Kevin Beaumont is not exactly a random person in this instance, he's a pretty experienced writer on cybersecurity.
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."
Or, similarly, the letter to the editor in NEJM which caused decades of mistrust of MSG -- and which, depending on who you listen to, might or might not have been a deliberate hoax.
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."