Ecovacs robot vacuums in multiple US cities were hacked in the space of a few days, with the attacker physically controlling them and yelling obscenities through their onboard speakers.
  • Alice@beehaw.org
    32·
    1 month ago

    Despite the slurs, Mr Swenson was glad that the hackers had announced their presence so loudly.

    It would have been much worse, he said, if they had decided to quietly observe his family inside their home.

    They could’ve peered through his robot’s camera, and listened through the microphone, without him having the slightest clue.

    Why does a vacuum cleaner have a spy camera and microphone? Insane thing to have in a house with children.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      13·
      1 month ago

      Camera makes some amount of sense. Can be used to keep it from running over wires, or getting caught up in something like a loose curtain. Stuff that would be difficult to handle with non-visual sensors.

      Microphone? Oh hell no. No purpose.

    • FizzyOrange@programming.dev
      5·
      1 month ago

      The camera is used for visual odometry. They’re usually black and white and very low resolution though.

      Microphone, I have no idea. Could be useful for floor type detection or something? Voice control?

  • Asafum
    17·
    1 month ago

    I know people like to have faith in technology but I live by the idea that “if it connects to the internet, it will be hacked/hackable.”

    Fuck that noise, I’ll push my “old school” vacuum around tyvm…

    • Daemon Silverstein@thelemmy.club
      2·
      1 month ago

      Not just things connected to the internet. Radio-controlled things can also be hacked/hackable. Electronic devices are prone to EM interference. Air-gapped systems have flaws somewhere, even if the flaws come from the human operators (social engineering, humans are hackable). There’s no such thing as a non-hackable thing.

    • AliasAKA@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      This is the answer.

      We really need regulation at the FCC level also, such that users are able to physically disable any and all WiFi radios in the device. I want to buy a tv and completely physically disable any wireless radios there in (I don’t want my electronics band hopping in free WiFi unless I’ve asked them too).

      We also need privacy regulation at the FTC such that any product capable of connecting to the internet discloses such, gives the user at any time an export of the data it has waiting for export or the last export it did, and allows for the owner to disable any such data export over the internet on a permanent basis.