How an Internet-of-Things Botnet Took Down Twitter, Reddit, and Github - The Atlantic

A Bruce Schneier quote later in the article: "What this all means is that the [internet of things] will remain insecure unless government steps in and fixes the problem."

"The websites were not targeted individually. Instead, an unknown attacker deployed a massive botnet to wage a distributed denial-of-service attack on Dyn (pronounced like dine), the domain name service (DNS) provider that they all share.

A distributed denial of service attack, or DDoS, is not an uncommon attack on the web, and web hosts have been fending them off for years. But according to reports, Friday’s attack was distinguished by its distinctive approach. The perpetrator used a botnet composed of so-called “internet-of-things” devices—namely, webcams and DVRs—to spam Dyn with more requests than it could handle."

How an Internet-of-Things Botnet Took Down Twitter, Reddit, and Github - The Atlantic