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.
    • ⸻ Ban DHMO 🇦🇺 ⸻@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
      16·
      24 days ago

      Personally if I was the hacker I’d chase the people around with it shouting “EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE!” I think that would be tasteful

      • Tikiporch@lemmy.world
        2·
        24 days ago

        “Hello, we’ve been trying to reach you about your cars extended warranty…” or whatever the current trend is in phone scams.

  • No1@aussie.zone
    6·
    24 days ago

    SkyNet is coming. When it’s AI controlling the robots instead of hackers, watch out!

    To be serious though, I’ve got a robot vac that’s pretty dumb by today’s standards - no camera etc. It hasn’t had a firmware update for ages, so if it was hacked, I’m dubious the company would fix such an old model. The one benefit is that I think it’s so old and dumb, I think I can actually run it without connecting to a network. But I would lose app control and the ability to change any settings.

    • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
      1·
      23 days ago

      I find they are all dumb. I spend more time helping the stupid machine get unstuck from under the couch, pulling random crap that gets stuck from its brushes. I basically needed to follow it around the house which defeated the purpose of automatic. It never gets used as it’s faster to do it myself. AND the bigger vac is quieter than the dumb thing.

      • Ilandar@aussie.zone
        1·
        23 days ago

        This has been my experience too. I bought a new model from LG last year, thinking the technology would have evolved enough by now to be useful. Instead it consistently gets itself stuck in the stupidest places and re-cleans the same spots repeatedly whilst completely ignoring others. In the accompanying app I can see a map of what it thinks the room looks like and it’s always wrong because the vacuum has this habit of continuing to drive into walls and recording it as forward movement in an open space instead of a wall, which completely skews the dimensions.

      • Taleya@aussie.zone
        1·
        23 days ago

        we have an ol’ 880 that does the rounds every other day - it’s very very good for keeping on top of the dross. Doesn’t replace the big vacuum, but it does cut down on the number of times we have to vacuum per week, keeps the walkways clear and eats all the cat fur. Ours is brushless though, I’ve tried a brushed version, it’s a piece of shit that chokes.

  • Taleya@aussie.zone
    5·
    23 days ago

    …aaaaand this is why I shoot anything with a camera or wifi enabled that doesn’t explicitly need it.

      • Taleya@aussie.zone
        2·
        23 days ago

        I have an 880 that works just fine - no camera, no wifi. Comes with a remote and when it bumps into something with its soft rubber bumpers it adjusts its trajectory and keeps going

    • dai@lemmy.world
      2·
      23 days ago

      Valetudo exists for local only operation of robot vacuums. Not for the point and click among our modern society, but if someone was paranoid enough they’d probably make it happen.

      Sorry if that sounds like a jab, not intended 😅

      Many “smart” devices can be modified, blocked or just not connected in the first place. I prefer to waste hours of my life figuring out extravagant ways to break these devices, only sometimes enabling local only functions.

  • Che Banana@beehaw.org
    3·
    24 days ago

    Copied from another thread on the same topic:

    Yeah so we were visiting friends in Germany and the father was all proud to show us how he surveiled the (young adult) children and their friends with the vacuum camera while they were out.

    Needless to say that was super creepy and for sure we thought our room might be ‘bugged’ so we didn’t talk about it until we were (far, far) away.