Stephen Herwig (University of Maryland), Katura Harvey (University of Maryland, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS)), George Hughey (University of Maryland), Richard Roberts (University of Maryland, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS)), Dave Levin (University of Maryland)

The Internet of Things (IoT) introduces an unprecedented diversity and ubiquity to networked computing. It also introduces new attack surfaces that are a boon to attackers. The recent Mirai botnet showed the potential and power of a collection of compromised IoT devices. A new botnet, known as Hajime, targets many of the same devices as Mirai, but differs considerably in its design and operation. Hajime uses a public peer-to-peer system as its command and control infrastructure, and regularly introduces new exploits, thereby increasing its resilience.

We show that Hajime’s distributed design makes it a valuable tool for better understanding IoT botnets. For instance, Hajime cleanly separates its bots into different peer groups depending on their underlying hardware architecture. Through detailed measurement—active scanning of Hajime’s peer-to-peer infrastructure and passive, longitudinal collection of root DNS backscatter traffic—we show that Hajime can be used as a lens into how IoT botnets operate, what kinds of devices they compromise, and what countries are more (or less) susceptible. Our results show that there are more compromised IoT devices than previously reported; that these devices use an assortment of CPU architectures, the popularity of which varies widely by country; that churn is high among IoT devices; and that new exploits can quickly and drastically increase the size and power of IoT botnets. Our code and data are available to assist future efforts to measure and mitigate the growing threat of IoT botnets.

View More Papers

Giving State to the Stateless: Augmenting Trustworthy Computation with...

Gabriel Kaptchuk (Johns Hopkins University), Matthew Green (Johns Hopkins University), Ian Miers (Cornell Tech)

Read More

The Crux of Voice (In)Security: A Brain Study of...

Ajaya Neupane (University of California Riverside), Nitesh Saxena (University of Alabama at Birmingham), Leanne Hirshfield (Syracuse University), Sarah Elaine Bratt (Syracuse University)

Read More

IoTGuard: Dynamic Enforcement of Security and Safety Policy in...

Z. Berkay Celik (Penn State University), Gang Tan (Penn State University), Patrick McDaniel (Penn State University)

Read More

BadBluetooth: Breaking Android Security Mechanisms via Malicious Bluetooth Peripherals

Fenghao Xu (The Chinese University of Hong Kong), Wenrui Diao (Jinan University), Zhou Li (University of California, Irvine), Jiongyi Chen (The Chinese University of Hong Kong), Kehuan Zhang (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Read More