Ever wonder what is the real cost of IOT insecurity?
Well reseachers at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Information recently published a report that attempts to lay out the costs to consumers in the context of DDoS attacks. The report focuses on exploiting vulnerable devices for their computing power and ability to use their network’s bandwidth for cyberattacks—specifically DDoS attacks on Internet domains and servers.
Researchers infected several consumer IoT devices with the Mirai malware and measured how the devices used electricity and bandwidth resources in non-infected and infected state. Their hypothesis: compromised IoT devices participating in a DDoS attack will use more resources (energy and bandwidth) and degrade the performance of a user’s network more than uninfected devices in normal daily operation.
Based on energy and bandwidth consumption they developed calculator to estimate the costs incurred by consumers when their devices are used in DDoS attacks. Two recent and well publicized attacks, and one hypothetical, were calculated:
- Krebs On Security Attack: According to their cost calculator, the total electricity and bandwidth consumption costs borne by consumers in this attack was $323,973.75.
- Dyn, Inc. Attack: They calculate the total cost borne by consumers as $115,307.91.
- "Worst-Case" Attack: This hypothetical “Worst-Case” scenario approximates the costs that could result if the Mirai botnet operated at its peak power using a UDP DDoS attack. The projected cost to consumers of this attack is $68,146,558.13.
Commenting on the study, Bob Noel, Director of Strategic Relationships and Marketing for Plixer said, “Organizations with enslaved IoT devices on their network do not experience a high enough direct cost ($13.50 per device) to force them to worry about this problem. Where awareness and concern may gain traction is through class action lawsuits filed by DDoS victims. DDoS victims can suffer financial losses running into the millions of dollars, and legal action taken against corporations that took part in the distributed attack could be mechanism to recuperate losses. Companies can reduce their risk of participating in DDoS attacks in a number of ways. They must stop deploying IoT as trusted devices, with unfettered access. IoT devices are purposed-built with a very narrow set of communication patterns. Organizations should take advantage of this and operate under a least privilege approach. Network traffic analytics should be used to baseline normal IoT device behavior and alarm on a single packet of data that deviates. In this manner it is easy to identify when an IoT device is participating as a botnet zombie, and organizations can remediate the problem and eliminate their risk of being sued.”
Or as we've argued before, regulation is key. And now that we have an economic cost on IoT insecurity, we have better information for regulators to pursue strategies and legislation for enforcing workable security standards to reduce the negative impacts of IoT devices on society.
