Proof? This is just some random person claiming it's not true but they link to an article which explicitly states that it is in fact true. Am I missing something?
He elaborates farther down the thread:
> A botnet of 3 million toothbrushes would be twice the size on Mirai's various botnets put together, and a MAJOR infosec event. The person they were interviewing has only worked there about a year, and Fortigate staff don't appear to know about this botnet.
Edit to add:
Imagine you read on TechMeme that room-temperature superconductors are now confirmed to exist. But when you trace the story back, the original citation is an article in the Tucson Regional Business Journal about how scientific research benefits innovation. Would you think "wow, big scoop for the TRBJ!" Or something more like, "I bet that business reporter misunderstood something they heard."
This was a simple letter to the editor, written by a doctor, that became the driving force behind Oxycontin marketing.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/06/nejm-lett...
https://news.colgate.edu/magazine/2019/02/06/the-strange-cas...
> Das Beispiel, das wie ein Hollywood-Szenario daherkommt, hat sich wirklich so zugetragen.
Correct translation:
> This example, which seems like a Hollywood scenario, actually happened.
But as you can see, if you miss the last part, it's easy to get the translation wrong.
(Interestingly, the Swiss article doesn't directly quote Fortinet as a source, but as an expert opinion. Maybe something was lost in translation there when the story went viral?)
Million dollar damage because a Swiss site wasn't reachable for 4 hours?
I doubt that.
If this is real, the article is beyond useless in informing people of what has happened and how it's happened.
> She's in the bathroom at home, but she's part of a large-scale cyber attack. The electric toothbrush is programmed with Java, and criminals have unnoticed installed malware on it - like on 3 million other toothbrushes.
(In German, toothbrushes are female, like all brushes.)
Let's coin a term for this: misanthromorphism.
It means nothing other than that you need to remember the correct pronoun for every noun, which is absurd.
I just assumed they were gendering inanimate objects, which even non-gendered English speakers will do, but conveys more anthropomorphic intent.
Highly suspicious and now confirmed it didn't happen.
Highly unlikely.