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.
Having a vacuum, or microwave, refrigerator, toaster, washing machine, blah blah blah connected to the internet is the dumbest thing you can do, Why are you giving corporate America access to your personal space? “Big Brother” is not who we should be worried about, it’s corporations selling you in-home surveillance devices that pretend to do other tasks. This is literally how Humanity loses it’s freedom and autonomy. Not to mention how easy it will be / is for psychopaths to stalk you.
In a weird way, this is possibly the best thing the hackers could have done after gaining access.
Having your robot vacuum start yelling about hating black people gets media attention in the way an announcement at a security conference just doesn’t.
I doubt any of the victims who were black would be too pleased. I think this is the makings of a good class action. The only way these companies are going to start securing the Internet of shit is if it becomes too expensive not to.
I wouldn’t expect any of the victims to be happy about it, but this definitely could have been worse.
And hopefully these things will become known as the vaccum that shouts slurs at you.
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