More importantly, they are raising consciousness of fundamental problems that can lead to very damaging consequences by doing cheap pranks with trivial consequences.
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.
this whole subthread is upsetting. horrifying to see HN glorify the antagonist. the family was made to feel unsafe in their own home. yes, the manufacturer was negligent but that does not make it okay, it just means multiple parties are at fault. don't spin roomba terrorists as do-gooders. this teenage hacker was spreading hate and fear.
My Roborock has a three button combination you have to press on the bot to enable remote viewing. I suppose once you do that all bets are off. But at least it requires access to the hardware and is off by default. Better if you could configure it to disable again after each use or periodically.
I'd really want this feature to keep an eye on my pets if I work away from home again. I could see buying a bot just for that.
My pup would be tormented by the vacuum following it around while I'm not there. She gets freaked out enough by a stationary PTZ camera on my bookshelf.
Right. But the actual use case of being able to sell your home's floorplan and general cleaning schedule/behaviors/etc to advertisers requires cloud functionality, so you need some fig leaf to cover up the requirement...
I agree, local only would be great. But that's not aligned with the "sell a product once, sell the data collected forever!" model that most modern consumer tech products operate on.
Maybe a step further for privacy: a physical "config mode" toggle on top of the vacuum that enables the BlueTooth radio for a point-to-point connection with the phone app, then toggle it back when you're done. Wouldn't prevent the vacuum from caching data during its work and sending it when in config mode though, I suppose.
Maybe the fact it shows how these devices can spy might educate people on what IoT's are doing all day every day in their homes and around their kids. Would this be considered hactivism?
I'm half curious if they got some of the idea from Michael Reeves [1].
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. :)
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)