Information Security: Analysis of Mirai Botnet Malware Attack on Edimax Cameras

INFORMATION SECURITY 1
INFORMATION SECURITY
By (Student Name)
Course Name
Professor Name
University Affiliation
City
Date

INFORMATION SECURITY 2
Table of Contents
Task 1: Pretty Good Privacy............................................................................................................3
Task 2: Critical thinking..................................................................................................................3
Analysis of the Business Case.........................................................................................................3
Summary of the case study..........................................................................................................3
Solution against the attacks.............................................................................................................5
Critical Review of the Journal.........................................................................................................7
Summary of the paper..................................................................................................................7
Information security.........................................................................................................................8
Data fraud and intrusion of privacy.................................................................................................8
Text coding .....................................................................................................8
Cyber security..................................................................................................................................9
Cloud computing...........................................................................................................................10
Mitigation of data security risks....................................................................................................11
Bibliography..................................................................................................................................13

INFORMATION SECURITY 3
Task 1: Pretty Good Privacy
EnCt21771efe0563dd16919618e2e21fc8dcc2ba4965e1771efe0563dd16919618e2elezuT=h03w
A
6BBwIt1vA/HdsWSFAm5e7UdDRxjgmq6/sd2enDm4FUNzHXfZlz6kuSQ==IwEmS
Task 2: Critical thinking
Field Selection
Internet of Things
Finding a Case Study
Our case study is the Edimax cameras which were infected by a malware known as Mirai Botnet
in late 2016.
Analysis of the Business Case
Summary of the case study
This business case involves Edison cameras that were primarily affected by the Mirai
malware. The cameras were affected as the attackers used them. This made it possible for the
attackers to use the cameras for DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.
Identification of the security breaches that occurred
The Marai botnet malware infected the Edimax cameras and they were greatly affected.
Mirai malware exploits the security of many devices of the Internet of Things that is weak. Its
operations are through scanning the devices of the internet of things devices in a continuous way
(Strba, 2018:33). These devices are those that can be accessed through the internet and which get
protection from factory default or usernames that are hardcoded as well as passwords.

INFORMATION SECURITY 4
The default usernames of the Internet of things devices, as well as their passwords, are
generally not changed. This is the same case with the Edison cameras (Ling et al. 2018: 123).
The Mirai botnet malware infects these devices forcing them to do their reporting to the server
that is controlled centrally. This turns them into a bot that can be used in enhancing DDoS
attacks.
The main vulnerability that was found by the hackers who developed Mirai malware was
that cameras are devices of the Internet of Things that can be operated and fully controlled by
anyone. This are cameras that underlie operating system especially Linux through the typing of
a username that is random but which contains very many characters(Kennefick, 2017: 111).
Since the passwords of the cameras are not normally changed, the Mirai malware capitalized on
this by infecting them and taking full control of them. The main security breach that the cameras
were exposed to is one of them being able to be controlled by anyone.
Following this vulnerability, the Mirai malware infected the cameras and turned them
into bots. This facilitated them to be used for DDoS attacks(Gupta et al. 2017:411). They were
also in campaigns of extortion through the use of ransomware. The Mirai Malware mainly
targeted the devices that were using the Linux operating system.
Therefore, the cameras were affected greatly because of the poor security procedures in
these devices. The attackers are able to pre-program their worm with default passwords and
those passwords that are used commonly (Guez, 2017: 61). The limitations of power processing
as well as operating systems imply that there is a lack of security features that are advanced in
many devices of Iota.