Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

kuenzi.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 311 posts

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#101

Post by Shank »

teekert wrote: post #99
bilekas wrote: post #95

This is crazy interesting but I didn't quite understand, when the timer runs out the head doesn't work anymore or you just get an LED notification to get a new one, to me at least there's a big difference in the two!

I'm also curious!

Depending on the model, it usually blinks an LED and vibrates a pattern to let you know it's time for replacement. It's definitely not a hard lockout or anything.

The brush heads for advanced models also tell the brush which cycle to use and which intensity to vibrate at (e.g., for tongue cleaning brushes vs normal brushes).

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#102

Post by boosteri »

aceazzameen wrote: post #52
qingcharles wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome Time Travellers! This is 2023 where you can find yourself locked out of your toothbrush after too many failed password attempts.

Guess we'll have to brute force clean our teeth by moving the locked toothbrush up and down, side to side, and in circular motions.

Will just squirt some ink into your mouth upon detecting such abuse and violation of ToS

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#103

Post by teekert »

eternityforest wrote: post #68

I really don't think that permabrick after N incorrect attempts should ever have been considered as a sane feature. That allows denial of service extremely easily. What needs security just enough that it can't just be unencrypted, but also can't afford real security (like long passwords or public keys)? Does this have any use aside from DRM products?

TFA does not suggest the head is bricked, the internal counter just stops updating. TFA does not even specify what the handle does in that situation. Supposedly it just keeps working with no issues.

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#104

Post by RobotToaster »

userbinator wrote: post #72

I guess this is one of the downsides of ubiquitous cheap electronics --- DRM everywhere. A similar thing happened relatively recently with label printers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30420918 (...and people have come up with a "modchip" to bypass that restriction already: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/dymo-550-thermal-print... ) All my tries to guess to one-way function for generating the passwords f…

If anyone happens to be looking for an open source alternative label maker https://github.com/andreisperid/E-TKT

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#105

Post by teaearlgraycold »

TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #55

I’ll never forget when my damn sonicare toothbrush app warned me about my iPhone being jailbroken. Had to have been a troll by the creators of the app since not even some of my banking apps had that warning.

Probably outsourced the app development and the contractors reused their boilerplate which included a jailbreak check.

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#107

Post by jachee »

charles_f wrote: post #94
mrfumier wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The toothbrush doesn't force you to change the head. You can brush your teeth with an old head as much as you want.

Yeah but if you could reset the head instead of having to change it, imagine the savings

All it saves is a light blinking at you. A bit of electrical tape will also solve that problem.

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#108

Post by psychphysic »

boosteri wrote: post #102
aceazzameen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess we'll have to brute force clean our teeth by moving the locked toothbrush up and down, side to side, and in circular motions.

Will just squirt some ink into your mouth upon detecting such abuse and violation of ToS

TOOTHBRUSH LOCKED. DRINK CAN TO UNLOCK

https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1ggg4u/please_drink_...

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#109

Post by psychphysic »

mikestew wrote: post #4

Great article, the most interesting part of which is that you can lock your self out of your toothbrush head after three wrong password attempts. I didn't dig into the data sheet for the NFC chip very deeply, but I imagine that it's just the default that the chip ships with. Or maybe Philips really wants that $25 for a new toothbrush head. :-) EDIT: nope, not the default. From the data sheet, last sentence: "To preve…

I agree the lock out is most interesting.

I think a better write up would have front loaded that aspect.

Even titling it "How I locked myself out of my smart brush" or similar. If he wanted to be creative it could have had a Film Noir start but even in a technical write up you should start with interesting aspects.

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#110

Post by PietdeVries »

aceazzameen wrote: post #52
qingcharles wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome Time Travellers! This is 2023 where you can find yourself locked out of your toothbrush after too many failed password attempts.

Guess we'll have to brute force clean our teeth by moving the locked toothbrush up and down, side to side, and in circular motions.

I might have misinterpreted the article, but I imagine that if the NFC tag on the brush locks out, the handset is no longer able to write new data to it (no 'brush seconds' can be added to the counter). This suggests to me that the handset will not start blinking and reminding you that you need a new brush, but will be happy to brush to infinity. I cannot imagine that the handset will refuse to brush if it can't write to the brush...
Post reply on HN