Tuesday, 4 February 2014
A report from U.S security firm Proofpoint Inc. revealed
that cybercriminals have hacked over 100,000 smart appliances and used
them to send out more than 750,000 spam emails across the globe. Just
imagine your refrigerator sending an email to your smartphone, laptop,
or tablet.
David Knight, general manager of
Proofpoint's Information Security division, said in a press release,
"Botnets are already a major security concern and the emergence of
thingbots may make the situation much worse."
The hack attack allegedly happened
between December 23, 2013 and January 6, 2014, three times a day.
Proofpoint reported 25 percent of the spam emails sent to both personal
and business email addresses were from smart appliances. The security firm also noted that the
hacker behind this attack is difficult to trace location-wise because
several IPs were used.
