Category Archives: Internet of Things

IoT Devices in Password-Spraying Botnet

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Microsoft is warning Azure cloud users that a Chinese controlled botnet is engaging in “highly evasive” password spraying. Not sure about the “highly evasive” part; the techniques seem basically what you get in a distributed password-guessing attack:

“Any threat actor using the CovertNetwork-1658 infrastructure could conduct password spraying campaigns at a larger scale and greatly increase the likelihood of successful credential compromise and initial access to multiple organizations in a short amount of time,” Microsoft officials wrote. “This scale, combined with quick operational turnover of compromised credentials between CovertNetwork-1658 and Chinese threat actors, allows for the potential of account compromises across multiple sectors and geographic regions.”…

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More Details on Israel Sabotaging Hezbollah Pagers and Walkie-Talkies

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The Washington Post has a long and detailed story about the operation that’s well worth reading (alternate version here).

The sales pitch came from a marketing official trusted by Hezbollah with links to Apollo. The marketing official, a woman whose identity and nationality officials declined to reveal, was a former Middle East sales representative for the Taiwanese firm who had established her own company and acquired a license to sell a line of pagers that bore the Apollo brand. Sometime in 2023, she offered Hezbollah a deal on one of the products her firm sold: the rugged and reliable AR924…

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Deebot Robot Vacuums Are Using Photos and Audio to Train Their AI

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An Australian news agency is reporting that robot vacuum cleaners from the Chinese company Deebot are surreptitiously taking photos and recording audio, and sending that data back to the vendor to train their AIs.

Ecovacs’s privacy policy—available elsewhere in the app—allows for blanket collection of user data for research purposes, including:

  • The 2D or 3D map of the user’s house generated by the device
  • Voice recordings from the device’s microphone
  • Photos or videos recorded by the device’s camera

It also states that voice recordings, videos and photos that are deleted via the app may continue to be held and used by Ecovacs…

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Israel’s Pager Attacks and Supply Chain Vulnerabilities

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Israel’s brazen attacks on Hezbollah last week, in which hundreds of pagers and two-way radios exploded and killed at least 37 people, graphically illustrated a threat that cybersecurity experts have been warning about for years: Our international supply chains for computerized equipment leave us vulnerable. And we have no good means to defend ourselves.

Though the deadly operations were stunning, none of the elements used to carry them out were particularly new. The tactics employed by Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied any role, to hijack an international supply chain and embed plastic explosives in Hezbollah devices have been used for years. What’s new is that Israel put them together in such a devastating and extravagantly public fashion, bringing into stark relief what the future of great power competition will look like—in peacetime, wartime and the ever expanding …

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IT threat evolution in Q2 2024. Non-mobile statistics

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This report presents statistics on PC threats for Q2 2024, including data on ransomware, miners, threats to macOS and IoT devices. Continue reading IT threat evolution in Q2 2024. Non-mobile statistics→