What is IoT Botnet?

Understanding IoT Botnet

IoT Botnets represent a significant evolution in distributed attack infrastructure, leveraging thousands or millions of compromised Internet of Things devices to conduct large-scale attacks with unprecedented bandwidth capabilities. These massive device networks typically form through automated exploitation of common IoT vulnerabilities: default or weak credentials, unpatched software flaws, insecure network services, and lack of secure update mechanisms. Once compromised, devices receive commands from centralized or peer-to-peer command and control systems, often using encrypted communications to evade detection. Attackers leverage these botnets for various malicious purposes: launching devastating distributed denial-of-service attacks exceeding terabits per second, conducting credential stuffing against websites, cryptomining using distributed processing power, performing network scanning to identify additional vulnerable devices, and serving as anonymization proxies for other attacks. Organizations face significant challenges defending against these threats: the massive device scale makes traditional blocking approaches impractical, compromised devices often show minimal performance impact making detection difficult, many consumer devices lack security monitoring or update mechanisms, and botnet infrastructure constantly evolves to evade discovery. Effective defense requires robust network segmentation, device inventories, secure configurations, and close collaboration with ISPs and threat intelligence providers to detect and disrupt botnet activity upstream.