Cybercriminals have been using a multiplayer option on Grand Theft Auto in order to infect IoT devices with a new botnet which has connections to the Satori botnet. According to a blog post by Radware researcher Pascal Geenens, the botnet uses the vulnerabilities CVE-2014-8361 and CVE-2017-17215, which affect certain Huawei and Realtek routers. Terry Ray, CTO at Imperva commented below.
Terry Ray, CTO at Imperva:
“At the moment, it appears that the biggest threat from this botnet is its capacity to offer cheap DDoS services to users. The last time it was reviewed DDoS offerings were in the range of 290-310 GBPS, which should be capable to create successful denial of services for most unprotected organizations. Certainly a threat of infection exists, but since the threat sources is a video game from 2004, albeit the Guinness record holder of the best selling game. It’s still a video game so infections within an organization should be much less a threat then the DDoS. The DDoS, appears to be focused on targeting other GTA hosts, it seems you can point the DDOS Engine at anyone. A strong DDoS mitigation solution would deflect these DDoS, but organizations need to be setup with the protection before the attack to prevent being taken off-line.
Modern DDoS mitigation technologies will create a shield in front of organization’s networks preventing the attack traffic from accessing critical resources. Our customers find that being setup in advance of suchattacks allows them to operate in a predictable environment without fear of downtime. Downtime in most organizations is measured in dollars, customers and productivity lost.
Most IoT devices have patches for known Vulnerabilities. Sadly, most IoT devices, rarely or never get patched. When was the last time you upgraded or patched your cable box, cctv, home router or access point, etc. you get the idea, most of these devices just work and as long as they continue to work most people don’t worry about them be infected, because he infection doesn’t usually interrupt the function of the device.”
