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The toothbrush bot army story got started by a Swiss newspaper writing about a scenario they heard from a cybersecurity company and claiming that even though it
by yorwba 3y ago
The toothbrush bot army story got started by a Swiss newspaper writing about a scenario they heard from a cybersecurity company and claiming that even though it sounds like a Hollywood movie, "this really happened". When the company in question was reached for comment, they said it was hypothetical.
In the end, the story's spread can be explained by a journalist's simple misunderstanding that made the story much more virulent.
In this case, the journalist probably also doesn't understand the technical details, but we have a link to the researchers' own write-up right there in the article, which makes it much easier to rule out simple misunderstandings. So the situation is completely different.
That said, they're not reconstructing the fingerprint ridges from the sound the way you're probably imagining. Instead, they build on an existing attack exploiting fingerprint readers' error tolerance with a set of "masterprints" that are unusually likely to be accepted as a match, and the sound is used to determine which masterprint to use first.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago> In the end, the story's spread can be explained by a journalist's simply misunderstanding that made the story much more virulent. Bollocks, you're letting the "journalist" off way too easily. That toothbrush story was simply "a story too good to vet", meaning, sure, the author had a convenient excuse blaming it on a "misunderstanding", and while I don't believe the author was necessarily lying, I do believe they had no incentive to dig any more deeply because the toothbrush bot army story was already clickbait enough.
- lupusreal 3y agoJournalists seem to do an awful job with the kind of stories I understand, but surely they do better most of the time...
- CaptainFever 3y agoAh, the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. https://theportal.wiki/wiki/The_Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect https://theportal.wiki/wiki/The_Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect
- richij 3y agoAFAICS, it wasn't the journalist's fault. It was the Swiss PR spokesman. While the company concerned made a mild followup statement implying the journalist misunderstood because of a translation error, both parties spoke Swiss German as a native language. tl;dr: It was Fortinet's fault and they tried to cover it up: https://securityboulevard.com/2024/02/toothbrush-ddos-botnet-bollocks-richixbw/ https://securityboulevard.com/2024/02/toothbrush-ddos-botnet...
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3y agoThe newspaper claims that they explicitly asked for and received confirmation.