Finding 1: In 2019, over 30 types of IoT vulnerability exploits were captured, most of which targeted remote command execution vulnerabilities. Though hundreds of to thousands of IoT vulnerabilities are unveiled each year, only a few can exert an extensive impact. Attackers were keen on targeting devices (routers and video surveillance devices) exposed in large quantities, in a bid to broaden their influence.

Finding 2: IoT devices, especially cameras and routers, were major targets of Telnet weak password cracking attacks.

Finding 3: Since security researchers from Baidu disclosed that the Web Services Dynamic Discovery (WSD) protocol could be exploited for DDoS reflection attacks, there has been a notable increase in reflection attack events based on this protocol in the latter half of 2019. Since mid-August, WSD reflection attacks captured by us have been on the rise. Worse still, September has witnessed a sharp increase in such attacks. All parties concerned, including security vendors, service providers, and telecom carriers, should pay due attention to this type of threats.

Finding 4: Approximately 2.28 million IoT devices (port 1900) worldwide had the UPnP/SSDP service publicly accessible and were thus at risk of being exploited to launch DDoS attacks, an decrease of 22% from 2018.The UPnP port mapping service, exposed on about 390,000 IoT devices, was likely to be abused as a proxy or render intranet services accessible on the extranet.

Malware Threats from Mobile Platforms

Nowadays, smartphones are ubiquitous. Android, as a widely used mobile operating system, is vulnerable to an increasing large number of malware families owing to its openness and privilege issues. Such malware can even be spread via legal channels, including Google Store.