This is probably the nastiest part of the whole Internet of Things hype. There is so much stuff that now comes with internet connected functionality that securing it all is simply not manageable. Sure, a household may demand that their smart thermostat keeps working reliably and securely, but how about the smart TV that's connected to WiFi, but is only used as a (classic) dumb screen? Or the talking doll the kids got for Christmas that talks back? (Yes, this is a thing!) Or the baby monitor? Or any other plug-and-play webcam?

All of these devices are by design capable of performing HTTP requests, and can be exploited to perform DDOS attacks. There is no economic incentive to keep these devices secure once the warranty runs out, yet hackers do have a lot of interest in hacking whole classes of devices.

It's not only the future, it's already happening. The Mirai botnet, mostly running on IoT devices, was used to perform massive DDoS attacks in 2016. This gives us a foretaste of what is to come when we can assume at least one vulnerable IoT device in more or less every household.