The Metamorphosis of Mirai
Volume 9
The Metamorphosis of Mirai
By Mike Patterson , CEO of Plixer International
This is the era of Malware Response
The Institute of Critical Infrastructure Technology has issued a report that contends that the Mirai malware has given even unsophisticated hackers a quantum leap in capabilities to launch cyber attacks .
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Mobile phones are now being used to mount DDoS attacks against 911 systems by flooding centers with incoming phone calls . An arms race is under way for power to disrupt the Internet and take down services and websites .
The source code for Mirai is one way to do that and it is being evolved to do even more damage . The scary part is that it also provides the bridge for those criminals that are not tech savvy to inflict a great deal of damage by creating weapons with IoT devices .
Millions of IoT devices that have been deployed with default credentials , programmed backdoor accounts , open access ports etc and are wide open to be taken over by the Mirai malware .
A lot of malware compromising systems today are an amalgamation of pieces of pre-existing contagions like Mirai .
It has become easy for cyber criminals to purchase software that will take advantage of specific exploits and then complement it with another cyber weapon . They can even purchase technical support to achieve their objective .
Once the software is compiled , its signature is unique and can be virtually undetectable by signature matching cyber defense systems . We can expect larger variations of DDoS in 2017 with an array of different objectives .
An example of IoT devices currently on the market
With the source code in hand , cyber criminals are racing to identify all available vulnerable devices to build massive botnets that could be used to collect confidential information or launch huge attacks to disrupt services or take down websites .
Similar to bot infections , new variants of Mirai will likely be out to engage in multiple missions with DDoS being only one of the objectives .
Millions of IoT devices that have been deployed with default credentials , programmed backdoor accounts , open access ports etc and are wide open to be taken over by the Mirai
malware
Combining Mirai with other pieces of software could include functionality such as key loggers , hosting websites selling contraband or perform more surreptitious missions such as routine re-
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