Fear them tooth brushes.
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In another posting of this, it was pointed out that this is just a game of telephone that started with someone saying “I dunno, maybe they used electric toothbrushes?!?” basically. There’s no concrete evidence of this actually occuring and is just being reposted over and over as fact now that it’s been picked up by bigger sources and now those sources are being pointed to as proof.
I forget the name of it, but it’s when the original source is lost and all current sources are just an oroboros consuming itself. You have the original, shakey source, its picked up by a reputable source, then everyone starts sharing that as the source, giving the story credibility. Eventually everyone is just referencing a copy of a copy(sometimes with one of the copies even being credited as the OG source).
Most outrage media is this. One person said something on social media, it gets repeated by a source that “matters”, and eventually it is “fact” with “thousands of supporters”. The Starbucks Holiday drama is usually just a handful of people on Twitter being spread around, for example.
EDIT: FOUND IT. Was an old XKCD comic. “Citogenesis”. When people don’t pay attention to the original citation anymore because it’s been replaced by “better” citations that validate it in a weird catch-22 way.
The term you may be looking for is “woozle”. :)
It’s a great story. It’s also completely Fake News. DIdn’t happen at all.
The fact that “toms” hardware is reporting on this is pretty coinci(dental)
This is false, delete this fake news OP
I updated the title, but will leave it, unless the majority wishes to remove it.
Nevertheless it’s a great reminder of what we might get ourselfs into with all these fancy IoT Devices we put into our homes.
Here also the link to the original paywalled article that started this avalanche.
Is this the onion? Fucking toothbrushes? Who the fuck connects their toothbrushes to wifi?
I’m pretty happy with my $20 electric toothbrush with no fucking smart IoT features.
Who the fuck would ever connect their fucking toothbrush to the internet?
That’s almost as stupid as connecting your laundry machines to the internet, or your thermostat, or any other appliance in your house
@oh_gosh_its_osh
Since this is already being reposted, could you at least edit the post to mark it as untrue?
At this point there’s no evidence that this has really happened, please stop spreading #misinformation!
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/no-3-million-electric-toothbrushes-were-not-used-in-a-ddos-attack/
@cybersecurityNone of my IoT devices can be used in a botnet because they are not connected to my wifi for internet access, dont have internet access, and get patches and security updates regularly, because they are all running on open source.
IoT stuff is absolutely fine as long as you’re not a moron that thinks marketers need to know your brushing habits and you happily give that data without a second thought.
