There have been two massive hack attacks in the past week. They are both known as DDOS or Distributed Denial of Service attacks. It involves tens of thousands of devices flooding a network or device with bogus requests in order to overwhelm it. These two attacks were notable due to one thing: they both were conducted by hacked Internet of Things (IoT) devices like cameras, DVR’s and routers. Here is how to secure your devices and prevent them from becoming part of a hacked device set:
Passwords
Change the password for every single device on the network. Make sure not to use any default passwords. Millions of devices on the internet still have the default admin username and password set.
Access
Some devices like cameras use something called UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) to talk to your router and get direct access from the internet. Find this setting and disable it. Only allow access from outside if it is necessary. Whenever possible use a vendor’s system to access the device. For example, video cameras come with a method of access through the vendor app. These tend to be more secure than connecting to the camera directly.
Restart
One useful bit of information that came out was that a lot of these hacks only work until the device is restarted. Have you noticed slower than usual internet access? Restart your router and any other devices. Make a practice to do this regularly.