Man accidentally gains control of 7k robot vacuums

https://www.popsci.com/technology/robot-vacuum-army/

by Brajeshwar • 5 months ago

423 240 5 months ago

metalman• 5 months ago

accidentaly a god, a sucky kinda god, but a god none the less " I command thee to make vanish the minor sins of this world my minions"

ghgr• 5 months ago

[...] the same credentials that allowed him to see and control his own device also provided access to live camera feeds, microphone audio [...]

Sorry what? Why would a vacuum cleaner even need a microphone?

onli• 5 months ago

Control by voice? Not that absurd.

Telemakhos• 5 months ago

Audio and video surveillance via robot vacuum is a feature: you can control the vacuum, see and hear the world from its perspective, and spy on your cats. I wish I were kidding.

https://youtu.be/TltYXEDoong?t=412

NooneAtAll32• 5 months ago

control what?

"get out of my room"?

thinkingemote• 5 months ago

As an impractical idea, echo location popped into my head.

jonplackett2• 5 months ago

Companies this inept really need to get fined.

Like how many layers of people had to have OKed having the same password for all of them? It’s incompetence on an impressive scale.

wolrah2• 5 months ago

Agreed, this sort of thing should at minimum be considered gross negligence at this point, but because regular consumers who buy these products rarely see and almost never understand these news articles it doesn't really impact sales so the company doesn't care.

If this discovery was guaranteed to result in meaningful fines companies would get their act together pretty quickly. 7000 counts of negligent exposure of private data (camera/mic feeds) should in a just world be millions of dollars in fines at the least and arguably criminal charges for management.

jonplackett2• 5 months ago

Exactly. If GDPR fines can be so high, then something like this that is pretty much intentionally leaking personal data should be in the same ballpark.

hinkley• 5 months ago

Just one underpaid dude.

RHSeeger2• 5 months ago

In order for the Romo, or really any modern autonomous vacuum, to function it needs to constantly collect visual data from the building it is operating in.

I specifically bought one without a camera or mic.

sverhagen• 5 months ago

How do you know? For sure, I mean?

brookst• 5 months ago

I mean your coffee maker could be a one-off spy device with nation-state backing. But it seems unlikely.

soopypoos2• 5 months ago

I wrapped mine in foil to be safe and now it's fabulous

tgsovlerkhgsel2• 5 months ago

Are there any like that that would have automatic emptying?

valicord2• 5 months ago

Roborock q revo

amelius• 5 months ago

Does your smartphone have a mic?

dylan6043• 5 months ago

You've brought up such a brilliantly useless point to this discussion. I'm really appreciative of your efforts

codeulike• 5 months ago

Smartphones at least have some semblance of security, whereas iot devices are a free for all

fsflover• 5 months ago

Yes, and a hardware kill switch for it.

Marsymars7• 5 months ago

In order for the Romo, or really any modern autonomous vacuum, to function it needs to constantly collect visual data from the building it is operating in.

IMO the random bouncing of older Roombas was unfairly pilloried. Sure, it didn't look great, but in practice it was effective at cleaning.

skrebbel3• 5 months ago

My Eufy claims to do all processing locally. I admit I never verified this (eg turn off the wifi while it's running - I should actually). But they were the only Chinese manufacturer that at least bothered to write anything about data locality and privacy in their marketing materials, and that got them my money.

Obviously at any point the brand can send a firmware update down the wire that does send a realtime video feed from my home right to Chairman Xi's bedroom. I'm aware of that, but the reality also is that the European/US brands currently don't get anywhere near the Chinese price/quality ratio, and I didn't want to muck about with Valetudo, I'm not courageous enough for that.

I'm not super happy about this situation but I am super happy about the robot. It's really very good.

accelbred• 5 months ago

Isn't Eufy the one that marketed fully local smart cameras that actually just streamed to the cloud unencrypted?

exegete• 5 months ago

“Accidentally” is not accurate. He used AI to inspect the source and found credentials that work in all devices. He also never gained control of anyone else’s devices. He never used the exploit.

55555• 5 months ago

I didn't read the article but based on the title and subheading I assume they say "accidentally" because he was trying to reverse engineer the communication protocol to use his own device and he did not expect to find something as dumb as master credentials that would work on others' devices.

wolrah2• 5 months ago

"Accidentally" as in his intent was to gain control of his own device but instead discovered what would in a just world be considered criminal levels of either incompetence or indifference to the most basic levels of security in the entire product line.

MostlyStable2• 5 months ago

Anyone who's somewhat technically inclined should, in my opinion, only be buying valetudo [0] compatible vacuums and replacing the default software as soon as possible.

[0] https://valetudo.cloud/

ericpauley2• 5 months ago

I found the “Why Not Valetudo” page on that site extremely persuasive. I would consider myself technically inclined. I also own a robot vacuum so I can spend more time doing important things that leverage my skills. Valetudo does not serve this mission.

Very impressive, but I disagree that this is the clear best choice for anywhere close to anyone.

misnome2• 5 months ago

Also, the first line in "Why Valetudo?"

First of all, please do not try to convince people to use Valetudo.

A good realist position for such a project to take.

MostlyStable2• 5 months ago

The main value proposition is privacy and security. If you are content with the privacy and security of your existing vacuum, then yes, I'd agree it's not for you. That being said, your critique seems to imply that Valetudo will increase your overall time spent managing the vacuum, and this has not been my experience. There is the initial setup time which I'm sure varies by robot, but for me took (conservatively) and hour or two, and then I never think about it again, to the same degree that I would before. You still have schedules, etc. and all the same features that make a robot vacuum a time saving item.

lucb1e2• 5 months ago

For anyone else wondering, "Why Not Valetudo" <https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/why-not-valetudo.html> lists:

- all the same downsides as keeping the stock OS would have ("it's opinionated software", "it's not about you", and the last one "it's not a community" basically means "you can't tell me how to change my software and be confident I'll do it")

- that this fan project is not necessarily as polished as the original software (as I would have expected)

- Only supported robots are supported (as the author themselves say: duh)

- it only works in english

- you can't revert to stock software if you don't like it

For me, the latter is the only thing worth mentioning. You made me curious what all these compelling downsides are but the rest is obvious and the latter isn't surprising / I would have known to check beforehand

How did you come to the conclusion that it's not likely the right choice for nearly anyone? Do you think so many people wouldn't understand enough English to operate the controls of a robot vacuum cleaner? Have you found features to be missing or clunky/fragile enough that people would frequently want to revert to stock? Do you think people care so much about it being community-driven FOSS that they'd rather keep the proprietary OS instead of open source that isn't community-driven?

Btw I have no experience with the project whatsoever and am not involved, only interested in trying it out once we need a new vacuum. I just came to a very different conclusion and am quite surprised by yours

mkoubaa2• 5 months ago

I wonder if Claude could do a good job or setting this up for someone not technically inclined

mzhaase• 5 months ago

Until it can disassemble a robot to attach a programmer to the mainboard, it cannot.

charles_f• 5 months ago

Original story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/879088/dji-romo-hack-vulnerabi...

Accompanying discussion on hn https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47047808

Cthulhu_• 5 months ago

Thank you, the guidelines are clear that the original source should be linked.

Betelbuddy2• 5 months ago

His code sucks...

Betelbuddy2• 5 months ago

Tough crowd. Even the robots got the suction reference.

fuzzfactor• 5 months ago

Well some robots like these are on the cutting edge of autonomous sucking.

dlenski6• 5 months ago

he soon discovered that the same credentials that allowed him to see and control his own device also provided access to live camera feeds, microphone audio, maps, and status data from nearly 7,000 other vacuums across 24 countries.

This is extremely similar to what I accidentally discovered and disclosed about Mysa smart thermostats last year: the same credentials could be used to access, inspect, and control all of them, anywhere in the world.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43392991

morkalork• 5 months ago

Is this cutting corners on manufacturing/assembly where they're skipping installing a unique set of keys on each device?

Neywiny4• 5 months ago

I think it's about being a configuration management nightmare. If every device has a unique password, you need the decoder ring for serial number to password. However, not all processors have unique IDs. So you either need to find a way to reliably serialize each board during manufacturing and hope it stays (like a sticker/laser/printer/etc) or add a serial number chip which is cost and complexity. It's not impossible, it's just extra work that usually goes unrewarded.

Aurornis2• 5 months ago

The vulnerability was in their backend cloud structure. The backend wasn't restricting access to only devices associated with your account.

Out of sheer laziness, I connected to the Mysa MQTT server and subscribed to the match-everything wildcard topic, #. I was hoping I’d see messages from a few more MQTT topics, giving me more information about my Mysa devices.
Instead, I started receiving a torrent of messages from every single Internet-connected production Mysa device in the whole world.

The devices had unique IDs, but they were all connected to one big MQTT pub/sub system that didn't even try to isolate anything.

It's lazy backend development. This happens often in IoT products where they hire some consultant or agency to develop a proof of concept, the agency makes a prototype without any security considerations, and then they call it done because it looks like it works. To an uninformed tester who only looks at the app it appears secure because they had to type in their password.

dlenski6• 5 months ago

Quite ironically, they do install a unique TLS cert and key on each thermostat, although it's done on first-wifi-connection of each thermostat, rather than pre-installed at the factory.

And then the thermostat uses those keys to mutually authenticate itself with the MQTT server. It actually makes it quite tedious (not impossible :-D) to 2-way-MITM the device's connection to the server.

It's just that, as @Aurornis wrote, the MQTT server itself did not have any checks to prevent sending and receiving messages to other owners' thermostats. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ I've actually discovered a whole lot more details about the Mysa thermostats than what I published. Many of them can be used to subvert and reconfigure the devices in interesting ways, but only with a witting/willing device owner who has local access. So I don't feel any obligation to disclose them, although I might eventually get around to building a de-cloud-ifying tool using them: https://github.com/dlenski/mysotherm/blob/main/README.md#fut... ]

jcgrillo14• 5 months ago

The "smart" thermostat stuff is scary. I have Haier minisplits in my house and they have some "smarts" built into each head unit. The way it works from the user's perspective is you connect to the device in the GE Home app via Bluetooth, enter your WiFi network's credentials, then the minisplit joins your wifi network and phones home to GE Cloud. Then your GE Home app can monitor and control your minisplit via GE Cloud.

I haven't done anything to analyze it further, instead after trying that out once I promptly changed my WiFi password and never looked back. The long term solution will involve some ESP32s, AHT20 temp/humidity sensors, and IR rx/tx.

But it just occurred to me reading this that if there's a similar vulnerability in HVAC system controls an attacker could cause one hell of an unanticipated power demand spike.

rpcope1• 5 months ago

This is honestly why it's important to insist on Z-wave or Zigbee if you don't have control over the device firmware and must have smart controls. Why people don't seem to understand now that if it's "WiFi" it's suspect at best, I'll never understand.

irishcoffee• 5 months ago

Edit: misread.

dilyevsky• 5 months ago

UniFi has ppsk setup where you can put an EU on a separate vlan with a separate password. Seems ideal for this

WalterBright2• 5 months ago

My problem with smart thermostats is the user interface couldn't be more awful. It's just nuts. You cannot do anything without the squinty manual in one hand and the squinty touchscreen in the other. So, you finally get it programmed. Then you want to change something, and boom, start all over.

I gave up.

I use a simple dial the temperature, turn on/off thermostat. I turn it off when going to bed, turn it on in the morning. Very happy.

Induane• 5 months ago

I have an old zen thermostat with home assistant support but no WiFi. They don't make them anymore sadly but it was the perfect balance.

dlenski6• 5 months ago

But it just occurred to me reading this that if there's a similar vulnerability in HVAC system controls an attacker could cause one hell of an unanticipated power demand spike.

Absolutely. This was one of the things I realized could be a substantial risk when I discovered the Mysa vulnerability. https://snowpatch.org/posts/i-can-completely-control-your-sm...

Thankfully, Mysa responded very rapidly to fix it, but if they hadn't I was planning to notify the BC provincial electric utilities which were cross-subsidizing these devices.

shevy-java2• 5 months ago

The ideal spy army. Nobody expects the spanish inquisition I mean, being able to spy into households via cheap house-cleaning devices.

lysace• 5 months ago

Some of us do. I specifically picked a device that (supposedly) lacked cameras and microphones. LIDAR seemed okay.

hilbert424• 5 months ago

"Nobody expects the spanish inquisition…"

Why not? They bought roving cameras that surveil their homes and connected them to internet servers they neither own nor control.

They obviously don't give a shit about privacy or they've room-temperature IQs.

vintagedave• 5 months ago

The old joke: people who are into tech have an Alexa, a smart thermostat, a fridge connected to the internet.

People who work in tech keep an axe next to the toaster.

alt2272• 5 months ago

Do you want a slice of toast?....

projektfu• 5 months ago

No way I'm putting an axe near an appliance like that. I need to sleep at night.

Ir0nMan• 5 months ago

I'm sorry Dave, I can't toast that.

PatronBernard• 5 months ago

Why does a robot vacuum have a microphone? Voice control?

Filligree• 5 months ago

Voice control is the claim. In my experience the voice control is entirely unusable, and can’t be fully turned off.

mexicocitinluez2• 5 months ago

One thing people don't realize with regard to smart thermometers is that they're a goldmine to people who break into houses.

A 51 straight weeks of 70 degree temperate followed by a week > 70 might imply they're on vacation. People who turn down the heat/ac and turn it back on when they come home from work is also a pattern pretty apparent by that info.

fullstop4• 5 months ago

Couldn't they get that information by pointing a thermal camera at the house? Most windows and doors would leak enough to show this information.

Or they could watch the air conditioner fans to know if it's on.

dlenski6• 5 months ago

A 51 straight weeks of 70 degree temperate followed by a week > 70 might imply they're on vacation. People who turn down the heat/ac and turn it back on when they come home from work is also a pattern pretty apparent by that info.

Yes, exactly. I made this point in my write-up: if you can a home's thermostats, you can probably figure out when people are away. https://snowpatch.org/posts/i-can-completely-control-your-sm...

Perepiska• 5 months ago

I've heard about some home internet provider in Georgia (country, not US state) which has the same default password on all of it's fiber routers. It could easily found in internet just by googling router model name.

TheRealPomax3• 5 months ago

Surely this also requires reporting DJI to the authorities for gross negligence? This is not an oopsie, this is deploying a surveillance network without telling anyone.

thenthenthen3• 5 months ago

This is a DJI company? Ouch. [edit] ah it is right in the title of the og article. Wow. Just wow. In China we just use a broom, so maybe it is an oversight (aka no one uses this overprices crap)

Someone1234• 5 months ago

It is gross negligence, but to which authorities are you reporting them to and which criminal violations are you claiming they broke?

TheRealPomax3• 5 months ago

Every single one relevant to where you live? If you're in the US, the US. "Good fucking luck and lol" and all that, but do it anyway. In the EU? Your country has agencies for this, as does the EU as a whole. Perform your civic duties, they still count in the EU.

Somewhere else? I don't know man, the author sure seems to live in either of those two regions.

You know where to report things if you live on Earth and use the internet.

niccl• 5 months ago

I invoke Hanlon's Razor [0]. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

TheRealPomax3• 5 months ago

I reject this razor on the basis that the author is more than clearly not stupid.

shevy-java2• 5 months ago

Well - imagine how many cat furs can be vacuumed with this!

trelane• 5 months ago

"sneak peak"

Sigh

https://slate.com/culture/2012/01/stealth-mountain-the-twitt...

sowbug3• 5 months ago

One advantage of AI-generated copy is it generally doesn't make mistakes like this.

The only mistake I've noticed, besides inexplicably lapsing into Chinese mid-sentence, is parallel construction errors, like "This product is fast, lightweight, and won't break the bank!"

MarkusQ6• 5 months ago

parallel construction errors, like "This product is fast, lightweight, and won't break the bank!"

I'm failing to see the error. That seems like perfectly sound, vernacular English.

rdiddly• 5 months ago

Well it only took until the 2nd paragraph, and the words "DJI’s remote cloud servers" for me to be forehead-slappingly disgusted again.

Obviously proper diligence wasn't followed with this product, and obviously this is going to be something we've all heard before, but why does a vacuum need to talk to a server at all?

And also, to go even further back, is there anything more leopards-ate-my-face than a compromised robo-vacuum? I have never understood the appeal of these things. Except as satire. Pushing a vacuum around takes minutes, once a month, all the more so when you live in a 3m x 3m box with 12 roommates, and is badly needed exercise for a lot of pathetic little nerd noodle-arms.

VladVladikoff• 5 months ago

once a month

We vacuum and mop our kitchen and dining room daily. It gets dirty, especially when you have young kids.

kelnos• 5 months ago

I get the frustration, but this is how pretty much all of the connected home devices on the market work. Sure, there are local-only versions of many of these things, but that sort of design is in the minority both in number of products and in sales.

And it makes sense: most people want this stuff to just work, and be accessible when they aren't at home on their WiFi network. The only reasonable way to do that these days is to have a central server that both the devices and the control apps connect to. Very few users (and yes I am one of them) are going to set up a local control server and figure out how to securely set up remote access to it.

It's a crappy situation that leads to security incidents like this one, but that's just where we are right now.

Regarding cleaning frequency: no need to repeat what the sibling commenter said, but I will say I suspect your cleaning needs are much lower than those of the average person.

Marsymars7• 5 months ago

Pushing a vacuum around takes minutes, once a month, all the more so when you live in a 3m x 3m box with 12 roommates

That's a lot of assumptions.

I budget an hour every couple of weeks to vacuum the entire house (kitchen more frequently, but that's quick). When we had pets, which we'll probably have again in the future, this had to be done weekly.

moooo99• 5 months ago

Pushing a vacuum around takes minutes, once a month,

Wait, you vacuum your living space *once a month*? If that is indeed the case, I am nit surprised you do not get the appeal. But everybody I know personally has a different understanding of cleanliness. We vacuum once a week at least and ans frequency only goes up if you have kids or/and pets.

and is badly needed exercise for a lot of pathetic little nerd noodle-arms.

I get the implication, hahaha. But in all seriousness, our Robot vacuum was the only tech purchase that I ever made based on an explicit wish of my girlfriend.

These things really make life easier for lots and lots of people.

Ylpertnodi• 5 months ago

Terrible writing in the article.

It retails for around $2,000 and is roughly the size of a large terrier or a small fridge when docked at its base station.

So, large terriers, and small [presumably 'smart'] fridges can have docking stations?

dep_b• 5 months ago

Internet connections on devices are an anti feature to me. I need something to work reliably without internet. And then maybe add some extras through internet access through open and secure protocols, so I can always write my own implementation.

fnands• 5 months ago

The dishwasher at my office has WiFi.

Why do companies insist on connecting every single device to the internet? Fortunately it's mostly an optional feature, so still works just fine without it, but in general it's a pretty strong signal to me to not buy that product.

thegrey_one• 5 months ago

I thought this was pretty much a known fact by now. To make more money. They sell the data, or monetize it somehow. They disguise doing it under all kinds of "features" which indeed might be useful for some people. What should ring your alarm bells is any device that needs you to make an account, at least once when setting it up. That's valuable data, who/where/email/phone number etc. If you cannot fully use the product without at least one initial access to the internet, your data will be monetized, that's the reason you're not able of using it, they need to get something out of you. Of-course there's features that don't work, or make any sense, without internet access. But if you cannot wash your clothes without an account/initial access to the internet...that's sus.

autoexec3• 5 months ago

In addition to collecting and selling every scrap of you your private data they can get their hands on, having 24 hour access to the internet also means that at any time they can push updates that disable features you paid for so that they can start charging you a monthly fee to regain access to them.

Any CEO whose company engages in spying and theft should be criminally charged and thrown behind bars just as you or I would be for those same acts, but right now companies can do pretty much anything they want to you and if they do happen to face any consequence it'll just be a slap on the wrist that costs them a fraction of the profit they made ripping you off and violating your privacy.

tgsovlerkhgsel2• 5 months ago

It's cheap to do, some people like it and it can be sold to them as a premium feature, and it enables future enshittification with subscriptions and other revenue opportunities.

Ignore the security issues for a bit, because most buyers don't know/think about those. If it wasn't for the enshittification, having your dishwasher online would be useful. Not groundbreaking, but being able to look up how long it still has without having to walk to the kitchen, get a notification when it's done, be able to look up error codes or check the status of consumables would be kind of nice if it weren't for the downsides that come with it. But those downsides are not something people think about.

dlenski6• 5 months ago

The dishwasher at my office has WiFi.

At one of the AWS builds I worked at there was a water dispenser. It had one button to dispense cold still water, one for fizzy, one for hot water, etc.

Instead of JUST PRESSING THE BUTTON WITH YOUR FINGER, you could—and I am not making this up—download an app that would allow you to pair to the dispenser via a QR code, and then remotely trigger the water-dispensing action… so that you wouldn't have to press the button.

Absolutely insane.

Yeah, I imagine that this feature was dreamed up during the early part of the COVID pandemic where it was hypothesized that COVID spread on high-touch surfaces. Still doesn't make it any less insane. (And also, that theory was pretty clearly highly sus from the start.)

kderbyma• 5 months ago

He couldve cleaned up....

Nevermark• 5 months ago

How long before there is a claw controlled network of robot/device spies and soldiers?

jrochkind1• 5 months ago

I don't knowingly have any live cameras or microphones in my home other than my laptop and phone (I know those are big "buts", but still), and I plan to keep it that way.

I remind myself of this no matter how much convenience I may be missing out on. (Getting a TV without em is kinda hard!)

Planning in advance, same for any AR stuff, not in my life, I'm sticking to it.

testing223212• 5 months ago

I have a roomba It has never been connected to wifi and I’ve never used a phone app for it (I don’t have a phone)

It works perfectly.

NooneAtAll32• 5 months ago

a room a?

CableNinja• 5 months ago

Unless you watch actual TV theres no reason to buy an actual TV in my opinion. You can get nicely large monitors and displays for pretty cheap, and a minipc or even a stick pc and youre good to go.

Both of my 'TV's are big monitors with some lenovo minipcs running debian. Hardwired, but i could wifi them if i want.

Zero tracking, zero bullshit.

Arch485• 5 months ago

I've just accepted that Microsoft, Google, and Meta all have a constant wiretap in my office (on account of my Windows PC, Android smartphone, and Meta VR headset).

It's rather dystopian to just know and accept this, but there's really no alternative if you want to participate in modern society at a normal capacity (sans the VR headset, that really isn't a necessity).

Something something, keep your enemies closer, right?

shrubble• 5 months ago

Due to the wonders of technology, you can now do the equivalent of the Steven Wright joke:

“In my house there's this light switch that doesn't do anything. Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Germany. She said, 'Cut it out.'”

At scale, over the Internet.

mghackerlady• 5 months ago

I once did something similar for car wash doors. there's a car wash door company out there that has a control panel accessible over VNC and uses the same defaults for every one they set up, so I used to connect to random ones and open and shut the car wash doors for the fun of it. The best part was when someone noticed and tried to shut it only for me to open it again, resulting in a battle where neither of us knew anything more than someone or something keeps undoing my actions

Razengan• 5 months ago

This should be a supervillain origin story.

cogogo• 5 months ago

About 10 years ago I was at a startup that used one of the upstart 401k providers of the time. Logged in one day and could see several of my coworkers’ accounts. Really bad class of bug. Still not clear to me how they could have screwed up account atomicity so poorly but assume it was something to do with how they managed orgs.

I was pretty mad about it but also tried to play ball and not make too much of a fuss because I learned some pretty private things without meaning to and didn’t want to inadvertently make them public. Should have been more vocal.

rkagerer• 5 months ago

I tend to err on the side of discretion as well. It's more professional.

Though over the years, I've learned to calibrate that discretion proportional to how much of a good-faith effort the counterparty involved seems to be making. If they clearly don't give a shit that they're incompetent, they can expect my megaphone to blare.

fc417fc8023• 5 months ago

didn’t want to inadvertently make them public

Screenshot, redact, mass email everyone. Problem solved. Financial institutions don't deserve any leeway with security issues when it comes to their reputation. Handling your money securely and privately is the totality of their reason for existence.

coin• 5 months ago

Please don't edit the title

rtchau• 5 months ago

For a brief, beautiful moment, one man came close to sucking more than any other person in human history.

mattmaroon• 5 months ago

I bet he had the world's cleanest floor.

userbinator• 5 months ago

The robot in question is the DJI Romo, an autonomous home vacuum that first launched in China last year and is currently expanding to other countries. It retails for around $2,000 and is roughly the size of a large terrier or a small fridge when docked at its base station.

Unfortunately it doesn't fly.... although if it did, that would've made this even scarier.

dwoldrich• 5 months ago

Consumers are not voting with their wallets, they do not care. Surveillance for profit will be illegal. Time for the Internet Bill of Rights. Trust me, it's coming. tyfyattm

petterroea• 5 months ago

China simply isn't interested in or understands privacy at the moment. I have some experience with cross border relations with them and getting them to sign and then care about data processing agreements we need for gdpr is something for sure...

My understanding is that there is no malice or incompetence, it's usually just "who cares"

echelon• 5 months ago

Chinese engineers are knowingly surveilled by the state with no recourse. Commercial offerings of all shapes and sizes have cameras and microphones. It's just new tech.

In the US, Five Eyes, and abroad, there is at least some ceremony around calling this bad even though a similar apparatus is installed. (Supposedly with "checks and balances", but who knows?)

People in Western countries almost unanimously find corporate spying creepy. (Though ad tech has snuck in via convenience and invisibility.) We find cameras a hard line.

The TikTok and Twitch generation has different attitudes about always-on cameras, though.

surprisetalk• 5 months ago

https://taylor.town/roombas-with-fart-spray

suzzer992• 5 months ago

I have my Roomba programmed to start at 5pm every day. Multiple times now it's come to life at 7pm, gone straight to my bedroom, stayed for for 5-10 minutes, then come back home to its dock and gone back to sleep. I have no idea what's going on.

qnleigh• 5 months ago

Does it even vacuum while it's in there? From what you wrote, it sounds like it just comes in, sits menacingly at the side of your bed, and then leaves...

suzzer992• 5 months ago

I was in the living room and didn't follow it into the bedroom. It didn't sound like it ever turned on the vacuum. It has a mapping mode (I assume) where it drives around and doesn't vacuum.

fix4fun• 5 months ago

My first think after reading title was "Silicon Valley" series (2014) and episode with Gilfoyle and taking control of smart fridges ;) Sorry. A but out of topic, but I had to mention ;)

hilbert424• 5 months ago

I give up. Privacy's hopeless as none care. When so many are prepared to chuck privacy to the wind and connect a roving camera in their homes to an internet server that's not under their contol there's no hope. The few who do care are swamped by the numbers.

Anyway, what's all the fuss about (those affected couldn't give a damn about their privacy)?

NalNezumi• 5 months ago

As part of my thesis work almost 10 years ago I worked on a robot vacuum cleaner, (working on their sensor data) and one smart hardware implementation they had was that they had separated the computer vision module from the main board.

This way, only processed vision data would be physically sent to the main board. This constituted of mostly just "line segments", almost like a sparse point cloud, to detect obstacles and edges. They argued that this was more privacy safe because there's no way for the main module to access any raw vision data. It did however make the SLAM part harder to make work.

In hindsight, a good decision. I got one as a thank you for thesis work and it's still running just fine (with battery and brushes replaced once) and good to know that with the years of software update it still can't check me walking around in underwears in my apartment

altacc• 5 months ago

I'm obviously wondering which company this is but understand the anonymity. I have a LIDAR vacuum to avoid cameras and from connecting to its debug socket could see the point cloud enough to know that it was very granular.

logankeenan• 5 months ago

Which brand did you get? I’ve always been hesitant to get one, I’d like one that I could reduce the amount of data sent out to the cloud

fainpul• 5 months ago

If one's goal was to force companies to implement better security for their products, it would probably be more efficient to cause maximum reputational damage to the companies, instead of just "responsibly disclosing" vulnerabilities.

It would temporarily suck for consumers, having their devices exploited and their privacy abused, but it would lead to wider awareness of the problem, shaming of the companies, financial and legal pressure, and hopefully change things in the long run.

Disclaimer: This is not a call to action to do illegal things. Your decisions are your own.

mihaaly• 5 months ago

Paying almost a thousand - or more! - to have an overcomplicated device filled with sensors put into your most private sphere voulnerable to adverse elements unnecessarily (had a perfect dumb robot vacuum doing its job loaned to us once, but no-one sells such when they can sell bullshit for 4 times more, idiots buy it regardless), that is not smart....

Consumidiotsm, is the term comes to mind. Eating up crap, is the analogy from non-technical contexts. The side effect is, that buying properly made not overcomplicated and tedious to maintain (update, refresh, pair, disgnose, update and configure connected harware, click away pushy self-promotions, the way it is not exposing you to the manufacturer or everyone) products is tedious (loosing saved efforts). Poor others just want simple and robust, not fragile and risky tech-crap doing the core thing are left out.

(Robotic vacuum is a great concept! The available implementations in the other hand are rubish!)

ruffrey• 5 months ago

At what point do these security flaws come with a criminal level of negligence? This isn't intended to be an inflammatory or angry comment. It is a genuine question.

Man accidentally gains control of 7k robot vacuums

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