The old bait-and-switch digital prank “Rickrolling” has wavered in and out of popularity for the last decade and a half, but an 18-year-old student of Security Research and Computer Science put up a blog post earlier this year detailing a creative spin on the classic prank – he “Rickrolled” his entire school district via an IoT hack.
Thankfully, for all those involved, the outcome of this Whitehat hacking prank was hilarious, entertaining, and relatively victimless. The perpetrators took care to ensure they would not disrupt any school sessions or tests. They even debriefed the school district’s IT team with information on how and where they found the vulnerabilities to prevent a malicious attack in the future. You can read the full account of the incident, accompanied by a video, here.
IoT has been around for decades now, so you might wonder how this practical joke was so easy to pull off? The short answer is that IoT is often overlooked in cybersecurity because IoT devices are built with convenience, not security, in mind. As we’ll explore here, it’s imperative that your IoT landscape be included as part of…
