Proofpoint says Refridgerator hacked and used to send Spam email - Internet of Things Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines for hacker's DDOS and Spambots

“Botnets are already a major security concern and the emergence of thingbots may make the situation much worse. Many of these devices are poorly protected at best and consumers have virtually no way to detect or fix infections when they do occur. Enterprises may find distributed attacks increasing as more and more of these devices come online and attackers find additional ways to exploit them”

Proofpoint's David Knight in comment to CNWT Australia on the First documented Botnet attack involving a web connected Refrigerator

Yes rasta, I knew this Internet of Things phenomenon with connected Appliances was a bad idea!! My worst fears as documented in my Geezam blog article entitled “The Internet of Things – Our AI’s State of Connectedness” has been realized; my Refridgerator has apparently been zombified  and is out to get me.

Gentle reader, it’s now possible to hack Home appliances that are connected to the Internet and use them in DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service), botnet attacks or in this case, sending spam as noted in the article “Fridge caught sending spam emails in botnet attack”, published January 20, 2014 By Michelle Starr, CNET News.

Get this; some of these devices included routers, multimedia centres, televisions and …..wait for it….at least one refrigerator, exactly as i’d predicted in my Geezam blog article entitled “The Internet of Things – Our AI’s State of Connectedness”. People, am I a prophet or what!

No surprise here as far as I’m concerned though. Half of the time when I’m online, I’m probably speaking to a bot, a semi-autonomous program that can be programmed to do great stuff or steal your Credit Card info as pointed out in my Geezam blog article entitled “61% of all Traffic on the Internet is generated by bots”.

And most devices have built in Hard-Drives, even Photocopiers. This makes them potentially dangerous sitting time bombs that are easily exploitable for hacks of this nature. Worse, many retain the data they’ve collected on you, storing gigabytes of personal information on their activities.

Unscrupulous Data Mining bots can access these unprotected devices with very weak passwords and encryption connected via the “Internet of Things” to recover and get access to Credit Cards, Internal company secrets and other potentially damaging  information

Refridgerator spambot is Media Sensationalism – Any ‘Net connect Device with a Hard-Drive is hackable

Good to note this hack is fairly routine and run-of-the-mill; Hacker uses a bot and infects the Host machine, that being the Refridgerator or whatever device is connected to the Internet. Then he sends instructions to the machine to send out emails or whatever other tasks he wants it to do.

The hack, which occurred between December 23, 2013 and January 6, 2014 according to Security Expert Proofpoint as noted in the article “For The First Time, Hackers Have Used A Refrigerator To Attack Businesses”, published JAN. 16, 2014, 1:36 PM by JULIE BORT, Business Insider, indicates some interesting bits of info that reminds me of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003):

1.      100,000 Internet connected devices were involved in the attack

2.      750,000 spam emails were sent

3.      100,000 emails at a time were sent thrice daily

4.      10 emails from a single device at a time

Effectively as far as he’s concerned, the refrigerators, Microwave or any other Appliance that are connected to the Internet are just another set of unprotected computer that the hacker can use to host and run his software program to do what he wants.

Really and truly it’s the Media and Proofpoint's that’s hyping this, as this may have been happening ALL along as I’d warned in my Geezam blog article entitled “NFC and M2M – Cashless Society and the Internet of Things” and “Google and AI - The Matrix and Terminator Rise of the Machines”.

Intel developing Defense against the Dark Arts – All-Electric Vehicles may be the next targets

Still, hopefully companies may be taking a leaf from Intel’s playbook and start embedding anti-virus software into Processors as noted in my blog article entitled “Intel and LightPeak - Race towards the Sun”.

This as the next target’s may not be so amusing and may in fact be All-Electric Vehicles, most of which have a fully-functional onboard computer with a VERY large hard-drive, a scenario that Intel is preparing for as noted in my Geezam blog article entitled “Intel’s McAfee researches Virus attacks on All-Electric Vehicles as AI’s Project SARTRE hits the road”.

As for me, I’ll be round back…..charging up my EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) weapon and sharpening my cutlass, should the Microwave, Refridgerator and Toaster Oven decided to off me in the night!