In a new report from Nokia, the number of infected IoT devices has doubled in the past year. The Nokia Threat Intelligence Report says that IoT devices made up 16% of all infected machines last year. The figure seems to have jumped to 33%.
The findings are based on data aggregated from monitoring network traffic on over 150 million devices worldwide.
Nokia anticipates that the number of IoT devices will grow, especially after 5G becomes widespread. The by-product of the growth is that the number of infected devices will grow at a fast pace.
Hackers are more sophisticated than ever
The company says that the infection rate depends on the device’s visibility on the internet. With a public-facing IP address, the chances of attack increase. This is because hackers have created automated tools that scan the internet looking for devices they can attack.
Nokia’s Software President and Chief Digital Officer, Bhaskar Goti, says that the growth of 5G and an increasing number of IoT devices is what criminals are using to spread their malware everywhere.
To deal with this problem, enterprises and consumers need to know the risks. Hackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, making it very hard to catch them or prevent some of their attacks.
IoT makers need to step up their game
As one of the remedies, the report says that carrier-grade Network Address Translation. These networks stop scanning and have a much lower infection rate. If all the IoT devices had such addresses, they might stand a chance against hackers’ most effective methods.
To deal with this, most of the concerned people who are most likely to suffer in an attack need to be aware that the risks keep changing and come up with defenses every time. IoT makers should also ensure that they make products with great security features.
15 hours ago
