Washington Examiner: Law enforcement agencies kill significant botnet

An excerpt from the Washington Examiner article, ‘Law enforcement agencies kill significant botnet’

The disruption of RSOCKS will have a positive impact on cybersecurity in the short term, added Brian Contos, chief security officer of Phosphorus, an IoT cybersecurity provider.

“Since this botnet appears to have been used for credential stuffing attacks, malicious spam, and fake social media accounts, the criminal groups engaged in those activities will have to replace part of their infrastructure to continue with those attacks.”

He told the Washington Examiner. “However, this probably won’t take them very long.”

And IoT-based botnets are “extremely easy” for criminal groups to set up, he added. “Disrupting botnets is a game of whack-a-mole,” he said. “To say IoT devices are vulnerable and an easy target for criminal hackers is an understatement.”

Phosphorus’s research found that 50% of all deployed IoT devices still have their default passwords and 70% have significant vulnerabilities in their firmware.

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