Fortinet: Cryptojacking IoT Devices Begins to Become One of the Focuses of Cybersecurity Threats

Cyber ​​crime has always been a scourge for the digital industry. Fortinet, a provider of security services and solutions, launched a report titled "Fortinet Threat Landscape Report Q2 2018". In the report Fortinet highlighted a few things in particular, such as attacks Cryptojacking from attacking IoT for home devices to botnets starting to evolve.

Report Fortinet it highlights several aspects of digital security, ranging from exploit, malware, botnets, to predicting future threat trends. All companies that have digital services and IT infrastructure are said to have the same risk in cyber attacks, only anticipation and precautionary measures make the difference.

For exploits, Forniet detected 7.230 exploits found with an average of 811 finds per company. Even Fortinet says nearly 96% of companies experience at least one major exploit.

"Analysis focused on critical detection and high severity shows a worrying trend with 96% of companies experiencing at least one major exploit," Fortinet wrote in the release.

Another reported finding that has been highlighted is the presence of exploit or cryptojacking which started targeting IoT devices for the home. Cryptojacking is the term given to software that uses the target or victim's hardware resources to perform mining cryptocurrency. Infected hardware will become a "mining machine" for attackers.

Cryptojacking time booming some time ago because it was embedded in a website and made users who open the web act as minners which of course made computer performance decrease. In the case that Fortinet encountered, cryptojacking attacks have led to IoT devices that have been implemented in homes, such as lights, CCTV, alarms, and other devices.

"Attackers take advantage of them by loading malware that is constantly mining because these devices are always on and connected. Additionally, the interfaces for these devices are being exploited as modified web browsers, which expand vulnerabilities and exploit vectors in them. Segmentation will be increasingly important for devices." connected to corporate networks as this trend continues," Fortinet wrote.

Fortinet found 23.945 malware variants with daily detections reaching 13 for each company. For cryptojacking, Fortinet detected 23,3% of malware occurrences. Fortinet also detected 265 unique botnet attacks with an average of 1,8 active botnets per company. Botnet itself is a term for devices infected with malware and functioned as "robots" that can be controlled for attacks such as spam to DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks.

Fortinet also underlined that malware continue to grow and evolve. Avoid detection and prevention so it has many ways to infect a computer or network.

"Cyber ​​enemies never stop. More and more, they are automating their tools and creating variations of known exploits. These days, they are also getting more precise in their targeting, not relying on blanket efforts to find exploitable victims, "explained Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Fortinet Phil Quade.