Understanding the Simplicity Behind IoT Botnets: A Case Study of a Social Media Fraud Provider
Masarah Paquet-Clouston, GoSecure
Presented at the SERENE-RISC Workshop, April 2017
Who would want to be liked by an army of robots? The size of a social media account’s audience is considered to be a measure of the influence of a person in a community. Consequently, being followed and liked online could be desirable. An army of malware infected computers (botnet) provides its commander with considerable power. The larger the army, the more capacity it has. IoT devices have greatly increased the number of devices connected to the internet. These devices are vulnerable to malware infection and induction into botnet armies. Examples of this such as the Mirai Botnet made possible incredibly large-scale attacks on several important websites, such as Twitter, Spotify and Reddit. These botnets can use their power on social networks as well. The Moose botnet provides a service of creating a false appearance of popularity and influence. The commander of this botnet will provide this service for a fee.
Masarah Paquet-Clouston explains how IoT botnets are a source of power online, and how this is applied to the ego-market.
Running time: <25 Minutes
