The United Kingdom and its Five Eyes partners have raised an alert regarding a cyber attack associated with a China-backed “botnet” consisting of over 260,000 compromised devices.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), along with its allies in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, has urged businesses to safeguard their systems against potential threats.
According to reports, a company linked to the Chinese government has established and controls a botnet comprising more than 260,000 infected devices globally.
Botnets are extensive networks of online devices that have been infiltrated by malware.
Consequently, these networks can be manipulated by the entity controlling them, allowing for the execution of harmful attacks without the knowledge of the device owners.
These networks are most frequently employed to perform distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which inundate a website with traffic in an effort to take it offline.
However, they can also serve the purpose of distributing malware.
Compromised devices can range from routers, webcams, to CCTV cameras, among various internet-connected tools.
Approximately half of the devices involved, totaling 126,000, were reported to be situated in the United States, with around 8,500 “nodes” located in the UK.
Organizations were advised to verify the adequacy of their device security, emphasizing that this botnet represents a particular risk to outdated equipment and systems that lack current security updates.
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Paul Chichester, operations director at NCSC, stated: “The operations of botnets present a considerable danger to the UK, as they exploit weaknesses in everyday internet-connected devices, enabling the potential for large-scale cyber assaults.
“While most botnets are utilized for coordinated DDoS attacks, we are aware that some possess the capability to extract sensitive information.”
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He continued: “That is why NCSC, along with our counterparts in the Five Eyes nations, is strongly advising organizations and individuals to adhere to the guidance outlined in this advisory, which includes implementing updates for internet-connected devices to avert the risk of their systems being integrated into a botnet.”
