OMG is not us being all trendy using such a "cute" acronym, but it is indeed the name of a dangerous threat that has surfaced recently. Our researchers say that this malware infection is the new version of Mirai malware. It is capable of attacking all kinds of IoT (Internet of Things) devices and turn them into proxy servers, which can be used by cyber villains to perform all kinds of malicious activities. IoT devices are the network of physical devices, vehicles, and home appliances that can exchange data among themselves and connect to each other.
Several versions built on Mirai malware have been appearing since October 2016, when its source code was leaked. For example, in 2017, a version of Mirai botnet surfaced under the name of Satori, which exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Huawei routers. And we could go on, but let us focus now on this new dangerous threat. The only possible way for you to protect your devices is to have a strong up-to-date firewall and anti-malware application (where possible) to protect the ones that can be. Before giving you more tips to safeguard your IoTs, we would like to tell you in more detail what we have found out about OMG.
As we have mentioned, this new malware infection is built on the well-known Mirai malware. In fact, it seems to be the first version that can turn IoT devices into proxy servers as well as perform distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. According to our research, though, the latter functionality will only be exploited in the future. This attack and its authors have one main goal: To sell the access to the compromised IoT devices to cyber crooks after creating the botnet. Once a cyber criminal gains access to such a proxy server, he can perform all kinds of malicious actions and attacks as well being all anonymous at the same time. This makes OMG malware extremely dangerous against which you need to do all you can to protect yourself and your devices as well.
"With this development, we believe that more and more Mirai-based bots are going to emerge with new ways of monetization" said Fortinet researchers, Jasper Manuel, Rommel Joven, and Dario Durando whose team uncovered this new threat in the first place. Remember that IoT devices include all kinds of smart devices, such as smart door locks, smart bluetooth trackers, smart bike locks, smart thermostat, smart kitchen appliances as well as your web camera, security cameras, routers, and so on. This new malware infection uses 3proxy, which is an open-source application, to serve as its proxy server. This is how it can exploit the network of these IoT devices.
The emergence of this new variant can indicate serious future attacks built on this malware because it means a new way to make money and more powerful cyber attacks by hackers. This is why we recommend that you make sure that all your smart and all other devices be secured with a firewall, impossible-to-crack passwords, and whatever you can use to protect your privacy. Although it seems beneficial and high-tech to have and use such smart devices that are supposed to make our lives easier and more comfortable, as you can see, it is not without risks. Of course, we proper safety measures and policies you can make the best out of the new technology.