That $60 network analyzer saved my bacon after a ransomware scare

I dropped 60 bucks on a little pocket-sized network traffic monitor after ignoring warnings for years, and last month it caught a weird spike in outbound data from my thermostat. Turned out some sketchy IoT device was phoning home to a known C2 server, and I cut it off before anything got encrypted. Anyone else had a cheap gadget actually pay off bigger than expected like that?

2 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

2 Comments

noahcampbell4mo ago

My neighbor's kid got one of those cheap Fluke network testers for like 50 bucks at a garage sale. He used it to find out his Ring doorbell was sending way more traffic than normal after hours. Turned out it got compromised through a weak password and was part of a botnet doing DDoS attacks on some gaming servers. That little gadget saved him from getting his whole home network blacklisted by his ISP.

8

uma_reed264mo ago

Right, and THIS is why I tell people to STOP using default passwords on their smart home stuff. It's such an easy thing to fix but nobody thinks about it until their internet gets shut off. That fifty dollar finder probably paid for itself fifty times over in saved headache alone.

8