Not the Bee
Robot vacuums are being hacked, some yelling racial slurs and chasing pets
Jessica Swietoniowski
Oct 17, 2024 · NottheBee.com
Welp, I guess it was fun while it lasted.
In a recent tech fail, robot vacuum owners across the U.S. reported that the devices had been hacked, causing their trusty cleaning bots to yell out racial slurs and chase their pets.
This isn't exactly what I imagined going wrong with robots, but it still ain't good!
According to the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC), a security flaw in the Chinese-made Ecovacs Deebot X2 is being blamed for the hacks. These vacuums are pretty popular, which means the chaos is widespread.
Minnesota lawyer Daniel Swenson shared his own story, telling the outlet that he was spending a nice quiet evening with his family, watching TV, when his vacuum started acting up in a way no one expected.
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It sounded like a broken-up radio signal or something. You could hear snippets of maybe a voice.
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When he checked the Ecovacs app, he saw some random person messing with the vacuum's remote control feature and live camera. Freaked out, he quickly reset his password and rebooted the vacuum, thinking that would fix it.
But just as he settled back on the couch with his wife and teen son, the real chaos began — a voice started booming through the robot, this time, loud and clear.
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The voice shouted "F*** [n-word]" over and over again.
I got the impression it was a kid, maybe a teenager [speaking].
Maybe they were just jumping from device to device messing with families.
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At this point, he went ahead and turned the thing off and tossed it in the trash.
Swenson was at least glad the hackers were loud and obvious about it all. It could have been a lot worse; the hackers could have quietly watched his family through the vacuum's camera and listened in on the mic.
Super creepy.
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It was shock. And then it was like almost fear, disgust.
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This poor family wasn't the only victim of this type of robot-on-human hate crime (or is this cyberbullying? 🤔). ABC reported that one Ecovacs robot vacuum in El Paso, Texas, started yelling racial slurs at its owner, while another in L.A. chased a dog around the house.
According to TechCrunch, Ecovacs vacuums are pretty easy to hack.
In an August report, cybersecurity experts had been digging into the brand's security flaws. They found several ways hackers could mess with the robots through Bluetooth, including remotely turning on their microphones and cameras without anyone noticing.
Researcher Dennis Giese told TechCrunch that the security was "really, really, really, really bad."
Since then, Ecovacs put out a statement saying they haven't found any proof that user accounts were hacked or that their systems were breached. However, cybersecurity researchers have already shown how the four-digit PIN can easily be bypassed since it's only verified by the app, not by the server or the vacuum itself.
Ecovacs did end up rolling out a patch for this issue, but ABC sources say it didn't do much. Still, the company promised a security upgrade for owners of the X2 vacuums, which is expected to drop in November.
Well, I don't know about you, but I'd say it's time to go back to good old-fashioned vacuuming? 🤷♀️
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