Millions of smart toothbrushes used in major cyber attack

In a surprising turn of events, approximately three million smart toothbrushes were utilized in a large-scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, as reported by Swiss newspaper Aargauer Zeitung.

Hackers exploited these seemingly harmless bathroom gadgets, turning them into soldiers in a botnet army, which subsequently paralyzed a Swiss company, resulting in several hours of downtime and millions of euros in damages.

By coordinating the compromised toothbrushes, the attackers flooded the targeted website with fake traffic, effectively disrupting services and causing significant disruption.

The incident underscores the profound implications that IoT devices, once considered secure, now serve as potential vulnerabilities exploited by cybercriminals. Stephan Zuger, director of systems engineering at Fortinet Switzerland, states, "Every device that is connected to the Internet is a potential target – or can be misused for an attack."

UPD: The story turned out to be a newspaper duck. Fortinet, the company that sourced the story, claimed that it was purely theoretical and they were simply misunderstood in translation.