The three million toothbrush botnet story isn’t true.
Here’s the original source of the story: https://archive.is/2024.01.30-203406/https://www.luzernerzeitung.ch/wirtschaft/kriminalitaet-die-zahnbuersten-greifen-an-das-sind-die-aktuellen-cybergefahren-und-so-koennen-sie-sich-schuetzen-ld.2569480
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That page is old enough that it doesn't seem to support HTTPS. If your browser automatically converts HTTP to HTTPS, you're going to get a warning about an insecure connection. Here's a wayback machine link that supports a secure connection:
First thing I was asking is the model of toothbrush that supposedly got hacked. AFAIK there are no mainstream electric toothbrushes with onboard WiFi. Both OralB and Philips use Bluetooth for their smart functionalities.
If the story was about smart ovens or washing machines I would have believed it.
They say the story isn't true, but the source they cite in the very next sentence says:
Das Beispiel, das wie ein Hollywood-Szenario daherkommt, hat sich wirklich so zugetragen. Es zeigt, wie vielseitig digitale Angriffe geworden sind.
(This example, which sounds like a Hollywood plot, really happened. It shows how multidimensional (my mind blanks on a better translation right now) EDIT: diverse cyber attacks have become)
Edit: I hate microblogging sites. Apparently the thread continues on and the company who made the statement in the cited article has backtracked and admitted that this was a hypothetical. It did not happen.
The only one I'd trust without having to do more research on their reporting quality is netzpolitik.org. Not sure how much of a newspaper they are though. I'd consider them digital activists - with sound positions based on facts, but activists nonetheless.
I mean we haven't seen any proof, but Stefan Züger of Fortinet told that story as a supposedly true event to Journalists of CH-Media.
The very article Kevin Beaumont posts says that the scenario is a real event.
I'm really glad Kevin got them to admit it was a fabrication. The way he asserted that it was a made up example first, before having anything concrete to back it up, made him seem unreliable to me at first.