Turning Internet of Things(Iot) Into Internet of Vulnerabilities (Iov) : Iot Botnets
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TURNING IOT INTO IOV : IOT BOTNETS 1 Turning Internet of Things(IoT) into Internet of Vulnerabilities (IoV) : IoT Botnets Kishore Angrishi Abstract—Internet of Things (IoT) is the next big evolutionary step in the world of internet. The main intention behind the IoT is to enable safer living and risk mitigation on different levels of life. Home Automation / With the advent of IoT botnets, the view towards IoT devices Smart Home has changed from enabler of enhanced living into Internet of vulnerabilities for cyber criminals. IoT botnets has exposed two Industrial Control Systems different glaring issues, 1) A large number of IoT devices are Smart City accessible over public Internet. 2) Security (if considered at all) is often an afterthought in the architecture of many wide spread Internet of Things (IoT) IoT devices. In this article, we briefly outline the anatomy of Autonomous the IoT botnets and their basic mode of operations. Some of the Vehicles Medical and healthcare major DDoS incidents using IoT botnets in recent times along Smart traffic & parking with the corresponding exploited vulnerabilities will be discussed. control We also provide remedies and recommendations to mitigate IoT Smart Metering & related cyber risks and briefly illustrate the importance of cyber Smart Grids insurance in the modern connected world. Index Terms—DDoS, IoT, IoT Botnets, Mirai Botnet, Cyber Insurance, Security I. INTRODUCTION Fig. 1. Internet of Things (IoT) The Internet of Things (IoT) is key in the digital world of connected living. The futuristic appeal to make life bit more enjoyable in a hectic day-to-day routine is enticing to many. For example, the idea of refrigerators monitoring their contents and send orders directly to the retailers when the milk is run- ning out or ordering Sunday morning bread from your bed with a voice or gesture command to an intelligent assistants like Amazon Alexa or Apple Siri or Google Assistant is appealing. With the advent of smart phones, smart television, and more smart devices like Amazon echo with Alexa or Google Home, most of the ideas stated above are not part of some science fiction dream anymore but rather becoming a reality right now. The IoT devices have a wide range of applications (see Fig: arXiv:1702.03681v1 [cs.NI] 13 Feb 2017 1) especially in home automation (smart home), healthcare, smart energy solutions, autonomous connected vehicles and extremely complicated industrial control systems. According to a study [1] we have now (2016) have 9 billion smart Fig. 2. The worth of IoT by 2025 devices (excluding smart phones, tablets and computers) and is anticipated to grow to 28.1 billion by 2020. By 2025, the value of the internet of things will be trillions annually (see a smart phone can be seen as a computer that makes phone Fig: 2) [2]. calls or a refrigerator is a computer that keeps things cold. It is important to understand that these smart devices cannot These specialized computers are often run by powerful micro- be seen as specialized devices with intelligence built-in but processors just as much as desktop, laptop or tablet computers rather as computers which does specialized jobs. For examples, and are well connected with each other, either inside a private network or over the public Internet. The crucial distinction Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his with these specialized computers is that, IoT devices are often private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Munich RE, or any other entity of the Munich RE Group designed with poor security or even none at all. Internet is K. Angrishi is with Munich RE, Königinstrasse 107, 80802 Munich e-mail: already very complex to secure, with additional 9+ billion [email protected]. insecure IoT devices, the task has become more difficult. In The author like to thank Jo Müller, Carsten Topsch, Sebastian Wolf and Wilhelm Reeb for their time and feedback in both initiation into work on IoT the next section, a brief introduction of simplified Internet is and in the preparation of this contribution given to understand the vulnerabilities used by IoT botnets to TURNING IOT INTO IOV : IOT BOTNETS 2 launch attacks on clueless victims in Internet. FTP &HTTP CDN Service Node II. INTRODUCTION TO SIMPLIFIED INTERNET CDN Cache DHCP Server DSL Modem Internet is the network of networks. It can be broadly divided into two parts, namely, access network and core DSL Modem network. There are arrays of technologies involved in enabling ISP 2 the normal functioning of both access and core networks. BRAS ISP 1 DSL Modem Since IoT devices are mostly end customer devices deployed Router DSLAM/ at edge of access networks and IoT botnets often exploit the MSAN ISP 3 vulnerabilities present at the interface between access networks Edge Router DSL Modem and core network, we limit our discussion on internet to access networks especially digital subscriber line (DSL) access AAA TR Ͳ069 DNS & Server ACS NTP server network (see Figure 3) along with the TCP/IP protocol suite. DSL Modem The first entity on the DSL access network is DSL modem DSL Access Network Core Network located at the customer premises. DSL modem can terminate ADSL, SHDSL, VDSL circuits and provide LAN interface Fig. 3. The DSL access network together with core network of ISPs to end devices at private or commercial premises. Now-a- days, most DSL modems are integrated into the home routers. BRAS is technically the first IP hop from the client to the Thereby, the clear demarcation of local area network (home internet. BRAS is connected to Internet router of the ISP to network) and the infrastructure of the Internet Service Provider route the user traffic into the Internet. Data traffic from one ISP (ISP) is no more possible. DSL modem is connected to a is forwarded to the infrastructure of another ISP through their digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) port in respective edge routers. The main functionality of Internet is telephone exchange using telephone company wires. DSLAM to be used by users to transfer data from end devices over converts analog electrical signals from subscriber local loop to a medium (wired or wireless) through the infrastructure of digital data traffic (upstream traffic for data upload) and digital an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to either other user’s end data traffic to analog electrical signals to subscriber local loop devices or to servers of service providers. The end user will (downstream for data download). The traffic from DSLAM is need the IP address of the destination to transfer the data routed to and from a broadband remote access server (BRAS) through the Internet, this information can be obtained by sitting at the edge of an ISP’s core network, and aggregates making a domain name look-up using the services of DNS user sessions from the access network. BRAS has following server of the ISP to obtain the IP address. The DNS server specific tasks of ISP, if the requested domain name is not found locally, 1) Provides layer 2 connectivity through transparent bridg- would recursively querying the authoritative DNS hierarchy. ing or Point to Point Protocol sessions over Ethernet To illustrate the working of DNS, let’s imagine a user wants (PPPoE) or ATM sessions. A BRAS can terminate upto to visit the website "www.amazon.com". The web browser first 50000 PPPoE sessions. looks in its own cache for the IP address of the domain name 2) Inject policy management and Quality of Service (QoS). "www.amazon.com", if no entry is found, the web browser 3) Provides layer 3 connectivity and routes IP traffic will ask the operating system (OS). If OS doesn’t have the through the Internet Service Provider (ISP) backbone entry, OS will perform the DNS query to DNS servers of infrastructure to the Internet. ISP. The DNS servers of ISP are mostly configured to provide 4) Responsible for assigning network parameters such as IP recursive DNS look-up. This means, the ISP’s DNS server addresses to the clients. BRAS is connected to following will quest the "root" name server to find out which name major necessary servers to assign network parameters to servers are authoritative (in simple terms responsible) for the DSL modem: the ".com" domain. Once the information is available, ISP’s • Authentication, authorization and accounting sys- DNS sever will send a query to those name servers asking tems of ISP them about the authoritative name server for "amazon.com" • Auto Configuration Server (ACS) to perform remote domain and then a final query to those name servers asking management of the DSL modems at the customer for the address of "www.amazon.com". The servers which premises. answer for "www.amazon.com" and resolve the domain name • Domain Name System (DNS) server of ISP to to an IP address are called authoritative DNS servers. These translate the domain name address to IP address authoritative DNS servers can be either company’s private to enable the users to transfer data over the IP DNS server or a company hires a DNS service provider like networks. Dyn to have managed DNS service. The figure 4 illustrates • Network Time Protocol (NTP) server to provide the working of recursive DNS query processing without the timing information to DSL modems. consideration of DNS caching, web-browser caching or OS • Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) caching. server to lease unique public IP address to each DSL The another important component of Internet is Content modems. Delivery Networks (CDN). CDN operators like Akamai host TURNING IOT INTO IOV : IOT BOTNETS 3 Root DNS Server Sender Receiver Application Application Software Software 2 DNS Query „www.amazon.com“ Application 3 Data Data ISP‘s Ask „.com“ server Layer Recursive DNS Top Ͳlevel Domain Client Laptop Server DNS Server „.com“ UDP UDP Transport UDP UDP DNS Query Header Data Layer Header Data 1 DNS Query 4 „www.amazon.com“ „www.amazon.com“ IP Internet IP Header IP Data Layer Header IP Data 5 Ask Dyn DNS 8 „216.58.211.36“ Frame Frame Frame Frame Link Header Frame Data Footer Header Frame Data Footer 6 DNS Query „www.amazon.com“ Authoritative 7 Response „216.58.211.36“ Fig.