This article is more than 1 year old

Chinese electronics biz recalls webcams at heart of botnet DDoS woes

US products compromised by Mirai mischief in another Internet of Things success

Chinese electronics firm Hangzhou Xiongmai is set to recall swathes of webcams after they were compromised by the Mirai botnet.

Mirai exploits the low security standards of internet-connected devices, from routers to webcams, and after enslaving them with malware uses their network connections to launch DDoS attacks, such as that hobbling Dyn's DNS services last week.

Among the many devices infected by Mirai were products sold by Hangzhou Xiongmai, although the company disputes claims that its products comprised the majority of those involved in the attack.

The firm's devices do not force the end-user to change the default password, and in some cases does not allow the administration password to be changed at all, leaving many thousands open to rogue access.

In a statement, the company announced that it would now be recalling some of the products it had sold in the US, as well as strengthen their password functions and issue a patch for earlier products.

El Reg has been banging on about IoT security for ages. The blame in last Friday's attack does not lie with Dyn, nor with the owners of hijacked devices. Rather, it lies with the botnet operators – and, perhaps more crucially, the dimwit IoT manufacturers who crank out criminally insecure hardware that can be compromised en masse.

Hangzhou Xiongmai was blamed by infosec business Flashpoint when we spoke with them last Friday for producing vulnerable software and hardware and selling easily hijacked IP cameras, digital video recorders and network-attached video recorders. These devices were at the core of Friday's attacks, according to Flashpoint.

Until there is a standards crackdown, and vulnerable devices are pulled offline, this will continue on and on until there is no internet left. ®

More about

More about

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like