Robot vacuum yells racial slur at family after being hacked
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.
The affected robots were all Chinese-made Ecovacs Deebot X2s — the exact model that the ABC was able to hack into as proof of a critical security flaw.
"It sounded like a broken-up radio signal or something," he told the ABC. "You could hear snippets of maybe a voice."
Dismissing it as some kind of glitch, Mr Swenson reset his password, rebooted the robot and sat back down on the couch beside his wife and 13-year-old son.
This time, there was no ambiguity about what was coming out of the speaker. A voice was yelling racist obscenities, loud and clear, right in front of Mr Swenson's son.
"I got the impression it was a kid, maybe a teenager [speaking]," said Swenson. "Maybe they were just jumping from device to device messing with families."
