Hackers Make Robot Vacuums Go Rogue Inside Houses

Original article here

Ecovacs devices hurled racial slurs at US customers.

Those robot vacuums are handy devices—until they allow strangers to watch your family, hurl racial slurs, and torment the dog. ABC News of Australia reports that hackers gained control of Chinese-made Ecovacs Deebot X2s in the homes of US customers. It’s not clear how many devices were compromised, but the outlet rounds up examples from Minnesota, Los Angeles, and El Paso, Texas.

• In Minnesota, lawyer Daniel Swenson says what sounded like a teenage voice began yelling “f—ing n—–s” over and over in front of his family. A similar incident happened in El Paso. In Los Angeles, one of the devices began chasing the family dog—because the hackers gained control of the device’s camera and remote operations.

This hack may sound like a bunch of bored teens goofing around, but it demonstrates how easily hackers can gain access to people’s homes to spy through cameras and microphones, notes Gizmodo. “A lot of the time the intent of these intruders is just to be punks,” writes Tom Maxwell. “But you have to wonder how many times it happens and no one knows about it.”

Ecovacs denies its devices were to blame for any vulnerability, though ABC demonstrated six months ago how easily it could commandeer one of the company’s vacuums from afar and see through its camera inside a home. The latest hack may come down to a PIN code vulnerability. A four-digit code is needed to gain access to the device’s video feed, but the code “is not validated server-side—meaning anyone with the basic know-how of a tool like Chrome web inspector could bypass it,” per Gizmodo. Its takeaway: Before buying any kind of smart device for the home, put due diligence into checking the company’s security measures. And maybe stop using the same PIN code over and over.

(More hackers stories.)

Source: Newser

John Johnson joined Newser in 2007. Prior to that, he worked as an editor for Gannett at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle for 12 years and as a reporter and editor at other newspapers in New York state and Ohio. He has a degree in journalism from SUNY College at Buffalo and focuses mainly on politics and science for Newser.