It sounds more like science fiction than reality, but Swiss newspaper Aargauer Zeitung reported that approximately three million smart toothbrushes were hijacked by hackers to launch a Distributed Denial of Service attack.
These innocuous bathroom gadgets - transformed into soldiers in a botnet army - allegedly knocked out a Swiss company for several hours, costing millions of euros in damages.
Now the security company Fortinet, which helped give the original story credence, is admitting that mistakes were made.
The story had claimed that the compromised toothbrushes were running Java, a popular language for Internet of Things devices.
Once infected, a global network of malicious toothbrushes supposedly launched their successful attack.
The repurposed toothbrushes supposedly accomplished this by flooding the Swiss website with bogus traffic, effectively knocking services offline and causing widespread disruption.
Although this story wasn't real, the episode underlines the ever-expanding threat landscape as the IoT becomes increasingly embedded in our daily lives.
Devices that once seemed harmless and disconnected from the digital ecosystem are now potential entry points for cybercriminals.
The implications are vast, not only for individual privacy and security but also for national infrastructure and economic stability.
Anyone paying close attention to cybersecurity has known about this threat for years.
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You should also never charge your device at a public USB port.
That same port that charges your gadget can also infect it.
I also suggest paying attention if your device suddenly starts losing power faster than normal.
Sure, it may just be an aging battery, but it also could be malware running in the background.
You should also be wary of public Wi-Fi connections.
While at your home, I urge you to set up a firewall on your Internet connection.
If an attacker can't get to your smart toilet, it can't infect it.
Finally - and I'm quite serious about this - don't buy an IoT-enabled device unless you have a real need for it.
This Cyber News was published on www.zdnet.com. Publication date: Thu, 08 Feb 2024 01:10:13 +0000