CYBERATTACKS
Antivirus firm Avast flags appliance hacking
The rapidly rising number of people using internet-enabled appliances is a ‘total nightmare when it comes to security’, says chief technology officer
Prague — Avast, the company behind the leading antivirus software, has warned against attacks on home appliances connected to the internet, calling hackers targeting home routers a major threat to consumers. "It’s a trivial thing to do and there’s nothing the user can do to fix it other than to throw the router away and put in a new router," Avast CE Vincent Steckler told reporters. Avast chief technology officer Ondrej Vlcek said an increasing number of people were using internet-enabled appliances, which he described as "a total nightmare when it comes to security". Vulnerable appliances include televisions, audio systems and coffee machines, said the Prague-based company. In February, London police arrested a Briton suspected of staging a cyberattack on household routers run by Deutsche Telekom in November 2016, which knocked about 1-million German households offline. Steckler said his firm had hacked into a router at a recent show in the US to demonstrate the harm such attacks c...
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