SMB, IoT Attacks Rapidly Increasing, while Mirai Malware Dominates

Hackers are launching cyberattacks against SMB ports and IoT devices at a record pace, with the US facing the greatest number of hacking attempts, according to a recent report from F-Secure. F-Secure researchers set up a network of honeypots – decoy servers set up around the globe – to get a pulse of the current threat landscape. The report found these attempts have tripled in the past year: The honeypots measured a total of 2.9 billion events. It’s the first time the report showed more than 1 billion attacks. Of those attacks, 2.1 billion were on the TCP ports, primarily used on IoT devices. Mirai malware, which proliferated in 2018, is continuing to highly target these devices. What’s more, the US saw the greatest number of attacks.