Hacker group Digital Revolution published documents according to which the FSB ordered the creation of the Fronton program for organizing cyberattacks using the Internet of things devices.
According to the technical documentation published by hackers, there are three versions of the program — Fronton, Fronton-3D and Fronton-18. They allow infecting smart devices (from digital assistants to smart homes), integrate them into a network and “crash” the servers responsible for the stability of large Internet services and the Internet in entire countries.
It's interesting to note that the Moscow company 0day (LLC 0DT) could have participated in the development of the programs. Previously, the company also carried out orders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
According to the published documents, the Internet of things is "less secure, unlike mobile devices and servers." This is due to the fact that many users use smart devices instantly, without changing factory usernames and passwords.
FSB contractors cite the experience of Mirai, the largest network of infected IoT devices, which had 600,000 bots. In 2016, it disabled the DNS servers of the American company Dyn, which made PayPal, Twitter, Netflix and about 70 other services unavailable for some time. At the same time, the organizers of the attack did not use computers, but printers, children's monitors and IoT routers.
Hackers noted that Fronton can be used for "spying on the whole world". The BBC suggests that, most likely, the main targets of cyberattacks may be digital cameras.
The documents note that 95% of the botnet should consist of IP cameras and digital video recorders. Search server must find targets for hacking, which can be connected via a virtual private network or the Tor browser. Documentation also emphasizes that "the use of the Russian language and the connected Cyrillic alphabet is excluded". It is suggested to hack devices using a dictionary of typical passwords from the Internet of things devices.
In December 2018, Digital Revolution said that it hacked the server of the Kvant Scientific Research Institute, owned by the FSB, and found documents on the system of automatic monitoring of social networks for protest moods. In the summer of 2019, hackers said that they broke into the servers of the Moscow IT company Sitek, which carried out projects for Russian special services and agencies.