Security researchers have spotted a new variant of the Mirai malware that focuses on infecting IoT and networking equipment with the main purpose of turning these devices into a network of proxy servers used to relay malicious traffic. IoT botnets used as proxy servers isn’t a novel concept, and many such botnets have been spotted all last year, with the most famous being Linux.ProxyM. Fortinet claims this is the first Mirai variant that besides the DDoS function also includes a proxy feature as well. But according to sources in the infosec community who spoke to Bleeping Computer with the promise of anonymity as not to criticize Fortinet in public, this may not be 100% true.
ORIGINAL SOURCE: Bleeping Computer