The report says this massive mob of connected tooth cleaners was used in a DDoS attack on a Swiss company's website. The firm's site crashed under the pressure of the attack, costing them millions of Euros in business.

In this case, the toothbrush botnet was easy to hack because of its Java-based OS. The report didn't name any toothbrush brands. Usually, the toothbrushes would have used their connection for keeping track of and improving your teeth brushing, but after a malware infection, these toothbrushes were forced into a botnet.

Stefan Zuger from the Swiss branch of the global cyber security firm Fortinet gave the paper some tips on how people could protect their toothbrushes - or other connected gadgets like routers, set-top boxes, spy cameras, doorbells, baby monitors, washing machines, and so on.

Zuger told the Swiss paper that " every device connected to the Internet is a possible target - or can be used for an attack. "

The security expert also said that hackers constantly check every connected device for weaknesses, so there is a real fight between device software/firmware makers and cyber crooks. Fortinet recently connected an 'unprotected' PC to the internet and found it took only 20 minutes to become full of malware.