Russian banks hit by cyber-attack - Security Commentary
November 2016 by David Kennerley, director of threat research at Webroot
Following the news that Russian Banks have suffered IoT facilitated DDoS attacks please find the below commentary from security firm Webroot.
David Kennerley, Director of Threat Research at Webroot:
These latest DDoS attacks are extremely similar to the recent ones targeted at Dyn last month, and really drives home the security issues of the Internet of Things. While attacks like these are complicated, there’s still an element of basic security that could have reduced success – password management. Consumers and end users need to understand the importance of changing your password from the manufacturer’s default. If the default password had been changed many of the webcams and CCTV devices that formed the botnet army would not have been successfully hijacked. Default passwords are inherently easy for software to guess and as the number of connected devices continues to rise consumers need to change them to more complex ones, otherwise we’ll be seeing a lot more of these attacks in the future.