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Things get crazier once you have one compromised hole-punched device that is behind your NAT/firewall too. You can end up in a situation where you have a local
by psybin 10y ago
Things get crazier once you have one compromised hole-punched device that is behind your NAT/firewall too. You can end up in a situation where you have a local C2 server on your light bulb, controlling a sub-botnet of your fridge, washing machine, and wifi controlled doorbell. It's not unreasonable to think that this could compromise orders of magnitude more devices than the original botnet itself, considering how many things are just saved by their interface not being routable or accessible from the wider internet.
Something I've wondered is how much of an impact large botnets have on other systems they rely on. If you had a million compromised CPUs in a small geographic area suddenly jump from a low power state into doing a massive amount of work, could it cause localized brown outs? Some napkin math says probably not, but it's not something I've heard considered much before.
- kevingadd 10y agoIt's certainly plausible: http://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/tea-time-in-britain-causes-predictable-massive-surge-in-electricity-demand-1535023/ http://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/tea-time-in-britain-causes-p...
- stordoff 10y agoA kettle can draw 1500W+, so you'll need a lot of devices (or Internet connected kettles...) to cause a similar effect.
- akiselev 10y agoA few hundred megawatts is well within the amount of power peaker plants can produce and the vast majority are idle >> 90% of the time. You'd need millions of air conditioners to cause a brownout. Most states fine utilities heavily for any disruption of service (to the tune of $10s or 100s of millions per company per incident) in exchange for a govt granted monopoly so they all have extensive capacity built out, capable of providing for huge extended spikes in consumption.
- inferiorhuman 10y agoWhat about other countries?