Man Accidentally Gains Control of 7,000 Robot Vacuums

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A software engineer tried steering his robot vacuum with a videogame controller, reports Popular Science — but ended up with "a sneak peak into thousands of people's homes."While building his own remote-control app, Sammy Azdoufal reportedly used an AI coding assistant to help reverse-engineer how the robot communicated with DJI's remote cloud servers. But 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. The backend security bug effectively exposed an army of internet-connected robots that, in the wrong hands, could have turned into surveillance tools, all without their owners ever knowing. Luckily, Azdoufal chose not to exploit that. Instead, he shared his findings with The Verge, which quickly contacted DJI to report the flaw... He also claims he could compile 2D floor plans of the homes the robots were operating in. A quick look at the robots' IP addresses also revealed their approximate locations. DJI told Popular Science the issue was addressed "through two updates, with an initial patch deployed on February 8 and a follow-up update completed on February 10."Read more of this story at Slashdot.