The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been developing “strategic principles” for securing the Internet of Things (IoT) and will release them in the coming weeks, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Monday.
Johnson released a statement following last Friday’s distributed denial of service attacks that shut down a number of popular websites in the United States including Amazon [AMZN], Twitter [TWTR] and Netflix [NFLX]. The attacks began against managed domain name system provider Dyn, leading to the shut down of the websites.
Johnson said that on Friday after the cyber attacks began, DHS hosted a conference call with 18 major communication service providers to share information about the incident.
“At this time, we believe the attack has been mitigated,” he said. “We have shared information with our partners and through our Automated Indicator Sharing program.”
The malware used in the attacks is called Mirai and compromises IoT devices such as surveillance cameras and entertainment systems that are connected to the Internet, Johnson said. He added that the DHS cyber watch center, the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, “is working with law enforcement, the private sector and the research community to develop ways to mitigate against this and other related malware.”