{"id":81522,"date":"2017-10-24T10:43:09","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T17:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/securingtomorrow.mcafee.com\/?p=81522"},"modified":"2025-08-31T19:34:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T02:34:56","slug":"iot_reaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mcafee.com\/blogs\/internet-security\/iot_reaper\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet IoT_reaper: The New Malware Building a Massive Botnet Army"},"content":{"rendered":"

WannaCry<\/a>, Petya<\/a>, the Dyn distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack<\/a> \u2013 all now infamous cyberattacks that have defined the modern threat landscape. The latter, which was orchestrated by Mirai malware<\/a> and took the entire East Coast offline, occurred exactly a year ago, so naturally a successor has emerged<\/a>. Named IoT_reaper, the new malware doesn\u2019t necessarily depend on cracking weak passwords like Mirai did, but rather exploits vulnerabilities in various Internet of Things (IoT) devices and enslaves them into a botnet army.<\/p>\n

IoT_reaper leverages<\/a> a total of nine vulnerabilities, to be exact. These vulnerabilities were previously disclosed in a plethora of routers and cameras that come from popular manufacturers that produce millions of devices each year. Which means there\u2019s potential for a DDoS attack<\/a> of massive proportions. In fact, researchers believe IoT_reaper is already halfway there, and has infected nearly two million devices so far. Plus, the army is growing at a mind-boggling rate of 10,000 new devices per day. For reference, it took only\u00a0100,000 infected devices\u00a0for Mirai to flood the internet with traffic and take down\u00a0DNS provider Dyn\u00a0last year.<\/p>\n

Tips to Improve Your Security<\/h2>\n

Clearly, it\u2019s crucial users start thinking now about how they can prevent their IoT devices from becoming enslaved into IoT_reaper\u2019s botnet army. To do just that, follow these tips:<\/p>\n