This latest list of Internet of Things miscreants doesn't limit itself to botnets, like Mirai.

Don't you hate it when one loud co-worker at the office takes all the credit and keeps the rest of the team out of management's eye? Welcome to the world of Internet of Things (IoT) malware, where several families do their malicious worst — only to hear IT professionals droning on about Mirai, Mirai, Mirai.

Don't be misled: Mirai is still out there recruiting low-power IoT devices into botnets, but it's certainly not the only piece of malware you should be aware of. Mirai wasn't even the first of the big-name IoT baddies — that distinction goes to Stuxnet — but the sheer size of the attacks launched using the Mirai botnet and the malware's dogged persistence on devices around the world have made it the anti-hero poster child of IoT security.

Mirai has continued to grow through variations that make it a malware family rather than a single stream of malware. And it's not alone: Malware programmers are much like their legitimate software development counterparts in their programming practices and disciplines, making code reuse and modular development commonplace. Each of these can make it tricky to say whether a bit of malware is new or just a variant. Regardless, security professionals have to stop all of them.

This latest list of IoT miscreants doesn't limit itself to botnets. You'll also find data wipers, cryptominers, and data capture clients. And if there's one thing cybersecurity professionals can count on, it's that malware authors will continue to apply their creativity and programming skills to new forms of criminal code that will be unleashed on the IoT.

What kind of malware are you dreading most? And what kind do you think will all but disappear in the coming years? Share your thoughts with the Dark Reading community in the Comments section, below.

(Image: peshkov VIA Adobe Stock)

About the Author(s)

Curtis Franklin, Principal Analyst, Omdia

Curtis Franklin Jr. is Principal Analyst at Omdia, focusing on enterprise security management. Previously, he was senior editor of Dark Reading, editor of Light Reading's Security Now, and executive editor, technology, at InformationWeek, where he was also executive producer of InformationWeek's online radio and podcast episodes

Curtis has been writing about technologies and products in computing and networking since the early 1980s. He has been on staff and contributed to technology-industry publications including BYTE, ComputerWorld, CEO, Enterprise Efficiency, ChannelWeb, Network Computing, InfoWorld, PCWorld, Dark Reading, and ITWorld.com on subjects ranging from mobile enterprise computing to enterprise security and wireless networking.

Curtis is the author of thousands of articles, the co-author of five books, and has been a frequent speaker at computer and networking industry conferences across North America and Europe. His most recent books, Cloud Computing: Technologies and Strategies of the Ubiquitous Data Center, and Securing the Cloud: Security Strategies for the Ubiquitous Data Center, with co-author Brian Chee, are published by Taylor and Francis.

When he's not writing, Curtis is a painter, photographer, cook, and multi-instrumentalist musician. He is active in running, amateur radio (KG4GWA), the MakerFX maker space in Orlando, FL, and is a certified Florida Master Naturalist.

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