Malware Threat in Internet of Things and Its Mitigation Analysis

This chapter introduces malware’s threat in the internet of things (IoT) and then analyzes the mitigation methods against the threat. In September 2016, Brian Krebs’ web site “Krebs on Security” came under a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. It reached twice the size of the largest attack in history. This attack was caused by a new type of malware called Mirai. Mirai primarily targets IoT devices such as security cameras and wireless routers. IoT devices have some properties which make them malware attack’s targets such as large volume, pervasiveness, and high vulnerability. As a result, a DDoS attack launched by infected IoT devices tends to become massive and disruptive. Thus, the threat of Mirai is an extremely important issue. Mirai has been attracting a great deal of attention since its birth. This resulted in a lot of information related to IoT malware. Most of them came from not academia but industry represented by antivirus software makers. This chapter summarizes such information.