When BrickerBot was discovered, it was the first time we’ve seen a botnet that would destroy an IoT device, making it unusable. We’ve had cameras in the lab for our research on the Mirai botnet, so one was volunteered to be the guinea pig. Watching our beloved research lab’s IP-enabled camera turn into a useless paperweight was somewhat bittersweet. We knew BrickerBot v1 aimed to destroy insecure IoT gear, and this was validation. We had to either take it apart and solder a serial connection to it to re-flash it, or just spend the $60 on a new one to continue our IoT botnet research.