Botnets created from the Mirai malware were involved in Friday's cyber attack A Chinese electronics component manufacturer says its products inadvertently played a role in a massive cyberattack that disrupted major internet sites in the U.S. on Friday.Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology, a vendor behind DVRs and internet-connected cameras, said on Sunday that security vulnerabilities involving weak default passwords in its products were partly to blame.According to security researchers, malware known as Mirai has been taking advantage of these vulnerabilities by infecting the devices and using them to launch huge distributed denial-of service attacks, including Friday’s outage.“Mirai is a huge disaster for the Internet of Things,” Xiongmai said in an email to IDG News Service. “(We) have to admit that our products also suffered from hacker’s break-in and illegal use.” Mirai works by enslaving IoT devices to form a massive connected network. The devices are then used to deluge websites with requests, overloading the sites and effectively taking them offline.Because these devices have weak default passwords and are easy to infect, Mirai has been found spreading to at least 500,000 devices, according to internet backbone provider Level 3 Communications. Xiongmai says it patched the flaws with its products in September 2015 and its devices now ask the customer to change the default password when used for the first time. But products running older versions of the firmware are still vulnerable.To stop the Mirai malware, Xiongmai is advising that customers update their product’s firmware and change the default username and passwords to them. Customers can also disconnect the products from the internet.Botnets created from the Mirai malware were at least partly responsible for Friday’s massive internet disruption, according to Dyn, the DNS service provider targeted in the assault.“We observed 10s of millions of discrete IP addresses associated with the Mirai botnet that were part of the attack,” Dyn said in statement.The DDOS attack, which flooded sites with an overwhelming amount of internet traffic, slowed and stopped access to Twiiter, Spotify, PayPal and many more services.Although Dyn managed to fend off the disruption and restore access to its service, Mirai-powered botnets could easily strike again. Earlier this month, the unknown developer of the Mirai malware released its source code to the hacker community. Security firms have already noticed copycat hackers using it. The Mirai malware also appears to target products from other IoT vendors that use weak default passwords in their devices. Security experts have noticed the malware tries a list of more than 60 combinations of user names and passwords. Last month, a Mirai-powered botnet also briefly took down the website of cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs, by delivering 665 Gbps of traffic, making it one of the largest recorded DDOS attacks in history. Related content feature How cybersecurity teams should prepare for geopolitical crisis spillover CISOs can anticipate and prepare for cyberattacks conducted by participants in geopolitical conflict such as the Israel/Hamas war by understanding the threat actors' motivations and goals. By Christopher Whyte Dec 05, 2023 12 mins Advanced Persistent Threats Advanced Persistent Threats Advanced Persistent Threats news analysis P2Pinfect Redis worm targets IoT with version for MIPS devices New versions of the worm include some novel approaches to infecting routers and internet-of-things devices, according to a report by Cado Security. By Lucian Constantin Dec 04, 2023 5 mins Botnets Hacker Groups Security Practices news Hackers book profit by scamming Booking.com customers Malicious elements are using Vidar infostealer to gain access to Booking.com’s management portal and defraud customers. By Gagandeep Kaur Dec 04, 2023 4 mins Cyberattacks opinion Proactive, not reactive: the path to ensuring operational resilience in cybersecurity The experience of the financial sector in dealing with threats is instructive to anyone in the cybersecurity space — there’s no substitute for getting out ahead of potential risks and problems. By Cameron Dicker Dec 04, 2023 6 mins Financial Services Industry Data and Information Security Security Practices Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe