There’s a New Botnet out There That Dwarfs Mirai

This botnet is even more dangerous than Mirai.

We already know just how dangerous botnets can be. In 2016, Mirai was used for numerous attacks, including the one on 20 September, which targeted Krebs on Security. Now, a new threat looms on the horizon. It’s called the Reaper botnet, and researchers claim that it could cause much more trouble than Mirai ever did. By comparison, Reaper can actively hack and infiltrate devices around the world. Mirai only infected unsecured devices with default passwords before adding them to the botnet. It’s true that Reaper shares some similarities with Mirai, as it borrowed some of its source code. However, this new botnet can actually inject its code into the victim. This allows it to grow at a very fast rate.

The defense.

Checkpoint has discovered that 60% of the networks it monitors currently include the malware. Hardware devices from AVTech, MikroTik, Linksys, Synology, GoAhead, D-Link, TP-Link and Netgear are all hosts for this infection. Fortunately, manufacturers have already issued patches for these vulnerabilities. However, most users will likely fail to install them, which will put them at risk. The software used to launch the attack modules is already present on millions of devices. As for the botnet, it is currently in standby mode, waiting for a signal to launch DDoS attacks.