How the Mirai botnet hacks a security camera in a few seconds

The popular security expert Robert Graham, CEO of Errata Security, has explained how the Mirai botnet could hack a security camera in a few seconds.

The recent string of attacks powered with the Mirai botnet has demonstrated to the security industry the potential effects of DDoS attacks on the global Internet backbone.

Experts who investigated the threat confirmed that the Mirai botnet is composed of hundred thousand compromised IoT devices, such as CCTVs and DVRs.

This week, Robert Graham, CEO of Errata Security, has explained how the Mirai botnet could hack a security camera. Graham used a $55 JideTech security camera that was behind a Raspberry Pi router that the experts configured to isolate the surveillance device from his home network.

“I’m setting up a little test network for IoT devices, one isolated a bit from my home network. This is a perfect job for a computer like the Raspberry Pi (or similar computers, such as the Odroid-C2, which is what I’m actually using here)” wrote Graham in a blog post.

Graham published a series of Twitter posts to document his experiment, he confirmed that his camera was compromised by the Mirai botnet in just 98 seconds.

“Actually, it took 98 seconds for first infection” wrote the expert.

The IoT malware runs a brute force password attack via telnet using a list of 61 default credentials to gain access to the target device.

Once the Mirai component gains access to the target IoT device, it connects out to download the full virus and runs it. Then it starts sending out SYN packets at a high rate of speed, looking for other potential victims.

Once again let me highlight the importance to properly configure IoT devices, for example by changing default passwords and disabling unnecessary services.

It is essential also to protect IoT with

“The correct mitigation is ‘put these devices behind your firewall’,” Graham said.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Mirai botnet, IoT)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.