The Internet of Things is continuing to grow in popularity, providing consumers with many great options. Marketers are making lots of money promoting these things, and taking advantage of the added web traffic. According to security researchers, however, the security related to them is quite low, and may have just gotten worse.
There is a list of more than 1700 different IoT devices and their passwords, which gives hackers the ability to easily take them over and control them remotely. Most consumers fear this type of thing for web cameras or other devices with the ability to either send video or audio, but that is hardly the most common use by hackers.
Instead, these devices are being infected with malware that allows the hackers to use the devices for DDoS attacks and other malicious activities. Since most consumers will never change the default passwords on their IoT devices, these 1700 ID/Password combinations could result in a huge number of infected devices over time.
This type of thing can hurt the trust that consumers have in web-enabled devices, which can impact all marketers. When hackers have the ability to easily create large scale DDoS attacks, it also puts the web properties of all marketers at risk.
