HP Innovation Journal Special Edition: Security | Page 17

S H IVAU N A LB R I G HT D istin g uish e d Te ch n olo gist , H P For today’s hackers, the massive profit potential drives innovation and creativity. Among the greatest threats are botnets—automated tools built out of thousands of hacked IoT devices that are used to execute a coor- dinated attack. To create a botnet, hackers hijack the processors of unsecured devices, then use these com- promised devices to mine bitcoin, or they rent their botnet to others to launch ransom-seeking DDoS attacks. The Mirai botnet attack in October of 2016, used as many as 1.2 million compromised devices to wage a DDoS attack, preventing access to popular web- sites such as Amazon, Netf lix, and PayPal. The Mirai malware targeted IoT devices such as DVRs, security cameras, and printers. HP’s Printing and Imaging devices have evolved to become just as sophisticated as PCs containing a power- ful processor running Windows or Linux, with storage, displays, scanners, network access, and email capabil- ities. With the ability to print, copy, scan-to-network destinations and send-to-email attachments, these print 16