CHINA: Electronics Maker Orders Recall Of Web Devices That May Have Allowed Last Week’s DDOS Attack

SC Magazine reports:

Xiongmai, a Chinese electronics firm, has initiated a product recall, prompted by the large DDoS attack that caused large internet websites such as GitHub, Reddit and Spotify to grind to a halt on the east coast of the US, and mainland Europe this past Friday.

The root distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), was believed to be a network of hacked Internet of Things devices, such as webcams and digital recorders, many of which were made by Xiongmai.

Researchers accused Xiongmai of releasing products with basic security vulnerabilities, such as the inability to set a password on some forms of connection. This is the reason which hackers were then able to combine them into the Mirai botnet, a large network of hacked IoT devices consisting of millions of devices.

Craig Young, security researcher at Tripwire said: “It is fantastic to see a vendor owning up to their responsibility in this event. It is very rare to hear of a vendor doing something like this and I hope that it will be the first of many vendors to react strongly to Friday’s attacks.”

The Chinese firm, which makes parts for surveillance cameras, said in a statement on its website that it would recall some of its products sold in the United States. They plan to strengthen security on the devices and send users a patch for products made before April last year.

Curiously, the company is also threatening to sue western media outlets who blame their devices for allowing the attack.