Sarah Zatko of the Cyber Independent Testing Lab joins us to talk about CITL’s big new study of firmware security. In our second segment, we’re joined by Allan Thomson who is the Chief Technology Officer at LookingGlass Cyber Solutions to talk about the growing use of cyber threat intelligence and the need to evolve cybersecurity practices to keep ahead of fast-evolving threats.
Home connected device users are putting their IoT networks at risk by leaving exposed a common service devices use to seamlessly connect and communicate with each other, according to cybersecurity firm Trend Micro. Hackers recently have been found to exploit the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) service of poorly configured routers and home networking devices, as evidenced by an attack earlier this year that allegedly hijacked thousands of Chromecast streaming dongles, Google Home devices and smart TVs to play an ad for a YouTuber PewDiePie’s channel. This event prompted Trend Micro researchers dig deeper into UPnP, discovering that the potential to exploit this service remains significant as many home users are leaving UPnP enabled–unknowingly or not–and often with older, unpatched versions of the service installed on devices, they said. “In a nutshell, we found that most devices still use old versions of UPnP libraries,” wrote Tony Yang, a Trend Micro […]
Home routers and wi-fi access points are the canaries in the coal mine for security on the Internet of Things. Simply put: they’re ubiquitous, Internet-connected and innocuous. Unlike mobile phones, wi-fi routers aren’t in your pocket – buzzing and ringing and demanding your attention. In fact, it’s safe to be that the vast majority of Internet users are concerned wouldn’t know how to connect- and log in to their router if they had to. But appearances can deceive. Broadband routers are, indeed, mini computers that run a fully featured operating system and are perfectly capable of being attacked, compromised and manipulated. We have already seen examples of modern malware spreading between these devices. In March, the security firm Team Cymru published a report (PDF) describing what it claimed was a compromise of 300,000 small office and home office (SOHO) wireless routers that was linked to cyber criminal campaigns targeting online banking customers. In January, […]
