Sen. Mark Warner probes Friday’s crippling cyber attack

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and co-founder of the bipartisan Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, is asking three federal agencies for information on the tools available—and the additional tools which might be needed—to prevent cyber criminals from compromising consumer products, such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

The market for IoT products—such as connected refrigerators, smart thermostats, and Internet-enabled cameras—is growing exponentially. Weak security features in many of these products can enable access to user data by hackers, create easy entry points to home or work networks, and allow hackers to hijack devices into enormous botnets used to send crippling amounts of data to specific Internet sites and servers.

Botnets are frequently referred to as ‘zombie computers,’ and Sen. Warner said the metaphor is appropriate: bad actors infect unsuspecting computers and network devices with malware, sending remote commands to hordes of compromised computers to maliciously cripple parts of the Internet. Experts say that is what occurred on Friday, temporarily affecting Twitter, Netflix, PayPal and other popular sites.

“The weak security of many of the new connected consumer devices provides an attractive target for attackers, leveraging the bandwidth and processing power of millions of devices, many of them with few privacy or security measures, to swamp internet sites and servers with an overwhelming volume of traffic,” Sen. Warner said.  “I am interested in a range of expert opinions and meaningful action on new and improved tools to better protect American consumers, manufacturers, retailers, Internet sites and service providers.”