"Unique trick" to crash a website using... a toothbrush

Smart toothbrushes with internet connection are now quite popular on the market, aiming to monitor and improve users' oral hygiene habits.

DDoS is a form of denial of service attack that involves sending a large number of requests to the target system, causing the system to become overloaded and paralyzed. This type of attack has been around for a long time but is still a popular form used by cybercriminals because it is easy to deploy and leaves no trace.

Cybersecurity experts at Fortinet (USA) confirmed that hackers have controlled and turned 3 million smart toothbrushes into "ghost devices", from which they launched a DDoS attack on the website of a company based in Switzerland.

About 3 million smart toothbrushes were infected with malware. Illustration: ZDNet

As a result, the website could not withstand the pressure of overload, causing complete paralysis, causing damage estimated at tens of millions of euros.

Details of the attack and the names of the toothbrush models compromised by the hackers have not yet been released, according to ZDNet.

"Hackers are using smart toothbrushes to join botnets, which is a new tactic. Smart toothbrushes have an internet connection, so they can also be infected with malware. Their operating systems run on Java, which is one of the weakest platforms in terms of security and is not updated regularly," explained Stefan Züger, senior security expert at Fortinet.

This expert also warned that not only smart toothbrushes but also routers, set-top boxes, surveillance cameras, doorbells, wifi-connected washing machines... are all targets for malware infection. The reason is that these devices are increasingly popular but the level of security is not given due attention like smartphones or computers. In addition, they are easily controlled because they are not updated with security patches regularly.

"Every internet-connected device is a potential target for hackers. Bad guys are constantly probing these devices for vulnerabilities to spread malware. There will be a real race between software manufacturers and cybercriminals in the coming time," added expert Züger.

Cybersecurity experts say that with the popularity of 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT), hackers can control millions of routers, security cameras, doorbells... creating large botnets to carry out more DDoS attacks in the future.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/chieu-doc-danh-sap-trang-web-bang-ban-chai-danh-rang-196240209140523356.htm