A security expert who hooked up an Internet-connected surveillance camera for research purposes reported via Twitter on Friday that the device was compromised by IoT malware after just 98 seconds of being online.
According to Robert Graham, owner of consulting company Errata Security, the Wi-Fi camera – from JideTech – was infected by a malicious program similar in nature to the Mirai IoT botnet malware, which since September has been used to launch DDoS attacks against multiple targets, including the Domain Name System service provider Dyn.
To limit the damage of any possible infection, Graham leveraged a Raspberry Pi as router and firewall to isolate the camera from his home network, and also limited outgoing traffic before activating the device. According to Graham, after the initial stage of infection, the malware connected out to download the full virus, and then began firing off malicious packets in hopes of victimizing additional device-owners.
