{"id":8117,"date":"2024-09-19T15:32:16","date_gmt":"2024-09-19T15:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/19\/uk-and-allies-issue-cyber-attack-warning-over-china-backed-botnet-of-260000-compromised-devices\/"},"modified":"2024-09-19T15:32:16","modified_gmt":"2024-09-19T15:32:16","slug":"uk-and-allies-issue-cyber-attack-warning-over-china-backed-botnet-of-260000-compromised-devices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/19\/uk-and-allies-issue-cyber-attack-warning-over-china-backed-botnet-of-260000-compromised-devices\/","title":{"rendered":"UK and allies issue cyber attack warning over China-backed \u2018botnet\u2019 of 260,000 compromised devices"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK and its Five Eyes allies have issued a cyber attack warning over a China-backed “botnet” of more than 260,000 compromised devices.<\/p>\n

Businesses have been urged by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and its allies in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to protect their devices from possible attacks.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

It says a company based in China, with links to the country’s government, has created and wields a botnet of more than 260,000 compromised devices around the globe.<\/p>\n

Botnets are large networks of internet-connected devices that have been infected with malware.<\/p>\n

As a result, they can be controlled by the group and used to carry out malicious attacks without the owners’ knowledge.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Most commonly, they are used to carry out distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which flood a website with traffic with the aim of knocking it offline.<\/p>\n

But they can also be used to deliver malware.<\/p>\n

Compromised devices can include routers, webcams, and CCTV cameras – among other internet-connected devices.<\/p>\n

Around half of the company’s devices, 126,000, were said to be in the US, with around 8,500 “nodes” in the UK.<\/p>\n

Firms were urged to check if the security of their devices was adequate, noting that this botnet poses a particular threat to older equipment and devices whose security is not up to date.<\/p>\n

Paul Chichester, NCSC director of operations, said: “Botnet operations represent a significant threat to the UK by exploiting vulnerabilities in everyday internet-connected devices with the potential to carry out large-scale cyber attacks.<\/p>\n

“Whilst the majority of botnets are used to conduct coordinated DDoS attacks, we know that some also have the ability to steal sensitive information.”<\/p>\n

He added: “That’s why the NCSC, along with our partners in Five Eyes countries, is strongly encouraging organisations and individuals to act on the guidance set out in this advisory<\/strong>, which includes applying updates to internet-connected devices, to help prevent their devices from joining a botnet.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UK and its Five Eyes allies have issued a cyber attack warning over a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8118,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}