Most Common Threats to Security and Privacy of IoT Devices

Nowadays, the Internet is growing at a very fast rate with the advancement in technologies and techniques. Some years ago, we did not necessarily require an advanced level security system for our networking devices because the internet is not that much advanced in that era. According to a survey in 2017, 51% of big companies didn’t even think about securing their devices because they felt that their devices might not be attacked by hackers and now approx 96% of companies think that there may be a huge increase in attacks of IoT devices in upcoming years. 

As technology is becoming advanced, attacks on internet devices are increasing very rapidly and becoming more and more common. Now, security and privacy have become a very important aspect of any IoT device. In this article, we will discuss some most common threats to the security and privacy of IoT devices.

1. Weak Credentials

Generally, large manufactures ship their products with a username of “admin” and with the password “0000” or “1234” and the consumers of these devices don’t change them until they were forced to that by security executive. These kinds of acts make a path for hackers to hack consumer’s privacy and let them control the consumer’s device. In 2016, the Mirai botnet Attack as a result of using weak credentials.

2. Complex Structure of IoT Devices

IoT devices have a very complex structure that makes it difficult to find the fault in devices. Even if a device is hacked the owner of that device will be unaware of that fact. Hackers can force the device to join any malicious botnets or the device may get infected by any virus. We can not directly say that the device was hacked because of its complex structure. A few years ago, a security agency has proved that a smart refrigerator was found sent thousand plus spam mails. The interesting fact was that the owner of that refrigerator even did not know about that.

3. Outdated Software and Hardware 

It has been seen that IoT devices are secured when they are shipped. But the issues come here when these devices do not get regular updates. When a company manufactures its device, it makes the devices secure from all the threats of that time but as we discussed earlier, the Internet and technologies are growing at a very fast rate. So after a year or two, it becomes very easy for hackers to find the weakness of old devices with modern technologies. That’s why security updates are the most important ones.

4. Rapid increase in Ransomware

With the advancement of the internet, hackers are also getting advanced. In the past few years, there is a rapid increase in malicious software or ransomware. This is causing a big challenge for IoT device manufacturers to secure their devices.

5. Small Scale Attacks

IoT devices are attacked on a very small scale. Manufacturing companies are trying to secure their devices for large scale attacks but no company is paying to attention small attacks. Hackers do small attacks on IoT devices such as baby monitoring devices or open wireless connections and then forced to join botnets.

6. Insecure Data Transfer 

It is very difficult to transmit data securely in such a large amount as there are billions of IoT enabled devices. There is always a risk of data leaking or get infected or corrupted.

7. Smart Objects

Smart objects are the main building block of any device. These smart objects should able to communicate with another object or device or a sensor in any infrastructure securely. Even while these devices or objects are not aware of each other’s network status. This is also an important issue. Hackers can hack these devices in open wireless networks.