Cyber hackers took control of an army of connected toothbrushes to launch a DDoS attack against the website of a Swiss company. The latter would have lost millions of euros.
According to the Swiss newspaper Aargauer Zeitung, a Swiss company was the victim of a denial of service (DDoS) attack carried out thanks to a botnet formed by three million connected toothbrushes. These utensils use connectivity to support the user in their oral hygiene by analyzing the effectiveness of brushing and providing advice.
According to the article, which does not give many details, the cyber hackers took control of these connected objects by exploiting a flaw in their Java operating system. They then launched an assault on the targeted company’s website, flooding it with queries and saturating it. The website went down, which would have resulted in the loss of millions of euros in revenue.
Anonymous connected toothbrushes
We do not know which company is the victim. Aargauer Zeitung also does not mention the brands of connected toothbrushes that were used in this DDoS attack. The daily quotes Stefan Zuger, director of engineering for the Swiss subsidiary of the security company Fortinet, as saying that“ every device connected to the Internet is a potential target, or can be misused for an attack ”.
This expert explains that connected objects are under constant surveillance by hackers looking for security vulnerabilities. To illustrate this threat, Fortinet recently connected an “unprotected” PC to the Internet. It did take just 20 minute to get infected with malware.
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