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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom’s Hardware: According to a recent report published by the Aargauer Zeitung (h/t Golem.de), around three million smart toothbrushes have been manufactured. infected by hackers and enslaved in botnets. The source report says that this considerable army of connected dental cleaning tools was used in a DDoS attack on a Swiss company’s website. The company’s site collapsed under the pressure of the attack, reportedly resulting in the loss of millions of euros in business. In this particular case, the toothbrush botnet was thought to be vulnerable due to its Java-based operating system. No particular toothbrush brand is mentioned in the source report. Normally, the toothbrushes would have used their connectivity to track and improve users’ oral hygiene habits, but after a malware infection, these toothbrushes were included in a botnet.
Stefan Zuger, from the Swiss branch of global cybersecurity firm Fortinet, provided the publication with some advice on what people can do to protect their own toothbrushes or other connected devices such as routers, set-top boxes, surveillance cameras, doorbells and baby monitors. , washing machines, etc. “Every device connected to the Internet is a potential target, or can be misused for an attack,” Zuger told the Swiss newspaper. The security expert also explained that hackers were continually investigating every connected device for vulnerabilities, so there is a real arms race between device software/firmware manufacturers and cybercriminals. Fortinet recently connected an “unprotected” PC to the Internet and found that it only took 20 minutes before it became infected with malware.