An 14-year-old's Internet-of-Things worm is bricking shitty devices by the thousands

boing
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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/25/teenaged-kicks.html

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Hmmm. Shitty IOT devices?

Not all heroes wear capes?

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So, all of them?

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So it bricks insecure IOT devices? That’s probably for the best…

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of-course

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So this is how it all ends…

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If it’s a worm where is the step in which it transmits itself to another device? Bricking the device would seem to reduce its worminess.

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So, everything was bricked, and manufacturers just kept on releasing devices that allowed login with default credentials…? That’s not good.

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It costs money to reprint the instructions. Duh

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I’m just excited to have the new phrase “brickin shits”.

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This is almost hacktivism - worms like this take shitty, easily exploited devices offline and render them ineffective as botnet amplifiers, which is a net good for the internet. It also shines a light on products that are shitty, which is also a net-good.

What’s not good about it is that some of these devices might be used in critical scenarios where they almost certainly shouldn’t be but are anyway, which is always the issue with hactivism - innocent bystanders who you may harm along the way.

But if this results in even 1% of the internet-of-shit vendors rethinking their security stances in the future, and avoids endangering anyone, then there’s a good change this will be a net win IMHO.

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An fourteen?

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It was bugging me, but I didn’t want to be that grammar pedant. Thank you for being that guy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to wash my hands in a Judean washbowl.

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Just an typo, I’m thinking.

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A accident if you will.

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This is something every aspiring hacker has considered at least once. Most people don’t do it for a couple of reasons.

  1. You might get thrown in jail.
  2. That piece of shit you take down might be someone’s ventilator or a dam sluice gate controller or something else vitally important that is being operated by fuckwits.

Unfortunately, the followup option of “if you find something insecure notify the administrator” runs into the problem of it being basically impossible to find the administrator for a random device on the internet.

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An Internet-of-Things worm is bricking...
  ^
14-year-old's

Obviously added as an afterthought. /pedantry

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The only good refrigerator is a dumb refrigerator.

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Can’t wait until the govt finds out if he’s white before deciding whether or not he’s a terrorist.

Brown person in a foreign (but not too big) country: Drone up his ass
White person in the USA: Hey would you like to join the NSA?

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