How ’bout that Mirai Botnet

 

Do you remember that thing? It was the panic of the week last fall. Some jerks took large portions of the internet down for a couple hours. Everyone was in a tizzy for a bit. Well, the problem is still there. At least now nobody’s in a flail-your-arms panic over it, so maybe it’s worth discussing solutions.

Since there’s very little reason to remember the panic of the day even a week later, let me remind you how this works. A couple years back “Internet of Things” became the fashionable buzzword, so we all went out and bought WiFi enabled toasters. Now you can start toasting automatically when your alarm clock goes off. The fact that your toast will be ice cold by your seventh snooze is a small price to pay for living in The Future! But when you got your FutureToast, you didn’t bother to change the default password (it’s a hassle and if you did you’d forget the new one and what’s the worst that could happen anyway?) Mr. Nefarious Hacker sees that you’ve got a FutureToast, and he can log into it too. With your toaster and the 13,000 other ones that nobody’s changed the passwords on (and the 3300 GarageNoMores, and 4200 BlindsWithScience, and 132 HubCapConnects) he’s got access to a massive number internet connected devices. Mr. Nefarious Hacker can then use them to form punishing denial of service attacks, making the internet useless to the rest of us.

How do we solve this problem? It seems resistant to market forces. From FutureToast Inc.’s perspective adding security to their toasters makes them cost more and makes them less user friendly. That translates to less toaster sales. The Customer doesn’t care; the fact that his toaster is a tool for world domination doesn’t stop it from providing toast on demand.

If you ask the computer security industry, they tend to tell you “Government Regulation.” Every FutureToast variant has to have a password change on first boot up, mandated by law. This solves the problem in the future, but there’s still a heck of a lot of unsecured devices in existence today. The government is also a good way to take all the vitality out of an industry. Maybe there are better solutions.

You could educate the public. As a rule that never works. Take me as an example. I know this is a thing, and I think it’s a big enough problem to post about it on Ricochet. Now ask me what my password is for my Raspberry Pi. It’s not hard to guess.

You could hack back. If you go into my FutureToast and change the passwords then Mr. Nefarious Hacker can’t use it. But then I can’t use it anymore, either. That approach amounts to the destruction of property. This is also not a good solution.

You could, and I can’t overstate the general applicability of this solution, actively wait for your problem to go away. We haven’t seen Mirai in the news much at all even though nobody’s fixed the problem. Maybe the world wakes up and realizes their fridge really shouldn’t have anything to say to their toilet and they stop buying IoT devices. Maybe we figure out a better way to catch the people behind these attacks and launching them becomes a much riskier proposition. Maybe Russia gets into a war with China and the world’s supply of hackers gets busy fighting one another. Maybe none of those happen and we’re still stuck with the problem.

What do you think, Ricochet? Got any brilliant ideas?

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  1. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):

    By the way, she said count, so I think 1024 is actually correct.

    Only if you have 11 fingers. And then it would be 2047.

    Now I’m being pedantic. (Sorry I keep saying that. It was on my word of the day calendar today. I’m pretty sure I’ve got it now.) I’m not trying to win an argument. I’m actually hoping some math major will chime in and set me straight. My thinking is that people don’t count to zero. If you have 2^10 apples, you’ve got 1024 apples, not 1023. Is that wrong?

    You’re using your fingers as binary digits.  So your fingers are either on or off, one or zero.  You can count to one with your first finger, but to get to the number 2 by counting, you’re going to need the second finger, just like you need two digits for the number 10 in base 10; even though there are ten possible values in a single digit, it takes two digits to express the number 10.  Back to binary and it’s three fingers for the number 4, four fingers for the number 8; continue that across all your fingers and you’ll find you need all ten fingers to get to 512, as 1000000000.  Fill in all the rest of those digits with ones and it’s only 1023.

    • #121
  2. Richard Finlay Inactive
    Richard Finlay
    @RichardFinlay

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):

    By the way, she said count, so I think 1024 is actually correct.

    Only if you have 11 fingers. And then it would be 2047.

    Now I’m being pedantic. (Sorry I keep saying that. It was on my word of the day calendar today. I’m pretty sure I’ve got it now.) I’m not trying to win an argument. I’m actually hoping some math major will chime in and set me straight. My thinking is that people don’t count to zero. If you have 2^10 apples, you’ve got 1024 apples, not 1023. Is that wrong?

    I think so.  The way we are talking about ‘counting’ on fingers is by letting each finger represent one bit, rather than simply counting 1, 10, 11, 100, 101 on one hand, for example.  Instead, we are representing the value 8 by extending the middle finger only.  In this manner, when all ten fingers are extended, i.e., ‘on’, the value represented is 2^9+2^8+2^7+2^6+2^5+2^4+2^3+2^2+2^1+2^0.  (The first finger is 2^0 = 1) so 512+256+128+64+32+16+8+4+2+1=1023

    • #122
  3. Chuck Enfield Inactive
    Chuck Enfield
    @ChuckEnfield

    Fine.  Now I get it.  Picture me counting to 8. :)

    • #123
  4. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):
    You’re using your fingers as binary digits. So your fingers are either on or off, one or zero. You can count to one with your first finger, but to get to the number 2 by counting, you’re going to need the second finger, just like you need two digits for the number 10 in base 10; even though there are ten possible values in a single digit, it takes two digits to express the number 10. Back to binary and it’s three fingers for the number 4, four fingers for the number 8; continue that across all your fingers and you’ll find you need all ten fingers to get to 512, as 1000000000. Fill in all the rest of those digits with ones and it’s only 1023.

    Now I get it. Picture me counting to 8. ?

    I think you mean 4.

    (Going into extra innings on pedantic.)

    • #124
  5. Richard Finlay Inactive
    Richard Finlay
    @RichardFinlay

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):
    You’re using your fingers as binary digits. So your fingers are either on or off, one or zero. You can count to one with your first finger, but to get to the number 2 by counting, you’re going to need the second finger, just like you need two digits for the number 10 in base 10; even though there are ten possible values in a single digit, it takes two digits to express the number 10. Back to binary and it’s three fingers for the number 4, four fingers for the number 8; continue that across all your fingers and you’ll find you need all ten fingers to get to 512, as 1000000000. Fill in all the rest of those digits with ones and it’s only 1023.

    Now I get it. Picture me counting to 8. ?

    Or 132, for emphasis.

    • #125
  6. Chuck Enfield Inactive
    Chuck Enfield
    @ChuckEnfield

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):
    You’re using your fingers as binary digits. So your fingers are either on or off, one or zero. You can count to one with your first finger, but to get to the number 2 by counting, you’re going to need the second finger, just like you need two digits for the number 10 in base 10; even though there are ten possible values in a single digit, it takes two digits to express the number 10. Back to binary and it’s three fingers for the number 4, four fingers for the number 8; continue that across all your fingers and you’ll find you need all ten fingers to get to 512, as 1000000000. Fill in all the rest of those digits with ones and it’s only 1023.

    Now I get it. Picture me counting to 8. ?

    I think you mean 4.

    (Going into extra innings on pedantic.)

    Damn it I do mean 4.  Argh!

    • #126
  7. Richard Finlay Inactive
    Richard Finlay
    @RichardFinlay

    One of the great things about computers is their ability to express themselves in decimal.  Starman Jones was wrong.

    • #127
  8. Chuck Enfield Inactive
    Chuck Enfield
    @ChuckEnfield

    Richard Finlay (View Comment):
    Or 132, for emphasis.

    I considered that, but was too lazy.  They way this discussion has worked out for me it’s better that I left it alone.

    • #128
  9. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Richard Finlay (View Comment):

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):
    You’re using your fingers as binary digits. So your fingers are either on or off, one or zero. You can count to one with your first finger, but to get to the number 2 by counting, you’re going to need the second finger, just like you need two digits for the number 10 in base 10; even though there are ten possible values in a single digit, it takes two digits to express the number 10. Back to binary and it’s three fingers for the number 4, four fingers for the number 8; continue that across all your fingers and you’ll find you need all ten fingers to get to 512, as 1000000000. Fill in all the rest of those digits with ones and it’s only 1023.

    Now I get it. Picture me counting to 8. ?

    Or 132, for emphasis.

    I finally remembered the thumb, so it made sense.

    • #129
  10. Richard Finlay Inactive
    Richard Finlay
    @RichardFinlay

    Richard Finlay (View Comment):
    One of the great things about computers is their ability to express themselves in decimal. Starman Jones was wrong.

    Unless, I suppose, the Astrogators Guild restricted computer development to preserve their perquisites.

    • #130
  11. MLH Inactive
    MLH
    @MLH

    Richard Finlay (View Comment):

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):
    You’re using your fingers as binary digits. So your fingers are either on or off, one or zero. You can count to one with your first finger, but to get to the number 2 by counting, you’re going to need the second finger, just like you need two digits for the number 10 in base 10; even though there are ten possible values in a single digit, it takes two digits to express the number 10. Back to binary and it’s three fingers for the number 4, four fingers for the number 8; continue that across all your fingers and you’ll find you need all ten fingers to get to 512, as 1000000000. Fill in all the rest of those digits with ones and it’s only 1023.

    Now I get it. Picture me counting to 8. ?

    Or 136, for emphasis.

    Is one of those this:
      3-D loser?

    • #131
  12. MLH Inactive
    MLH
    @MLH

    Guess not.

    • #132
  13. Chuck Enfield Inactive
    Chuck Enfield
    @ChuckEnfield

    Looks like we killed this thread.  Sorry Hank.

    • #133
  14. MLH Inactive
    MLH
    @MLH

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):
    Looks like we killed this thread. Sorry Hank.

    yep. now we don’t even need an abacus let alone wifi enabled toasters

    • #134
  15. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    I’ll restart it.  For those of you talking about buying only non-wifi enabled appliances, that’s fine for as long as you can buy them.  Sure, that’s not an issue with toasters right now, but for those of you who still play DVDs, try to find a player that isn’t enabled for an Internet connection.  They don’t exist anymore.

    I expect the same will happen with any appliance where they decide it’s useful.

    • #135
  16. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):

    Matt Balzer (View Comment):
    Unless you’ve got a four-slice toaster, in which case up to 7.

    Would it be pedantic to point out that 4 bits will get you to 15?

    But if you have one of those toasters that can fit four slices in two slots does that constitute fuzzy logic?

    What would be pedantic would be pointing out that 4 bits is 50 cents.

    • #136
  17. Chuck Enfield Inactive
    Chuck Enfield
    @ChuckEnfield

    Modern video game consoles are powerful computers which manufacturers make only perfunctory efforts to secure.

    • #137
  18. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Judge Mental (View Comment):
    So your fingers are either on or off,

    I’m in favor of on.

    • #138
  19. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    Hank Rhody (View Comment):

    skipsul (View Comment):
    I had to replace my washer recently – the new one (an LG model) came with WiFi, there’s a smartphone app you can use to load it with your own customized wash cycles! I’m not going to bother.

    From what I’ve heard from the many fine ladies of Ricochet (very few of whom I suspect to be rogue sex-bots), the deficiency in a lot of modern washing machines is their unwillingness to use much water. Do your custom wash cycles allow you to add enough water? Cause that could be useful.

    Dunno, we’ve not used that feature.

    • #139
  20. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    DrewInWisconsin (View Comment):

    Aaron Miller (View Comment):

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):
    It’s extremely hard to protect against targeted denial of service attacks

    How hard is it to trace to hacker(s) of such attacks? Very time and labor intensive?

    If they can’t be stopped in action, maybe they can be deterred by certain and swift penalties.

    And marmalade.

    Raspberry

    • #140
  21. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    Judge Mental (View Comment):
    I’ll restart it. For those of you talking about buying only non-wifi enabled appliances, that’s fine for as long as you can buy them. Sure, that’s not an issue with toasters right now, but for those of you who still play DVDs, try to find a player that isn’t enabled for an Internet connection. They don’t exit anymore.

    I expect the same will happen with any appliance where they decide it’s useful.

    You can find them but they’re usually off-brands like Coby, and also they’re usually junk.

    • #141
  22. Matt Balzer Member
    Matt Balzer
    @MattBalzer

    Richard Finlay (View Comment):

    Richard Finlay (View Comment):
    One of the great things about computers is their ability to express themselves in decimal. Starman Jones was wrong.

    Unless, I suppose, the Astrogators Guild restricted computer development to preserve their perquisites.

    That’s sort of how they did it in Dune. Although there it was because of the AI taking over.

    • #142
  23. Matt Balzer Member
    Matt Balzer
    @MattBalzer

    Hank Rhody (View Comment):

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):
    My thinking is that people don’t count to zero. If you have 2^10 apples, you’ve got 1024 apples, not 1023. Is that wrong?

    I can represent zero with two fists. I can’t represent the 1024 place because I run out of fingers at the 512 place. The best I can do is jazz hands, with all fingers extended, to get to 1023.

    I considered that you might start counting at one, and therefore closed fists would be 1024, but I quickly discarded it.

    • #143
  24. Chuck Enfield Inactive
    Chuck Enfield
    @ChuckEnfield

    Matt Balzer (View Comment):

    Hank Rhody (View Comment):

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):
    My thinking is that people don’t count to zero. If you have 2^10 apples, you’ve got 1024 apples, not 1023. Is that wrong?

    I can represent zero with two fists. I can’t represent the 1024 place because I run out of fingers at the 512 place. The best I can do is jazz hands, with all fingers extended, to get to 1023.

    I considered that you might start counting at one, and therefore closed fists would be 1024, but I quickly discarded it.

    Yeah, I was wrong for sure.  I eventually realized the source of my confusion.  The fact that we have 10 fingers is mere happenstance, but I gave it significance and confused base 10 and base 1. That led me to look for comparable phenomenon in base 2, which, of course, don’t exist.

    • #144
  25. Hank Rhody Contributor
    Hank Rhody
    @HankRhody

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):
    Looks like we killed this thread. Sorry Hank.

    Right, because I’m not making binary jokes in the thick of it too. To borrow one from @samrhody

    There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand hexadecimal and F the rest.

    • #145
  26. Hank Rhody Contributor
    Hank Rhody
    @HankRhody

    skipsul (View Comment):
    Raspberry

    You know I had to have been 30 before I caught the double meaning on raspberry there?

    • #146
  27. Hank Rhody Contributor
    Hank Rhody
    @HankRhody

    skipsul (View Comment):

    Do your custom wash cycles allow you to add enough water? Cause that could be useful.

    Dunno, we’ve not used that feature.

    Which is fair. I’ve only got so much time to worry about my washing machine.

    • #147
  28. Hank Rhody Contributor
    Hank Rhody
    @HankRhody

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):
    So your fingers are either on or off,

    I’m in favor of on.

    Spoken like an experienced woodworker.

    • #148
  29. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    Hank Rhody (View Comment):

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):
    So your fingers are either on or off,

    I’m in favor of on.

    Spoken like an experienced woodworker.

    • #149
  30. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    skipsul (View Comment):
    Spoken like an experienced woodworker.

    You only support one end of the wood.

    • #150
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