IoT under fire: More than 100 million attacks on smart devices in H1 2019

Kaspersky honeypots – networks of virtual copies of various internet-connected devices and applications – have detected 105 million attacks on IoT devices coming from 276,000 unique IP addresses in the first six months of the year. This figure is around nine times more than the number found in H1 2018 when only around 12 million attacks were spotted originating from 69,000 IP addresses. Capitalizing on weak security of IoT products, cybercriminals are intensifying their attempts to create and monetize IoT botnets. This and other findings are a part of the ‘IoT: a malware story’ report on honeypot activity in H1 2019.

Cybercriminals, however, are seeing more and more financial opportunities in exploiting such gadgets. They use networks of infected smart devices to conduct DDoS attacks or as a proxy for other types of malicious actions. To learn more about how such attacks work and how to prevent them, Kaspersky experts set up honeypots – decoy devices used to attract the attention of cybercriminals and analyze their activities.