New laws to protect consumers and businesses from hacking and cyber-attacks have come into force in the UK.
From Monday, regulations enforcing consumer protections against hacking and cyber-attacks will mandate that internet-connected smart devices meet minimum-security standards by law.
Manufacturers will be legally required to protect consumers from hackers and cyber criminals against accessing devices with internet or network connectivity – from smartphones to games consoles and connected fridges.
Under World’s first such law, manufacturers will be banned from having weak, easily guessable default passwords like “admin” or “12345” and if there is a common password the user will be promoted to change it on start-up.
This will help prevent threats like the damaging Mirai attack in 2016 which saw 300,000 smart products compromised due to weak security features and used to attack major internet platforms and services, leaving much of the US East Coast without internet. Since then, similar attacks have occurred on UK banks including Lloyds and RBS leading to disruption to customers.
According to the National Cyber Security Centre, recent figures show 99 percent of UK adults own at least one smart device and UK households own an average of nine connected devices.
An investigation conducted by “Which” showed that a home filled with smart devices could be exposed to more than 12,000 hacking attacks from across the world in a single week, with a total of 2,684 attempts to guess weak default passwords on just five devices.
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