Antivirus firm warns of cyberattacks on home appliances

PRAGUE: Avast, the company behind the leading antivirus software, has warned against attacks on home appliances connected to the Internet, calling hackers targeting home routers a major threat to consumers.

“It’s a trivial thing to do and there’s nothing the user can do to fix it, other than to throw the router away and put in a new router,” said Vincent Steckler, chief executive officer of Avast.

Ondrej Vlcek, Avast chief technology officer, said that more and more people were using Internetenabled appliances which he described as “a total nightmare when it comes to security.”

Vulnerable appliances include TV sets, audio systems, coffee machines and toys, according to the Prague-based company, which every month registers 444 million users and prevents 3.5 billion malware attacks and 500 million visits to harmful websites.

In February, London police arrested a Briton suspected of staging a cyberattack on household routers run by Deutsche Telekom in November 2016, which knocked an estimated 1 million German households offline.

Steckler said his company had hacked into a router at a recent show in the US to demonstrate the harm such attacks can do.

Avast changed the router’s firmware, took control of a TV set and made it play a Barack Obama speech over and over.

“Even if you turn off the TV, the router turns the TV back on and the user can’t see anything other than the Obama speech,” Steckler said, adding that the hacker could then hold the TV for ransom.

“I know most people, especially Americans, care much more about their TV than they do about their data. They’d probably be much more willing to pay ransom for it,” he said.

China earlier urged Windows users to protect themselves against a new ransomware virus similar to the WannaCry bug that wreaked havoc worldwide last week.

“UIWIX” encrypts and renames files through a bug in the Windows operating system, China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) warned in a public announcement on Wednesday, telling users to install the latest Microsoft update.

While no UIWIX infections have BRUSSELS: The European Commission on Thursday fined US social media giant Facebook €110 million ($120 million) for providing incorrect and misleading information on its takeover of WhatsApp.

“Today’s decision sends a clear signal to companies that they must comply with all aspects of EU merger rules, including the obligation to provide correct information,” EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.

“The commission must be able to take decisions about mergers’ effects on competition in full knowledge of accurate facts,” Vestager said.

Facebook said in response that it cooperated with the commission and that the errors made were not intentional.

“We’ve acted in good faith since our very first interactions with the Commission and we’ve sought to provide accurate information at every turn,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

“The errors we made in our 2014 filings were not intentional and the commission has confirmed that they did not impact the outcome of the merger review. The latest announcement brings this matter to a close.”

EU regulators cleared the then $19 billion Facebook acquisition of WhatsApp in late 2014, finding no reason to believe it would dampen competition in the burgeoning social media sector. yet been detected in China, the virus has spread in other countries, prompting a security alert last week from the Danish cybersecurity company Heimdal Security.