of more than 500 Gbps targeting one undersea cable servicing Internet connectivity for the entire country. Later, some media outlets also confirmed that the DDoS attack caused Internet outage in some parts of the country, citing 'slow Internet' and 'total outage' experienced by some local sources and citizens. "The DDoS is killing our business. We have a challenge with the DDoS. We are hoping someone can stop it. It's killing our revenue. Our business has frequently been targeted" an employee with one Liberian mobile service provider told PC World . Network firm Level 3 confirmed Zack Whittaker

Imagine a world where the software that powers your favorite apps, secures your online transactions, and keeps your digital life could be outsmarted and taken over by a cleverly disguised piece of code. This isn't a plot from the latest cyber-thriller; it's actually been a reality for years now. How this will change – in a positive or negative direction – as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on a larger role in software development is one of the big uncertainties related to this brave new world. In an era where AI promises to revolutionize how we live and work, the conversation about its security implications cannot be sidelined. As we increasingly rely on AI for tasks ranging from mundane to mission-critical, the question is no longer just, "Can AI  boost cybersecurity ?" (sure!), but also "Can AI  be hacked? " (yes!), "Can one use AI  to hack? " (of course!), and "Will AI  produce secure software ?" (well…). This thought leadership article is about the latter. Cydrill  (a

Note — We have published  an updated article on what really happened behind the alleged DDoS attack against Liberia using Mirai botnet. Someone is trying to take down the whole Internet of a country, and partially succeeded, by launching massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks using a botnet of insecure IoT devices infected by the Mirai malware. It all started early October when a cyber criminal publicly released the source code of Mirai – a piece of nasty IoT malware designed to scan for insecure IoT devices and enslaves them into a botnet network, which is then used to launch DDoS attacks. Just two weeks ago, the Mirai IoT Botnet caused vast internet outage by launching massive DDoS attacks against DNS provider Dyn, and later it turns out that just 100,000 infected-IoT devices participated in the attacks. Experts believe that the future DDoS attack could reach 10 Tbps, which is enough to take down the whole Internet in any nation state. One such inciden

The whole world is still dealing with the Mirai IoT Botnet that caused vast internet outage last Friday by launching massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the DNS provider Dyn, and researchers have found another nasty IoT botnet. Security researchers at MalwareMustDie have discovered a new malware family designed to turn Linux-based insecure Internet of Things (IoT) devices into a botnet to carry out massive DDoS attacks. Dubbed Linux/IRCTelnet , the nasty malware is written in C++ and, just like Mirai malware , relies on default hard-coded passwords in an effort to infect vulnerable Linux-based IoT devices. The IRCTelnet malware works by brute-forcing a device's Telnet ports, infecting the device's operating system, and then adding it to a botnet network which is controlled through IRC (Internet Relay Chat) – an application layer protocol that enables communication in the form of text. So, every infected bot (IoT device) connects to a mali

The infamous botnet that was used in the recent massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the popular DNS provider Dyn, causing vast internet outage  last Friday, itself is flawed. Yes, Mirai malware, which has already enslaved millions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices across 164 countries, contains several vulnerabilities that might be used against it in order to destroy botnet's DDoS capabilities and mitigate future attacks. Early October, the developer of the malware publically released the source code of Mirai , which is designed to scan for IoT devices – mostly routers, cameras, and DVRs – that are still using their default passwords and then enslaves them into a botnet, which is then used to launch DDoS attacks. However, after a close look at the source code, a researcher discovered three vulnerabilities, one of which could be used to shut down Mirai's ability to flood targets with HTTP requests. A stack buffer overflow vulnerability wa

Guess how many devices participated in last Friday's massive DDoS attack against DNS provider Dyn that caused vast internet outage? Just 100,000 devices. I did not miss any zeros. Dyn disclosed on Wednesday that a botnet of an estimated 100,000 internet-connected devices was hijacked to flood its systems with unwanted requests and close down the Internet for millions of users. Dyn executive vice president Scott Hilton has issued a statement , saying all compromised devices have been infected with a notorious Mirai malware that has the ability to take over cameras, DVRs, and routers. "We're still working on analyzing the data but the estimate at the time of this report is up to 100,000 malicious endpoints," Hilton said. "We are able to confirm that a significant volume of attack traffic originated from Mirai-based botnets." Mirai malware scans for Internet of Things (IoT) devices that are still using their default passwords and then enslaves those