The current problem can be solved by putting new passwords on your toys. I hope you know how to do that, because I do not.
Motherboard.vice.com has some advice about buying Bullguards's loT scanner to see if your device is on the internet. YOU NEED TO CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD ON EVERY PRODUCT THAT HAS AN INTERNET CONNECTION.
Hangzhou XiongMai has admitted that their cameras and DVRs were used in the latest attack on the internet. They have changed their programming but you have to change your password.
This time the disruption was not very serious. But it only used about one third of the power of the bot net. Lots of hackers can make a bot net, as the programming to do this was posted on the internet.
I have been warning about these problems for a long time.
You need to make certain that all your devices with internet connection have a new password.
MY NIGHTMARE is that that may not be enough, that there will still be a way to make your toys into a group that can destroy the internet as we know it.
This could disrupt banking, the government, our phones. Everything you now do on the internet could be gone in a eyeblink.
Why can people buy toys that can kill one of the world's greatest assets? Maybe we need international regulations that say you can NOT sell one of these toys unless it is programmed to refuse to function until the password is changed.
* Bot nets are used by hackers to do denial of service attacks. Think of it like everybody in an entire city making a phone call at the same time, to the same phone number. Even if there are A LOT of phones answering the same number, eventually the phone becomes so overwhelmed that everyone gets a busy signal. It is very easy to get your toys to go onto the internet asking for one service, as this is what the toy is designed to do. Instead of you telling your toy what to do, the bot net is telling your toy what to do.
This means that people can take over your nanny cam, which makes your child vulnerable.
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