First-Ever Ransomware For Smart Thermostat is Here — It's Hot!
Swati Khandelwal | August 8, 2016
Until now we have heard many scary stories of hacking IoT devices, but how realistic is the threat?
Just think of a scenario where you enter in your house, and it's sweltering, but when you head on to check the temperature of your thermostat, you find out that it has been locked to 99 degrees.
[Andrew] Tierney [from Pen Test Partners] said that it was able to take the firmware, and it had everything he needed to make it run ransomware. “It heats to 99 degrees, and asks for a PIN to unlock which changes every 30 seconds,” he said. “We put an IRC botnet on it, and the executable dials into the channel and uses the MAC address as the identifier, and you need to pay one Bitcoin to unlick.”
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| [Click to Enlarge] Pen Test Partners: Penetration testing and security services. Source: https://www.pentestpartners.com/ |
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| [Click on limk for video.] "After showing off dramatic videos of his war-driving/flying, Ronen seized control of two Hue lights in the room. Although it was just blinking lamps, it was one of the more dramatic demonstrations at Black Hat this year." Source: http://www.pcmag.com/news/346789/hacking-hue-researchers-worm-into-the-internet-of-things |
<more at http://thehackernews.com/2016/08/hacking-thermostat.html; related articles and links: https://www.pentestpartners.com/blog/thermostat-ransomware-a-lesson-in-iot-security/ (Thermostat Ransomware: a lesson in IoT security. August 8, 2016) and >http://www.9news.com.au/technology/2016/08/08/15/47/tech-gurus-raise-concerns-over-smart-devices-after-locking-thermostat-and-demanding-ransom (Researchers hack into thermostat to show vulnerability of 'smart' devices. August 8, 2016)>
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