Four U.S. Senators have introduced a bipartisan bill aimed at improving the baseline security for all IoT devices bought and used by the U.S. government.
The bill is being called The Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act and its goal is to ensure that IoT products can be patched, do not include hard-coded passwords that cannot be changed, and most importantly, are free of known security vulnerabilities, amongst other requirements laid out in the bill.
The massive Mirai attack that occurred last year which knocked off some of the biggest sites on the web for a brief time was made possible because the malware simply scanned for the default logins that many IoT devices ship with.
Additionally, this new bill would require all government agencies to take inventory of all smart devices that are in use.
From mainstream computing platforms like PCs, tablets, and smartphones, to more complex IoT devices like TVs, heart monitors, and industrial control systems, the IoT threat landscape is far spread. Both the internet-enablement of more devices, combined with the increased adoption of more function-rich application runtimes/environments, including full operating systems, has rendered these things more vulnerable to misuse.
NNT suggests scanning regularly for network connected devices and identifying what these 'things' are. In any Device Hardening program, changing the default username and password is step number one. Disabling UPnP services where possible and firewalling where not should also be done immediately.
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