The recent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Internet service provider Dyn highlighted the security shortcomings of the Internet of Things (IoT). However, the hackers’ real target was the domain name service (DNS), whose weaknesses made such an attack possible.
Furthermore, leveraging the IoT to mount DDoS attacks against DNS only scratches the surface of this crisis. Hackers actually leverage weaknesses in DNS to build the botnets of compromised IoT devices in the first place.
The challenges facing DNS don’t stop there, however. Because controlling DNS means controlling the Internet, the burgeoning nationalism of a Trump-led administration may take down the Internet as we know it, even before hackers can.
Using the IoT to target DNS
The original designers of DNS built the system to be simple, scalable, and resilient. Security, however, wasn’t top of mind in the Internet’s early days before the Web, when the network was largely an academic and military tool.
Read the entire article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2016/11/13/the-internet-of-things-dns-weaknesses-or-trump-which-will-sink-the-internet/.
Intellyx publishes the Agile Digital Transformation Roadmap poster, advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives, and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers.
