Hacker leaks passwords for more than 500,000 servers, routers, and IoT devices

A hacker has published this week a massive list of Telnet credentials for more than 515,000 servers, home routers, and IoT (Internet of Things) “smart” devices.

The list, which was published on a popular hacking forum, includes each device’s IP address, along with a username and password for the Telnet service, a remote access protocol that can be used to control devices over the internet.

According to experts to who ZDNet spoke this week, and a statement from the leaker himself, the list was compiled by scanning the entire internet for devices that were exposing their Telnet port. The hacker than tried using (1) factory-set default usernames and passwords, or (2) custom, but easy-to-guess password combinations.

These types of lists — called “bot lists” — are a common component of an IoT botnet operation. Hackers scan the internet to build bot lists, and then use them to connect to the devices and install malware.

These lists are usually kept private, although some have leaked online in the past, such as a list of 33,000 home router Telnet credentials that leaked in August 2017. To our knowledge, this marks the biggest leak of Telnet passwords known to date.

DATA LEAKED BY A DDOS SERVICE OPERATOR

As ZDNet understands, the list was published online by the maintainer of a DDoS-for-hire (DDoS booter) service.

When asked why he published such a massive list of “bots,” the leaker said he upgraded his DDoS service from working on top of IoT botnets to a new model that relies on renting high-output servers from cloud service providers.

www.zdnet.com/article/hacker-leaks-passwords-for-more-than-500000-servers-routers-and-iot-devices/