Nokia is effected by 78% of Malware attack because of IoT botnets

According to recent report from Nokia, since 2016 there is a 45 percent increase in IoT botnet network activity which is a warning for serious IoT malware threat for this service provider.

This threat intelligence report is based on data collected from NetGuard end point security product, which monitors the network traffic from 150 million Nokia devices all over the globe.

It declared 78% malware attack detected from the botnet activity which is more than double than 2016 report, where the malware detection was only 33% from the IoT botnet activities.

But when the question comes to making up the infected devices, report said 15% of the infected devices was cured, which increased to 3.5% as compared to last year.

"Cyber-criminals are switching gears from the traditional computer and smartphone ecosystems and now targeting the growing number of vulnerable IoT devices that are being deployed,” said Kevin McNamee, director of Nokia's Threat Intelligence Lab. “You have thousands of IoT device manufacturers wanting to move product fast to market and, unfortunately, security is often an afterthought.”

The IoT based botnet attack first came out with Mirai attack in 2016, when a malware was infecting tens of thousands of devices, those were protected with a factory default password.

That vulnerability caused some remarkable DDoS attacks and not only that Nokia also faced some infamous crypto-mining attack using botnet compromised web browser and infected smart phone devices.

“Cyber-criminals have increasingly smart tools to scan for and to quickly exploit vulnerable devices, and they have new tools for spreading their malware and bypassing firewalls. If a vulnerable device is deployed on the internet, it will be exploited in a matter of minutes," McNamee warned.

The next generation 5g network is also going to adopt IoT devices, which will increase more malware attacks if it is still vulnerable.

Yossi Naar, co-founder at Cybereason said, “Simply put, security needs to be a primary design consideration, as fundamental as any other measure of performance,” he added. “There should be a focus on tight mechanisms for strong authentication and the minimization of the potential attack surface. It’s a fundamental design philosophy that responsible companies have, but it’s not a reflex for all companies — yet."

Source: www.infosecurity-magazine.com