IoT Botnets Are Growing—and for Hire

The army of Internet-connected devices being corralled and controlled to take down online services is active, growing, and for hire. The rise of Internet of Things botnets—which commandeer devices like routers and digital video recorders to send debilitating surges of data—have been blamed for several recent Internet outages. Now, hackers are attempting to swell their ranks. The German telephone provider Deutsche Telekom has reported that nearly 1 million of its users suffered Internet outages as a result of a failed attempt to recruit the company’s routers to the growing army. Meanwhile, one pair of hackers has now started offering a huge botnet of 400,000 devices for hire. Believed to be the same system that took Liberia offline earlier this month, the hackers will offer up 50,000 devices to perform attacks in exchange for thousands of dollars. Motherboard claims that the total number of devices employed by IoT botnets could now be in excess of 500,000. This threat shows little sign of retreating.