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Report: smart IoT devices can be weaponized by hackers to launch larger attacks

The internet of things (IoT) has increased the prevalence of intelligent objects at home. These devices can be anything from smart light bulbs to televisions, appliances to cameras, and even water heaters – can be hacked and weaponized to create an army of smart devices to scale up attacks against corporations and governments, according to Bloomberg.

Researchers from Nokia Deepfield published a report Monday, revealing global DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) traffic between January 2020 and May 2021 and found the threat potential for DDoS attacks is around 10 Terabits per second, as much as five times more than the most significant attacks reported so far.

The analysis found most global DDoS attacks originate from 50 hosting companies. These extensive DDoS attacks saturate the targeted network with high amounts of traffic to crash it.

DDoS threats are immensely harmful to the day-to-day operational activities of targeted networks operated by corporations and or governments and can cause considerable damage.

This means billions of smart home devices could be susceptible to cyberattacks and silently weaponized to launch DDoS attacks in a simultaneous fashion.

The proliferation of IoT devices has increased the number of devices a malicious actor can weaponize. The combination of IoT and DDoS may result in a devastating cyberattack using armies of IoT devices.

A problem we notice is that much of the world’s electronic devices are produced in China. As a result, the communist government may have the ability to backdoor these devices and weaponize them against the US.

Article: Smart IoT Devices Can Be Weaponized By Hackers To Launch Even Larger DDoS Attacks: Report

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