The Internet of Things in the Cybercrime Underground

The internet of things (IoT) continues to influence many aspects of today’s society. IoT devices are increasingly being used in homes and businesses to improve user experience and innovate services. The continuing growth of the IoT makes it an irresistible target for cybercriminals — thus shaping the threat landscape and the cybercrime underground.

Studies have already been made on how the IoT can be attacked and what the impact of these attacks would be. For this research, we took on a different perspective. We dove into the IoT cybercrime underground to gather insights into current threats from the very minds that conceive them.

We analyzed five underground communities, which we classified based on the principal language used in the community discussions. Starting with the community with the most activity and sophisticated monetization schemes, these are Russian, Portuguese, English, Arabic, and Spanish.