Mirai botnet cost you $13.50 per infected thing, say boffins

Berkeley boffins reckon the Dyn-based Internet of Things attack that took down Brian Krebs' Website in 2016 cost device owners over $US320,000. Since the 2016 hit on KrebsOnSecurity involved devices in their tens of thousands, the costs to individuals (in power consumption and bandwidth charges) only ends up a handful of …

[Mark 85]

I am impressed

The entire thing-owner cost the Berkeley researchers estimated was US$323,973.75.

They produced an estimate right down to the penny.

[Candy]

Unmasking the cost...

The interesting part for me is that this is the first time I've seen a detailed analysis of the cost to the owners of the pwned devices. As opposed to the costs borne by the target of such an attack.

If anything were finally to wake up the IoT industry to the importance of securing their sh!t, it will be their enterprise customers asking them how they will prevent this sort of unexpected spend from the tens or hundreds of thousands of devices to be deployed.

Ambient and edge compute could well become a massive revenue drainer for the unaware.

[Doctor_Wibble]

Re: Unmasking the cost...

The cost is not just financial, there's also the carbon footprint. Maybe on that basis we can get botnet spreaders/herders multiple-classified as moneto-cyber-eco-terrorists and therefore requiring of three lots of government resources being thrown into the search for them with a view to shoving them into Gitmo?

I like the logic, even if it isn't sound...

[Anonymous Coward]

Headline should read "Poor Router Security costs people $$$$$"

and the amount should be much higher.

Wouldn't have happened if firmware and device security was better!