Smart Home Threat Landscape

The explosion of IoT devices in people’s homes and offices is attracting attention from cyber criminals. And thanks to the security problems commonly found in these devices, they present attackers with low hanging fruit to pick. According to F-Secure Labs, threats targeting weak/default credentials, unpatched vulnerabilities, or both, made up 87% of observed threats.

In late 2018, F-Secure’s network of reconnaissance honeypots servers observed a huge spike in threats targeting exposed telnet ports. Mirai uses this infection method to go after devices through default passwords. This explosion of attacks suggests that there is still plenty of “easy prey” out there and criminals are going after it. Of the attacks observed by F-Secure’s honeypots in 2018, 59%, were attacks targeting Telnet 4 – a trend F-Secure Labs attributes to the spread of Mirai malware.

Securing the smart home requires confronting the rampant vulnerabilities in IoT devices. In addition, the rising number of connected devices on home networks must be as secure as PCs and mobile devices. By inviting more and more tools into the home that can be used to track and observe consumers, security and privacy will play an increasingly crucial role in our lives.

Download this whitepaper to learn the following:

• A quick history of IoT threats
• Common IoT threat characteristics
• How do we stop this growing attack vector in the smart home?