Technology

59612 readers

3489 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

224

Ecovacs home robots can be hacked to spy on their owners, researchers say (techcrunch.com)

submitted 3 months ago by lemmee_in@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Malicious hackers can take over control of vacuum and lawn mower robots made by Ecovacs to spy on their owners using the devices’ cameras and microphones, new research has found.

Security researchers Dennis Giese and Braelynn are due to speak at the Def Con hacking conference on Saturday detailing their research into Ecovacs robots. When they analyzed several Ecovacs products, the two researchers found a number of issues that can be abused to hack the robots via Bluetooth and surreptitiously switch on microphones and cameras remotely.

“Their security was really, really, really, really bad,” Giese told TechCrunch in an interview ahead of the talk.

The researchers said they reached out to Ecovacs to report the vulnerabilities but never heard back from the company, and believe the vulnerabilities are still not fixed and could be exploited by hackers.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] JudahBenHur@lemm.ee 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

no you are not. I will not buy an internet connected anything as long as possible.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I've seen tower fans with Wifi. Why on earth does a fan need to contact the internet?

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Most smarthome products are only worthwhile if they're coupled with other devices in IFTTT style workflows. Like a morning routine where lights come on, the blinds open, and your playlist starts when you fist bump the air or yell "still alive". A fan is stupid because you can control most fans from a smart plug, but a fan could come in handy for a grow operation, to maintain a level of humidity or whatever; coupled with a smart hygrometer/thermometer, irrigation, and server.

The problem is capitalism — every company tried to create their own walled gardens out of pure greed, so nobody except rich morons were willing to commit to automating their lives with a product/brand/platform that may not exist tomorrow, and won't work with any other brand/platforms products, so all they've done is collectively hamstrung the entire markets growth, and created mountains of e-waste. Things are starting to move in a better direction, but until I can setup a cost-effective smarthome 100% offline, LAN only, managed by my own FOSS home server, I'm not gonna bother with anything more than a few standalone devices (e.g. pet-cam, mood lighting, etc).

[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

until I can setup a cost-effective smarthome 100% offline, LAN only, managed by my own FOSS home server, I'm not gonna bother

I have that for several years now, with Tasmota devices and a Home Assistant server.

I am going one step further even: most of the logic continues to work even if the Home Assistant server is down. I just have less additional control by smartphone then, and less statistics.