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Chinese firm recalls webcams over botnet DDoS woes

Chinese firm inadvertently involved in cyberattack

Now Xiongmai has now said it will recall some of its products sold in the United States, strengthen password functions and send users a patch for products made before April previous year.

Chinese manufacturer Hangzhou Xiongmai has reportedly issued a recall for its vulnerable webcams that were used as tools in this attack. "We observed 10s of millions of discrete IP addresses associated with the Mirai botnet that were part of the attack", Dyn said in a statement.

As a result, the company is now recalling some of its products.

The company have said that a recall of earlier products released in the United States will soon be under way, and that password functions would be strengthened in the hopes of tightening security.

"It's remarkable that virtually an entire company's product line has just been turned into a botnet that is now attacking the United States", Flashpoint's Director of Security Allison Nixon told security researcher Brian Krebs.

"Security issues are a problem facing all mankind". "All industry leaders will experience them". DDoS attacks are of course nothing new, but last Friday's attack was unique insofar as it was incredibly massive and was carried out with a botnet not comprised of computers, but of Internet connected devices.

Oh, and while we have you, it might be a good idea to change any default passwords you have on your devices.

XiongMai says components made after September 2015 no longer have this susceptibility and users should update the firmware of products sold before that date.

Agencies including the US Department of Homeland Security are investigating the outage. In many cases, end users don't even know if they can change the factory settings, leaving hundreds of thousands of devices open to criminal attacks. Since more and more devices throughout your home are connected to the internet, hackers have more possible access points.

For several years now companies have been heavily marketing "smart" devices that are supposed to improve every facet of our lives, but were rushed too quickly to market with little to no functional security. Hackers can then use malware to seek out susceptible cams, hijack them en masse, and use them as part of attacks like the ones that occurred Friday.

The main products Xiongmai is to recall are all webcam models, it said.

stayontheblack.com

Chinese firm recalls webcams over botnet DDoS woes