AT&T: Mirai’s Rise Seen in IoT Vulnerability Scans

AT&T reported a 400% spike in scans targeting IoT ports in early 2016—an indicator that IoT devices were being recruited—months before the Mirai botnet used hundreds of thousands of compromised cameras, DVRs and routers to launch large-scale DDoS attacks against DYN and other targets; the article highlights the emergent IoT threat and recommends measures such as unique passwords, patching, SDN, improved identity/access management, and threat analytics.