DDoS Malware and AVTECH Software IoT Security

A new malware was discovered and announced a few days ago by many outlets, including Security Week and Trend Micro. This particular malware, which has been identified as ELF_IMEIJ.A, specifically targets a vulnerability In IoT (Internet of Things) devices made by a company called AVtech in Taiwan. AVTECH Software is in no way affiliated with this company in Taiwan and its products are not impacted by the new malware.

You may recall that the security concerns with AVtech Taiwan’s hardware, including CCTV cameras and DVRs, was first made public in late 2016. Researchers had discovered the vulnerabilities almost a year earlier, but repeated attempts to notify the company in Taiwan were unsuccessful.

The vulnerabilities were made public in hopes that the company would finally address them; however it appears that was not the case, as evidenced by the new exploit that specifically targets their devices.

Once again we would like to stress to all of our customers, partners, and vendors that AVTECH Software from Warren, RI has no relationship or affiliation whatsoever with the company in Taiwan that is currently the subject of this latest malware. Our Room Alert monitors, Device ManageR and RoomAlert.com products are not impacted by the ELF_IMEIJ.A malware exploit.

Room Alert is fully developed, built, and supported here in the United States and our team is very much aware of the security levels our customers expect. Our hardware runs custom built firmware that is specific to Room Alert only, and doesn’t rely on commonly used software tools such as embedded Linux or the Busybox software that a lot of IoT devices use. For a full rundown on the security features built into Room Alert, please see this article we published last year.

It’s always unfortunate when a news item causes confusion with the market, and to be honest it’s understandable. Both companies share names that are almost identical (although we’ve been AVTECH since we were incorporated in 1988, and they recently shortened their name from “Audio and Visual Technologies”) and we both manufacture IoT hardware that helps clients with monitoring.

We again would like to stress that we always the have security of our devices and our customers at the top of our minds, which is why we’ve built so many safeguards into Room Alert. Room Alert is not affected or impacted by this new malware, and we encourage our customers or prospects with questions about the security of our products to contact us at any time.

Going forward, we will continue to ensure that Room Alert is safeguarded to the highest degree possible, and all of our customers should feel secure in enabling them as part of their IoT infrastructure.

Note: The former GoToMyDevices online monitoring and management platform was migrated into RoomAlert.com in December 2017. For more information, please see our announcement article and FAQ.