Three million malware-infected smart toothbrushes used in Swiss DDoS attacks — botnet causes millions of euros in damages
www.tomshardware.com
Dental IoT devices caused millions of Euros in damages for Swiss company, says report.

Fear them tooth brushes.

  • fishos@lemmy.worldEnglish
    161·
    9 months ago

    In another posting of this, it was pointed out that this is just a game of telephone that started with someone saying “I dunno, maybe they used electric toothbrushes?!?” basically. There’s no concrete evidence of this actually occuring and is just being reposted over and over as fact now that it’s been picked up by bigger sources and now those sources are being pointed to as proof.

    I forget the name of it, but it’s when the original source is lost and all current sources are just an oroboros consuming itself. You have the original, shakey source, its picked up by a reputable source, then everyone starts sharing that as the source, giving the story credibility. Eventually everyone is just referencing a copy of a copy(sometimes with one of the copies even being credited as the OG source).

    Most outrage media is this. One person said something on social media, it gets repeated by a source that “matters”, and eventually it is “fact” with “thousands of supporters”. The Starbucks Holiday drama is usually just a handful of people on Twitter being spread around, for example.

    EDIT: FOUND IT. Was an old XKCD comic. “Citogenesis”. When people don’t pay attention to the original citation anymore because it’s been replaced by “better” citations that validate it in a weird catch-22 way.

    • conorabAEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      The term you may be looking for is “woozle”. :)

    • OSH@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      I updated the title, but will leave it, unless the majority wishes to remove it.

      Nevertheless it’s a great reminder of what we might get ourselfs into with all these fancy IoT Devices we put into our homes.

      Here also the link to the original paywalled article that started this avalanche.

  • EmperorHenry@infosec.pubEnglish
    51·
    9 months ago

    Who the fuck would ever connect their fucking toothbrush to the internet?

    That’s almost as stupid as connecting your laundry machines to the internet, or your thermostat, or any other appliance in your house

      • EmperorHenry@infosec.pubEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        I’d be okay with that one too, if only it didn’t have a microphone and camera and connections to google, amazon or apple.

  • gibmiser@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    9 months ago

    Is this the onion? Fucking toothbrushes? Who the fuck connects their toothbrushes to wifi?

  • edric@lemm.eeEnglish
    3·
    9 months ago

    I’m pretty happy with my $20 electric toothbrush with no fucking smart IoT features.

  • Vampire [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    9 months ago

    Sure, sure… your toothbrush is in a geopolitical conspiracy with millions of other toothbrushes… I’ll just type that up on my invisible typewriter

  • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    None of my IoT devices can be used in a botnet because they are not connected to my wifi for internet access, dont have internet access, and get patches and security updates regularly, because they are all running on open source.

    IoT stuff is absolutely fine as long as you’re not a moron that thinks marketers need to know your brushing habits and you happily give that data without a second thought.