Computer security professionals discovered one of the most interesting hacks you’ll ever read about. A giant “bot-net” infected home appliances that were internet-connected and sent over 750,000 malicious emails. That’s right, even a refrigerator was used to send all that spam. A California security firm has declared this might be the first cyber attack through “smart” appliances. The security firm said that hackers managed to hack home internet routers, televisions, multimedia centers connected to the internet and even a refrigerator to create a large platform to send thousand upon thousands of spam and phishing emails. The owners of these devices had no idea their items had been penetrated.
So many people are thinking, why hack these items? It’s simple; internet TVs, routers, refrigerators and other items don’t have the powerful security that a PC or laptop has. They are much easier to infiltrate. Cyber criminals are using these less-protected products to aim attacks at personal computers. These simple devices have no way to find out or fix these infections when they happen. The amount of internet-connected devices is increasing, and this is good news for the cyber criminals because they can create larger bot-nets and target more individuals and enterprises.
To give an idea of how many emails and spam were sent through devices that were not PCs or laptops, take the amount of emails sent (750,000) and multiply it by 0.25. The number is 187,500. That is an astounding figure! Think about out this, over a hundred thousand spam and phishing emails were sent through a device that wasn’t even a computer. A member of the Californian security firm said that bot-nets are a major security concern as it is, and the increase of internet-connected devices could raise the amount of hacks like these greatly. Not too long ago, security experts thought attacks like these were foolish and were probably never going to happen. Well now they are, and internet-connected devices will have to come with some sort of security system in order to prevent them, otherwise hacks like these will start to become more and more popular.