  A large majority of cheap Internet of Things (IoT) devices that arrive brand
new, and are configured with out-of-the-box settings, are not being properly
secured by the manufactures, and are vulnerable to existing malware lurking on
the Internet. Among them is the Mirai botnet which has had its source code
leaked to the world, allowing any malicious actor to configure and unleash it.
A combination of software assets not being utilised safely and effectively are
exposing consumers to a full compromise. We configured and attacked 4 different
IoT devices using the Mirai libraries. Our experiments concluded that three out
of the four devices were vulnerable to the Mirai malware and became infected
when deployed using their default configuration. This demonstrates that the
original security configurations are not sufficient to provide acceptable
levels of protection for consumers, leaving their devices exposed and
vulnerable. By analysing the Mirai libraries and its attack vectors, we were
able to determine appropriate device configuration countermeasures to harden
the devices against this botnet, which were successfully validated through
experimentation.
