IoT Attacks Escalate

At the end of 2016, the reality of the security risk posed by the Internet of Things came to light as a distributed denial-of-service attack hit internet performance management company Dyn, causing widespread internet outages across the East Coast. The attack came largely from devices infected by the Mirai botnet – malware that spreads to vulnerable devices by continuously scanning the internet for IoT systems protected by factory default or hard-coded usernames and passwords.

Amit Yoran, the new CEO of Tenable Network Security, said these attacks are likely only just the beginning and will expand to include attacks leveraging cyber infrastructure to take out physical devices and physical systems.

"The industry has been talking about this stuff for a long time, but I think these days are upon us," Yoran said.