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Robot vacuum cleaners hacked to spy on, insult owners

malwarebytes.com

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Re: Robot vacuum cleaners hacked to spy on, insult owners

#11

Post by amelius »

gedy wrote: post #5

These darn things don't need to be "cloud enabled", or even wifi. Please make them Bluetooth, etc only. These dopey use cases of needing to trigger a cleaning while miles away have always seemed like a stretch.

Even if they're Bluetooth-only: AdTech will invent some way to send Ethernet packets over it, sooner than you might expect.

Re: Robot vacuum cleaners hacked to spy on, insult owners

#14

Post by Rygian »

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #8
deepfriedchokes wrote: post #7

God bless these teenage degenerates and their endlessly creative fuckery. They bring more color to the world.

... for invading someone's privacy and screaming racist obscenities in their home? i vehemently disagree.

Consider the alternatives. Anyone else exploiting such a vulnerability would have worse intentions.

Re: Robot vacuum cleaners hacked to spy on, insult owners

#15

Post by guestbest »

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #8
deepfriedchokes wrote: post #7

God bless these teenage degenerates and their endlessly creative fuckery. They bring more color to the world.

... for invading someone's privacy and screaming racist obscenities in their home? i vehemently disagree.

I use a robot vacuum not connected to the internet. It has a remote and the same settings as an internet connected robot vacuum such as radial pattern, along edges, spot clean, etc. I hope it spurs people to consider these kinds of tools that don’t need to be connected to the internet to function over tools that don’t have a local/offline mode.

Re: Robot vacuum cleaners hacked to spy on, insult owners

#18

Post by badgersnake »

qmr wrote: post #12

It's almost like you shouldn't connect random ass appliances to the internet. My ancient roombas clean just fine with no cameras, internet, or AI nonsense.

Yep, I was gonna say exactly the same thing. Don’t connect it to the internet, just don’t do it.

Re: Robot vacuum cleaners hacked to spy on, insult owners

#19

Post by dang »

Hacked Robot Vacuums Across the U.S. Started Yelling Slurs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41815055 - Oct 2024 (1 comment)

Robot Vacuums Hacked to Shout Slurs at Their Owners - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41812546 - Oct 2024 (1 comment)

Insecure Deebot robot vacuums collect photos and audio to train AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41753983 - Oct 2024 (37 comments)

ABC News hacks into popular robot vacuum, watches owner through camera - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41735871 - Oct 2024 (138 comments)

Re: Robot vacuum cleaners hacked to spy on, insult owners

#20

Post by accrual »

jowea wrote: post #16

I was almost starting to think hacking had gotten too professional and commercialized for script kiddies to exist.

If anything, I'd expect it to proliferate with the easy access to GitHub and now LLMs. When I was a script kiddie we had to find tools on various forums attached as a .zip/.tgz and hope the supplied .exe/bin wasn't a virus. :)
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