" Ok, I am aware of how it works, but I'm not talking pentests or hardening. I'm talking simple, cheap design choices in this case, that could've eliminated the whole Mirai debauchery."
Then you are not talking about the security industry or its failure to work are you? Its a failure in the development industry to have basic security awareness.
If you don't engage the security industry for pentests or consulting. You can't go any blame them when you get hacked.
"How many pennies would've been needed to insert a simple page forcing you to change user/password combo and to choose a reasonably strong password after first boot ?"
These are written by outsourced developers who don't know anything about security. They wouldn't even think to develop something as simple as that.
You are obviously unaware of how this works, companies would have to hire consultants/penetration testers to assess the product first. Then they would spend even more money making the changes suggested by the consultants. So it would cost a lot of pennies.. actually.
Completely incorrect claim, the IoT industry doesn't spend a penny on security, and therefore will be vulnerable to these type of attacks.
If anything this is proof that the security industry does work, these attacks are happening on devices where there is no security budget - not on servers with large investments in security.
Then you are not talking about the security industry or its failure to work are you? Its a failure in the development industry to have basic security awareness.
If you don't engage the security industry for pentests or consulting. You can't go any blame them when you get hacked.