Gray Hat Hackers

Geenens said that the attacker could be a gray hat hacker who wants to expose vulnerable IoT devices or brick them to prevent future distributed denial-of-service attacks.

"Either we're looking at a gray hat hacker, who is trying to fix the DDoS problem, or someone who is angry at manufacturers, and who would bring awareness to the issue of IoT vulnerabilities," said Geenens. "They may want to take away the resources for future DDoS attacks by bricking vulnerable devices."