Security | Harry McLaren

The Future of Ransomware – It’s Bad & Getting Worse

Schneier has written a great post outlining the current and future risk of criminals/organisations/individuals holding our digital enabled devices against us for ransom. The impact of this is already being highlighted by attacks like WannaCry and are only going to get more server in the coming months.

“Everything is becoming a computer. Your microwave is a computer that makes things hot. Your refrigerator is a computer that keeps things cold. Your car and television, the traffic lights and signals in your city and our national power grid are all computers. This is the much-hyped Internet of Things (IoT). It’s coming, and it’s coming faster than you might think. And as these devices connect to the Internet, they become vulnerable to ransomware and other computer threats.”

A Private Network for IoT Devices

Cloudflare has just announced an interesting and potential game changer for IoT-based threats:

“Orbit sits one layer before the device and provides a shield of security, so even if the device is running past its operating system’s expiration date, Cloudflare protects it from exploits. And while devices may be seldom patched, the Cloudflare security team is shipping code every day, adding new firewall rules to Cloudflare’s edge. Think of it like changing IoT to I*oT — devices can still access the Internet, but only after passing through Cloudflare where malicious requests can be filtered.
For the last year, Cloudflare has been working with a number of IoT vendors to develop Orbit. Already more than 120 million IoT devices are safer behind Cloudflare’s network. Lockitron is one of the IoT companies using Cloudflare. “Keeping our products and customers secure is our primary concern,” says Paul Gerhardt, co-founder of Lockitron. “Cloudflare provides an extra layer of security that allows us to keep our devices continually updated and ahead of any vulnerabilities.””

Source: https://blog.cloudflare.com/orbit/