Researchers are warning that a new class of botnets could be marshaled and used to manipulate energy markets via zombie armies of power-hungry connected devices such as air conditioners, heaters, dryers and digital thermostats. A coordinated attack could cause an energy stock index to predictably go up or down – creating an opportunity for a rogue operator to cash in.
Researchers with the Georgia Institute of Technology laid out the scenario in a Black Hat 2020 virtual session Wednesday. They warned, high-wattage IoT devices are vulnerable to takeover by threat actors who can hijack them in the same way that millions of CCTV cameras, DVRs and home routers are recruited into botnet armies to conduct distributed denial-of-service attacks and mine cryptocurrency.
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Source: ThreatPost