Bitcoin news: Hackers could hijack your FRIDGE and force it to mine Bitcoin
GETTY Bitcoin news: Hackers could hijack smart home appliances and force them to mine Bitcoin
High-tech fridges, ovens and washing machines powered by computer processors and linked to home assistant devices and smart phones are all vulnerable to attack from cyber criminals, specialists from geopolitics consultancy Stratfor said. And, if hackers manage to hijack the software controlling them, they could use the appliance’s computing power to mine cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, then funnel off the proceeds into their own digital wallets. Giving a briefing on upcoming security threats for 2018, Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical analysis for Stratfor, said ‘smart homes’ with a number of connected applicances could be especially vulnerable. He said: “The concern is when you have a centralised home assistant device like a Google Home or an [Amazon] Alexa, that connects to many other devices, whether its lights, thermostats, refrigerators, dishwashers, other appliances, we’re really concerned that provides a central node for an attack.
So people could take over your appliances and use them to make Bitcoin, which is crazy Scott Stewart
“We believe we’re going to see this year hackers starting to use new tools and new approaches to grab a hold of those.” Mr Stewart said hackers have already made use of the processing power inside home appliances - without their owner’s knowledge - for distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Such an attack involves overwhelming a website with so much bogus traffic legitimate users are unable to access it. Mr Stewart added: “We saw that with some of the DDoS attacks, when they were grabbing home security cameras and other connected devices and using them on DDoS attacks.
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“We’re also concerned though not only for use in DDoS and the ransomware application, but also Bitcoin mining and other coin mining. “So people could take over your appliances and use them to make Bitcoin, which is crazy. But it is what it is.” Bitcoin mining is a potentially extremely lucrative practice but needs a great deal of computing power, which in turn runs up huge electricity bills. Computers connected to the Bitcoin network ‘mine’ new coins by solving a series of increasingly complex mathematical equations.