In the first half of 2019, Kaspersky registered 9 times as many attacks on its Internet of Things (IoT) honeypots as it did in the same period last year, a new report shows. Honeypots are decoy systems used for analyzing cyber threats. The vast majority of attacks involved the infamous Mirai botnet (39%) and the Nyadrop malware (39%), both of which are designed to target IoT devices. Most of the malicious traffic originated in China (30%), Brazil (19%), and Egypt (12%).
Dan Demeter of Kaspersky said that “as people become increasingly surrounded by smart devices, we are witnessing the way IoT attacks are intensifying.” He explained that the lack of security in many IoT devices makes IoT “a fruitful area for attackers that use even the most primitive methods, like guessing password and login combinations.”
Read more: Kaspersky honeypots find 105 million attacks on IoT devices in first half of 2019
