If IoT devices are not patched at regular intervals, known vulnerabilities will remain open and may be used for extensive attacks. One objective of an attack may be to integrate IoT devices into a bot network. In this case, they might be misused to execute DDoS attacks and restrict the availability of services, for example.

A DDoS attack of this kind was carried out on an Internet service provider at the end of October 2016. A botnet was used that consisted largely of IoT devices. Due to the large number of devices, the so-called Mirai bot network reached a bandwidth that vastly exceeded the previously known bot networks. The webcams, cameras, digital video recorders, routers, and printers that were already part of the botnet automatically scanned the Internet for further devices in order to infect them with malware and add them to the network.