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The source code for a large IoT Mirai botnet components was published in early October 2016. It was known that there were mainly IoT devices in the botnet, including CCTV and DVR, almost 400,000 devices — extremely powerful botnet for DDoS attacks.

Screenshot of the forum Hackforums, where was published a message with links to the source code of the botnet

We saw at least two major attacks through Mirai botnet: Brian Krebs’ website was subjected to DDoS attack at speed of about 620 Gb/s; the French OVH hosting provider underwent an even more powerful DDoS attack of 1 Tb/s.

Botnet’s logic of spreading and devices’ infection indicates that digital cameras or IoT were not initially the target of its creators. They focused on finding connected to the Internet devices…

The 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center towers killed 658 employees of the Cantor Fitzgerald financial company. Its chief executive, Howard Lutnick, lost his brother that day and also ran into an unprecedented problem. The company’s servers, including the backup ones, were buried under the rubble, but it was not the case: the financial information was partially available but under the hundreds of deceased colleagues password-protected accounts. To hack those accounts Microsoft specialists were called for help, and they used their powerful servers for the fastest brute force: the data was the company's life or death question, and it had to be recovered before the first after the attacks trade opening. The personal data of the deceased colleagues could speed up hacking, so Lutnick had…

In 2016 the TeamsID company published its annual list of the top 25 most common passwords found on the web, using data leaks. So “password” for a personal password lost its leading position, slipping to the second place, and at the first place now is “123456”.

A list of frequently used passwords shows that many people still prefer to run a risk by using weak, easy-to-guess passwords. Most common passwords in the TOP-10 are “qwerty”, “football” and “login” keep their places for years.

Another interesting aspect of the last year's list, is that there are short numerical passwords, although site administrators are starting to implement strict password policies (minimum length, for example). Still, there are on the list simple and easy-to-guess passwords like “1234” at the…