{"id":42365,"date":"2021-08-18T10:26:30","date_gmt":"2021-08-18T10:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=2a63e3ac3b424e4a76ab62602dbf90f9"},"modified":"2021-08-18T10:26:30","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T10:26:30","slug":"83-million-iot-devices-at-risk-of-hacking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/83-million-iot-devices-at-risk-of-hacking\/","title":{"rendered":"83 million IoT devices at risk of hacking"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Sabina Weston<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
18 Aug, 2021<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

At least 83 million\u00a0Internet of Things (IoT)<\/a>\u00a0devices around the world could be at risk of hacking, potentially enabling threat actors to listen in on private conversations and\u00a0watch live video streams from baby monitors and smart cameras.<\/p>\n

That’s according to new findings from Mandiant, a cyber security company and subsidiary of\u00a0FireEye<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nMandiant\u00a0security<\/a>\u00a0researchers Jake Valletta, Erik Barzdukas, and Dillon Franke discovered a vulnerability that affects IoT devices that use the Kalay network platform manufactured by Taiwanese IoT and M2M (machine-to-machine) solutions provider ThroughTek.<\/p>\n

Tracked as CVE-2021-28372, the vulnerability affects a core component of the Kalay platform, allowing hackers to \u201clisten to live audio, watch real-time video data, and compromise device credentials for further attacks based on exposed device functionality\u201d, according to the researchers.<\/p>\n

Although Mandiant was not able to pinpoint the affected devices, its researchers noted that ThroughTek has at least 83 million active devices as well as an estimated 1.1 billion monthly connections on its Kalay platform, with all of them potentially\u00a0being exposed to hackers.<\/p>\n

Mandiant disclosed the vulnerability to the US\u2019\u00a0Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)<\/a>, which has published an\u00a0advisory report<\/a>\u00a0on the issue that recommends\u00a0that users disconnect their ThroughTek devices from the internet, isolate them from the business networks, and\u00a0to only connect to devices through\u00a0virtual private networks (VPN)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the UK\u2019s\u00a0National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)<\/a>\u00a0told\u00a0IT Pro\u00a0<\/em>that it is \u201caware of this vulnerability\u201d, adding that ThroughTek \u201chas released an update to fix the issue\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimply using the platform does not automatically make you vulnerable to real-world impact, as additional information that is hard to guess is needed to exploit the vulnerability in an individual device successfully. To maximise protection, the NCSC recommends individuals keep their software up to date by installing the latest vendor updates as soon as practicable,\u201d said the NCSC spokesperson.<\/p>\n

The discovery of CVE-2021-28372 by Mandiant comes two months after Nozomi Networks researchers discovered\u00a0a similar flaw affecting ThroughTek\u2019s P2P SDK<\/a>, which is used to provide remote access to audio or video streams over the internet.<\/p>\n

The UK government is working on a new law that will force IoT device manufacturers to meet minimum security requirements and banning\u00a0them from setting easy-to-hack passwords such as \u2018admin\u2019 or \u2018password\u2019. In April, it was announced that the legislation would\u00a0also include smartphones<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sabina Weston<\/p>\n

18 Aug, 2021 <\/p>\n

At least 83 million\u00a0Internet of Things (IoT)\u00a0devices around the world could be at risk of hacking, potentially enabling threat actors to listen in on private conversations and\u00a0watch live video …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42366,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42365\/revisions\/42366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}