Call it the attack of the zombie refrigerators.
Computer security researchers say they have discovered a large "botnet" which infected internet-connected home appliances and then delivered more than 750,000 malicious emails.
The California security firm Proofpoint, which announced its findings, said this may be the first proven "internet of things" based cyber attack involving "smart" appliances.
Proofpoint said hackers managed to penetrate home-networking routers, connected multimedia centres, televisions and at least one refrigerator to create a botnet — or platform to deliver malicious spam or phishing emails from a device, usually without the owner's knowledge.
"Proofpoint's findings reveal that cyber criminals have begun to commandeer home routers, smart appliances and other components of the internet of things and transform them into 'thingbots'", to carry out the same kinds of attacks normally associated with personal computers.
The security firm said these appliances may become attractive targets for hackers because they often have less security than PCs or tablets.
Proofpoint said it documented the incidents between December 23 and January 6, which featured "waves of malicious email, typically sent in bursts of 100,000, three times per day, targeting enterprises and individuals worldwide".
More than 25 per cent of the volume was sent by things that were not conventional laptops, desktop computers or mobile devices. No more than 10 emails were initiated from any single device, making the attack difficult to block based on location
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That doesn't bode well for security does it? Want to immobilise a country's defence system, just hack into their coffee machine and teill it to scramble their command system!
