3 million smart toothbrushes were not used in a DDoS attack after all, but it could happen (2024)

FAQs

Were 3 million smart toothbrushes used in DDoS? ›

Lessons learned last week after false reports that 3 million smart toothbrushes were compromised and used in a DDoS attack went viral! The story of 3 million “hacked” smart toothbrushes used in a DDoS attack quickly went viral last week, only to be proven false.

Update 2 — 2/9/2024 6:30am PT: The security company at the nexus of the original report that three million toothbrushes were used in a DDOS attack has now retracted the story and claimed it was a result of a mistranslation — but according to the news outlet that published the initial report, that statement isn't true.

There was about a 24-hour period where many news outlets reported on a reported DDoS attack that involved a botnet made up of thousands of internet-connected toothbrushes, it all started with one international newspaper report, and then was aggregated to death and spread quickly on social media.

Hackers didn't hack your smart toothbrush. What's happening: Swiss outlet Aargauer Zeitung published a story last week claiming that hackers had launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against roughly 3 million internet-connected toothbrushes, causing damage to the tune of millions of euros.

As many as three million smart toothbrushes were reportedly converted into a massive botnet to carry out a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against a Swiss company. According to Aargauer Zeitung, the cyberattack took down the company's website for several hours.

In a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, multiple devices are used to overwhelm a targeted server with requests and take web applications offline. Some of the biggest DDoS attacks have made major tech headlines.

However, with location sensors, a Bluetooth toothbrush can keep track of where you've brushed already, and alert you if there's a tooth or section of your mouth that hasn't been properly cleaned yet.

As the name suggests, a smart toothbrush is enabled with a motor that tells you the brush's position, speed, gives feedback and tells you how to improve oral hygiene. At the heart of most smart toothbrushes is a sonic motor and sensors attached at the head of the brush, which vibrates to effectively clean your teeth.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.

What does DDoS do to WIFI? ›

DDoS Attack Meaning

DDoS Attack means "Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attack" and it is a cybercrime in which the attacker floods a server with internet traffic to prevent users from accessing connected online services and sites.

Types of DDoS Attacks

DDoS attacks are an evolving threat, and a variety of techniques can be used to carry them out. Some examples of common DDoS threats include: Amplification Attacks: Some services, such as DNS, have responses that are much larger than the corresponding request.

Yet, when the Swiss newspaper Aargauer Zeitung published a story that cybercriminals had infected 3 million internet-connected toothbrushes with malware, then used them to launch a cyberattack that downed a website for four hours and caused millions of dollars in damage, the tale was somehow irresistible.

KGTV) — A story you may have seen claims millions of hacked toothbrushes were used in a Swiss cyber attack. That's fiction. Last week, a Swiss-German news site published a story that three million smart toothbrushes had been hacked to conduct attacks against a company. But that wasn't the case.

According to a report by the Aargauer Zeitung (spotted by Tom's Hardware), hackers infected nearly three million electric toothbrushes to turn them into botnets. The report also notes that this army of connected dental cleansing tools was used in a DDoS attack on a Swiss company's website.

Attackers use malware and other techniques to compromise a device, turning it into a “zombie” in the attacker's botnet. Botnets enable attackers to carry out DDoS attacks by harnessing the power of many machines and obscuring the source of the traffic.

DDoS attacks are carried out with networks of Internet-connected machines. These networks consist of computers and other devices (such as IoT devices)which have been infected with malware, allowing them to be controlled remotely by an attacker.

Botnets, which are vast networks of computers, can be used to wage DDoS attacks. They are usually composed of compromised computers (e.g., IoT devices, servers, workstations, routers, etc.), or zombies, that are controlled by a central server. Attackers don't necessarily need a botnet to conduct a DDoS attack.

Globally, it is estimated that over 23 billion plastic toothbrushes are discarded every year, according to a report by the Zero Waste Week campaign. This number is expected to increase in the future with the growing population and the increasing use of disposable plastics.